Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

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

Fight them, without becoming them!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

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

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

Let’s finish the job.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

“woke” is the new caravan.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Just Cruisin’ Thru

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Just Cruisin’ Thru

by | 69 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

bush library forgot the books danziger
(Jeff Danziger’s website)
.
Dubya Bush doesn’t seem to have had many generous impulses in his life, but he sure can’t stop making gifts to America’s humorists. Ask Doghouse Riley about what the shills call “an interactive theater [where library visitors] will be presented with the stark choices that confronted the nation’s 43rd president” and Riley names “Worst Video Game Ever. Figures.“:

• Run for governor of Texas, or move to an island and found your own colony of Jebus-mazed explosion fanciers?

• Fakey Texas drawl, or Cagney impression?

• Run for President, or do something for your country for once?…

bush library cruisin thru thompson
(Mike Thompson via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    muddy

    I just saw a clip from a GWB interview, his red drinkywinky face was on fire. Goes with his pants.

  3. 3.

    Steeplejack

    Worst president ever. James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce had much less potential leverage for harm, intentional or not.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Actually allow the nation’s pressing business which they’re being paid to undertake to proceed?

    Nope.

    On the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to appoint seven Democratic and five Republican Senate negotiators to a conference committee with House counterparts, to iron out major differences between the two chambers’ budgets.
    [snip]
    …speaking on behalf of Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) objected to Reid’s request.  Source

  5. 5.

    LanceThruster

    Anything associated with Shrubya that does not mock him mercilessly just makes me sad. Stolen elections make me sad. Crazy unfunded wars make me sad. Dem kow-towing makes me sad.

  6. 6.

    Mike G

    The $250-million complex holds the president’s archive as well as a museum, restaurant, auditorium, policy institute and foundation.

    $250 million for a shelf full of comic books and The Pet Goat?

    Does the restaurant serve Freedom Fries?

  7. 7.

    PsiFighter37

    God, I fucking hate GWB. I was 14 years old when the 2000 election went down. I wrote an essay as a freshman that talks about how Bush and Gore were the same – bought that line hook, line, and sinker. But I knew that fishy shit was going down in FL, and it was a terribly sad day when Gore conceded the race after SCOTUS and those 5 assholes stole the presidency from him.

    Yes, that turd Joe Lieberman would’ve been vice president. But you know what? I would trade Barack Obama’s presidency for Al Gore’s in a heartbeat. So much would have been different – and better – if he was in charge. And the fact that this assclown ran the country into the ground over the course of 8 years makes it all the much worse.

    Even to this day, 13 years later, I can’t think straight about that election, because the wrong person didn’t even WIN, and he was gifted the presidency.

    Just incredibly sad. Fuck him and his half-billion dollar tribute to a shitty legacy.

  8. 8.

    Morzer

    Bit of nice news:

    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/rhode-island-lawmakers-approve-marriage-equality

    The Rhode Island state Senate voted to legalize same-sex marriage on Wednesday, following the House which approved a similar bill in January, BuzzFeed reported. The vote was 26-12.
    The House now needs to pass the slightly updated version, which is expected to pass easily. Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) has said he will sign the bill into law.
    With Chafee’s signature, Rhode Island will become the 10th state along with the District of Columbia to allow same-sex marriage.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    @Mike G

    Don’t forget the statues of his dogs and cat.

    And what? No section for the kiddies where they can participate in a Where’s WaldoWMD? interactive exhibit? That could keep the young’uns busy for hours on a fruitless search.

  10. 10.

    Morzer

    And Mark Sanford has apparently just revealed his complete, utter, barking lunacy to the world:

    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/video-sanfords-debate-with-cardboard-cutout-of-pelosi

    Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) on Wednesday debated a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as a protest against Elizabeth Colbert Busch, his Democratic opponent in the special House election in South Carolina’s First Congressional District, who has agreed to only one debate.
    After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a brutal ad last week that mocked his 2009 mistress scandal, Sanford took out a full page newspaper ad in Sunday’s edition of the Charleston Post & Courier in which he accused Pelosi and Colbert Busch of attempting to “buy this race.”

  11. 11.

    I am not a kook

    I’d like to start a guerilla program to place copies of My Pet Goat in random places in his library.

