Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

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

“woke” is the new caravan.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Consistently wrong since 2002

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

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

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

In my day, never was longer.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

We still have time to mess this up!

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

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

You are here: Home / Must win

Must win

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There’s an old football story where they ask the coach “is this a must win game” and the coach says “no, World War II was a must win”.

This election is a must win. I don’t know what will become of the country if Mitt Romney wins in November. I don’t. Do you?

I know a little. The Ryan plan will be enacted. Medicare will be turned into a voucher program. The social safety net will be decimated. An unspeakable amount of wealth will be moved from the middle-class to the rich, the largest such transfer in human history.

So when Mark Halperin writes of Romney’s embrace of birtherism:

The level of vitriol and personal animus that exists on both sides over the flap is truly discouraging.

I wonder what’s discouraging about you and me condemning base racism. I wonder what’s discouraging about me and you caring about wanting to live in a society with a functioning middle-class.

Don’t you?

Goal Thermometer

Reader Interactions

124Comments

  1. 1.

    Valdivia

    and Romney’s birtherism is Obama’s fault how? By existing?
    Is Obama supposed to just grovel to Romney for saying what he said today? Halperin is an idiot.

    ETA: this whole thing has me so angry I have been seeing red all day. and the idiotic both sides do it (how can they in this case?) reaction of the village made it worse of course.

  2. 2.

    SIA

    Too well said. The monsters never die and they never stop. It’s all just a little too much today. I’m going took bed with a vintage English mystery.

  4. 4.

    Jeff Spender

    Racism has a hall pass these days, it seems. I was angry with how the media is handling this that I just decided to write a story.

    And it isn’t half bad.

  6. 6.

    magurakurin

    off topic.

    Have you seen the video of the shooting in NYC? How in the fuck did those two cops end up shooting nine other people? The guy they killed was two feet away from them. For fucks sake, they’re supposed to be trained professionals. It would appear they aren’t well trained at target shooting.

  7. 7.

    Joseph Nobles

    Halperin actually suggested that Mitt giving a reach-around to the birthers was the “both sides” equivalent of Nathan Lane telling some joke about the Romney sons at an Obama fundraiser. smh

  9. 9.

    Valdivia

    @Joseph Nobles:

    Obama is responsible for anything any democrat ever says, Romney is not responsible for even the things he himself says.
    See, there’s no alcohol enough in this world to keep me sane this coming week

  10. 10.

    Steve

    What is the Democratic equivalent of Romney saying President Obama has un-American values? What would it sound like if Obama actually campaigned in that tone?

  11. 11.

    Davis X. Machina

    I don’t know what will become of the country if Mitt Romney wins in November. I don’t. Do you?

    The glorious day of single-payer health care creeps a little closer? We, no longer taken for granted, finally get to climb out from under the bus? Rahm Emmanuel weeps bitter, bitter tears? The death-rattle of the DLC is our mix-tape?

    Surely that’s compensation enough…I’m not saying no one’s going to get their hair a little mussed….

  12. 12.

    PsiFighter37

    FUCK MARK HALPERIN. Shit, dude, when you’re beers deep, you can’t ever reference that shithead.

    PF37 +8(I’ve lost count at this point, but I’m hammered)

  13. 13.

    General Stuck

    Halperin is a clown amongst clowns in the village of the damned. If Obama wins, then we get a stay of national execution, and a little more time to try and turn the Titanic around. If Romney wins, well, let’s just say the deck ensemble can play us a dirge while we wait for the end.

  14. 14.

    Hill Dweller

    As I was saying on the thread below, Katty Kay did the ‘both side do it’ bullshit on Maher.

  15. 15.

    gbear

    This evening I was riding my scooter behind a late model Lincoln sedan with a bumper sticker that said ‘NOT A REPUBLICAN’. That made me feel a little better about today.

  16. 16.

    Rommie

    Look at Michigan for the past two years, and you’ll see just a taste of what Romney would do. And that’s with a “moderate” executive, which Mittens is not. Do Not Want More.

  17. 17.

    dance around in your bones

    I’m so sick of this ‘both sides do it’ bullshit…..one of these things is not like the other, and if you can’t recognize that then you need a brain implant.

