Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

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

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

This fight is for everything.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

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

Battle won, war still ongoing.

The willow is too close to the house.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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90Comments

  4. 4.

    Big R

    This is terrible. The shadow doesn’t even make a Chaplin-stache. If anything, she’s got a Magnum, PI moustache. Gawker falls flat this time.

  7. 7.

    The Dangerman

    Merkel’s Boner? If you aren’t a baseball person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Merkle

    Also, is it wrong I’m taking glee it seeing Bitcoin take a dump? I don’t understand it, don’t understand the fools that would get involved in it, don’t understand the places that are accepting it (on a recent trip to Vegas, lots of places were taking bitcoins in bets), etc.

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @The Dangerman:

    No, you are not wrong in taking glee that Bitcoin is in trouble.

    The originators of the con are long gone, somewhere on a beach telling a short waiter that they’ll have both the cracked crab and the lobster.

  11. 11.

    Roger Moore

    @The Dangerman:

    Also, is it wrong I’m taking glee it seeing Bitcoin take a dump?

    If taking glee in Bitcoin’s failure is wrong, I don’t want to be right. It’s an obvious pyramid scam targeting glibertarian gold bugs that doubles as a convenient way for criminals to launder their money. The only thing that makes me sad about it is that they didn’t manage to fleece a few more suckers along the way.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    Also, is it wrong I’m taking glee it seeing Bitcoin take a dump?

    Glee away.

    It’s hilarious watching a bunch of glibertarians learn first hand why even the incredibly limited banking regulations we have are in place.

  13. 13.

    max

    @Villago Delenda Est: The thing is, Merkel is not the suspected Nazi in the photo.

    It would have been perfect if Bibi had shaved his head beforehand, suiting his real doppelganger – Mussolini.

    Speaking of the white power crowd:

    White supremacist banners and Confederate flags were draped inside Kiev’s occupied City Hall, and demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin. After Yanukovich fled his palatial estate by helicopter, EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II. Sieg heil salutes and the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol have become an increasingly common site in Maidan Square, and neo-Nazi forces have established “autonomous zones” in and around Kiev.

    An Anarchist group called AntiFascist Union Ukraine attempted to join the Euromaidan demonstrations but found it difficult to avoid threats of violence and imprecations from the gangs of neo-Nazis roving the square. “They called the Anarchists things like Jews, blacks, Communists,” one of its members said. “There weren’t even any Communists, that was just an insult.”

    “There are lots of Nationalists here, including Nazis,” the anti-fascist continued. “They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters.”

    max
    [‘Whee!’]

  14. 14.

    Violet

    That’s hilarious. Whatever the top prize is in photojournalism, the person who took this picture should have it locked up. Cannot top that.

  16. 16.

    The Dangerman

    @Roger Moore:

    …is that they didn’t manage to fleece a few more suckers along the way.

    I’m just amazed there are (were?) enough suckers sucked into this obvious pile of suck to keep it going, I mean, the klaxon horns should have been screaming in these peoples brains that this is (was?) a ripoff.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @The Dangerman: Well, it seems to have been purpose-designed to attract libertarian IT workers with spare cash and spare computers sitting around. That’s a fair-sized sucker pool to draw from.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @max:

    Well, SOMEONE has made the connection between “white supremacist banners and Confederate flags”.

    Funny how in this country they’re just symbols of “heritage”.

  21. 21.

    SatanicPanic

    @dmsilev: And you’ll be hard pressed to think of a less sympathetic group when the inevitable whining starts “waaah government must have shut it down because it was too powerful, Audit the FED!”

  23. 23.

    Paul in KY

    @max: They will get Russia in there if they’re not careful.

    These facist idiots are playing with fire, IMO.

  24. 24.

    Keith G

    @The Dangerman:

    …is it wrong I’m taking glee it seeing Bitcoin take a dump?

    Whatever levitates your barge.

    It was a predictable end to speculation based upon speculation based upon systems and technology that as yet are not evolved enough to carry out such an enterprize. That will not always be the case.

  27. 27.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: This is from the bio of the author you’re quoting.

    On his PJM blog, called “Spengler,” American exceptionalism is the continuing theme — not in the sense of self-congratulation, but the view that this “almost-chosen” country is utterly unique in the world:

    “The world will be a miserable and dangerous place without our leadership, strategic as well as economic. Most of the world’s cultures are failing, and if we forget what makes us different, we will suffer the same decline.”

    Strange bedfellow.

  32. 32.

    cckids

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Well, SOMEONE has made the connection between “white supremacist banners and Confederate flags”.