  12. 12.

    Roger Moore

    @Mike G:

    $250 million for a shelf full of comic books and The Pet Goat?

    I assume it must have been built on a no-bid Haliburton contract, so it’s understandable that they spent so much for so little.

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    @Morzer:
    Reminds you of the Mickey Kaus vs. Cardboard Box debate, doesn’t it? As I recall, the cardboard box won that one by default.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    For those who may not have seen it yet, the name of the boat the younger Tsarnaev (a/k/a Suspect #2) hid within has been disclosed.

    And the irony is rife.

                  Slip Away II

  15. 15.

    PsiFighter37

    @Morzer: Damn that’s weird. The problem is, it is South Carolina, so I could imagine some of the people there thinking that Colbert Busch is Nancy Pelosi.

    I do have to take it as a good sign that he has to resort to pulling off really fourth-rate stunts like this to get attention nowadays.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    I will say that i hate GWB for very personal reasons — the animosity of the 2000 election and the Fox News hysteria over Gore “stealing” the election caused a major breach in my family and made it very difficult to talk to my dad, since he only wanted to talk about the horrible thing the Demon-rats were doing.

    For the same reason, I am planning to piss on Rush Limbaugh’s grave when that asshole finally relieves the world of his presence. And this is not a threat I make lightly because, as a woman, it’s a whole hell of a lot harder for me to carry out than it would be if I were a dude.

  17. 17.

    Morzer

    @Amir Khalid:

    My wife immediately thought of Eastwood versus E.M.P.T.Y.Chair at the GOP convention. I’d like to believe that our national sanity index hasn’t fall so far that Sanford can actually be elected. But, South Carolina is indeed different, bless its heart.

  18. 18.

    Morzer

    @PsiFighter37:

    I thought the ad they ran against Sanford was pretty effective and I think Colbert-Busch will win, but I wish I could be sure. Sanford is such a deeply despicable human being on every level.

  20. 20.

    Morzer

    @lamh35:

    I wonder what luckless staffer got the job of holding the cutout up for the debate. You can see a pair of (presumably) female feet underneath the bottom edge.

  21. 21.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @PsiFighter37:

    I think one thing that worries me about that scenario is that if Gore were president in 2008, the housing collapse and economic collapse would have happened ‘under his watch’ and that would be cemented in the public’s mind. Would that have led to a GOP victory in ’08? I’m really, really glad we haven’t had a Republican president the last 4 years.

  22. 22.

    HinTN

    @I am not a kook: Rev it up! I can assure you we ain’t gwine to Texas any time soon. The last time was when Shrub was governator and every person we met along the coast was, at a minimum, rolling their eyes…

  23. 23.

    Morzer

    @Mnemosyne:

    Given the unique blend of drugs and toxic waste contained by Limbaugh’s grave, I worry that you might set off an apocalyptic explosion.

  24. 24.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @PsiFighter37:

    You know, if you’re trying to win a close election, is it really a good idea to call the voters pig-fucking morons who can barely feed themselves? I mean, if you’re going to say the South is full of morons when it goes GOP, at least give them credit when something like this happens, and don’t just say it’s in spite of the inherent pig-fucking idiocy. Changing perceptions, hearts and minds and all that. Just say no to self-fulfilling defeatism.

    Saw some similar comments on TPM, like “Yeah, ECB’s winning now but she’ll eventually lose. It’s South Carolina.” Uh, thanks for the support?

  26. 26.

    David Koch

    Hillary is giving a speech tonight for a $200,000 fee to a bunch of rich ruling-class land-lords in Dallas.

    Why is any so-called liberal promoting this oligarchic for president instead of a true progressive?

  28. 28.

    HinTN

    @PsiFighter37: It really was true then, though surely not now, that if Al had done s few BBQ events ‘t home he would gave carried TB and he would not have needed Florida. We are far crazier now.

  29. 29.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @Morzer:

    I was referring to: The problem is, it is South Carolina, so I could imagine some of the people there thinking that Colbert Busch is Nancy Pelosi.

    I’m not trying to start a fight, honestly, but people here sometimes talk about the Democrats’ problem with being too defeatist and I think this is a good example. It’s like, even when we’re winning, we’re losing.