    And not an Abby Normal brain, either.

  18. 18.

    cmorenc

    @DougJ:

    This election is a must win. I don’t know what will become of the country if Mitt Romney wins in November. I don’t. Do you?

    The consequence of a Romney/Ryan victory, especially if coupled by GOP control of both the Senate and House, will be not just a wholesale dismantling of every element and institution of progressive government from the New Deal onward, but the erection of as many formidably difficult to reverse barriers to any possibility of any of it being rebuilt for several decades. Not only will the existing 5-4 conservative SCt majority feel emboldened toward outright reversal of not just Roe v Wade, but decades of accumulated precedent that started in the New Deal and onward through the Warren and even Burger Courts. Any of the four more moderate justices retire, and their replacement will be a Scalia/Thomas clone.

    It really will be a dystopian nightmare, with the foundations of society rebuilt on Koch-style economic libertarianism, without any of the redeeming social elements of Ron Paul’s vision (e.g. ending the war on drugs), but with many of the nastier social elements realized (reversal of much civil right legislation as it applies to business under the banner of free association). The vision of economic “freedom” realized will in reality be a hardening of the social stratification of society in to one percenters, have-muchers, have-littles, and desperately third-world poor.

  19. 19.

    magurakurin

    @danah gaz (fka gaz): really. I mean, wtf, over. You have to see the video. They were really close to the guy. They put something like nine rounds into him and nine into the crowd. Maybe they should be packing six-shooters or something. Christ, I don’t know.

    I was just there, too. We were staying near 31st and Lexington, very nearby. Walked by there a bunch of times.

    Nine people getting shot by cops. Probably not the best outcome from a tourism PR point of view.

  20. 20.

    gbear

    If Romney wins the sheeple will finally wake up and we’ll get the progressive government that will take us into a gloriously perfect future.

    Or else riots.

  21. 21.

    Hal

    @magurakurin:

    Have you seen the video of the shooting in NYC? How in the fuck did those two cops end up shooting nine other people?

    Ahem:

    Amadou Bailo Diallo (September 2, 1975 – February 4, 1999) was a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant in New York City who was shot and killed on February 4, 1999 by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss. The four officers fired a total of 41 shots. The shooting took place at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.[1]

  22. 22.

    Dennis SGMM

    If the Dems fail to retake the House and the balance in the Senate remains as is, an Obama win will be like pissing your pants in a dark suit.

  24. 24.

    Geoduck

    I’ll ditto a comment above, and say that a Romney/Ryan win alone will not automatically doom Medicaid. They’ll have to take control of both houses of Congress as well. And yes, this could happen.

  25. 25.

    Anya

    @Valdivia: I know how you feel. Chris Cillizza made me so mad I almost got a twitter account for the sole purpose of harassing his ass. These people are cowards. We are at a point in our national discourse that our media cannot even challenge a candidate for the highest office in the land for using a naked racist appeal.

  26. 26.

    Caz

    You’re so full of shit. If Romney gets elected the nation will be destroyed?? You’re really brainwashed by the liberal media, you know that? Of course you don’t. You’ve been taught to hate conservatives and that Obama is some sort of savior who is doing a great job as president. Things get worse every day that he’s in office. Of course, that makes me a racist for saying so. You should watch Media Malpractice and you’ll see what the fundamental problem in this nation is and why so many others like you are so misinformed and ignorant.

  27. 27.

    Ann Rynd

    Look at Halperin’s face.
    In Cold Blood Capote wrote of the murderer Perry: “He had a face that was not quite symetrical. It was like an apple that had been sliced down the center and then put back together just a fraction of an inch off.” Halperin has that kind of face.
    Not saying he’s a murderer but he’s some kind of twisted.
    Cannot figure why anyone listens to his hateful, wrong pronouncements.

  28. 28.

    The Dangerman

    @Hal:

    How in the fuck did those two cops end up shooting nine other people?