    Yeah, shocking, that. I haven’t been here since yesterday, but I cannot have been the only person to see Jon Stewart last night, with his find of A.Napolitano on Fox blaming Lincoln for starting the Civil War & being so unreasonable & aggressive. After all, slavery was “coming to a natural end”.(??!!!) Also, Lincoln could have & should have just bought all the slaves & freed them.

    The complete fisking by Stewart & Larry Wilmore was absolutely classic.

    I should not be surprised, ever, at the depths to which FauxNews will sink, but the total blow-out of any hint of historical fact was truly stunning. Even for them.

  34. 34.

    NonyNony

    @Keith G:

    It was a predictable end to speculation based upon speculation based upon systems and technology that as yet are not evolved enough to carry out such an enterprize. That will not always be the case.

    What? The problem with Bitcoin is inherent in what they’re trying to do in the first place – they’re trying to create a new currency that floats along purely on the belief that it will always increase in value. That isn’t going to work – if you wanted to create a system that would be used as a form of roulette by speculators to suck as much money out of suckers as possible in a short period of time, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a better one. No amount of technology is going to correct for the basic problem of psychology that is flawed at the premise.

    Precious metal backed currencies worked because the paper was a promise that the government would hand over X amount of precious metal in exchange for the note, so the note was “worth” that amount of metal. That’s how the old bank notes worked, and how early paper currencies issued by governments worked. Government backed currencies work because not because people figure that the value will appreciate – it doesn’t, after all, the dollar you bury in the back yard now has less earning power every year until you dig it up and spend it – but because they believe that other people will take it in exchange for goods and services.

    Distributed currency schemes like Bitcoin do not have these attributes. They are predicated on the belief that the currency has a worth because “the market” says it has a worth. Whether this works in theory or not is unimportant – in actual practice “currencies” that have this attribute are driven upwards through speculation until they inevitably crash. Baseball cards, comic books, tulips, Pets.com stock (hell most internet company stock from the 1990s) – you name it, it crashes. It’s pretty much designed to crash because at some point the speculators inflate the bubble up to unreasonable expectations, the smart speculators realize that this is as good as it’s going to get and cash out, leaving only the chumps who held on too long and the suckers who thought it was a legit investment opportunity.

    Technology isn’t going to change that. Any currency that follows a Bitcoin like model is a scam just waiting for a pump and dump.

  36. 36.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Gin & Tonic:

    and if we forget what makes us different, we will suffer the same decline.

    Yes, a country where 24% of the adults don’t know the Earth orbits the sun and the base of one major political party is made up of people who vote against their own economic self-interest because it’s far better to keep some gay people from getting married than feeding their own kids, think mythology should be taught as science, that women are Trillian hosts to fetal symbionts, and lethal weapons belong in the hands of children. Yeah, that’s different, all right.

  37. 37.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: I responded very late last night. The Spengler article has multiple factual errors, and is built on a premise that “Ukraine” is an artificial, 20th century construct. He says, for instance, that there wasn’t even a dictionary of Ukrainian until 1918. I have one on my bookshelf at home printed in 1907, and the first known one was published in 1823. When your premises are so incorrect, and so easily verifiable (falsifiable, rather) then excuse me for not trusting the direction in which you’ll take those premises.

    The Max Blumenthal article is also riddled with factual errors and allegations presented as if they were facts, more numerous than I have time to go into. Suffice it to say that he replays all the top hits of the Soviet-era anti-Ukrainian propaganda jukebox.

    As I said last night, though, I have a suspicion that our exchanges on this topic have become tiresome to the readership here.

  39. 39.

    Suffern ACE

    @Paul in KY: Yep. And then a whole bunch of countries will be sucked in, or the Ukrainians will need to deal with a smaller Ukraine that doesn’t have the Crimean penninsula. All those in favor of getting involved in a war to fight for Ukrainian territorial integrity, say “Aye.”

  41. 41.

    JoyfulA

    @cckids: Lincoln had proposals for buying slaves. He couldn’t get Delaware Interested, nor any other Union slave state.

    Interesting fact: New Jersey was a slave state during the Civil War because its emancipation process was so drawn-out. The youngest slave was 60.

  42. 42.

    Suffern ACE

    @JoyfulA: The Southern states would have refused to pay any tax to raise funds to buy their slaves. They were not interested in ending slavery. They were interested in expanding it to Cuba. They had blocked the Homestead Act because they did not want government land going to small farmers. I don’t know where this “well, it would just end peacefully anyway.” Sure if we ignore the actions of “Slave Power” in the 1850s, it was like no one was interested in keeping it around, and no one had ideas to end it peacefully before that Lincoln decided to end it by force.

