Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

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

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Consistently wrong since 2002

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

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102Comments

  2. 2.

    The Other Bob

    This guy is a nut, as any American who follows him. Not becuase Iran is not a danger, but in no way should another country drag us into a war. The U.S. needs to set it’s own foreign policy.

    It seems to me that supporting Isreal is less and less in our national interest.

  3. 3.

    Napoleon

    But, but, but there is an ad in heavy rotation here in Ohio that says that Obama dizrespectz this guy!

  5. 5.

    Cermet

    I’ve seen eight year old’s have better graphics – not like he was at a real forum – just the UN. Looks like he wanted to topic romney’s epic fail; good try but not there. Still, proves that thugs are backing another asswipe. Of course, this could be a graphic of Israeli’s bomb program (200 nukes and a danger to Iran!)

  10. 10.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    The Other Bob:

    It seems to me that supporting Israel Likud is less and less in our national interest.

    Minor fix. Please to not be confusing Netanyahu/Likud for all of Israel.

    .

  11. 11.

    General Stuck

    Bibi might want to review and revise some of his body language while speaking to groups of peeps. Just sayin”

    Wingnuts smell liberal press full of Obama stooges as behind it all.

  12. 12.

    beltane

    At least the Bush administration put a lot of effort into their efforts to deceive the world at the U.N.. Netanyahu is just a troll, a very insulting, dangerous troll.

    While nearly universally ridiculed, Bibi’s performance at the UN did find a fan with Ari Fleischer who had this to say on Twitter:

    Bibi’s use of that chart was one of the most effective, gripping, uses of a chart I’ve ever seen. Is the world listening??

  13. 13.

    Comrade Nimrod Humperdink

    I don’t know a whole lot about Israeli politics, but I DO know that there’s a substantial number of people who are decidedly not Likudniks. I wonder if they think of Bibi as their Bush.

  18. 18.

    Nunca el Jefe

    Apart from the graphics, the speech itself was nothing more than booga booga scare tactics, and poorly done at that. Call me a cynic but I expect better from world leaders.

  23. 23.

    JMG

    I watched several of the most Serious talking heads on this issue last night on TV, two think tank frauds on PBS and David Gergen on CNN. Their unstated but fundamental assumption was that a new U.S. war would be undertaken with no input from the public whatsoever. The elite is sure the rabble will just go “USA, Fuck Yeah!” when the bombs drop.
    Which they would, until they go to fill up with $9 a gallon gas.

  24. 24.

    Comrade Nimrod Humperdink

    @Anton Sirius: Oh man… Imagine the entertainment that could be had if those two high status dipshits had a debate and there was a guarantee that it wouldn’t lead to anybody getting killed. I say let Pat Robertson moderate it.

  27. 27.

    Comrade Nimrod Humperdink

    @SiubhanDuinne: Unpossible. Everybody knows that those kind of bombs are only used by villains in the Old West on railroad bridges, and Hitler had no handlebars on his mustache to twist while he plotted.

  28. 28.

    4tehlulz

    Between Iran ‘shopping missile launches and the Mossad outsourcing their intelligence operation to Acme, am I wrong to wonder if were all just trapped in a WB cartoon?

  29. 29.

    Patricia Kayden

    @JGabriel: Good point. Sometimes here in America, we forget that there is a lot of discord in Israeli politics. They’re not all rightwingers like Netanyahu. We can support Israel and still criticize the rightwingers over there who seem to be pushing for a war with Iran (like our rightwingers here).

  32. 32.

    some guy

    Minor fix. Please to not be confusing Netanyahu/Lieberman/Mofaz/Barak/Likud/Kadima/Labor/Shas/National Religous Union/Yesha Colonists Council for all of Israel.

    Nothing that a few well placed bunker busters dropped on Ariel, Gush Etzion, and Kiryat Arba won’t fix right quick. Or we could simply stop directly funding the ongoing colonial project on the West Bank. alas, with the imminent collapse of the Palestinian Authority the fig leaf covering the apartheid regime will drop and the cry “One Man, One Vote” will become much much louder. and with the collaborationist PA busted Israel can then make a decision they have been avoiding for 65 years, if they want to be a Jewish state or a Democratic state

  33. 33.

    gnomedad

    @Randy P:

    That device has been used by many serious players on the world stage, such as Boris and Natasha.