    I feel a Ron White joke coming on:

    You ever see tape of the Kehoe brothers from Ohio, those two guys that get out of that white Suburban, it’s been on COPS a few times? Those guys, folks, have a shootout with the police, at point…blank…range — nobody gets hurt. I would love to have been at that office the next day when that guy’s being interviewed by the police. “And then what happened?” “Well, at that point, I unloaded my semi-automatic 9 millimeter weapon at point blank range.” “And then what happened?” “They…left.” Nice shooting, Elmer Fudd. There was a kid in Detroit a few years ago, shot 8 bullets, hit 9 people. These cops fired 22 shots, didn’t even hit the fuckin’ Suburban!

  30. 30.

    Chris

    @cmorenc:

    Is it that inevitable? Bush had both houses of Congress and a Supreme Court under his control when he tried to gut Social Security. How did we stop him then?

    Not that I’m saying it doesn’t matter who wins, if only because they’ll keep trying and the more opportunities we give them the more chances they have that it’ll work. I just don’t see it as a foregone conclusion.

    I have to say, though, as a dual citizen – if they finally gut the safety net, I’ll give serious thought (at the very least) to ditching the U. S. altogether and heading for France.

  33. 33.

    Ron

    Shorter Mark Halperin: “I’m a fucking tool that just wants to be thought of as a Very Serious Person”

  34. 34.

    Chris

    @Caz:

    YER BRAINWASHED BY THE LIBERAL MEDIA –

    Ahahahahaha!

    “The liberal media.” That’s really good.

    Tell me another.

  36. 36.

    dance around in your bones

    @Caz: Gawdd, you are a twinkie.

    Unfortunately, twinkies are devoid of nutritional value yet have a shelf life of about a gazillion years.

  39. 39.

    LGRooney

    I’d like to say that there will be enough Ds in the Senate, control or no, that a Romney victory can be contained in its damage. However, if the Rs control the Senate, I fear they will feel no remorse in killing the filibuster and thus push through anything they want.

    Consensus, bitches!!

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @magurakurin: Pistols aren’t particularly accurate. Cops don’t actually put in a lot of practice with them. The cops were nervous. Any bullshit gun freaks spout about citizen heroes is a fucking fantasy; some asshole with a Desert Eagle is going to shoot innocent people and break his own wrist.

    @gbear: I saw my first Romney sticker in Madison while out riding yesterday. It was a tiny thing tucked discreetly into a corner of the rear window of a huge Lexus SUV. The couple in it were overly tanned and in their late 50s(?).

  42. 42.

    Chris

    @Dennis SGMM:

    Dude. Union thugs? Black racists? ACORN? Islamo-fascist infiltrators? One world government? Water fluoridation? List of card carrying Communists? Welfare queens? He didn’t even scratch the surface.

  46. 46.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    @Omnes Omnibus: I saw one today on the rear window of the 20XX cadillac of the geezer who runs the millworks near where I live.

    He seems like a nice enough guy, but i can’t get past the NRA sticker, much less the Mitt one. He’s deranged. At least he’s not a frothing maniac.

  47. 47.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Caz:
    It does not make you a racist. It makes you wrong, which is consistent, since saying factually untrue things like claiming birtherism is not mainstream in the Tea Party is your modus operandi. It’s only recently that you’ve devolved into angry name calling as well as out and out lies.

  48. 48.

    sylvan

    @Caz:

    I don’t hate conservatism.

    I just miss the days when it wasn’t primarily a tax-cut delivery system.

    I liked conservatives just fine when it was considered patriotic to pay one’s taxes.

  52. 52.

    RaflW

    Halperin is ranting on Twitter, right now, late on a Friday. Kinda train-wreck fascinating.

    (Wonder if he’s had a few adult bevvys)

  54. 54.

    Hal

    @efgoldman:

    Let’s not forget another example of fine marksmanship for New York’s finest:

    The arresting officers beat Louima with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios on the ride to the station.[3] On arriving at the station house, he was strip-searched and put in a holding cell. The beating continued later, culminating with Louima being sexually assaulted in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Volpe kicked Louima in the testicles, then, while Louima’s hands were cuffed behind his back, he first grabbed onto and squeezed his testicles and then sodomized him with a plunger. According to trial testimony, Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand, bragging to a Police Sergeant that he, “took a man down tonight.”[4]

  55. 55.

    BBA

    Let’s be realistic here. All signs point to the House staying Republican and the Senate staying deadlocked.