  43. 43.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Gin & Tonic: And Max Blumenthal is not a reliable source. He tweets anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist bullshit all fucking day long. Not that there’s anything wrong with being anti-Zionist per se; that’s more about how you go about it. Just yesterday he was tweeting that Israeli teens were being indoctrinated to hate Poles, etc, and so on.

  44. 44.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Bob In Portland: Wow, a Max Blumenthal article is your ace in the hole. What color is the sky in your world? And I love that image from late December that you are pimping as the latest news out of Ukraine. Does it hurt to be that willfully ignorant, or does it just come naturally?

  46. 46.

    Bob In Portland

    Holocene, Max Blumenthal is anti-Semitic because he is anti-Zionist?

    Gee, maybe you should be on a far-right website. That way you can cheer on the revolution to permanent warfare partisans.

    But thanks for all that information. And good luck on that new Ukraine. Just a reminder. There’s less than a hundred thousand Jews left in Ukraine, so choose your next scapegoat wisely.

  49. 49.

    sm*t cl*de

    The Spengler article has multiple factual errors, and is built on a premise that “Ukraine” is an artificial, 20th century construct. He says, for instance, that there wasn’t even a dictionary of Ukrainian until 1918.

    Here’s Slavic linguist Andrew Hippersley to further put the boot into Spengler’s claim that Ukraine and Belarus are not real nationalities:

    From around the fourteenth to fifteenth century onward, we can start talking of differentiation among three East Slavonic languages, though Ukrainian as a standard literary language was not adopted until the nineteenth century, and Belarusian not until the twentieth century (Schenker 1995: 74).

  50. 50.

    sm*t cl*de

    EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II.

    Max Blumenthal is telling porkies there. When you follow his own link (to the Russia Times), it reports the toppling of a memorial to the Valiant Red Army Liberators, in which the only Ukrainian is a Rescued Baby.

    I have to say, I’m slightly baffled why he would say ‘A’ while linking to his source which says ‘Not-A’. Does he want to get caught out?

  51. 51.

    Bob In Portland

    @sm*t cl*de: I think that snark about Ukraine not being a country was to emphasize how foolish pure-blooded Ukrainians is kind of a joke. In fact, it’s been a doormat for various empires over the centuries.

    More important, the country is bankrupt, doesn’t have much industry, and the IMF have already turned down two smaller loans to Ukraine because they haven’t done the wage and pension cutting thing, as the bankers and plutocrats demand.

    Unless the neos start killing the ethnic Russians there’s not much chance that Putin would move in.

    Nothing sadder than a petty fascist without enough Jews to scapegoat.

  54. 54.

    Bob In Portland

    @Suffern ACE: Putin is actually in a great position now. The fascists won’t get the big money from the US or the EU, any money that comes will be with strings attached to cut wages and pensions, and that’s always good to make the masses happy, eh, and when Russia stops extending them credit they might as well all be living in tents because they won’t have anything to heat their houses.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bob In Portland:

    Your point being that we should tear down monuments to people who fought the Nazis in WWII?

    Stalin fought the Nazis in WWII, so clearly any Ukranians who hate him and the other Soviets who participated in the Holodomor are just fascists.

    It’s kind of funny how Ukranians are supposed to remember all of the crimes that (some of them) committed but completely forgive all of the crimes that the Soviets/Russians committed against them. Why does remembrance only go one way?

  56. 56.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: It is undeniable that the country faces vast economic, demographic and geopolitical problems. It is far from clear how it will turn out. But explain to me how calling everyone there “fascists” or “natsos” helps alleviate any of those problems.

    As to “enough Jews to scapegoat,” I provided you a link above. Call me crazy, but I will take the word of someone who lives there and has a lot to lose over a random blog commenter who doesn’t speak the language, has no access to primary sources and has never set foot in the country. When the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress says “Together with the entire people of Ukraine, the Jewish community will actively participate in the building of a democratic state and promote the renewal and prosperity of the country,” I will take them at their word.

  57. 57.

    LanceThruster

    Franz Liebkind: Hitler… there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in ONE afternoon! TWO coats!

  58. 58.

    sm*t cl*de

    @sm*t cl*de: Your point being that we should tear down monuments to people who fought the Nazis in WWII?

    My point is that Blumenthal is making stuff up.

    And you worry about Max Blumenthal being an anti-Semite?

    You appear to have confused me with the voices in your head.

  59. 59.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: Your point being that we should tear down monuments to people who fought the Nazis in WWII?

    Do you know anything about the activities of the Red Army in Western Ukraine during or after WWII?

