Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Let there be snark.

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

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

I was promised a recession.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I really should read my own blog.

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

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Invective of the Week

Open Thread: Invective of the Week

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Mr. Charles P. Pierce on the “Hacko di Tutti Hacki“:

… For going on three decades now, there has not been a hackier hack on this little blue marble than Mark Halperin. He is the worst thing to happen to political journalism since the mob in Alton iced Elijah Lovejoy. He is walking journalistic potato blight. He is a living, breathing, suppurating punditizing boil on the asscheeks of a once-proud profession. Doc Alterman has the 411 on the history of this towering ‘ho, and the remarkable Driftglass, friend to young bloggers and owner of the prettiest website (Bring back the meteor, dammit!) on the Intertoobz, catches Halperin in his latest act of abject ‘ho-dom, servicing (of all people) Glenn Beck.

This is something, this appearing with a public lunatic, that should send you off to Hannity Island for the rest of your sorry-ass career…

There is a tale that the Celtic bards of old could rid a homestead of vermin through the proper application of sulphuric wordsmithing. Tragically for our modern realm, Mark Halperin is sufficiently resistant that nothing short of a non-metaphorical nuclear strike would be liable to deter him.

And while we’re on the subject of arrogant offenses against the public weal, apparently Willard Romney has not quite given up on that whole running-for-office idea, because he’s hauling his poor wife around the lady-chat tv shows, and her fashion sense remains… distinctive. I’m convinced there’s some kind of secret rich-Mormon dress code signalling going on here: “Of course, I am too modest in my womanly virtue to wear anything that isn’t ugly & unflattering — but at the same time, everybody in Our Club understands how expensive it is for me to look this awful.”

Apart from snark, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  1. 1.

    Yatsuno

    apparently Willard Romney has not quite given up on that whole running-for-office idea, because he’s hauling his poor wife around the lady-chat tv shows

    Could also be laying visibility groundwork for one of the spawn. Willard will accept nothing less than fulfilling prophecy by any means necessary, plus he has to surpass his beloved Daddy.

  2. 2.

    jharp

    Anyone know what Dennis Kucinich is up to these days?

    Was always a huge fan. I lived in the Cleveland area during his mayoral days of the late 70’s.

  3. 3.

    beltane

    Leave Ann Romney alone. She’s a “best-selling author” now, just like Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter. Who are we to mock the fashion sense of such a serious intellectual.

  5. 5.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    In a real meritocracy, Halperin would be the name of the largest picked booger on record.

  6. 6.

    Aji

    You know, I’ve had a really crappy week. And you have to end it by inflicting both Ann Romney and Mort’s Hellspawn on me? Either would have been much more than enough, thankyouverymuch. I really didn’t need both.

    Where’s the damn foodie thread?

  8. 8.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Spamming this: Wisconsin’s Dems have a good candidate for next year’s Attorney General election, Jon Richards, He is currently an Assembly member from Milwaukee and all around good guy. Bat signal for gogol’s wife; he is one of us.

  9. 9.

    The Dangerman

    … her fashion sense remains … distinctive.

    Not many women can rock a print that looks like a blood spattered used diaper that was used to clean a greasy engine.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @beltane:

    Who are we to mock the fashion sense of such a serious intellectual.

    We are us. I am sure it is too French and/or cosmopolitan to be intellectual ( Ann Romney, ha!) and try to look good.

  14. 14.

    Culture of Truth

    Here is what you need to know about Halperin, and this is important — he is the great white shark of media.

    No, really — and as far as I know I am the first to make this observation, a few years ago — he is soulless, he has soulles eyes, “a doll’s eyes”…. Watch him next time he’s on TV, and think… “doll’s eyes”…. and tell me I’m wrong….

  16. 16.

    Anne Laurie

    @Aji: Wish granted, up above!

    I like to give you all a placeholder, while I set up TaMara’s post, so people who want to talk about non-food topics have a convenient outlet.

  20. 20.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @Anne Laurie:

    I like to give you all a placeholder, while I set up TaMara’s post, so people who want to talk about non-food topics have a convenient outlet.

    Thank you for your servant leadership.

  22. 22.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MikeJ: Sad. Jon really is a good guy. He also is a very progressive/liberal legislator. Our current AG is of a piece with Scott Walker. Jon would be an amazing improvement in that office.

  23. 23.

    Ruckus

    For the weekend.
    Trying to figure out if a bad acid trip is preferable to our public discourse. Or if our public discourse is a bad acid trip.

  24. 24.

    MikeJ

    @Omnes Omnibus: I thought you badger people would like that. It’s a pretty peppy tune. He should use it in his commercials. Or perhaps actually change his name to Jon Wisconsin.

    Did you know Trader Joe’s has a not great, but drinkable, single malt at a reasonable price?

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MikeJ:

    Did you know Trader Joe’s has a not great, but drinkable, single malt at a reasonable price?

    I do now. I’ll give it a look.

