Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans in disarray!

Come on, man.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

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

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

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

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

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

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

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

Infrastructure week. at last.

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

We still have time to mess this up!

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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52Comments

  1. 1.

    Ted & Hellen

    Do you all remember others that were just as good?

    omg. You’ve become DougJ.

    Maybe you’ve been DougJ all along.

  9. 9.

    Spaghetti Lee

    It’s an oldie, but I still occasionally reread Mistermix’s ‘Today in Politician COCK’ masterpiece (the title preceding that one is pretty good too: “They’ll know we are Christians by our Rational Self-Interest”).

  10. 10.

    Felonius Monk

    Chili with beans tonight, Cole. Love the stuff, but now I’m paying for it. Man, it sucks when you’re getting to old to handle the stuff you love.

    I’ll second the request for Tunch pix — maybe they’ll help ease the suffering.

  13. 13.

    Hill Dweller

    Josh Marshall, after being in D.C. for a couple of days, has a new post up saying the Republicans are going to give in on raising taxes for the upper brackets, but they’ll refuse to raise the debt ceiling and ultimately default on the debt. Good times.

  15. 15.

    TheMightyTrowel

    Since we’re in an open thread… my mom arrives tomorrow. She’s staying for a month. I love her dearly, but i love her more with an ocean (or two) between us. Any survival tips?

  17. 17.

    joeyess

    Great title. Laughed hard when I read it.

    I love being in on the joke……

    Speaking about that, a bunch of Kansas City area musicians, led by yours truly, are going to flash-mob one of the more conspicuous consumption centers in all of Real ‘Murika.

    We’re going to the Oak Park Mall in Overland Park Kansas and start singing “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” right in the food court.

    10 musicians with guitars, singers, and tamborines. The DFHer’s are going to strike a blow for peace and music right in the heart of Governor Brownback’s Gilded Gimme Palace.

    YouTube video is imminent.

    Bail is not guaranteed.

  19. 19.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @Hill Dweller:

    Question, because I honestly don’t remember: would this technically be the shutdown that was put off in summer 2011? And, also, didn’t it all feel ‘inevitable’ then until the Republicans blinked?

    I don’t know if this factors into the decisions of crazy teatards, but all the polling I’ve seen says the GOP gets blamed for a shutdown in the public eye, and it’s not even close. Given that Obama’s outfoxed the GOP more than a few times on crap like this (and he seems even more committed to not giving into them than in 2011), I’m not gonna call apocalypse until it happens.

    EDIT: I mean, I’m not seeing Marshall’s point, honestly. A shutdown will happen because the Tea Party is really really mad and they’re not gonna give up? Well, shit, they’ve been that way for years now, and in that time they have a notable history of not getting what they want in terms of election results or policy.

  21. 21.

    Hill Dweller

    @Spaghetti Lee: No, this would be Republicans intentionally defaulting on our debt, which has never happened before. Hell, no one had ever as much as threatened to default on the debt until the Republicans did it last year.

    Marshall thinks the wingnuts are going to be furious after being forced to raise taxes on the top 2%, and looking for revenge. A strong Speaker could cool them down, but Boehner is weak.

    Couple that with Obama saying he will not negotiate a debt ceiling raise, and it has the makings of a massive default/shutdown.

  22. 22.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @Hill Dweller:

    OK, again, I don’t see what’s fundamentally changed here. Wingnuts are always furious. They’re always trying to depose John Boehner. They keep raising hell and talking about how much political power they have but they never actually seem to get what’s on their wishlist.

    Maybe I’m being overly optimistic here, but here’s my theory. There will by 235 Republicans in the House next year, and you need 218 votes for a majority. Assuming all Dems will vote to not raise the debt ceiling (maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the familiar troublemakers are all gone), there have got to be, somewhere in the House, a mere 17 Republicans with a combination of no political future, plans to retire, resentment towards the Tea Party, being strong-armed by Obama, and an actual understanding that default would be really bad that can be peeled off. I know I’ll get a lot of snarky comments about how I just don’t understand how nuts the GOP really is, but it seems that Obama and his people are savvy enough, and the stakes high enough, that for them to peel away something like 7% of the Republican caucus, vote by vote, is not a Herculean task.

  23. 23.

    Yutsano

    @Hill Dweller: Helloooo trillion dollar platinum coin. Or Obama ignores them and dares them to take him to court. Which could also be fun.

    Full disclosure: if there is no debt ceiling raise I am temporarily out of a job. So I’d just as soon it doesn’t happen, back pay restored notwithstanding.

  24. 24.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    My dear wife of three-plus decades had open heart surgery to deal with a bad mitral valve this morning. She came through it well and she’s recovering now in the Expensive Care Unit (That’s SOP for this procedure).

    Now we have a Cadillac health plan and even though my wife is a state employee we make Cadillac payments for it. Our charges for all of this are nothing, zip, zero, even though she’s in a damned good hospital with a damned good staff.

    I’m very grateful for that, but I couldn’t help but feel very sad that all Americans aren’t able to get the same level of care no matter what their incomes.

  26. 26.

    ? Martin

    @Hill Dweller: That seems pretty obvious to me too. The GOP has no play, and they’re finally realizing it. The debt limit is their only bargaining tool, and I think Obama is willing to let them shut us down. He can’t afford to let them fuck the queen every time then want something – he needs to get the debt limit power out of their hands, and if he can win this, then the issues that led to our credit rating going down will be effectively addressed.