  32. 32.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @efgoldman:

    Well, if he comes back to life, I’ll peel his skin off with a red-hot pair of pliers and then inject flesh-eating bacteria into his eyeballs. Then I’d wrap him in barbed wire and stuff his mouth full of rusty nails, and drop him out of an airplane into a lake of sulfuric acid.

    I don’t know if that’s the proper way to kill zombies, but it’s just something I’d enjoy.

  33. 33.

    Morzer

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    So your answer then is that, other than you, no-one called the noble exercisers of the South Carolina franchise “pig-fucking morons”?

  34. 34.

    PsiFighter37

    @Spaghetti Lee: We wouldn’t have had a jobless recovery that necessitated reckless actions like lending money to people who couldn’t afford their houses…because they would’ve had jobs that would’ve given them the income that they needed to actually pay off the house.

    It’s hard to say for sure, and granted, one of the bad legacies of the Clinton era is that they were way too pro-deregulation, but Gore definitely was getting his populist streak on, and I feel like that, in his heart of hearts, was a truer voice for him.

    @HinTN: Butterfly ballot. Yes, he could’ve won WV, or TN, or NH, but he actually DID win the election in FL; it’s only SCOTUS that thought that not counting the votes = democracy!!11

    Oh, and one more side effect of 2000 is that Ralph Nader can go fuck himself. The only personal beneficial impact of his run is that it turned my once-conservative mother into a straight-ticket Democratic voter ever since when she voted for him and realized what a shitty screwup that was (she was voting in NY, but still).

  37. 37.

    West of the Rockies

    I would be very surprised if GWB by choice set foot in any library since about his second year of college.

  39. 39.

    Redshirt

    @efgoldman: Dude, you can’t kill a zombie with a silver bullet. Unless! That silver bullet directly penetrated the brain and severed the central brain cord thingy. That would kill a zombie, but you could also do that with a regular bullet – maybe! So in summary, use machetes and axes for zombie killing rather than guns. Unless they’re big guns, and then go to zombie town.

  40. 40.

    Morzer

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    You know, if you’re trying to win a close election, is it really a good idea to call the voters pig-fucking morons who can barely feed themselves?

    Looks like you and D J Fluker both got yourselves hacked, ‘cos I am not seeing anyone else on here using that language with reference to the magnificent and virtuous voters of South Carolina.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    @HinTN

    Tennessee, maybe not so much. Gore’s very vocal and strident anti-tobacco rhetoric didn’t play well in tobacco country.

    On the basis of that, coupled with his campaign’s announced reticence in having Clinton stump for him, I had predicted he wouldn’t carry TN by the time the 2000 conventions were over.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    I think one thing that worries me about that scenario is that if Gore were president in 2008, the housing collapse and economic collapse would have happened ‘under his watch’

    Maybe there wouldn’t have been a bubble and crash under a Gore administration. The bubble may not have been primarily a result of federal malfeasance, but it might have been headed off by competent government regulators who had tried to stop all the fraud that supported it.

  48. 48.

    PsiFighter37

    @muddy: And SS would’ve been fine. Gore took way too much shit about ‘lockbox’, but how does that look 13 years in hindsight and we’re now having to fight a Democratic president including cuts to benefits in his budget?

    There are a lot of shitty things that happened as a consequence of the 5-4 “don’t take this as precedent” decision of Bush v. Gore.

    Oh, not to mention that if Gore had gotten re-elected in 2004, we’d be looking at a solid liberal majority on the court of 6 members for a generation to come. THAT’S the real kicker of 2000 (and 2004 as well).

  50. 50.

    PsiFighter37

    @Morzer: We would’ve had a liberal Chief Supreme Court Justice.

    Can you fucking imagine that the last liberal to sit in that seat was Earl Warren, who was a Republican appointee? It’s been nearly 45 years and counting since LBJ screwed the pooch and tried to put Abe Fortas in that seat, resulting in Warren retiring after Nixon was elected.

  51. 51.

    Morzer

    @PsiFighter37:

    After further review, this may be a good night for some drinking and lamenting, followed by a vow to take vengeance on the Republican cretinocracy.

  52. 52.