  28. 28.

    beltane

    @The Dangerman:

    Not many women can rock a print that looks like a blood spattered used diaper that was used to clean a greasy engine

    That is true. It is also true that whoever those women are, Ann Romney is not one of them.

  32. 32.

    Mike in NC

    While at a mall today I walked into the always creepy Books-A-Million store where they dutifully had racks of the new Sarah Palin book on Christmas next to the checkout line, plus Limbaugh’s latest crock of bullshit, 4 or 5 of the turds pumped out by Bill O’Reilly Inc., and some military tripe by Ollie North. Didn’t see the one by Chuck Krauthammer that was in the pile at Costco. Guessing the theme there is “Obama bad, Israel good”.

  33. 33.

    MikeJ

    @Omnes Omnibus: They also have a blended scotch at a price so low it scared me away for months. I finally did try it and I can honestly say it tastes much better than you expect $9.99 scotch to taste. It is not entirely unpleasant and it contains ethanol.

  35. 35.

    Scott Alloway

    @MikeJ: Son, switch to a Beam Company bourbon, like Old Crow. Don’t burn out your liver until you’re older. I started on Scotch in 1968 and moved to Wild Turkey in 1971, Then added wines like medoc and Beaujolais before finding good CA chardonnays from Russian River vintners in the 90s. But George Dickel Sour Mash is still number 1 with me.

  38. 38.

    Davis X. Machina

    @efgoldman:The number of all-booze (beer, wine, hard liquor) licenses per town, in distinction to just beer/wine licenses, is frozen, and strictly limited. The package store lobby on Beacon Hill is fierce. Johnnie-come-latelies like Trader Joe’s are behind the eight-ball as a result.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud:

    The legislature seems to have gone insane.

    It has. The Dems are quite good, but they don’t have numbers. The Repubs are trying to get every insane thing they can in next few months. If the Dems can take back the Assembly, the Senate, or the Governor’s office next year – just one of them, the bleeding stops. If we could get them all, we can start rebuilding what Walker and company smashed.

    @efgoldman: Exactly right. They want to do as much damage as fast as they can.

  45. 45.

    mclaren

    Mitt Romney and his wife look like androids created by evil tentacular aliens to probe the population of the earth for weakness before they invade.

    I swear, after Romney vacates his La Jolla house, investigators will find cages hidden in the basement with the bones of young women. And the bones will have human teeth-marks on ’em.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: Walker is slightly ahead 49%-47% against the only declared (so far) Dem candidate. Mary Burke is relatively unknown in the state, has just declared, and is neck and neck. She is a former Trek bicycle exec which is interesting since it should dull any anti-business attacks. As far as the senate and assembly go, I just don’t know. That link suggests that more Dems than Repubs indicate that they will definitely be voting – a good sign.

  48. 48.

    Mr. Longform

    Charlie Pierce: one of the greatest bloggers. His website at Esquire: one of the worst. The goddamn, intrusive, slow-downing ads, the annoying-as-all-get-out Esquire-ish tone of everything in the margins – effete rich-guy wussy products. Isn’t there some more working-class type Boston-based organization that can save this man from such an embarrassing association? It’s bad enough the poor guy has an NPR gig – Esquire is a bridge too far.

  49. 49.

    beltane

    @efgoldman: New York was even worse. No wine sold in grocery shops, only in liquor stores, and liquor stores were not allowed to be open on Sunday. Supermarkets sold beer but never before noon on Sundays.

  51. 51.

    StringOnAStick

    OK, normally I won’t do fashion critique because (1) boring, (2) not exactly cutting edge myself, but dayam that Ann rMoney outfit is shiny polyester Walmart crap bad. Wow.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    In Soviet Massachusetts, no can has booze in the grocery store.

    WTF is wrong with you people? Out her in Californistan, we can buy just about any kind of booze in the supermarket. Our worst stupidity- and it’s a pretty mild one- is that you can’t buy anything over 151 proof. I’m pretty sure that if the Feds wouldn’t cut off our highway funds, we’d lower the drinking age back to 18.

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Roger Moore:

    I’m pretty sure that if the Feds wouldn’t cut off our highway funds, we’d lower the drinking age back to 18.

    That is the only reason Wisconsin raised it. I don’t think it does a bit of good.

  60. 60.

    beltane

    @schrodinger’s cat: Some things will never change. I’ve always been led to believe the situation in NY was due to the combined efforts of the liquor store lobby (with a big assist from the mob) and the RC church (another kind of mob) wanting people to be sober enough to attend Sunday mass.

  61. 61.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @schrodinger’s cat: I’m going to intentionally completely miss the point of your comment and say that, whether Tendulkar should have retired from test cricket a couple of years ago, the Indian side would likely would have been better off had they stopped selecting him. Since the beginning of 2012 he’s averaged under 27 runs per innings in 24 matches. Given that the only thing he’s there for is to bat (he’s bowled 22.5 overs for one wicket and 39 runs in that span and caught five balls) that’s not good.

