Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

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

Let there be snark.

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

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

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

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A consequence of cucumbers

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

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Venality / Today in America’s Vibrant Confederacy

Today in America’s Vibrant Confederacy

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Mitch McConnell is an unreconstructed Confederate shitbird:

Lynch has public support from five Senate Republicans: Orrin Hatch of Utah, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois. With support from all Senate Democrats, that would give Lynch 51 votes, enough to be confirmed.

But her nomination is tangled up in an unrelated Senate fight over a human-trafficking bill, which has been bogged down by a partisan dispute over its abortion provisions. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reiterated earlier this week that the chamber would not move on to Lynch until it resolves the dispute over that bill.

The long-going partisan spat over the trafficking legislation took a even sharper rhetorical turn earlier Wednesday when the Senate’s two top leaders fought over the impasse in dueling speeches.

McConnell accused Democrats of choosing to aid doctors who serve Medicare patients, while shunning sex trafficking victims. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) shot back that his counterpart’s complaints were “illogical” and devoid of facts.

He’s doing this simply to be an asshole.

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    Arclite

    Only tangentially related, but I was a bit heartened by this story:

    Terrified ‘Tea Party Patriot’ realizes he could lose Obamacare if GOP wins in 2016

    “And I’m serious because I asked myself, ‘Which party has helped me out the most in the last, I don’t know, 15 years, 20?’ And it was the Democrat [SIC] Party,” Webb lamented. “If it wasn’t for Obama and that Obamacare, I would still be working.”
    …
    “But you know, the Republican Party, they haven’t done nothing for me, man. Nothing,” he remarked. “So, I’m leaning toward voting for Hillary unless something major comes up. I don’t trust the Republicans anymore because they’re wanting to repeal the Obamacare. And I don’t want them to do that, man, because then I’ll have to go to work again. My life’s already planned out.”

    Man, I hope there’s a million or two out there like this guy.

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    took a even sharper

    WTF? Are the editors there just trying to fucking kill Steeplejack?

  4. 4.

    The Golux

    The entire point of being a republican is to be an asshole. At the returdlican debates in 2012, the braying in approval at whatever horrifying idea squirted from a candidate’s lips was an indication of what the base truly wants in a candidate: to let the asshole-freak-flag fly.

  5. 5.

    Corner Stone

    @Arclite: I’m still trying to decide where on the spectrum this guy’s story falls. Self-unaware? Onion-esque? Or sabotage?

  6. 6.

    RaflW

    He’s doing it because it’s pretty clear that McConnell actually hates Obama. Not just the usual Republican hate him because he’s a black Democratic president. McConnell seems to rather personally and directly hate the person of Barack H. Obama.

    So, yeah, he’ll f*ck up the DOJ for as long as he likes over petty emotions he can’t really contain. Klassy.

  8. 8.

    Roger Moore

    @Arclite:

    Man, I hope there’s a million or two out there like this guy.

    There will be more the more aggressively Democrats get out the word that the nice health insurance benefits people have gotten used to are actually part of the Obamacare the Republicans are so eager to destroy.

  9. 9.

    Shell

    No argument here.
    ********
    Question for the Balloon Juice blog masters. Suddenly today, when I try to log on to BJ, I get an error message along the lines of ‘can’t recognize..ad.stitcher..’ Can never get the whole thing cause my browser (Safari) then immediately crashes. It’s okay if I use Firefox. Has something changed with the website since yesterday?

  10. 10.

    Corner Stone

    @Shell:

    Suddenly today, when I try to log on to BJ, I get an error message

    What’s your bank login and password, and I’ll give it a shot.

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    This should be regarded as an opportunity. An opportunity for Eric Holder to be as assholish as possible towards conservative causes.

  12. 12.

    Botsplainer

    I’m genuinely a little sad about McConnell. In his incarnation as a young local politician, he was a closeted gay dude from a privileged background and was a fairly competent administrator, even if he was overtly partisan – he was actually interested in the mechanics of governing. Once he hit the Senate, he was a reliable deliverer of local pork for most of his career; he loved showing up here in Louisville with his beard and was generally welcome and well-received even in more progressive circles, he was known as somebody you could do business with.

    Once the Teahadis took away the pork, he became completely unmoored and is completely beholden to them.

  15. 15.

    Hal

    The sweeping Medicare payments package that the Senate passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday night contains so-called “Hyde amendment” language that would bar funding for community health centers from being used on abortions. The abortion provision in the trafficking bill is similar, but instead of applying those restrictions to taxpayer funds, it would be for fines paid from trafficking offenders — which Democrats say goes too far.

    “Democrats couldn’t possibly justify voting for Hyde language in order to help doctors, as they did hours ago, but then look an abused victim in the eye and tell her she’s not worth it,” McConnell said. “All that’s needed now are a couple more Democrats willing to show the same level of compassion to enslaved victims they offered to doctors just a few hours ago.”

    Nothing says compassion like forcing a woman to carry the child of someone who raped her. It will never cease to amaze me how obsessed conservatives are with women’s bodies whenever it comes to their ability to make personal, private choices about their reproductive health.