    Redshirt

    Aw, man. It is an entirely different reality we’d be living RIGHT NOW if Gore had prevailed in 2000. Assume 9/11 DOES NOT happen. Assume continued growth of the economy yet curtailing of global warming. 2004 is President Gore versus McCain and Gore wins and so continues a generation of Democratic rule, and a more enlightened America.

    Instead, we have the Madness. So tragic!

  53. 53.

    Hal

    @PsiFighter37:

    I wrote an essay as a freshman that talks about how Bush and Gore were the same

    There has been some iteration of this sentiment for every election. I think there are folks who just genuinely do not see any differences at all between parties, or who focus on one specific issue and that issue guides their opinion in it’s entirety.

    Hell, I’ve seen comments on this blog by some commenters saying Bush=Obama because the public option, no wait, drones. Maybe it’s not prosecuting GWB for war crimes, or chained CPI. Whatever the case, some folks want a 100% difference between two candidates or as far as they are concerned, both candidates are pretty much the same.

  55. 55.

    PsiFighter37

    @Redshirt: Yeah, that’s why I have to stop myself from getting carried away with the ‘What ifs’ of 2000, because the magnitude of difference would have been incredibly different. And I’ll probably end up lethally drunk.

    @Hal: Yeah, but part of it was that I was a smart-ass freshman who wanted to demonstrate how ‘free-thinking’ I was. I don’t think I really ever truly believed that sentiment, and I knew that Gore was light-years ahead of Bush when it came to intelligence. I had already read ‘Earth in the Balance’ and should have known better.

    My only defense is that I was only 14 years old, so you can’t blame me for voting for Nader.

  56. 56.

    Morzer

    @PsiFighter37:

    My only defense is that I was only 14 years old, so you can’t blame me for voting for Nader.

    Please turn yourself in to your nearest Obama Death Camp Supervisor for punitive cleansing and thought purification.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @PsiFighter37:

    I was a smart-ass freshman who wanted to demonstrate how ‘free-thinking’ I was

    Funny how “free thinking” people always seem to end up with the same stereotypical conclusions.*

    You’re excused because of your youth.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    Mmm.

    Just took a devil’s food cake out of the oven.

    If houses could drool, I’d need an umbrella right now.

  59. 59.

    PsiFighter37

    I actually have my high school docs saved, and here’s this gem from a 6-page essay I wrote on October 25, 2000.

    Neither of the main candidates are appealing to me; if I had a choice, I would choose Ralph Nader from the Green Party. This election is not really about who is most fit to be president, but rather who is the least objectionable. That candidate would be Gore, who I believe has a better idea of how to run this country. He has more experience in politics (24 years as a House Representative, Senator, and Vice President) than Bush, who has only been governor in one of the weakest state governments for only five years. While Gore is explaining to people what his plans will do, Bush is running on his charismatic personality and little else. Gore’s tax cut would help out the poor and middle class much more than Bush’s; in fact, the Texas governor’s tax cut benefits the wealthier more. Gore has had on-the-job experience for learning how the presidency runs. His plan for education is better; it tries to reform public schools. Bush supports vouchers, which gives money to kids to go to private school. But how exactly does that help the public schools? It doesn’t. I didn’t include the environment in here, but Gore is known for his tough stance on many environmental issues. Texas has some of the most polluted cities in the country, and Bush does not believe that global warming is due to more pollution, even though there is overwhelming evidence that supports it.

    The fact is, though, both candidates are people who have clearly mastered the art of hypocrisy; they can switch positions as stealthily as any politician. Gore says he wants to tone down Hollywood, yet he receives millions from them in campaign contributions. Both candidates talk about campaign finance reform, however the soft money is pouring in from the special interests. Although the two candidates are, in my opinion, just completely hypocritical and appalling men, I choose Al Gore as the best person to lead this country into the 21st century.

    It actually turns out that I got the right man, but boy, was I loaded up on ‘both sides do it’ at 14 years old…even though it was clear from my own freakin’ explanation on the issues that Gore was way better.

  62. 62.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    True. Most of his sentences do not suggest composition under the influence of rabies and a bottle of Pappy’s Scrotum.

  66. 66.

    PsiFighter37

    @Hal: I can say with utter certainty that I’ve never had any affection for William Safire, so…no.

Comments are closed.