    I think he’s going for the long-term fix. Heaven help us all. It’s gonna hurt like hell.

  27. 27.

    ? Martin

    @Yutsano: He won’t do those things and for good reason as illustrated at TPM – it would undermine the functionality of US Treasuries.

    No, I think we’re headed for immovable object meets unstoppable force. Obama seems unusually determined to take us over the cliff and into a shutdown if needed. No president will ever be in a better position to do this – no re-election to worry about, not even into his 2nd term so there’s 2 years to assess the damage before the midterm. There will never be a point where political considerations will be lower than they are right now. If the GOP goes there, Obama has to as well. He’s got to call their bluff and let the chips fall where they may.

  31. 31.

    The Other Chuck

    @Joseph Nobles: You might be right — it could be fashionable to pin it on a Republican this year, make it sound like they’ve got their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist or whatever.

    Don’t imagine for a moment though that whatever they pick will actually involve real honest factual analysis or anything like “journalism”.

  32. 32.

    Joseph Nobles

    @TheMightyTrowel: But controversy is what makes Polititroll Polititroll. It’s not about actually identifying a Lie of the Year, but readership capture.

    Plus, a Hot Air writer called Bill Adair up because he thought the “War on Women” from the Democrats was the lie of the year. Bill told him this:

    http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/06/politifacts-lie-of-the-year-nominees-left-out-2012s-biggest-lie/

    “Lie of the Year comes from statements PolitiFact has rated ‘False’ or ‘Pants on Fire.’ We rate the ‘Lie of the Year’ as the boldest statement or the statement with the biggest reach.

    Mitt’s take on “You didn’t build that” has the biggest reach as a key talking point of the campaign. Rush is just demonstratably wrong. Who’s going to care about that? And Obama won, so any anger from choosing a candidate from his pile will dissapate quicker. Choosing a Romney quote means salt in the wound of bitter Republicans, especially that statement, since it got so much traction in the conservative world. So you’ve got maximum outrage and widest reach: Polititroll gold.

  33. 33.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    Cain:

    [Republicans] are such assholes. … Needlessly pissing off businesses for no reason.

    Needlessly pissing off {insert subset of American citizens here} for no reason is pretty much the GOP’s entire modus operandi and raison d’etre these days.

    (I use French phrases because the French needlessly piss off Republicans.)

    .

  35. 35.

    Yutsano

    @JGabriel: To be fair, modus operandi is Latin.

    @? Martin: He may not even be able to change much in the midterm given the political calculus. We can only hope the Senate candidates in the states where the Dems are weakest will be beautiful gems like Akin and Mourdoch. The teatards haven’t come close to learning that lesson yet. Gerrymandering will unfortunately keep the House out of reach for awhile. So he can certainly be as stubborn as he wants given he has zero to lose here. I just kinda like the trillion dollar platinum coin idea because it’s almost Ferengi in its deviousness.

  37. 37.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    Joseph Nobles:

    Mitt’s take on “You didn’t build that” has the biggest reach as a key talking point of the campaign.

    I’m more inclined to vote for The Apology Tour as biggest Lie of the Year. It seemed to be more widely repeated by the wingnuts I know.

    .

  38. 38.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    Yutsano:

    To be fair, modus operandi is Latin.

    D’oh! You’re right. I just woke up at 3:00 am, and I’m not fully alert yet.

    .

  43. 43.

    PeakVT

    @JGabriel: Based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of earthquake science, I think it’s unlikely that there will be a very big earthquake along that particular stretch of subduction zone anytime soon. That’s because most of the accumulated strain in that area was released in 2011.

    Now, if you are eager to worry, you can focus on sections of the plate boundary where the strain hasn’t been relieved lately. The area offshore of Tokyo is one such place. A brief discussion is here.

  44. 44.

    Suffern ACE

    @Hill Dweller: and? My guess is that they’ll shut down, all the Dems plus a dozen republicans will have to vote for it and the rrpublicans will run in 2014 against Democrat Party Debt Profligacy and spending.

    If the Dems can not start pushing back against that, well god bless their souls.

  45. 45.

    Mothra

    Yes. IMO, the best post title ever was “Her Nutcake Brings all the Boys to the Yard”-by John Cole.

  47. 47.

    danielx

    @Elizabelle:

    Does make one wonder how this beast got her name…I read about a great white in the Florida Keys area that was named Maybelline after some fisherman’s ex.

    edit: named after tracker’s mother.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    @danielx:

    Yeah, you got it. Named after a shark researcher’s mom.

    Mary Lee’s name comes from Chris Fischer’s mother. “My parents have done so much. I was waiting and waiting for a special shark to name after her and this is truly the most historic and legendary fish I have ever been a part of and it set the tone for Cape Cod,“ says Chris.

    Here’s link to track Mary Lee’s roaming. She is enjoying SC Lowcountry cuisine this month.

  49. 49.

    Mark S.

    This title has always been one of my favorites. It took me a minute to get it, and for once I had heard of one the damn songs DougJ referenced.

  52. 52.

    Boots Day

    “You Didn’t Build That” isn’t really a lie. It’s a stupid, misleading distortion of what Obama said, but I wouldn’t call it a lie.

    The one about Chrysler building all its Jeeps in China would be my choice. The Romney campaign kept using that one even after Jeep itself called the statement a lie. It’s a complete falsehood, widely repeated even after it as clear it was false: Lie of the Year.

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