(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
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Via commentor Middlewest, John “Leverage” Rogers understands how con artists work:
… Paul Ryan’s family fortune was based on being paid by the government to build highways, he’s never had a job other than “Congressman”, none of his budget numbers add up — at all — and he’s trying to push a budget that would raise taxes on the middle class, hand giant tax breaks to the rich, gut the country’s infrastructure, and end Medicare — which no matter what shit they sling at you is the plan because strangely, his plan doesn’t apply to anybody over 55. Why not, if it’s so awesome? Because old folk know bullshit when they smell it, that’s why.
And why is he pursuing these policies? Because, well, “job creators.”
You know what? I type for a living, and my stupid little typing creates a couple hundred jobs. I’m an actual job creator, which was the last damn thing anybody (including my perpetually surprised father) expected when I started telling jokes in bars. And I don’t think that raising my tax rate by 3.4% (back the bad old Clinton Socialism Rate) so you, my fellow citizen, won’t lose your fucking house when your kid gets cancer, or maybe we get a functioning power grid or roads that wouldn’t be substandard in ZIMBABWE is “socialism”. It’s basic. Goddam. Decency.
When the hell did we get talked out of that?
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Apart from the non-stop GOP Festival of #FAIL, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Mustang Bobby
My plans for the evening were shot to hell when I read that John Boehner is blaming Barack Obama for the drought in the Midwest.
Seriously.
gbear
Watching cats learn to like each other. It’s like watching paint dry, except for the additional poops.
It’s pretty hard to top the GOP festival of fail this weekend.
El Cid
There was an age in which the most influential and richest among the corporate super-wealthy worried about the stability of the broad working classes and wanted enough social development and federal investment to allow them to continue to be safely, stably, and increasingly rich for generations.
It lasted from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, give or take.
This isn’t in itself a great thing, but it sure seems a golden age compared to the times in which the rich don’t need us to exist as a population with strength and stability — no, fuck us.
Someday humans might be able to achieve a level of civilization which doesn’t hinge upon the cultural breezes blowing through the tiny super-rich few and the direct and indirect henchmen and serving institutes they spawn.
Or maybe not.
SiubhanDuinne
I, for one, cannot WAIT for the VP debate. Biden is going to efuckinviscerate this dude.
jl
@Mustang Bobby:
Let the GOP bury themselves in brutal vicious stupid. I hope they keep up this garbage. Too stupid for all but the 27 percent, which is good news for November. Everyone except racist wingnuts will despise them by then.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mustang Bobby: Can Obama at least take credit for photosynthesis or something?
JGabriel
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Mustang Bobby:
Yeah, it’s gonna be hard for anything on TV to top that for laughs.
Edited to Add:
But, hey, it’s a step forward: This is the first time a Republican has proposed man-made global warming!
.
SiubhanDuinne
Oh, and BTW and FTR: I am so glad Mike Luckovich is employed by my local paper. (Admittedly he is the only thing that makes said local paper worth reading, but one takes what one can gets.)
Anya
If you don’t have any plans, please take this “Quiz! Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, or Gone with the Wind.” It’s fun. I promise. But to tell the truth, I didn’t do well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mustang Bobby: makes ya wanna drink like a Boehner, don’t it?
sb
LAUSD schools start tomorrow. I have 150 students in what promises to be the hottest month of the year (we’re starting early this year, we here at LAUSD).
What’s on my agenda? Prayer, mostly.
beltane
@El Cid:
This period of good behavior was only brought on by the plutocrats’ fear of ending up like the Romanovs. It was a matter of self-interest and nothing else. Until some movement comes along that has the power to strike fear into their withered hearts, don’t expect a repeat.
MTmofo
Helen Gurley Brown has passed. She was 90. RIP
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That definitely needs to be included in the balloon juice lexicon.
After reading Keller’s opinion piece in the NYTimes today I wanted to drink like a Boehner.. nice
The Other Chuck
@efgoldman:
Why not, we already had him as president.
Maude
The Republicans have no notion about results of their “plans”.
It is fantasyland and they tell stories from fantasyland.
I’m tired of them, but it’s good to watch Ryan as Wild Bill Hickok in Iowa.
Obama saw the butter cow. I hope I get to see that some time. How neat.
ChrisNYC
Romney is an irredeemable coward. Halperin (Halperin!) tsked tsked today about his refusal to answer what the difference is between his plan and Ryan’s plan. Mitt says, “Oh that’s not my plan. For Pete’s sake, I can’t tell you about my plan because people might attack me for it.”
The media is going to flay him. First, the bad campaign. Now, their dearest hope for a “serious” discussion of heartthrob Ryan’s plan and all that awesome pain … dashed.
Baud
I’m saving my full measure of glee for when the friction between the Romney and Ryan people fully blossoms and becomes publicly exposed. I predict it’ll happen after the V-P debate.
scav
@ChrisNYC: ”For Pete’s sake, I can’t tell you about my plan because people might attack me for it.”
Why the hell weren’t the cameramen in the studio rolling on the floor into view, howling with laughter at that one?!
Hypatia's Momma
Having finished Escape from Camp 14, I started re-reading Guy deLisle’s “memoirs” of Burma, Pyonyang, and Shenzhen. (He also has one for Jerusalem but I don’t yet own it.)
