Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

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

The willow is too close to the house.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

This blog will pay for itself.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Everybody saw this coming.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

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

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / RIP / RIP, Mario Cuomo

Reader Interactions

26Comments

  3. 3.

    Anne Laurie

    A man of contradictions who enjoyed Socratic arguments with himself, Mr. Cuomo seemed to disdain politics even as he embraced it. “What an ugly business this is,” he liked to say. Yet he reveled in it, proving himself an uncommonly skilled politician and sometimes a ruthless one.

    Yeah, just the sort of liberal of whom Adam Nagourney (the writer) could approve — one who spoke eloquently, but could never lower himself to the unseemly scrum of fighting the GOP thugs & revanchists.

    I’m sure Mr. Cuomo was a fine man, but this obit is lionizing him for his worst facets.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: Cuomo also turned down Clinton’s offer to nominate him for the Supreme Court. On the other hand, he wasn’t above using some pretty nasty tactics in the campaigns he did run, so IIRC us flaming liberals weren’t too sorry that he didn’t get the chance at that lifetime seat!

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anne Laurie: ah, I was wondering what this meant

    Sam Stein @ samsteinhp · 1h 1 hour ago
    One of Cuomo’s most enduring legacies: a Hamlet act that ended up giving the country Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  12. 12.

    Tim F.

    Kevin Spacey’s agent has to face the fact that if a big budget Cuomo biopic does not happen now, it probably never will.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: At the time, the Nice Polite Media Villagers were very sad that Mario had turned the job down, because that New York City Jewish lady would never get confirmed by the “newly resurgent” GOP — or, if she somehow did, she’d never be able to hold her own against the robust manly conservatives already on the bench!

    (How’d that work out for ya, fellas?)

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Anne Laurie:

    Cuomo also turned down Clinton’s offer to nominate him for the Supreme Court

    If he had accepted the nomination (and been confirmed, of course), how very different the history of 21st-century America would be.

    EDIT: Ah, never mind. I hadn’t remembered, or (in my NyQuil-induced fog) even realized, that it was RBG we got. Probably a much better bargain, and wouldn’t have made a particle of difference in 2000.

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud:

    I can’t imagine him on the Supreme Court. The modern justices are relatively reserved in their personalities.

    Antonin Scalia makes an obscene gesture in your general direction. Mrs. Alito weeps copious salty tears from the balcony, and Mrs. Thomas makes plans to drunk-dial you and demand your Christian repentance.

  17. 17.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @SiubhanDuinne: How would replacing Ginsburg with Cuomo made much of a difference other than that Obama would have had to nominate someone else within the last few years?

  19. 19.

    Hildebrand

    Of course, none of the important lessons seem to have sunk in with his knave of a son. Sorry, the Cuomo family is one of those families with tremendous potential, but no follow-through. Yes, yes, yes — better than the republican alternative, blah, blah, blah. Still doesn’t mean that I have to applaud the family’s tendency to talk a good game and then turn out to be essentially useless, or worse.

  20. 20.

    eemom

    @Anne Laurie: @Anne Laurie:

    On the other hand, he wasn’t above using some pretty nasty tactics in the campaigns he did run

    could never lower himself to the unseemly scrum of fighting the GOP thugs & revanchists.

    Pretty fucking hilarious criticisms coming from Hillary Clinton’s #1 fangirl.

  21. 21.

    PurpleGirl

    Every so often the issue of nuclear waste at the Indian Point plant gets brought up. The used rods are kept on site. They have to be kept on site because NYS does not have a site for waste from all the sources in NYS. We also never signed the North East Waste Compact (not sure about the name) through which we could have sent the waste to collection sites in another member state. Cuomo didn’t want to sign the Compact and he didn’t show any leadership in setting up a useful debate about handling nuclear waste. So we are stuck with nuclear plants and other users of nuclear material who have to keep storing the waste.

  22. 22.

    Mike J

    @PurpleGirl: If you don’t store nuclear waste on site then you have to transport it on roads where we have 4,000 truck accidents per year. And that’s without somebody trying to make it happen.

  23. 23.

    Tree With Water

    I’m surprised the Times obituary made no mention of the mafia scuttlebutt that attended Cuomo throughout his political career. But you’ve got to love a guy able to display this much cool [from the Times obit]:

    “He had a pointed sense of humor. When an engine failed in a puff of smoke on a state-owned Gulfstream G-1 jet one morning with the governor aboard, he barely noticed, and kept talking about national politics until he noticed that a reporter across the way had stopped taking notes and had turned ashen. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Aren’t you in a state of grace?”

    Cuomo’s lucky I wasn’t the reporter. I would have vomited all over him for mocking me in my desperate moment of abject fearing for my very life. I don’t like to fly in the first place, so he would have had it coming.

  26. 26.

    Cervantes

    @Anne Laurie:

    Yet he reveled in it, proving himself an uncommonly skilled politician and sometimes a ruthless one.

    Yeah, just the sort of liberal of whom Adam Nagourney (the writer) could approve — one who spoke eloquently, but could never lower himself to the unseemly scrum of fighting the GOP thugs & revanchists.

    How do you read Nagourney’s “ruthless”?

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