Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans in disarray!

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

No Justins, No Peace

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

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62Comments

  7. 7.

    Paddy

    I’m presuming this is an open thread ’cause I need help finding a reliable site to download the new Homeland and Downton Abbey episodes. Any good ideas? My old one “self deported” before all the big crackdowns last year.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    Great stuff. Really needed the laugh today.

    @Rosalita:

    a well needed laugh for today…the Chris Christie elevator scene cracked me up

    Doh! I missed the reference the first time through (watching on break with the sound down reeeeeel low at work).

  10. 10.

    aimai

    Over at Kos they are showing a new Obama ad that is prepped to run in a bunch of battleground states. Its brilliant. Its a clip of Romney denying his tax cuts will be 5 trillion, being contradicted by a bunch of sources, then a pan of the debate setting “If we can’t trust him here, how can we trust him [picture of oval office] HERE?”

    Killer.

    aimai

  12. 12.

    Face

    I’m not understanding how/why the pundits continue to expect a debate to flip the election. Everyone I know (granted, not many, anecdotal, etc.) already has locked in a candidate. I know of not a single “undecided”. And one poor debate performance by “my guy” (whomever that would be) doesn’t make me want to switch my vote!

    So why do the TV peeps keep pimping a “game-changing debate” meme? Is this all horserace antics, or do they genuinely believe it?

  13. 13.

    Schlemizel

    @Raven:

    Yes, I may have some knowledge but I was a teen in the 60s so it would be hard not to at least heard of them

  17. 17.

    Schlemizel

    @Raven:
    BTW – don’t know if you saw my later comment the other morning as you never commented in that thread. I was not taking a shot at people who work from home. I was taking a shot at my boss who hardly works in the office & doesn’t even try to hide the fact he doesn’t. It was his use of air quotes around work from home that pissed me off.

    Unless you are my boss? In that case I’m probably screwed now ;)

    You didn’t just take off to spend the rest of the week at your daughters wedding did you?

  18. 18.

    kindness

    I like a good rip-off now and then.

    This is a good one.

    @Raven: Purple microdot? Haven’t seen that since the 70’s.

  22. 22.

    Schlemizel

    Heres a proud example of the fine leadership we turn our children over to when we send them to boot camp:
    http://www.examiner.com/article/army-general-faces-sodomy-and-forced-sex-charges-at-ft-bragg-n-c

    Not that there are not 10s of thousands of bright, honorable decent men and women in our military but there are an alarming number of @ssholes and the ‘warrior worship’ hides these types and enables guys like this POS. How many people knew but didn’t report? How many reported but got shuffled off to the paper shredder?

  23. 23.

    catclub

    I could have sworn JC posted something about: “See you all in four days. No posting from me.”

    Maybe a frontpager stomped on that post.

  25. 25.

    NonyNony

    @aimai:

    then a pan of the debate setting “If we can’t trust him here, how can we trust him [picture of oval office] HERE?”

    Okay, see, I didn’t watch the debate last night (working). I just read the aftermath.

    Everyone said Romney was lying his ass off and Obama was letting him get away with it. And I wondered if this wasn’t exactly why. Let him lie his ass off – then use his own words against him in swing states.

    The “give him enough rope to hang himself” maneuver. Rather than get confrontational to counter the lies (which is difficult in a debate setting already where you don’t have immediate access to sources and run the risk of a “both sides do it” moment if you screw up a point that would undermine your very successful “Romney is a lying liar” ad campaign), just stay on point and let him tell his whoppers.

    I don’t know if it was intentional, or making lemonade out of lemons, but that’s about the only approach I can see working with someone who believes that the truth is an Etch-A-Sketch that can be wiped away and redrawn whenever he feels like it.

  27. 27.

    dmsilev

    @aimai: I saw that. I wonder whether Romney is going to end up in the same trap that Ryan found himself after his convention speech: “Sure he was good last night, too bad everything he said was a lie”.

  28. 28.

    Enhanced Mooching Techniques

    @Face:

    So why do the TV peeps keep pimping a “game-changing debate” meme? Is this all horserace antics, or do they genuinely believe it?