For lighter reading, Kampung Boy and the sequel, Town Boy.
Hypatia's Momma
@gbear:
Really? I’ve always found it to be one of the more exciting experiences in life. Standing by with the vet on emergency dial, snacky-snacks, a spray bottle of water, and a heat-seeking tranq gun is top-notch entertainment.
NotMax
I don’t peruse the right-wing blogosphere, much less the righter-than-right-wing blogosphere, but I know some here do on occasion.
Just curious if any of those areas have picked up or started to push the U.S. medal totals from the summer Olympics as an anti-Obama ‘America In Decline’ screed.
2008 (‘W’) – 110 total medals
2012 (Obama) – 104 total medals
ChrisNYC
@scav: Sorry. That’s my made up quote. He didn’t really say that.
The facts if you INSIST are, according to AP:
Romney said he was “sure” there are places where his budget is different than Ryan’s. But he refused to say what specific policies his budget would include that would differ from the Wisconsin congressman’s detailed proposal.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman:
Interesting, isn’t it? That’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to see when they’re down by seven points in the third week of October and Santorum and Jebbie have started publicly critiquing the campaign
El Cid
@beltane:
It was that fear but also the realization of the true, modernizing capabilities of the appearing 20th century nation-state.
They could be even richer for longer by having the nation develop itself in certain ways mostly at the citizens’ own expense.
That it was all a matter of self-interest was true then and true now. The difference is in the context in which the super-rich find themselves, the power they hold, the lack of reproach they risk, and the ideology and structure of capitalist institutions which for a generation or so has fetishized shareholder profits and financialized gamesmanship in ways allowing corporate directors to pursue very risky and ridiculously profitable direct self interests with zero or near-zero personal financial risk on an astoundingly short term.
It’s not about the self-interest part — that’s a constant. It’s about what else is and isn’t there.
scav
@ChrisNYC: Well, that would explain the lack of visible cameramen. Damn. No need to apologize though, I thoroughly enjoyed that moment of personal gullibility while it lasted.
Maude
@efgoldman:
The results would create social chaos.
The rich would not be okay if all the plans went through. They have a blind spot about how an economy works and they don’t think, they emote.
trollhattan
@Baud:
What the hey, I’ll predict Ryan will begin Campaign 2016 during his convention speech, flinging red meat to the nosebleed section and working in a wink and at least one “urban dad” joke.
The elect-Willard thing is handy but ultimately, a distraction. Roger Ailes will approve.
Also, too: UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH.
Steeplejack
@gbear:
Similar excitement letting one cat get used to her new environment. Clearly this innocuous one-bedroom apartment is a sinister thunderdome infested with peril for a little kittycat.
She has been doing okay in bedroom lockdown, so this afternoon I opened the door to see if she wanted to try the rest of the place. She immediately went into low skulk mode, paced nervously back and forth in front of the door, then said, “Screw it,” and nosed under the bedcovers at the foot of the bed to hide out. Haven’t we all felt like that at one time or another?
NotMax
Banksters show their stripes yet again.
James E. Powell
@sb:
Hey! I also work for LAUSD. Wishing you a good year and all that.
Scuffletuffle
@Anya: An article on being naked and public sex has no place on the same page as that face…
Just sayin’
PurpleGirl
@Steeplejack: Aww. That sounds cute. Pics, please.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Why don’t we just get the pledgemaster of Phi Kappa Drunka to run the damned Congress.
I thought we did.
Steeplejack
@PurpleGirl:
If I can get her to stand still for a moment. All I get is blurs so far.
patrick II
John Rogers has not been doing political writing at Kung Fu Monkey since Leverage has been on the air. It is good to see him pissed off enough that he has decided some things need to be said. He is one of the best political writers I know, and I hope he keeps it up
trollhattan
@patrick II:
Just read his retort to a butt-hurt anonymous commenter and boy, it would seem a giant has been stirred from a long slumber. It seems the Ryan pick has stirred a lot of folks, only not in the way they intended/hoped/prayed for.
Brachiator
So, I was checking out post Olympics teevee. Checking to see when “Grimm” was coming on. Then I see that there is some weird reality show matching celebrities with military folk in something called “Stars Earn Stripes.”
And then I see that Too Palin is one of the “celebrities.”And I thought I saw something about Bristol Palin coming back to do “Dancing With the Stars All Stars.”
Are the Palin family going to be riding the CList grift circuit for the rest of their natural lives? And it is interesting to see how librul Hollywood is willing to keep pimping these clowns to the American public, and to provide them with a nice fat meal ticket.
NotMax
Banksters show their stripes yet again.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Bet Kathy Griffen would love to work on a vee-hickle for them.
Brachiator
Could not get back in to edit the earlier note. It should be Todd Palin in the reality show.
Amir Khalid
@Hypatia’s Momma:
Lat is like our Charles Schultz and our Norman Rockwell, here in Malaysia. That’s some fine work that you’ve mentioned there, but you should look out for his early Lots of Lat collection, which features his impressions from his visit to America.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
I saw the cartoon at the link, and I’m surprised at the description. Lat’s family never owned a large “plantation”; they were only smallholders, which could be financially precarious when rubber prices weren’t so good. His childhood may have been idyllic but it wasn’t a wealthy one.