    Defintely one of the top five batsmen of all time, though.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I’ve never understood how some states can have unreasonably restrictive rules on who can sell alcohol but still allow fucking drive through liquor stores. New Hampshire even has state run liquor stores at highway rest stops!

  64. 64.

    ericblair

    @Roger Moore:

    WTF is wrong with you people? Out her in Californistan, we can buy just about any kind of booze in the supermarket.

    Out here in Lower Eastern NotRealAmerica (metro DC) it’s a mixed bag. Wine and beer in the TJs and Virginia Costcos, but apparently liquor laws are on a county-by-county basis or some shit in Maryland which Costco doesn’t want to deal with so no booze at all in MD Costcos. You’d have to run up to Delaware to get Kirkland firewater, and I dunno about the TJ situation there. Of course PA is completely fucked up.

    On the bright side, the Virginia package stores are having a Black Friday Sale. Guess it’s Blackout Friday.

  66. 66.

    Mike in NC

    @efgoldman: I recall how my dad (1970s) had a favorite liquor store in Milton or Brockton where he’d buy the most undrinkable rotgut booze you could ever imagine.

  67. 67.

    ericblair

    @efgoldman:

    IANAL and i don’t play one on teevee, but after prohibition was repealed, there was a SCOTUS decision (maybe more than one) that effectively gave states and localities complete control as to whether, and under what circumstances, alcohol could be sold.

    I was just watching the Ken Burns documentary on Prohibition and was under the impression that it’s just the fact that the federal amendment and the Volstead Act were repealed, so there was no federal authority remaining in the matter. Interesting documentary: basically, Prohibition was the big triumph of the small-town hicks over the cities and the immigrants, and the anti-German feeling after WWI pushed it over the top. It got repealed mostly because it was the Depression and legal booze=legal jobs=lots of taxes back to the governments.

  68. 68.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman: Big factor in the Keep Belmont Dry movement, according to local scuttlebutt, is all the rich Mormons who support that godsawful ugly HoJo LDS temple that blinds drivers coming down Route2. Prominent among them being, surprise!, “Mitt” Romney his own self…

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @efgoldman:
    I don’t think it’s so much a SCOTUS decision as the text of the 21st Amendment. Section 2 clearly gives states the right to control liquor within their boundaries, and states naturally have the power to delegate their own authority to their subunits like counties and cities. I just think that state controlled drive through liquor stores show an incoherent attitude toward the danger of alcohol. Given the dangers of drunk driving, I see drive through liquor stores as a crazy idea, but I can see how somebody who is less worried might give them a pass. I see state controlled liquor stores as overly restrictive, but I can see how somebody who is more worried might see them as a good idea. I just don’t see how somebody can be simultaneously enough less worried that they’re OK with drive through liquor stores and enough more worried that they want to restrict sales to state owned stores.

  70. 70.

    Stella B

    @Culture of Truth: he does have weird eyes. I used to babysit for him when he was a sprat. His mom had the same eyes. I also babysat for the children of a freshman congressman — a fellow named Henry Waxman. Those are my two celebrity stories. The Waxmans were very nice, but actually the Halperins were okay too.

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    Can purchase booze, wine, beer most anywhere here, but no sales allowed between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

    Go figure.

    Supermarkets open 24 hours construct a wall of shopping carts to block access to the forbidden aisles.

    @efgoldman

    before the Mormons, we had the world headquarters of the John Birch Society (long gone) too.

    Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

  73. 73.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    In Washington, after three or four tries, we finally voted the State out of the liquor business a couple of years ago. Now you can buy liquor at grocery stores, drug stores, etc.

    Competition™ was supposed to lower prices. Well, prices have doubled, plus a 20.5% sales tax and a $4.83 (something like .83) per liter surcharge. And remember that half-as-much at the old State liquor stores had no tax on top of it (Well, to be fair it was all tax).

    Another triumph of the Free Market™, pbui!

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    @schrodinger’s cat: Not sure where you’re getting your information about Soviet Massachusetts.

    At the Trader Joe’s in Brookline, for example, one can purchase beer, wine, and spirits any time the store is open, except for Sundays before noon; during certain holidays; and during polling hours on Election Day. The same goes for the Trader Joe’s in Cambridge (well, one of them; I hardly use the other), except that they do not sell spirits.

  75. 75.

    Cervantes

    @efgoldman: Re alcohol sales in Soviet Massachusetts: never on Sunday.

    Not true. See above for what’s available at Trader Joe’s, for example.

    (It’s just an example I picked because people were talking about scotch available at Trader Joe’s.)

  76. 76.

    Cervantes

    @Mr. Longform: Charlie Pierce: one of the greatest bloggers. His website at Esquire: one of the worst. The goddamn, intrusive, slow-downing ads, the annoying-as-all-get-out Esquire-ish tone of everything in the margins.

    Isn’t it also true that commenting there requires a Facebook account? Execrable.

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