Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Let me file that under fuck it.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

T R E 4 5 O N

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

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

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

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

Come on, man.

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Black Jimmy Carter / Open Thread: Thanks, Obama!

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93Comments

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    but we’re all just gonna shrug and pretend that Scott Walker “punting” on evolution isn’t an embarrassment to this entire fucking country.

    and by we I mean they.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    That guy, can’t help being the coolest guy in the room, can he? Really glad he hasn’t embraced lame-duckhood and rolled over for our new, “improved” congress.

    Speaking of lame ducks, DiFi can’t retire soon enough to suit me. Goddamn….

    0Senator Feinstein, Congressman and Majority Leader KevinMcCarthy, along with five other California members of Congress have written a letter to State Water Board Chari Felicia Marcus asking for a reconsideration of the recent decision by the Executive Director of the State Water Board denying some elements of the Temporary Urgency Change Petition that were designed to provide additional near-term flexibility for Delta operations by the state and federal water projects.

    The letter states that the decision is ‘difficult to understand’ especially in light of the concurrence of the proposed changes by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife – the agencies that have responsibility for ensuring application of endangered species act protections. As a result, since the order went into effect, as much as 10,000 acre-feet of water has been lost, and more could be lost after storm flows have subsided, they say.

    “We appreciate the difficult task that has been placed in front of the Board, but we are running out of time and water because we don’t know how many more storms will hit California this year,” they write. “When five agencies – including three tasked with protecting fish – have already assessed and concurred that the export adjustment would not cause harms beyond those allowed under the most stringent statutes and biological opinions, we believe the Executive Director should not have rejected the agencies’ shared assessment and denied the export adjustment in the TUCP without a compelling rationale for taking such an extraordinary action.”

  5. 5.

    Belafon

    I like the fact that the WP link is acknowledging that people will be ranking those on how they ruin the presidency, and they’re just getting ahead of it.

  7. 7.

    jl

    Thanks, Obama!

    Great vid.

    More old out-of-it white farts huff and puff the better. More people will watch.

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    and I don’t know what twitter-versey is going on about Jon Stewart, but this has lot of application beyond “twitter liberals” and the public option

    Jamelle Bouie
    ‏@ jbouie
    If Twitter liberals cared as much about winning elections as they did about defending Jon Stewart we’d probably have a public option.

  9. 9.

    mai naem mobile

    Gawd, I sound like such an Obot, but, jeezus,,I’m going to miss this guy when he’s not in the WH anymore. He’s never made me cringe like Dubbya did often and Clinton did occasionally.

  11. 11.

    jl

    @mai naem mobile: If HRC wins, maybe keep Biden on as veep. Or, this would be wild, pick Warren for veep. There would still be somebody to do the ‘cool’.

    Or maybe HRC would get better with practice. Or Obama could give her some lessons when he briefs her. I am the ever hopeful fool.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @jl:
    Hillary can decorate the WH in full Sopranos. All statues replaced with Lladro. Onion rings at every State dinner. Dowd and Althouse will share a gigantic stroke.

  13. 13.

    lamh36

    The enite buzzfeed video is awesome sauce.

    the “Thanks Obama” bit had me with coughing fits (I’ve got a wee cold)

    and the “Can’t I Live” and ‘Yolo” bits at the end were also funny.

    I also laugh that people see the “Thanks Obama” bit and think he’s not afraid to make fun of himself, naw…he’s making fun of them and some don’t even realize it.

  17. 17.

    jl

    And how is this worse than, say, Silent Cal posing with his trademark stone face in a Native American head dress, or cowboy hat, or other costumes he would use for same schtick? Or pics of FDR horsing around with the patients at Warm Springs?

    Edit: Jeez, I forgot about Truman. What was his wife’s famous quote when press bugged her about his vulgar language? Something like ‘Do you know how long it took for me to get him to say ‘manure’ instead of the other words?”

  20. 20.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jl: my greatest Disappointment with Obama is that he didn’t get rid of the fucking turkey pardon like Howard Rodham Kucinich would have done.

    @trollhattan: eh? I don’t even know what the current Stu-beef is, I (and I think Bouie) was referring to the tendency of certain kind of internet liberal to get emotionally invested in individual personalities over issues and political progress

  22. 22.

    schrodinger's cat

    OT: I read this on Huffpo so take it with a grain of salt. Guess who is going to be the leading economic policy guy for the Clinton campaign? None but Summers, himself. Seems Greenspan and Rubin were unavailable.