  17. 17.

    Keith G

    Following up on a link from the Matt Y, I have visited the Twitter time line of Alice Dreger, who teaches medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University. Today she sat in on her middle school aged son’s sex ed lesson. It is an abstinence only program. She live tweeted from the back of the classroom.

    Do yourself a favor and check out her reactions, but empty your mouth of all foreign objects first.

  18. 18.

    Arclite

    @shpx.ohfu:

    @Arclite: …and now you see why the republican party will do anything and everything it can to kill this law.

    Well, yeah, I figured it could turn independents, but I never expected it to work on Tea Partiers.

  20. 20.

    Botsplainer

    @JPL:

    Sexual frustration lead to animus.

    I know he got plenty of the type that he prefers when he was local – his police drivers talked. Dunno if he does now – he’s got a Frank Underwood vibe going.

  22. 22.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Botsplainer: McConnell only seems even partially tethered to reality to those of us who remember Jim Bunning, who turned Senate insanity into an art form well before the full rise of the tea party.

    I found Dave Bunning (his nephew, for non OH/KY fols) a pretty decent AUSA. How’s he doing on the bench?

  23. 23.

    Botsplainer

    OT – Soft-drawling North Carolina teatards are about ready to murder the golden goose by disembowelment for their theories on the motivational aspects of economic pain.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/04/north_carolina_education_bill_it_would_require_public_university_professors.html

    In higher-ed parlance the herculean act of teaching eight courses per year is what’s known as “a 4-4 load” or, alternatively, a “metric ass-ton” of classroom time. And yet a new bill currently under consideration in the North Carolina General Assembly would require every professor in the state’s public university system to do just that. The results would be catastrophic for North Carolina’s major research universities. The region known as the Research Triangle—Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, so named because of the three “Research-I”–level universities that anchor it—would quickly lose two of its prongs—the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University—were this bill to pass. And it just might.

    ***
    Whether or not the stated goal is to “close it all down,” that will definitely be the result. The professors forced into a 4-4 will simply pick up their research—and the labs where that research gets done, and those labs’ workforces, much of them nonacademics, Mr. Schalin—and move them somewhere that will fund them. With the inevitable cratering of UNC–Chapel Hill and NC State, the Research Triangle will become the Research Dot, and the 50,000 individuals North Carolina currently employs in Research Triangle Park—a massive conglomerate of nonacademic research labs located where it is precisely because of its proximity to Duke, UNC, and NC State—will have their livelihoods put in danger. It’s easy to sneer that the university isn’t a “jobs program” until you have to answer for your state’s brain drain.

    SB 593 would also herald the unwelcome but not unexpected casualization of even the highest strata of UNC’s research professors, forcing them to take on similar teaching loads (albeit with marginally better pay) than the adjuncts who currently shoulder a majority of this country’s postsecondary instruction. The North Carolina debacle-in-waiting serves as abject proof that, as tenured history professor and Slate contributor Jonathan Rees has written recently, adjunctification moves upward as well as downward. “Working conditions will gradually drift towards the level of the least compensated among us, not the best,” he writes. “What’s that you say? You think you’re special? You do research? Tell that to every professor at a public university in North Carolina.”

    We really could have used those FEMA camps for white conservatives. Thanks a lot, Obama.

  24. 24.

    Steve

    Lynch is horrible. To hell with her so called support from across the aisle. Her position on executive orders is treasonous. Thing is, holder is worse. Maybe the two can do a joint psa telling is not to by imitation goods from gang members

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    He’s doing this simply to be an asshole.

    He’s playing to his strength. Don’t dis him for that!

  28. 28.

    Botsplainer

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    I do precious little work outside the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Louisville, most of that being in state court, which finds a majority of the local bench consisting of womyn, womyn of color, men of color and some LGBT (I jest a bit, but only in spelling – white men are definitely a minority of our jurists). Heck, even my last Federal Court foray just this past month was before John Heyburn, the traitor to all which is normal and decent who found Kentucky’s prohibitions on gay marriage to be unconstitutional – even our Federal judges are America-hating shariah law gay apologists.

  30. 30.

    Keith G

    @dmsilev:

    This should be regarded as an opportunity. An opportunity for Eric Holder to be as assholish as possible towards conservative causes.

    Yes. Most definitely. The White House needs to encourage Holder to start making as many high profile speaking engagements as possible on every topic that touched DOJ responsibility. The speeches need to be paint-scorching testimonies about the corruptions and immoralities inherent in the way these conservatives have practiced politics.

    A couple of weeks of that and Mitch might hear a few more voices suggesting that Lynch’s approval would be a good way to get Holder away from the spot light.

  33. 33.

    Turgidson

    @Arclite:

    Most teabaggers aren’t against the welfare state so long as they personally are the ones getting the welfare, which they of course earned through their uniquely impressive hard work and patriotism and defending freedumb and libertahh. Unlike those people who are freeloaders. Sure, there are some who would rather die from untreated strep throat than avail themselves of something passed by B. Hussein Obomber to get penicillin. But they’re a minority. Most will come around to liking the ACA just as soon as they personally benefit from it.