    Suggestion for caption contest: “Netanyahu vows to ‘get moose and squirrel’.”

  34. 34.

    nemesis

    The people of Israel deserve better. Vote out this neo-clown.

    gwb ran an AIPAC driven foreign policy. Obama, not so much. This pisses off Bibi. Im really really tired of his bullshit.

  38. 38.

    PaulW

    I mentioned elsewhere that my college public speaking professor told us “Never use props” because it pulls attention away from YOU and what you’re SAYING and focuses instead on something silly and potentially irrelevant.

    I’m reminded also of the one time I went to see a congressman – Cliff Stearns, who interestingly got primaried out this cycle – and he tried using a PowerPoint slide to impress the crowd. Instead, the PowerPoint glitched out and like most people who didn’t grow up using computers he couldn’t figure out how to fix the damn laptop he was using. While his staffers struggled with it, I shook my head and left.

    (to be fair, PowerPoint is a good tool, but used judiciously and in more appropriate venues such as business meetings, classrooms, and porn.)

  40. 40.

    Tom Levenson

    @Legalize:

    Bib E. Coyote?

    You can haz intertubes.

    Also too: I know this was visual rhetoric, but the notion of striking a match to set off a nuke makes my neutrons whimper.

  41. 41.

    kay

    @JMG:

    Their unstated but fundamental assumption was that a new U.S. war would be undertaken with no input from the public whatsoever

    I agree. It’s scary how out of touch they are. They really think it’s 2002 and they’re credible and riding high and they simply need to SELL this thing, and it’ll be all shock and awe. There’s simply no recognition of what has happened. Events. What transpired.

    I got news for them :)

  43. 43.

    General Stuck

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Don’t think so, from AP and Reuters. I doubt they are that stupid. It is interesting that the wire services chose to release these snap shots of overall mid hand gestures of something different. Which was fairly stupid, imo.

  44. 44.

    some guy

    1984: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”
    1988: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”
    1992: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”
    1996: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”
    2000: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”
    2004: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”
    2008: “Iran will have nukes in less than 3 years.”

    I am detecting a pattern here.

  45. 45.

    Randy P

    @Mark S.: Wow. The view from their world is always so… bizarre. Romney has the facts and issues on his side, and Obama never talks about his record and has none to talk about.

  46. 46.

    Paul

    @The Other Bob:

    Not only that. What I can never understand is why we give $9 billion a year to Israel, while at the same time we have record deficits and our own infrastructure in the US, such as bridges is falling apart.

  47. 47.

    Legalize

    @some guy: If you add up each time we’ve been told that Iran will have nukes in 3 years, eventually you’ll get to 27.

    Perhaps the wingnut event horizon is actually nigh.

  49. 49.

    Paul

    @JMG:

    I watched several of the most Serious talking heads on this issue last night on TV, two think tank frauds on PBS and David Gergen on CNN. Their unstated but fundamental assumption was that a new U.S. war would be undertaken with no input from the public whatsoever. The elite is sure the rabble will just go “USA, Fuck Yeah!” when the bombs drop.
    Which they would, until they go to fill up with $9 a gallon gas.

    And until they see their taxes sky rocket. The cost of a real war against Iran (not just an air war) would dwarf the expensive war we are having with Iraq.

  52. 52.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    kay:

    It’s scary how out of touch [Conservatives] are. They really think it’s 2002 …

    Or 1972, given Romney’s, et. al., rhetoric on the foreign policy missteps of the Obama Administration regarding the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

    .

  55. 55.

    some guy

    1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane’s Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.” US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.

  57. 57.

    some guy

    1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the US.”

  58. 58.

    some guy

    1995: The New York Times conveys the fears of senior US and Israeli officials that “Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought” – about five years away – and that Iran’s nuclear bomb is “at the top of the list” of dangers in the coming decade.

  59. 59.

    J.D. Rhoades

    If Romney gets selected, we might as well put five stars on Bibi’s shoulders and give him our military to play with. It’s what he wants, and Romney’s already says what Bibi wants, Bibi gets.

  60. 60.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    @PeakVT: That’s not one of Fleischer’s better lies.

    No doubt. Transparent horseshit – and who listens to charts anyway?