    Under these circumstances, Obama offers us four more years of slow-motion constitutional crisis.

    Romney offers us four more years of George W. Bush.

    Neither bodes well for the Republic.

  58. 58.

    Turgidson

    Like I said in an earlier thread where our friend made an appearance – it’s gotta be performance art.

  61. 61.

    mk3872

    Halperin, Scarborough, Tapper, et. al., are classic DC Village Idiot white dudes who don’t get the harm the racism has on societies. Not even one stinkin’ little bit.

  68. 68.

    dww44

    @BBA: I don’t know that I agree, methinks I’d take the known unknown, rather than the unknown unknown who’d just be the signer of whatever extreme legislation that Norquist, the tea party, the neocons,the religious fundamentalists and the 1 percenters want enacted. GWB had a bit of spine. Romney has no principled political core at all.

  72. 72.

    RaflW

    This is relevant to the discussion ~ A GOP state rep in Minnesota who was ousted in the primary by a winger had this parting shot today:

    Defeated representative leaves with sharp words for his party

    By: Jim Ragsdale – Minneapolis Star TRibune

    August 24, 2012 – 3:57 PM

    The longest-serving Republican in the Minnesota House delivered some sharp criticism of his party in his farewell speech on the House floor Friday.

    “The Republican Party in which I believed has at times shown inflexible adherence to the rhetoric of ‘the principle of the day,” said Rep. Steve Smith, R-Mound, who lost his party’s primary Aug. 12 to a Tea Party candidate, Cindy Pugh.

    House Speaker Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, and other party leaders supported Pugh in the race, despite the fact that Smith has served in the House since 1991.

    “My hopes is this — that the two-party system of civility and survival will be restored,” Smith said. “And Minnesotans shall prevail. God will help free people who work together.”

    Smith ran afoul of party activists due to his defense of organized labor, and he was not happy with his party’s stance in dealing with DFL Gov. Mark Dayton.

    “I have stood with Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt in defending the right of free men and women to negotiate for safer working conditions, reasonable benefits, and fair pay in return for their labor,” he said, reading a statement as the House concluded its flood-relief session.

    “I got to be a voice for the old Republican Party that was a legitimate and honorable strand of our American and Minnesota heritage,” he said. “We were committed to doing well what had to be accomplished, and doing without those things which people could do for themselves.”

    “The watchwords ‘balance and respect’ were also learned and observed from another of my friends from the House, Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who showed you can avoid deadlock and disgrace if you work with a governor from a different party,” he said. Kelliher was DFL speaker from 2007-2011, when Republican Tim Pawlenty was governor.

    Smith added: “If you want Minnesota to succeed, you cannot hope that our governor will fail.”

    Smith’s voice quaked at times during his speech. He mentioned several public-safety measures he championed, including felony domestic abuse law, life without parole for the worst sex offenders and attacking the problem of meth labs.He also mentioned working on an abortion waiting period law and on concealed weapons permit expansion.

    House members stood and applauded when Smith finished what will probably be his last speech as a legislator.

    Asked what he thought, Zellers said he was proud to have worked with Smith on the sex-offender bill. “I don’t see anything wrong with what he said,” Zellers said.

  74. 74.

    Turgidson

    @mk3872:

    They also have no clue that soulless and cruel legislation like the Ryan budget has real, actual, horrible consequences for tens of millions of people. For them, this is all a game. It’s who wins and loses the political battle that matters, not the consequences to the country.

    And for their fake-centrist-but-actually-right-wing-hack brethren, people advocating policy that removes what little security and comfort the poor in this country have and tells them to go die in a gutter sooner than later, and tells soon-to-be seniors that the retirement funds they thought they’d get to spend enjoying their golden years will instead be quickly exhausted paying for medical care they thought Medicare/Medicaid would cover are brave and courageous. Instead of sadistic sociopaths who should be sent to Siberia in a leaky kayak and a couple weeks’ worth of cat food.

    What a fine press corpse we have.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @danah gaz (fka gaz): Yeah, but it is well passed its prime. Maybe I am a Pollyanna, but the sheer insanity we are seeing shows the desperation on the GOP side. DougJ is right; this is a must win, but I think we have the advantage.