    The pundits are big on this alphamale nonsense. That’s basically what they do all day for a living; wag their dicks in each other faces in these verbal gladiator matches.

  29. 29.

    WarMunchkin

    @Face: I actually have the opposite anecdotal experience. Most of the people I talked to were disengaged from the election for the most part and tuned in just to watch the debate. (So previously their concept of Romney was filtered down from small quotations and short news reports). That was the first time they saw Romney actually do something, so it made an impact. I believe they’ll still vote for Obama on social issues alone, though.

  32. 32.

    KXB

    I think I have a better idea of what happened last night. What we saw was not Mitt Romney, Republican nominee for President. No, what we saw was Lyle Lanley, monorail hustler from The Simpsons. An enthusiastic song and dance man who convinces Springfield to spend money on a monorail that does not work, while he skips town with the loot.

    Nothing Romney said last night meshes with what he said the previous year, but he sure can carry a tune.

  34. 34.

    patrick

    The “give him enough rope to hang himself” maneuver. Rather than get confrontational to counter the lies (which is difficult in a debate setting already where you don’t have immediate access to sources and run the risk of a “both sides do it” moment if you screw up a point that would undermine your very successful “Romney is a lying liar” ad campaign), just stay on point and let him tell his whoppers.

    that was the one thing comforting me after the debate….that all the lies were SO blatant, the flip-flopping and throwing the teahadists & Ryan Plan under the bus, that I figured Obama just gave Mitt enough rope to hang himself….

    this article needs to be sent out to all your less wingnutty but republican leaning friends and family (link given at Dkos):

    http://www.nationalmemo.com/mitt-romneys-fuzzy-debate-math/

  35. 35.

    ? Martin

    @NonyNony: I think it’s making lemonade.

    Obama certainly wasn’t at the top of his game, but very early on Obama went after Romney on the tax cuts issue, and Romney basically said ‘I don’t want to cut anyones taxes’. No help from the moderator to say ‘Uh, what?’. Obama tried to press his point and Romney kept insisting that the 20% tax cut he and Ryan have been touting for months was just a figment of Obama’s imagination.

    I suspect Obama had built a lot of his strategy around the tax issue – because everything can tie back to that – education, defense, health care, and so on. Once Romney yanked that rug out, Obama was caught out and had to start building entirely new arguments. That’s hard. He should have been able to do it, but he struggled to – he counterpunched and there was nothing there. If you can lay out the math, it’s obvious enough, but it can take 20 minutes to communicate in words what you can show in a chart in 5 seconds. The format just doesn’t lend itself to anything like that. Look at how much Krugman and Ezra and Chris Hayes and everyone else rely on charts to make the point. So they were stuck at platitudes.

    Foreign policy will be easier – it’s a topic better suited to narratives and philosophies rather than statistics and math.

  39. 39.

    David in NY

    Ever since I heard of the Haley Barbour outfit’s (forget its name) focus group results, I’ve thought trust was Romney’s big Achilles heel. Romney is basically telling everybody, “Trust me,” on his programs. But Barbour’s people tested a couple of groups of moderate-undecideds and found they didn’t trust Romney, or at least not his advertisements. Specifically, they didn’t trust Romney’s ads quoting phrases of Obama’s (“you didn’t build that” etc.), while they did trust Obama’s ads quoting Romney (many). That might be an artifact of the skill of the copy writer and photographer for Obama’s ads, but more likely it arises from a pre-existing feeling that Romney can’t be trusted. I say, go with that.

  40. 40.

    David in NY

    Also, does Romney still say he’s not cutting taxes??? Not on the upper income folks?

    So — what’s his job plan then? How do the job creators get their incentive to create jobs? I’m actually confused.

  41. 41.

    dr. bloor

    @catclub: No, you read it right. Those announcements inevitably herald a hypomanic flurry of posts that effectively triple his output during any routine week.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin:

    Foreign policy will be easier – it’s a topic better suited to narratives and philosophies rather than statistics and math.

    I ended up not watching the debate or even listening to it because of work overflow, and I guess I’m glad I did.

