Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republicans do not pay their debts.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

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

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

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61Comments

  2. 2.

    c u n d gulag

    Hey, Ya Ol’ Stoop,
    You’re starting to listen to your own self-perpetuating loop – of stupid AND evil!

    What’s next, you’ll be telling Roger that since your viewers, readers, and listeners, seem to really love them, you want Ailes to order you some sh*t-sandwiches of your very own?

    Enjoy them, you sociopathic rich maggot, in ever-declining health, I say!

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I can’t, I just can’t. How does a man get to be 82 years old — I mean that quite literally, how does a person even survive eight decades — while carting around such stupid ideas?

    Trying to figure out if I can simultaneously headdesk and facepalm without hurting myself.

  7. 7.

    The Dangerman

    If you are on the Government payroll, I am all for you being denied the right to vote. Public Sector employees, gone. Welfare recipients, gone. Military, be gone with you. All employees of Defense Contractors, fucking leaches, get out. Social Security recipients, sorry, you are out, too.

    ETA: Let’s not forget all banks bailed out by the Government. No vote for you.

  8. 8.

    srv

    Well, I for one am glad that Sheldon Adelson supports President Obama in bombing Syria. You can’t smear all old men.

  9. 9.

    gelfling545

    @SiubhanDuinne: I imagine he didn’t always have these ideas. He just kept making more money and finally got to a point where he was so rich that reality could be whatever he wanted & what he wanted was to somehow demonstrate that anyone not as rich as he can’t be any good. This allows him to deny that human decency may make infinitesimal demands on a small portion of his immense wealth.

  12. 12.

    Comrade Jake

    Therein lies the problem with the right wing in this country. They assume that if they hear it from Rush, it must be true.

  13. 13.

    beltane

    Someone in a Crooked Timber thread on the Australian election wondered what was wrong with the electorates in English speaking countries. A simple answer to that question is: Rupert Murdoch.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    You could just as well ask that question of, say, the Koch brothers, or of the Walton family. I suspect the answer would be the same: dear old Rupe has spent much of his life in a rich and powerful man’s bubble, exempt from the examination that the real world imposes upon your beliefs and mine.

  16. 16.

    PeakVT

    @gelfling545: No, I think Murdoch has always been pretty much insane on such matters. To this day he views himself as an outsider with something to prove, despite being born on third base and having become one of the world’s richest men.

  17. 17.

    The Dangerman

    @FlyingToaster:

    So only Walmart employees, UPS workers, and contractors get to vote? Interesting.

    No, I suspect they will be DQ’d, too. By the end of the day, only Mitt Romney and his spawn will be allowed to vote. Think of the power of a Unanimous Victory for President (it has better be unanimous, at least, or someone’s getting cut out of the Will).

  19. 19.

    JGabriel

    Rupert Murdoch:

    Listen to talk back radio in UK and US … and you will be convinced.

    Ah, of course: Manufactured Resent.

  20. 20.

    srv

    This would save us so much money.

    Saudi Arabia has sent death-row inmates from several nations to fight against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences, the Assyrian International News Agency reports.

    Citing what it calls a “top secret memo” in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom.

  22. 22.

    MattF

    Spare me. So, the Internet, in its wisdom, has permitted some anonymous individual somewhere in the world, to disagree with an 82-year old shithead.

  23. 23.

    Belafon

    Hey, don’t pick on Benjamin Franklin. All the blogs he goes to, except for BJ, think that _____ is the worst thing ever, and therefore it must be true.

  24. 24.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Vile ignorant shitstain Murdoch’s evidence is the babbling of other vile ignorant shitstains.

    The echo chamber is sealed.

    I’m sorry, tumbrels are too humane for assholes like Murdoch. Flay them alive.

  25. 25.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @srv:

    So, were these inmates imprisoned for serious crimes like allowing their female relatives to drive or REALLY bad things like calling a Wahabbist Imam, accurately, an asshole?

  27. 27.

    Amir Khalid

    @MattF:
    Well ,not just any 82-year-old shithead; but an 82-year-old shithead who wields great influence over what news much of the world is exposed to, and consequently over what it thinks.

  31. 31.

    Judge Crater

    The looters and moochers theme really is the seminal creation of the right wing. It resonates in their lizard brains like a Lee Greenwood song. Plutocrats like Murdoch will pound that divisive notion as hard as they can. Denying succor to the “takers” is just another righteous virtue to our free market, libertarian propagandists.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @gelfling545:
    @Amir Khalid:

    Well, I wasn’t thinking of the IGMFY stance — agree with both of you on that. I was thinking of the complete and utter Logic Fail of the circular “My evidence is in talk radio (which I own) and letters to newspapers (which I own).”

  38. 38.

    NonyNony

    @beltane:

    The Syrian foreign minister says his government will accept the Russian proposal to put its chemical weapon stockpile under international control.

    Well this will get the teabaggers in the House riled up.

    “On the one hand, Obama wants a strike so I’m against it. On the other hand, the UN is seeking to expand its worldwide government by impounding and destroying weapons of a sovereign nation, and I’m against that.”

    Hatred of Obama vs. Hatred of Internationalism and One World Government. What is a teabagging Representative to do?

    (He could listen to his constituents and try to vote the way they want, but who’s gonna do that?)

  39. 39.

    beltane

    @WereBear: He can create his own facts and he can mold people’s perception of reality. As long as people have faith in mass media, they will be trained seals in the hands of the Murdochs and Berlusconis of the world.

  42. 42.

    Citizen_X

    Sigh. Re: “public sector workers sucking life out of the economy,” for the zillionth time, if the people furloughed by austerity in the states got their jobs back, the recession (as people experience it, not the formal definition) would pretty much be over. By a whole percentage point in the unemployment rate.