  76. 76.

    Brachiator

    @magurakurin:

    Have you seen the video of the shooting in NYC? How in the fuck did those two cops end up shooting nine other people? The guy they killed was two feet away from them. For fucks sake, they’re supposed to be trained professionals. It would appear they aren’t well trained at target shooting.

    And yet the gun nuts insist that a roomful of armed moviegoers could have taken down the guy in Colorado without anyone else getting shot.

  77. 77.

    Corner Stone

    @RaflW: Fuck Steve Smith.
    He rode Pegasus all the way down while his “party” fucked everyone around them.
    He lost and he can shut the fuck up.

  79. 79.

    Dennis SGMM

    @danah gaz (fka gaz):
    Yes. It exploited the fact that, to my everlasting sorrow, large parts of America are still just as racist as they ever were.

    I remember my relief when the Civil Rights Act was passed. I knew that racism wouldn’t just immediately go away, but I thought that it set us on a path that would lead us to a point where racism was passe. I’m in my sixties now and racism, sneaky, nasty, ingrained racism is worse than it was when I was a kid. At least back then it was overt and recognizable for what it was.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    @Davis X. Machina:

    The glorious day of single-payer health care creeps a little closer? We, no longer taken for granted, finally get to climb out from under the bus? Rahm Emmanuel weeps bitter, bitter tears? The death-rattle of the DLC is our mix-tape?

    You’re joking, right?

  86. 86.

    RaflW

    @Corner Stone:

    So he should have quit a few years ago and stopped being a Republican? That would have helped exactly how?

    Rally, I’d like to know. Because he was in a strong R district and a jackass TeaPartier could have taken this seat 2 or more years ago if he’d retired. And that would have made Minnesota better?

    Yeah you’re fucking angry. So am I. But the target of your scorn makes no sense at all.

    The target is Mitt Romney. Or that jack-nob Speaker Zellers. Or Timmy Twice-jilted Pawlenty. But Smith is a decent man who was part of the formerly decent and humane MN GOP that is now lost in a morass of immoral selfishness and power-lust.

    He stood up and said as much. Most people would pull a Halperin and blame both sides. This man rather pointedly did not. I think that takes guts.

  87. 87.

    murakami

    I don’t think Romney / Ryan would be able to push through the Ryan budget at all. I don’t think they would even try beyond a token effort. The current Republicans in Congress could easily vote for the Ryan budget only because they knew there was no damn way it would pass. Just look at how most of them are running away from that vote now and trying to pretend it never happened.

    If they passed a Ryan budget in ’13 or ’14, I’m almost certain there would be a solid Democratic Congress at the start of session in ’15. Teabaggers may talk about wanting smaller gov’t, less taxes, etc., but they love these two government services. And voters under 55 would largely rebel against getting completely screwed.

    And there will be another major enemy of the Ryan budget which few talk about: the highly profitable medical industry. The Ryan budget would endanger their Medicare-fueled gravy train. Sure drug companies, doctors. and hospitals bitch about Medicare rules and regulations and never-ending paperwork, but they know the bulk of care goes to the seniors and most seniors wouldn’t have the money for this care without Medicare. Having Medicare dramatically reduced would be a huge blow to their profit margins and their lobbyists would fight just as hard as the health insurance lobbyists fought against single-payer. The lobbyists would have public opinion on their side in this case.

    So Doctors, Hospitals, Pharmaceuticals, plus AARP and a large chunk of likely voters would all be gathered around the Capitol with torches and pitchforks. Even all the money of the Koch Brothers couldn’t win this one.

  90. 90.

    Carl Nyberg

    The corporate media is always going to find fault with activists who criticize the power structure.

    We are either too strident or too wimpy.

    Our ideas are either too old or too radical or unproven.

    There’s no eye of the needle to thread.

  95. 95.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    @Corbin Dallas Multipass: That site was the target of the most brilliant trolling I’ve ever managed to pull off in my life.