    Math is hard, but Obama is the freakin’ president. I don’t know whether many voters’ minds will be changed, but the president let an opportunity slip to seal the deal and to make Romney squeal like a pig.

    Foreign policy doesn’t matter in the same way that domestic policy does. Jobs and the economy are immediate and every day issues for more people than international issues.

    Not much more to say about this, except to hope that Biden does well against Ryan.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    BTW, just a reminder that Atlas Shrugged Part II opens in limited release on October 12.

    I know that most Balloon Juicers will be attending suitably Galtian midnight screenings.

    I can just see Mittens and Romney at a private screening, hot butter popcorn, and scorn heaped at the 47 percent.

  47. 47.

    Suffern ACE

    @Brachiator: I think his biggest escape was letting Romney turn his medicare plan into a choice narrative and make it sound like Medicare Part A. The reason we are getting rid of that program is because it turns out to be more expensive without any benefit to consumers. If the young people who opt out of Medicare think that he is just offering the same part A (But now you get choices) that’s a problem. It’s not Part A redux. It’s also going to be even more expensive to take care of those whose plans he isn’t changing if the young start opting out of the system. Instead of talking about profits and why those plans cost more, he needed to talk about the problems both fiscal and personal in Romney’s newly revealed plan.

  49. 49.

    AA+ Bonds

    More proof that while the Gangnam Style video is actually funny, most of its appeal in the United States comes from Americans’ lazy gawking at supposed foreigners

    (because Psy is about as American as it gets)

  50. 50.

    Suffern ACE

    @? Martin:

    Foreign policy will be easier – it’s a topic better suited to narratives and philosophies rather than statistics and math.

    The advantage for the challenger is that he can say pretty much anything that sounds sensible. (A foreign policy based on our Values!) while the incumbent is very constrained. Since our foreign policy sucks most of the time, anyone who promises to make it suck less by spinning a story can win those hearts and minds.

    I’m expecting Romney to pull the McCain approach of criticizing any bad situation and saying that he would have done the opposite and proclaiming that it hadn’t been tried.

  51. 51.

    AA+ Bonds

    Like I mean it is good for the person unwittingly making a parody of a satire that Mitt Romney is of the right social class to have purebred horses like in the original video but you’d think that would start some Googling and the person would be like, oh, well, the original does a better job than I could ever hope on this message so I should put my energy elsewhere

    It is like how it is very lucky for the Wayans Brothers that Scream contains a number of well-worn horror tropes, hmm how ripe for parody! When something is that convenient people should try using their noodles

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @Suffern ACE:

    Instead of talking about profits and why those plans cost more, he needed to talk about the problems both fiscal and personal in Romney’s newly revealed plan.

    Makes sense, but still too wonky.

    Again, I didn’t see the debate, so this means that I don’t have to have the vapors over Obama’s supposed weak showing.

    And while I think it is too easy, and wrong, to say that Obama should have been like Bill Clinton, I have always thought that Obama and the Democrats have been weak at explaining domestic policy and in laying out in “feel it in your bone” terms how craptastic the GOP is.

    I heard a snippet about how Romney wants to “keep tax rates low and remove some deductions,” claiming that this will create jobs. Did Obama clearly lay out that “removing deductions” would be an immediate tax increase for the middle class?

    This stuff bothers me a bit beause Romney was already on the ropes because of his own statements and thanks to Bill Clinton roughing him up in his speech at the DNC. It’s too damn bad that Obama let Mittens get away for now.

    Oh, well.

  54. 54.

    McJulie

    @? Martin:

    but very early on Obama went after Romney on the tax cuts issue, and Romney basically said ‘I don’t want to cut anyones taxes’. No help from the moderator to say ‘Uh, what?’. Obama tried to press his point and Romney kept insisting that the 20% tax cut he and Ryan have been touting for months was just a figment of Obama’s imagination.

    Exactly my impression. Obama was thrown by Romney’s refusal to stick by his own agenda, and was having to come up with new stuff on the fly, while Romney could stick to his prepared talking points.

  56. 56.