  60. 60.

    sm*t cl*de

    I think that snark about Ukraine not being a country

    I do not see the Spengler claim as “snark”: it appears to be a genuine statement of his beliefs, seeing he is offering evidence to support it (non-existence of dictionaries, etc.)… except the evidence is poorly fabricated and falls apart after 30 seconds of exposure to reality.

  64. 64.

    Bob In Portland

    @Gin & Tonic: If you speak the language I’ll guess you are probably a child or grandchild of an Operation Paperclip immigrant or so forth.

    And your Cold War position is understandable. As the song goes, you’ve had it drummed into your dear little head all these years.

    So why are they flying the Confederate flag at Kiev’s city hall? You know, next to the swastikas?

  66. 66.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: According to documentation unearthed since the fall of the USSR, between 1944 and 1952, in Western Ukraine the Red Army arrested and imprisoned 134,000 people, killed 153,000 people and permanently deported (to Kazakhstan, mostly) over 200,000 people. So their children and grandchildren are expected *not* to take down a statue to the Red Army soldier?

  68. 68.

    sm*t cl*de

    @sm*t cl*de: No, it’s the pro-fascist voices on this thread I’m confusing.

    Are you having a bad day or something? My activities in this thread consist of (a) documenting ways in which Pajama Media contributor ‘Spengler’ is talking out his arse, and (b) documenting ways in which Max Blumenthal is talking out his arse. Feel free to explain how my morbid interest in fact-based claims makes me a pro-fascist voice.

    In connection with (b), Max reports that

    An Anarchist group called AntiFascist Union Ukraine attempted to join the Euromaidan demonstrations but found it difficult to avoid threats of violence and imprecations from the gangs of neo-Nazis roving the square.

    “AntiFascist Union Ukraine” does not appear to have any (English-language) existence outside of the three anonymous individuals who talked to Timothy Eastwood.

  69. 69.

    sm*t cl*de

    Does your Ukraine have Stephan Bandera as a hero?

    I’m familiar with a Ukraine with a sizeable industrial base (31.4% of its economy), competitive in the world economy.
    Your Ukraine “doesn’t have much industry”.

    I do not have any personal stake in that part of the world so I do not have to decide which of these two countries I’d prefer to inhabit.

  70. 70.

    Cervantes

    @sm*t cl*de:

    “AntiFascist Union Ukraine” does not appear to have any (English-language) existence outside of the three anonymous individuals who talked to Timothy Eastwood.

    There may be some confusion. See here.

  72. 72.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Cervantes:
    Ah, an “AntiFascist Action Ukraine”? And I see that there is a Mira reporting there, as well as a Mira among the members of “AntiFascist Union Ukraine” who talked to Eastman. Thanks for clearing that up.

    Update: I was eager to find other evidence for Eastman’s sources before putting too much credence in them. Mystery solved.

  74. 74.

    Gin & Tonic

    @sm*t cl*de: Actually, Eastman does refer to AntiFascist Action, and Action is the correct translation of “Действие.” Not a very active group, as their most current postings are over a year old.

  76. 76.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Cervantes: I think the point there is that Blumenthal uncritically reports that Euromaidan protesters tore down a statue commemorating Ukrainians who fought the Nazis. The RT link, though, correctly mentions that it was a statue of a “Soviet Soldier.” Either Blumenthal is intentionally eliding the facts here, or he is simply unaware that in Stryj (in fact anywhere in Halychyna/Galicia) there would not have been any ethnic Ukrainians in Red Army units. The Soviet soldier in the statue was certainly Russian.

  77. 77.

    sm*t cl*de

    I also had issues with Blumenthal writing that “demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin”. When you follow the link to the photo he’s circulating, the symbols are not so much “hoisted” in the manner of flags, as “graffiti on a pedestal”. Proving that there are neo-nazis in Ukraine, and that they have access to spraypaint, but I’ll wait to see more evidence that they’re the same as the demonstrators who toppled the statue.

  78. 78.

    Bob In Portland

    Hmm. No explanation about the Stars and Bars flying in Kiev’s city hall. Spray-painting Nazi graffiti is cool, but it’s not like draping a Nazi flag over the fallen statue. But there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine. That’s a positive step. There are old Nazis there too.

    And since Ukraine has such a healthy strong vital industrialized economy, why are they asking for the EU to bail them out? Oh, I guess you can justify that.

    You guys who want to continue fighting WWII on the side of the Nazis, go right ahead. March for Bandera. You could go over there and join in the fight, and send us back pictures of your heroic struggles.

  80. 80.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Bob In Portland:
    And since Ukraine has such a healthy strong vital industrialized economy, why are they asking for the EU to bail them out? Oh, I guess you can justify that.