    The guy that runs it was like “Yo, you don’t need to demonstrate your ‘museum of tolerance’ it’s cool”

    And then another poster pointed out that the author of the essay on white privilege I mentioned was a white woman, and that my favorite hip hop artist was a white guy..

    and then the author of the site was like “Oh wait, yeah – racist” (although FTR, no I was not racist in that post, not even remotely, but I did sort of muddy things)

    I wouldn’t have trolled him except that the content of the site (and the tongue-in-cheek nature of some of his responses) made it impossible to resist.

    ETA: talking about yoisthisracist.com, not the other one.

  97. 97.

    RadioOne

    I do, pretty much. The media will give Mitt a sweeping mandate to do whatever the hell he wants for beating the first black President ever. Whatever the shakeup of Congress is in the 2012 elections, Democrats will almost certainly buckle under a brand new Romney administration just trying out a few new ideas.

    So yeah, we better win this thing.

  99. 99.

    max

    The level of vitriol and personal animus that exists on both sides over the flap is truly discouraging.

    This is full of win for us. If the D’s hadn’t noticed/reacted, Halperin would’ve been chortling. If the D’s had dug up something truly beyond the pale, or just sorta beyond the pale, Halperin would be on his high horse about the evil hippies. But this, this means Romney went low, and the D’s hit back hard and so the R’s look sneaky, shifty and generally chickenshit, and the D’s look like fighters and this makes for a very sad Halperin.

    Every time Halperin (or any of those other Villager assholes) is whining like this, we’re doing damage to the R’s.

    And that makes me smile.

    max
    [‘And soon, Peak Wingnut will be over and those glassy smiles will freeze like there on a deer caught in the headlights.’]

  100. 100.

    Carl Nyberg

    And pardon me, but where is the facts, policy, reasoning discourse in the corporate media?

    What stops the corporate media from providing better coverage of politics?

  103. 103.

    AxelFoley

    @magurakurin:

    off topic.
    __
    Have you seen the video of the shooting in NYC? How in the fuck did those two cops end up shooting nine other people? The guy they killed was two feet away from them. For fucks sake, they’re supposed to be trained professionals. It would appear they aren’t well trained at target shooting.

    I guess Bloomberg needs to do something about gun violence in his city. I mean, it’s only fair since he suggested President Obama take a stand on gun violence in our country (which he has).

  104. 104.

    TG Chicago

    Oh, FUCK Mark Halperin.

    Imagine if Ann Romney told a joke about her MS. The joke might be funny, self-effacing, charming, humanizing, etc.

    Now imagine if Michelle Obama told a joke about how Ann Romney has MS. That would almost certainly be tasteless and offensive, right? Right. (which is why Mrs. Obama would never do such a thing, btw)

    How hard is it to understand that it’s okay for Obama to joke about birth certificates but not okay for his political opponents to joke about it?

    FUCK. Where do these villagers come from? Who raised these sociopaths?

  106. 106.

    AA+ Bonds

    The war against capitalism is not really a “must win” in a universal sense, because the only thing we stand to lose is the human species and the current arrangement of the biosphere

    Still, I’d like to see all these bastards in jail, including any given set of bastards likely to arrive in the White House next January

  107. 107.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @gbear:

    I saw an old man driving a car with a bumper sticker that indicates that he’s not too thrilled with the current selections for president. The bumper sticker had red, white and blue horizontal stripes with I miss Ike on the top stripe, the white stripe in the middle says Hell and the blue stripe on the bottom says I miss Harry!.

    I’m going to guess that at the least he’s a Republican that is having a problem with voting for Mitty Rmoney. What really made me laugh is that he was driving down Highway 101 with his left turn signal on.

    I kept waiting for him to take a left and head into the Pacific Ocean.

  108. 108.

    AA+ Bonds

    Also those cops who shot all those people in New York today, they can go in the cell next door to the next President and all his banker friends (BUT WHICH ONES, WE BETTER FIGURE OUT WHICH ONES)

  109. 109.

    AA+ Bonds

    I suggest you do a bunch of blow and acid and wander into a parking lot for a shopping center and see where that gets you in the world, because it probably won’t involve this shit election

  110. 110.

    amk

    While the res of the world is moving on with the health of their citizens, the bestest country in the whole world is still stuck of free-speech porn.

    The US government cannot force tobacco firms to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, an appeals court in Washington has ruled.It said the government’s plan undermined free speech in America.