  23. 23.

    boatboy_srq

    The dairy and snack-food industry will no doubt take a major hit, now that the Teahad knows mink and cookies are off the menu because Obummer.

    /snark

  24. 24.

    Buddy H

    Can someone provide a list of republican operatives disguised as news journalists? Last night I watch Jonathan Karl very subtly suggest that it was Obama’s fault the American hostage had been killed, because he refused to pay ransom. Every time I hear Mara Liasson on NPR, she’s also very subtly casting the president in a negative light. I’d love to see a list.

  26. 26.

    Buddy H

    @jl: When Silent Cal died, it was reported that Dorothy Parker asked “how can they tell?” Which got a big laugh, but what wasn’t reported (because it wasn’t printable at the time) was Robert Benchley’s reply: “He had an erection.”

  32. 32.

    geg6

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yup. Total truth there. If there’s anything I hate, it’s the Twitterati. All about tweeting and sharing posts, but gawd forbid that they actually have to DO something like organize or canvas or, hell, vote.

  33. 33.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    ” but we’re all just gonna shrug and pretend that Scott Walker “punting” on evolution isn’t an embarrassment to this entire fucking country.”

    Walker has a lot of company.

    I hope Walker gets a lot of ‘help’ from Rush.
    Headline at TPM blog:
    Limbaugh: Scott Walker Should Say He Quit College Because He ‘Didn’t Want To Be Accused Of Rape’

    I have no idea what that is about, but the story is ‘out there’ now by Village standards. It is now officially irresponsible not to speculate!

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    Or maybe HRC would get better with practice.

    I don’t actually think she needs practice to be better. If anything, her problem is that she’s in the untenable position that many women are in of having whatever they do interpreted negatively. If she acts naturally and lets her emotions show, she’ll be accused of being a flighty, emotional woman. Instead, she’s chosen to present herself as cool and hyper-competent, which instead gets her accused of being a cold, humorless bitch. My gut feeling is that she could come across almost as well as Obama does just by getting out of politician mode and acting like herself for a change.

  37. 37.

    Couldn't Stand the Weather

    @jl:

    I forgot about Truman. What was his wife’s famous quote when press bugged her about his vulgar language? Something like ‘Do you know how long it took for me to get him to say ‘manure’ instead of the other words?”

    I really like Harry. Never met him, wish I had.
    Same with the current prez.

  40. 40.

    jl

    @gogol’s wife: One thing to look forward to, if we have an HRC administration, is 8 (if she gets four she gets 8) more years of Village doofus freakout over another one of ‘those people’ in the White House.

    It’ll do wonders for the GOP outreach effort, too.

  41. 41.

    gogol's wife

    Looking for my husband’s favorite Truman quote, haven’t found it, but I found these:

    “I fired MacArthur because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was.”
    ― Harry S. Truman

    “Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in. ”
    ― Harry S. Truman

    “A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.”
    ― Harry S. Truman

    “I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.”
    ― Harry S. Truman

    My husband’s favorite is something like, “I may not have gone to Harvard Law School, but I know how to tell the difference between horse s–t and chocolate ice cream.”

  42. 42.

    jl

    With HRC as prez, will she ever give a speech so good that Matthews can ‘forget’ she is a woman? I doubt it.
    Matthews’ imagination has some limits, hard as that is too imagine for us ordinary folk.

  44. 44.

    Iowa Old Lady

    It’ll be interesting to see the moment when the right wing dog whistles change from race slurs to gender slurs.

    ETA: And by “interesting” I mean recognizing the moment to call my doc for blood pressure medications.

  45. 45.

    Couldn't Stand the Weather

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    It’ll be interesting to see the moment when the right wing dog whistles change from race slurs to gender slurs.

    They did plenty of that in 2008. It got to be a bit cloying, after a while.

  46. 46.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Iowa Old Lady: Remember McConnell’s “Golden Girls” joke? the funniest/most interesting thing about it was McConnell’s smile. He was so proud of himself, thought he was being so clever. They can’t help themselves, and it will backfire.

  47. 47.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Couldn’t Stand the Weather: Wasn’t it? This time, they seem a little slow on the uptake. It’s like they can’t stop taking shots at Obama. Look at how they can’t let go of their resentment of Holder, even when it means they won’t confirm his successor so he’s still there. Tell me what sense that makes.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @jl:

    They had an interesting piece on “This American Life” where they talked about how there’s an age gap over whether or not people find women’s voices to be as authoritative (as in knowledgable) as men’s voices. The age gap was right around age 40: people under 40 mostly thought women’s voices were just as authoritative as men’s, and people over 40 mostly thought men sounded more authoritative. It was very interesting.