    ? Martin

    @Brachiator:

    Math is hard, but Obama is the freakin’ president. I don’t know whether many voters’ minds will be changed, but the president let an opportunity slip to seal the deal and to make Romney squeal like a pig.
    __
    Foreign policy doesn’t matter in the same way that domestic policy does. Jobs and the economy are immediate and every day issues for more people than international issues.

    I’m much better at math than Obama, but most of us have done the technical writing exercise in school where you need to write out instructions on how to tie your shoes. This shit is really fucking hard to do with just words – particularly when the target you prepared for just vanished before you. If Romney had tried to defend the 20% tax cuts and whatnot, I’m sure Obama would have been all over him and would have been able to rely on Romney doing half the work by framing his position. But Romney just said “I never said anything about tax cuts”. There was nothing there to push against. Obama was trying to push air.

    Foreign policy doesn’t matter, but remember that nobody is crediting Romney for winning on substance. In fact, he’s getting killed on that point. It’s all about delivery. The final debate could be on pizza toppings and the scoring wouldn’t be any different. It’s an area where Obama can get some momentum going. And the 2nd debate is town hall style. That should favor Obama – he’s much better in that setting because he’s talking to voters, not to Mitt or Lehrer. He actually seems to like doing that. His best debate with McCain was the town hall one. McCain constantly getting lost on stage might have contributed to that, though.

    I know we all want a knockout here, but the only place where that’s even possible is in the last debate, when nobody gets to stand back up again, refreshed, and start over. It’s the last debate that voters will remember before voting. Opinions are formed at the outset and the end. For voters that are using the debate as their first introduction to the candidates, Obama got hurt last night as that impression will carry for those voters into the next debates. He’s going to have to overcome a bad initial impression – and that’s hard. But for everyone else, baseline opinions are already set and what will ultimately matter is the one that they’re left with – the final debate.

  57. 57.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @? Martin:

    Obama certainly wasn’t at the top of his game, but very early on Obama went after Romney on the tax cuts issue, and Romney basically said ‘I don’t want to cut anyones taxes’. No help from the moderator to say ‘Uh, what?’. Obama tried to press his point and Romney kept insisting that the 20% tax cut he and Ryan have been touting for months was just a figment of Obama’s imagination.
    __
    I suspect Obama had built a lot of his strategy around the tax issue – because everything can tie back to that – education, defense, health care, and so on. Once Romney yanked that rug out, Obama was caught out and had to start building entirely new arguments. That’s hard. He should have been able to do it, but he struggled to – he counterpunched and there was nothing there. If you can lay out the math, it’s obvious enough, but it can take 20 minutes to communicate in words what you can show in a chart in 5 seconds.

    This seems exactly right to me. I also got the feeling that Obama had prepared going in to avoid using the words “lie” or “liar” (so the debate wouldn’t degenerate into you’re a liar – NO you are – no YOU are! etc..) . Instead his strategy was to just lay out the math behind Romney’s tax and budgetary proposals and let the viewers draw their own conclusions from a bunch of numbers that simply don’t add up. But then right at the very beginning of the debate Romney rebooted his claimed tax policy by emphatically stating he would NOT lower taxes on high incomes and just like that Obama suddenly had to junk his pre-prepared talking points. His only options were to either just up and call Romney a liar, or ad-lib it. So Obama ad-libbed it.

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin:

    I’m much better at math than Obama, but most of us have done the technical writing exercise in school where you need to write out instructions on how to tie your shoes. This shit is really fucking hard to do with just words

    That’s why he’s president and why he was there.

    It’s hard, but it ain’t impossible.

    I know we all want a knockout here, but the only place where that’s even possible is in the last debate, when nobody gets to stand back up again, refreshed, and start over

    I disagree. I expect Romney to keep going. But it was still possible to rattle him and undermine him.

    Again, one of my examples is the California gubernatorial election. Meg Whitman showed herself to be not ready for prime time. Jerry Brown used this to his advantage and by the end of the campaign it was all over but the actual voting.

    Romney’s weakness is that he thrives on giving off the illusion of competence. Obama should have knocked that peg out from under Mittens. Then his lies or later debate performances would not matter.

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