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had wanted to put nine pictures of dead and diseased smokers to convey the dangers of cigarettes.But tobacco firms had argued that the images went beyond factual information and into anti-smoking advocacy.

    The ruling comes as a number of other countries have ordered similar pictures to be placed on all cigarette packets.Australia has gone a step further, banning even tobacco company logos from the cartons.

    The verdict was welcomed by tobacco companies, with Lorrilard Tobacco’s describing it as “a significant vindication of First Amendment principles”.

    Classic signs of cracking ‘murka where corporates are above people, my friend.

  113. 113.

    Kane

    If Romney were to win in November, the Halperins of the world will marvel at the republican’s cynical political strategy of obstruction and the purposeful destruction of the economy designed around the sinister notion of making a democratically elected president of the United States a one-term president, and they will deem the strategy a brilliant success.

  114. 114.

    MTiffany

    I wonder what’s discouraging about you and me condemning base racism.

    It’s not about ‘you and me’ with Halperin (or any of the other Village twatwaffles). Halperin finds Romney’s embrace of birtherism discouraging because it means that if Romney can pander directly (from afar, no less) to the Twenty-seven Percenters, then he can dispense with having to endure the banality (and stench) of the Villagers who would presume themselves his equal.

    Shorter Romney to Halperin: “Who the fuck do you think I am? John Fucking McCain? I don’t swing on the tire with the help.”

  115. 115.

    Steeplejack

    @Brachiator:

    Gail Collins has a good piece today about the New York shooting.

    Nine passers-by were also wounded, and it seems almost certain that some or all were accidentally hit by the police. This isn’t surprising; it’s only in movies that people are good shots during a violent encounter. In 2008, Al Baker reported in the Times that the accuracy rate for New York City officers firing in the line of duty was 34 percent.
    __
    And these are people trained for this kind of crisis. The moral is that if a lunatic starts shooting, you will not be made safer if your fellow average citizens are carrying concealed weapons.

  116. 116.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    Even more important than re-electing Obama is keeping the Senate (adding a few seats would be good) and flipping the House. It won’t matter much if we re-elect Obama if we get another winger Congress.

  117. 117.

    Unsympathetic

    Mark Halperin:

    The level of vitriol and personal animus that exists on both sides is coming from the Democrats over the flap is truly discouraging.

    Fixed.

  118. 118.

    Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God

    Frankly, I’m not sure if a country that willfully let itself be purchased by the likes of Romney & Ryan, even after their message has turned so openly patriarchal and racist, would deserve saving.

    It’s also cute how ‘independents’ in the Blue states seriously think they’ll be okay no matter who wins. States’ Rights will go right out the window, as they always do when they’re in charge.

    Those states with same-sex marriage? HA! New Federal Law! That little high-tech state with RomneyCare? HA! All your HMOs are now based in Alabama and Texas, and no longer subject to your laws! And never mind abortion, kiss your birth control goodbye.

    Go to court all you like: SCOTUS isn’t going to help you.

    This really is a Firewall Election.

  119. 119.

    West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)

    I thought in 2008 that it was imperative that Obama defeat McCain. In retrospect, I think we would have likely survived a McCain presidency more fruitfully than we will a Romney presidency (if he actually wins).

    We should have the numbers to reelect Obama IF people get off their butts and vote.

  120. 120.

    JWL

    When you start signing Halperin’s paychecks, he’ll write what you want to hear. That’s the deal.

  121. 121.

    mclaren

    Sigh.

    Once again, DougJ has worked himself into an existential panic.

    This election is a must win. I don’t know what will become of the country if Mitt Romney wins in November. I don’t. Do you?

    Sure I do. So does everyone else.

    If Mitt Romney wins in November, American will become exactly the same thing America will become if Obama wins in November: a country of sadistic cowardly bully worshipers devoted to waging more endless unwinnable wars in the world’s poorest countries, more tax cuts for the rich, less social programs for the bottom 99%, more cuts to education to pay for more military spending, more prisons and more cops and more DEA goons and more DHS thugs and more TSA molesters and more SWAT snipers shooting down pregnant women and getting medals for it, more billionaires writing the regulations that supposedly govern their businesses, more Wall Street financial crime lords impoverishing millions of ordinary people and never being prosecuted for their crimes, more giant monopoly corporations crushing individual citizens and raising prices while offering worse service and shittier products, higher medical prices and less medical care and more people without health insurance, more secret police spying on our cellphone conversations and recording our emails and storing our tweets in databases.