  43. 43.

    Lady Bug

    @beltane:

    If Assad agrees to put his chemical weapons under international control, I don’t think there is going to be a military strike.

  44. 44.

    Ash Can

    @Amir Khalid: I would laugh hysterically if it turned out that all the bellicose talk from Obama and Kerry turned out to be nothing more than cover for these negotiations between Russia (and Iran) and Syria. It’s far too early to call this an outright win for Obama, but neither would I be surprised if it turned out that he sat on some folks and squeezed some cooperation out of them at G20.

  46. 46.

    danielx

    @Shakezula:

    I like it, but it flows better without the “because”.

    In any case…talk about your epistemic closure. Rupert evidently still can’t understand how it is that Rmoney lost to That (Black) Man In The (Our, from Rupert’s standpoint) White House. Which is surprising; Murdoch is next thing to a fascist but he’s not a stupid man. On the other hand, I’ve read that one of the signs of a failing business is when management starts to believe their own bullshit.

    There’s FauxNewsWorld, and then there’s reality.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    @JGabriel:

    Manufactured Resent

    Brilliant. Well done, JGabriel.

    Manufactured Resent is what Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck and their ilk sell.

    Manufactured Consent is what we get from the Morning Joe crowd, Charlie Rose, the Villagers.

  49. 49.

    Chris

    @srv:

    Saudi Arabia has sent death-row inmates from several nations to fight against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences, the Assyrian International News Agency reports.

    That sounds a lot like what they did in the eighties, only then, the Undesirables being tossed out of the country to fight the Kingdom’s wars were religious nuts instead of common criminals.

    One can only hope that at the end of this war, the common criminals don’t choose to continue the war against anyone and everyone like the religious nuts did.

  50. 50.

    Yatsuno

    @Citizen_X:

    if the people furloughed by austerity in the states got their jobs back, the recession (as people experience it, not the formal definition) would pretty much be over

    But…but…but…Saint Ronaldus Magnus taught us that gubmint can never be the solution, and he is the great holy prophet of this center-right nation! How could you even THINK such heresy?

  51. 51.

    Senyordave

    There are not many people outside of war criminals and mass murderers I would say this of, but Rupert Murdoch is a worthless human being. He is one of the most powerful people on the face of the earth, and what does he use his power for? Helping society, looking out for the downtrodden, even trying to support the middle class. No, he promotes ideas like the welfare queen myth, all liberals are bad, etc. I’ve always thought at the core of it Rupert is just a garden variety bigot who couches it in different language. I do believe in karma, so I’m hoping that maybe in his next life Rupert will get to experience life at the bottom rung of society.

  53. 53.

    NonyNony

    @beltane: @Lady Bug:

    I’ll believe it when I see it, I guess. I hope it works out that way, but I imagine that even if Assad does this there will be screams of “it isn’t enough” because he needs to be “punished” and/or the whole international ban on chemical weapons is just a toothless sham without a bombing campaign. Whatever it takes to justify dropping ordnance.

    President McCain would have started lobbing bombs at Assad’s military months ago from what I gather – he’s got buddies in Syria who he wants to help. I think for a lot of these guys the chemical weapon use is an excuse to start a military intervention, not a reason. Nothing the UN does will stop them from pushing – I remain hopeful that Obama is still in the “we have to do something -> bombing is something -> I can’t think of anything else to do -> start bombing” camp and will take this kind of UN action as an alternative “something” that can be done and use it. But I won’t be surprised if he’s in the “it isn’t enough – Assad needs to be punished for using chemical weapons” camp at this point either. (Hopeful yet pessimistic – sounds like my entire stance through most of the 21st century at this point, except for those 2-3 years where things were hopeless and pessimistic…)

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @NonyNony: What would the point of a military strike be at this point? Balancing the chance of getting chemical weapons out of the hands of someone has shown that he is willing to use them vs. “punishing” him and leaving the weapons in his hands, where would you land?

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @NonyNony:

    I imagine that even if Assad does this there will be screams of “it isn’t enough” because he needs to be “punished” and/or the whole international ban on chemical weapons is just a toothless sham without a bombing campaign.

    Well, yeah, the usual suspects on the right will be screaming that this shows that Obama is “weak,” but I really don’t think Obama gives a shit about that. It’s certainly not going to influence his chances of taking this deal if the details can be worked out — he’ll take it and tell McCain and his pals to go fuck themselves.

    The people screeching for bombing NOW NOW NOW were going to criticize Obama no matter what he did, so he may as well do the thing that will avoid bombing.

    ETA: If the chemical weapons are locked away and can’t be used again, then Assad’s punishment can wait for his trial at the Hague. My two cents.

  56. 56.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @aimai:

    Jeebus, a bubble entirely made of a palisade of old men shaking their fists at the clouds. Its a first.

    This

  57. 57.

    Debbie(aussie)

    FUCKING ASSHOLE!
    Apologies for the shouting, but this guy is so disgustingly horrible! We are about to follow the UK in ‘austerity’ on the poor and disadvantaged. I am really concerned for my country. We have no good reason for this, except that the wealthy aren’t fucking wealthy enough and god damn it, its the poors fault.
    (Now to read comments)

  59. 59.

    Ruckus

    @Senyordave:
    Maybe he will come back as a Tyson chicken. Live in a tiny cage, be shit upon by all those above him, have his neck rung, and be cut up and sold for parts.

    Or he could be turned into Solyent Green.

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @Sly:
    Fire is one of the least bigoted forces in the world. Anything that burns is OK. If it needs to be a lot hotter than wood to burn, that is possible. Fire just doesn’t care. So I think this is one substance that is not offended by involving it in the situation.

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