    If I had said that, or anything like that, then I might possibly be inclined to justify it. Were you traumatised by a straw-man as a child or something?

  84. 84.

    Bob In Portland

    I see that the Ukrainian parliament has revoked Russian as one of its official languages. And there’s a Confederate flag hanging in city hall in Kiev alongside Nazi insignia. What does this mean?

  88. 88.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: Yes, the law from September of 2012 allowing for official regional languages (not just Russian) has been revoked, and the country has returned to the status quo that prevailed for the previous 20 years.

    And yes, in December, while City Hall was occupied by protesters, some yahoo hung up a Confederate flag. Other flags were hung up as well. That action meant about as much as the people waving Chinese flags, or Che Guevara flags, or upside-down American flags at OWS protests.

    I’m struggling to understand your motivation here, Bob. You opine vehemently and at length about Ukraine, invariably critically, yet you do not know any Slavic languages and do not have any contacts in country, so you have no access to primary sources; you quote from secondary sources which are repeatedly pointed out to you (and not just by me) to contain basic factual errors or lies; you don’t know a lot of the history; you don’t know the current political parties very well and make claims which are untrue; you discount or ignore local authoritative opinions. It makes no sense. I know as little about Venezuela as you do about Ukraine, so I express no opinion about the upheaval there.

  89. 89.

    Bob In Portland

    @Gin & Tonic: Gin & Tonic, what are your motivations? I am an anti-fascist. Considering that lots of people don’t even know what fascism is, it’s probably very confusing to them. Maybe you.

    You have been coy regarding your allegiances in Ukraine. Feel free to explicate. Since Ukrainian isn’t generally an elective language in American schools can we presume that you have some Ukrainian heritage, and that your family came over here at the end of WWII after the fascists lost?

    I believe you’re incorrect about Ukrainian being the only official language for the last twenty years. Yuschenko tried to remove Russian as an official language and had to back off. But how do you think ethnic Russians feel about that? Sort of like how Republicans want to make English the official language of the US, no?

    There are other demands from the rebels. Banning abortion. You okay with that? Bringing back nuclear power, in the land of Chernobyl. Restrict all civil service jobs to ethnic Ukrainians. How do you think the ethnic Russians in the east and south feel about that?

    There was a coup in Ukraine, not a legal, lawful election. That’s not a good thing, whether or not the current/former president was a crook. I also find those who glorify xenophobia a little scary.

    But we shall see, won’t we?

    Oh, and the yahoo who hung the Confederate flag? What about the yahoos who hung the Nazi insignia up? How about those wolf’s hook armbands? Is there nothing to be drawn from that? I think that there is. It’s the nature of the beast.

    At the end of WWII the US employed Gehlen’s Org, the Nazis’ spy organization, to help undermine the Soviets in eastern Europe. The US has continued to have long-standing relations with the Nazi residua of eastern Europe, cultivating fascism just like the Nazis would do, for Cold War gains. Part of the CIA’s grand plan was to bring some of these fascists into the US and provide them with leadership positions in ethnic communities. It was the grand strategy of the Republicans’ ethnic heritage group, which was crammed with neo-Nazis from all over the globe. That may be where your folks came from. You can read all about it in Christopher Simpson’s BLOWBACK. From the Congress For Freedom (for which Ronald Reagan was spokesperson) to Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation, the US has continued to destabilize these countries, arm in arm with the old Nazis.

    The ethnic Russian population is not recognizing the coup. One can imagine the country partitioned between east and west. The question is whether or not it will happen peacefully, or if the street Nazis start a war which Ukraine will surely lose. If Ukrainians are satisfied with their half of the country and don’t start the massacres again, then maybe peace will exist. But fascists aren’t real good at being peaceful.

    At best the rebels are the equivalent of our Republicans. At worst, they are the White Aryan Nation. I would guess that they are a mix. The problem with fascism is that it works on two levels, the corporatist level, which most Americans are familiar with, and the street nazis who believe in things like ethnic purity, the Jewish worldwide conspiracy, that there is such a thing as subhuman mongrels.

    So may the rebels prove my fears wrong. We shall soon find out.

  90. 90.

    Cervantes

    @Bob In Portland:

    Nice horse you rode in on, Cervantes. If you step into the middle of a fight, though, it’s inappropriate to be tsk tsking rules of decorum. Nice horse, though.

    Regarding how one should behave: what’s quoted above is all your opinion — and as you know, I’ve already stated mine.

    Regarding what’s happening in Ukraine: I do appreciate the content of the discussion above. Thanks to all, certainly including you.

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