  61. 61.

    some guy

    1998: The same week, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reports to Congress that Iran could build an intercontinental ballistic missile – one that could hit the US – within five years. The CIA gave a timeframe of 12 years.

    lather.rinse.repeat.

  65. 65.

    Persia

    @Napoleon: The other day, on the local radio station, two conservatives were saying they couldn’t see how anyone Jewish could vote for Obama. I have to work with these folks, so I didn’t call in and tell them:

    1) Maybe they ought to meet some Jews
    2) Maybe they ought to actually listen to Bibi, ’cause homeboy is crazy.

    Oh, and yeah, Likud does not = Israel.

  68. 68.

    quannlace

    What is so hilarious, as soon as that speech was over….No matter where you saw news/stories about it, on Tv, on the net…EVERYBODY made the Wiley E. Coyote connection.

  69. 69.

    MomSense

    You are all killing me this morning–all the cartoon references are soooo funny.

    Did anyone catch Romney talking about Iran’s “centerfuges” as evidence of their nuclear program a couple of weeks ago? Well I’m not exactly sure when it was but it was about 5 gaffes and 4 campaign resets ago. Maybe Bibi had to go cartoon bomb picture so that Romney would understand. It’s a know your audience kinda thing.

  70. 70.

    kay

    @JGabriel:

    Dan Senor? Really, Mitt? Let’s just pretend Iraq never happened. I watch Senor with pundits and all I can think is “this conversation is happening outside of observable reality”.

  71. 71.

    Ohio Mom

    @Santiago: They are the (Russian) bad guys from the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons. I’m sure there are googleable videos. Truly an American classic.

  72. 72.

    WarMunchkin

    I see all these news organizations reporting this guy as either a visionary who gave a class on nuclear physics to the U.N. (and as a physics person, I have already completed ritual suicide and am writing to you from the afterlife) or as a guy who gave an “unorthodox” presentation.

    I can’t figure out why this guy is not met with mockery.

  74. 74.

    maya

    I think Bibi’s presentation would have really rocked if he had used pie charts instead. Everybody likes pie.

  75. 75.

    Randy P

    @Santiago: Sorry. I figured if people understood the Road Runner references they’d know that one too. As people have said, they were (incompetent) Russian spies. Who for some reason reported to a German called Fearless Leader. And who were always trying to kill Rocky and Bullwinkle, who were complete innocents.

  76. 76.

    KXB

    After the Vietnam War, the “best and brightest” were cast out of Washington decision-making circles. They were not hurting for money or thrown out of their homes, but when new foreign policy questions arose, no news organization would go to them, thinking they had anything to add. After all, if you are responsible for a war that killed 50,000 Americans and several million Vietnamese, you clearly were incompetent.

    But, it was different after Iraq. The very same men & women who argued for the Iraq fiasco are still treated with respect as they urge a repeat in Iran. Why?

    Because there is no AIPAC for SE Asia, arguing that some Asian nation is joined at the hip with us, and that if you question their leadership, you are some sort of bigot who wishes to repeat a genocide.

  77. 77.

    Twilight Jack

    @some guy: Can we get sources for that? I have a family member who’s beating the drum to “protect Israel from a nuclear Iran” pretty hard. I’d love to point to 28 years of that same drum being beaten, with nothing to show for all the alarmism.

  79. 79.

    Chris

    @KXB:

    Probably also because the Best And Brightest didn’t have the benefit of a wingnut welfare circuit that allowed them to fail upwards no matter how badly they screwed the pooch. They were all Democrats. Kissinger, on the other hand? I still see his name in the papers on a not irregular basis.

  81. 81.

    MomSense

    @77 Twilight Jack

    The fact that Bibi had to resort to cartoon bomb pictures pretty much says it all about the lack of evidence for his claims.

  82. 82.

    KXB

    @Chris:

    As I was typing that, I was thinking about the Kissinger problem. This may be threading a needle, but the term “best & brightest” is usually used for guys like McNamara and his guys, who earned their stripes during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kissinger’s misdeeds are well-known, and that he is invited for his opinion is an embarrasment. Perhaps he served as a model for neo-cons, “Hey, Kissinger messed up bad, but people still listen to him. What’s his secret?”

  84. 84.