  57. 57.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Was this that thing about “vocal fry”? I had to look that up to see what it meant. Apparently, it’s a sort of gravelly rumble in a voice. The piece I heard on it said young people use it, but it was perceived as less authoritative only on young women.

  63. 63.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Who is working harder to diminish a National institution? President Obama, or the Washington Post, by posting stupid, killjoy trivial crap about fun things the President does to promote his agenda?

  64. 64.

    shortstop

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed. They can no more stop repeating banal and hoary sexist tropes — with the self-satisfied smirks you describe, which compounds the offense — than they can stop telling women who’ve been raped that a) they weren’t really and b) if they were, get over it. It is who they are.

  65. 65.

    shortstop

    @opiejeanne: he also washed his own skivvies in the White House, because his mother had told him that nobody was important enough that someone else should have to wash their underwear.

  67. 67.

    Citizen_X

    That movie “Hot Tub Time Machine II” looks even dumber than the first one, but the trailer has one good joke: “We were supposed to have flying cars by now. Thanks a lot, Obama!”

  68. 68.

    piratedan

    @Buddy H: I would suggest that there are only three that appear to evaluate him honestly… Pierce, Maddow and Olbermann (although he’s now more or less retired from political punditry)… everyone else appears to have an agenda of some sort, either pandering to the purity pony brigade or are water carriers to some degree for their own corporate masters of varying syndicates….

  72. 72.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @jl:

    If HRC wins, maybe keep Biden on as veep. Or, this would be wild, pick Warren for veep. There would still be somebody to do the ‘cool’.

    I know this was a throwaway line for humorous effect, but I really do wish people would stop talking up Warren as a prez/veep candidate. She’s already said “what part of ‘NO’ don’t you idiots understand” more than once, and she’s far better positioned to work her pet issues in the Senate than in the WH.

    The WH matters, but Congress matters more. We need every good Congressweasel we can get.

  75. 75.

    kc

    @geg6:

    Yup. Total truth there. If there’s anything I hate, it’s the Twitterati

    Jamelle Bouie IS the “Twitterati.”

    Slate thrives on this horseshit.

  77. 77.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @kc: no, people shrieking “KILL THE BILL” or sniveling about “if Obama really wanted it…” are purity trolls

  78. 78.

    jl

    @Grumpy Code Monkey: You are grumpy. Bugging Warren to run for president is silly. But if HRC, or anybody else, is nominated for presidential candidate, and thinks Warren would make a good running mate, and can make a good case, I’m not going to argue with it.

  79. 79.

    lol

    @kc:

    The context was that Bouie wrote a post saying that while he generally enjoyed Jon Stewart, he didn’t think Stewart’s cynicism was that good for liberalism. People freaked out at the idea.

  80. 80.

    Southern Beale

    Thanks, all. Quinnie will be missed. He was a very handsome cat. Maine Coons are the absolute best, IMHO. Then again, so are big orange tabbies. And tuxedo kitties. And snowshoe kitties … aw hell, they’re all precious.

  81. 81.

    TF79

    All I can think of is the Dowager Countess’ shock and horror that the King was addressing the people on the talky-box thingy on Downton.

  85. 85.

    AnonPhenom

    @jl:

    But if HRC, or anybody else, is nominated for presidential candidate, and thinks Warren would make a good running mate…

    Hush child, don’t you know that Notorious R.B.G. is just keepin’ a seat warm for ‘Lizbeth on the SCOTUS? Lifetime, and all that …

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Bob In Portland:

    Yes, the article clearly supports your claims that Nazis totally overthrew the government with information like this:

    “I’m certain that the shootings of the 20th were carried out by snipers who arrived from Russia and who were controlled by Russia,” says Andriy Parubiy, the former Commandant of the Maidan.

    “The shooters were aiming to orchestrate a bloodbath on Maidan.”

    This is a widely-held belief in Ukraine. In Russia, many believe the opposite – that the revolt on Maidan was a Western conspiracy, a CIA-inspired coup designed to pull Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit. Neither side offers convincing evidence for its assertion.

    Did you even bother to read the article before you posted it?

  89. 89.

    Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey

    @jl: Warren as veep would be a criminal waste of talent. HRC shouldn’t ask her and she shouldn’t accept. She will do far more good for far more people in the Senate.

  93. 93.

    Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey

    As for all the idiots freaking out over the video – does nobody remember Richard Nixon saying “sock it to me?” on Laugh-In?

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