    That’s what we’ll get if Obama wins in November. That’s what we’ll get if Romney wins in November. Say hello to the new boss: same as the old boss.

  122. 122.

    mclaren

    @Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:

    Corrected version:

    Frankly, I’m not sure if a country that willfully let itself be purchased by the likes of Romney & Ryan Obama and Biden, even after their message has turned so openly patriarchal and racist totalitarian and antidemocratic, would deserve saving.

    It’s also cute how ‘independents’ in the Blue states seriously think they’ll be okay no matter who wins. States’ Rights will go right out the window [when Obama and Biden are in charge and order massive marijuana raids on state dispensaries, order massive DEA raids on people toking weed in their own homes, order massive raids by the DHS for copyright violations], as they always do when they’re in charge.

    Those states with same-sex marriage? HA! New Federal Law! [So with Obama/Biden gay marriage will be protected but all those gay couples won’t have jobs and they’ll be living in cardboard boxes under the freeway.] That little high-tech state with RomneyCare? HA! All your HMOs are now based in Alabama and Texas, and no longer subject to your laws shut down because the lack of cost controls in the ACA means that medical care is so expensive no one can afford the co-pays anymore! And never mind abortion, kiss your birth control goodbye you’ve got access to abortion and birth control, which is great, because as the economy continues to spiral downward you won’t be able to support any children.

    Go to court all you like: SCOTUS isn’t going to help you [under the Obama/Biden administration]. And Obama/Biden will make exactly the same arguments to SCOTUS that the Bush administration did in favor of murdering U.S. citizens without accusing them of a crime, spying on U.S. citizens who have never been accused of a crime, kidnapping and imprisoning Americans for no reason and without a warrant.

    This really is a Firewall Election. [Either way you vote, the constitution has been made illegal and any jobs that pay a decent wage are now behind a firewall, inaccessible to the bottom 95% of the population]

    There. Fixed that for you.

    It’s hilarious how obots think that someone re-electing Obama is going to change the Supreme Court’s rulings when Obama has been sending people to argue in favor of those totalitarian pro-corporate rulings for the last 4 years.

    It’s wildly funny that obots seem to delude themselves into fantasizing that re-electing Obama will mean a new birth of freedom, when Obama has been busy extending and worsening all the most heinous atrocities of the Bush administration and colluding in all the most vile policies of the house Republicans, from tax cuts for billionaires to warrantless wiretapping to shipping American jobs overseas.

  123. 123.

    mclaren

    @danah gaz (fka gaz):

    If they had remembered their training they’d have never fired into crowd of panicking people to begin with. I hope they’re all fired, and I hope the families of the survivors sue their asses off.

    Ludicrously naive.

    Police today are trained to beat and tase and shoot and murder innocent bystanders as a lesson to the peons: you’re scum and the 1% can murder you with impunity.

    Police today have no compunctions about shooting and choking to death and tasing and beating to death ordinary civilians because police today are never, ever, ever held accountable for it.

    Today, a police officer kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach is judged to have followed “proper police procedure” and to have engaged in “correct and appropriate use of force” and all lawsuits are dismissed.

    Police in America who tase a sixteen-year-old kid with a broken back 19 times are not charged with any crime and instead praised for their “appropriate use of force.”

    Police in America serve the same function as NKVD torturers in Stalin’s Russia: to remind the citizens that they are helpless and unimportant, and that the citizen exists only on the sufferance of their wealthy and powerful masters, capable of having their lives snuffed out in an instant at the slightest whim of the people who run society.

  124. 124.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    @mclaren: fuck off you arrogant little tool. I said hope, not expect. Do you need me to point you to the definitions of each of those words, or can you find them yourself?

    Adding, I don’t need any lectures on naivety from some arseclown who

    A) has no backup plan for leaving the country

    B) Has no solution to the current political mess in which this nation finds itself in other than being a WATB about it.

    Thanks for playing.

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