    Or something like that.Suffern Ace

    @some guy: It’s kind of like those mere 25,000 Taliban. A number that never goes down no matter how long we’ve been warring with them. Small enough to let the public think they can be defeated. Large enough to keep us fighting.

  88. 88.

    Chris

    @KXB:

    Oh, yeah – I’ve always heard “Best And Brightest” as applied to Kennedy/Johnson’s people. But that’s my point, they got screwed over and Kissinger, who had the same blood on his hands, didn’t.

    I’m not sure why either (he had his good moments, but so did his predecessors), but like I said, I imagine wingnut welfare had a lot to do with it. Republicans who fail can rely on a network of people who’ll take care of them no matter what, whereas Democrats are more prone to cleaning up their own messes.

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    So, conservatives around the world, they really, really got nothing don’t they. Whenever push comes to shove they look like 4 yr olds playing make believe. If they would all just play Sim City and leave the rest of us alone the world would be a much better place.

    Maybe that’s the problem, they all played Sim City once and thought they were ready for prime time.

  90. 90.

    Chris

    @Ruckus:

    Conservatives aren’t really the sharpest knives in the drawer regardless of context… but I would’ve thought that outside of the U.S. they’d find it harder to live in their own Fox News type bubble, and therefore would be more ready for prime time. Guess not.

  91. 91.

    Comrade Dread

    So what he’s doing is demanding that the world go to war on his behalf accepting the costs in blood and money so Israel can remain the sole nuclear power in the region.

    What an small, absurd, immoral man.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    I nominate this post for post of the year.

    I haven’t laughed this hard about fucking morons in power in a long time. Of course I don’t remember when even if they were fucking morons, they tried so hard to act like one.

    Not sure if it’s a good thing or not that the rest of the world has fucking morons called conservatives as well.
    OK, it’s really not.

  94. 94.

    El Cid

    C’mon, y’all, you’re being unfair and mean. Israel is a poor, undeveloped nation under assault by their Palestinian occupiers, what with the Palestinians’ huge arms industries and computing industries.

    If Israel were a large and well-defended nation, perhaps it could have modern conveniences and exotic luxuries like Power Point and such.

    As it is, Netanyahu had to borrow money to ride passenger space in a cargo ship just to get there. Be nice.

  95. 95.

    Jay C

    I cringed when I saw a clip of Netanytahu’s cartoon display at the UN on the news yesterday. WTF was he (or his advisors) thinking? It’s one thing when an Israeli leader goes on a world stage and looks like an alarmist: it’s quite another when he goes up and looks like a buffoon. In one swell foop, Bibi has probably undone years of diplomatic efforts. Well done!

    BTW, despite the apparent ludicrousness of the repeated “Bibi Unit” predictions over the last 27 years, the fact is that this means that Iran has has 27 years to actually DO work on a Bomb. Which they almost certainly have.

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:

    Oh LOL, I wasn’t talking about Bibi and the Bomb, I was talking about the photos of him giving what looks like a Heilongjiang Hitler salute. Now THAT’S unpossible, but that’s sure what it looked like!

  97. 97.

    Suffern ACE

    @Jay C: Are we talking about Palestine and settlements and the decline in support for Israel? Or are we talking about Iran and the prop. Bibi knows what he is doing. He’s forestalling a conversation.

  99. 99.

    Kyle

    Funny how Nutanyahoo has no pictogram of the estimated 500 nukes held by Israel, who have never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

  101. 101.

    melior

    Elephant in the room: not a single other nuclear-capable country on the planet is weaselly enough to pretend not to officially admit they have nukes. So how ’bout it Yahoo? Care to look those cameras in the eye and man up to *your* country’s nuclear weapon capabilities?
    Didn’t think so.

  102. 102.

    Bill Arnold

    @c u n d gulag:

    When he was a kid, I think Bibi read too many Mad Magazine’s, and loved Spy vs. Spy too much.

    He’s not unfamiliar with weaponry. Both he and Ehud Barack took part in an Israeli special forces attack on a hijacked airplane. (Sabena Flight 571) and Bibi was an active special forces soldier.
    A key issue here is that Iran is already past Bibi’s current red line, if I’m reading it correctly, if the Iranians have a modern implosion design which needs much less U235.

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