    Approval of Obamacare will inch up, quite literally, one teabagger at a time.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @Shell: I got that today, too, though I didn’t realize it was connected to balloon juice. I just noticed the little error window a few minutes ago.

  35. 35.

    trollhattan

    @Steve:
    As part of in your position as the New Troll I’d like your help in becoming better informed: is Lynch better or worser than abortion? Show your work.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    @Turgidson:
    Return of the Torture Regime(tm)! Kind of like finding out REO Speedwagon and Great White are re-formed and appearing at the nearest tribal gaming facility.

  39. 39.

    SuperHrefna

    @Keith G: That was hilarious! My goodness that was a terrible lesson. I’m fuming just reading about it, especially the extremely dodgy math they were using in their paper babies game. I mean it’s bad enough they are teaching such stupid, evil things as Sex Is Bad Until You Find A Girl Who Does Not Want Sex but shouldn’t they at least teach real mathematics? I’m glad she is giving them hell, and I hope she continues to dish it out to them.

  40. 40.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @trollhattan: Being that there appears to be no need of reforming(they still seem to be together in some form), and there are plenty of tribal gaming venues…

  42. 42.

    Mike in NC

    Until the turtle man and his minions are in the minority again, nothing is going to happen in the Senate.

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @SuperHrefna: How are you feeling? That was a pretty enthusiastic comment, so I have high hopes. (or, perhaps, you are still on the good drugs)

  45. 45.

    SuperHrefna

    @WaterGirl: I am still on the good stuff, but less of it. I’m doing pretty OK, really! I get to have my first post surgical shower tonight which I’m really looking forward to.

  47. 47.

    Cacti

    @Botsplainer:

    What a shame about NC. I lived there for 11 years and my folks still do. While Jesse Helms was always a presence in state politics, the place generally prided itself on being a bit less loony and more forward thinking than South Carolina.

    Since the rise of the tea party, the goal seems to be to transform NC into the new state of Upper South Carolina.

  48. 48.

    Mike in NC

    @Cacti: In 2008 we had a Democratic president, governor, senator, and congressman. The last three are now gone thanks to voter indifference.

  49. 49.

    Bokonon

    Mitch McConnell is a dick. He will pick fights with you just for the sake of petty aggression. He has to win, and you have to lose.

    I know this personally.

    I had a recurring driving duel with McConnell in Washington D.C. traffic years ago, when I was commuting into the city. He would see my car and deliberately pick fights – cutting me off, refusing to let me merge, and stuff like that. Sometimes it was just petty aggression, and sometimes it would get borderline dangerous. The thing is that I would dish it right back – and McConnell carried a grudge about that. He HAD to win. And he each time he saw me in traffic, he would start the battle over and over and over again.

    And McConnell would be SMILING that tight, mirthless smile of his when he did it.

  51. 51.

    RSA

    @Botsplainer: Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on that. It’s willful ignorance. Here’s our mission at NCSU:

    As a research-extensive land-grant university, North Carolina State University is dedicated to excellent teaching, the creation and application of knowledge, and engagement with public and private partners. By uniting our strength in science and technology with a commitment to excellence in a comprehensive range of disciplines, NC State promotes an integrated approach to problem solving that transforms lives and provides leadership for social, economic, and technological development across North Carolina and around the world.

    That’s pretty straightforward, right? And there have been studies done of the economic impact of NCSU research on the state of NC; it’s very noticeable.

  53. 53.

    PsiFighter37

    Too bad Kentucky Democrats are too inept to get that waste of human space out of the Senate. Man basically owns his seat for life…

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Steve:

    I paid. You realize that people who get refunds never get back what they paid in taxes throughout the year, right? They only get a small percentage, at best, and homeowners and people with kids get the best refunds.

    I hope to Christ you hire an actual professional accountant to do your company’s taxes, because I suspect you “forget” to pay your share of your employees’ Social Security taxes. You know you’re supposed to do that, right?

  55. 55.

    Botsplainer

    @Mike in NC:

    Remember how the paid professional left proclaimed that all we had to do in 2010 was get rid of blue dogs in states like NC, and that True Progressivism would arise?

    Good times…

  57. 57.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Arclite: Really? Is that the message of Obamacare? That you can retire at 50 as a fat unhealthy slob because someone else is picking up your heath care tab?

  59. 59.

    rikyrah

    @RaflW:

    He’s doing it because it’s pretty clear that McConnell actually hates Obama. Not just the usual Republican hate him because he’s a black Democratic president. McConnell seems to rather personally and directly hate the person of Barack H. Obama.

    After all, he did say, during the greatest economic crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression, that his primary goal was to make Barack Obama a One-Term President.

    Not help the country to recover.

  62. 62.

    Zinsky

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): “Worst President Ever”

    Yes, George W. Bush truly was! His father was second worst! Traitorous, philandering, lazy, dishonest, drug-addicted, brain-damaged human filth – the entire Bush clan.

  64. 64.

    pluege

    He’s doing this simply to be an asshole.

    I believe that there is the first requirement to be a republican in good standing.

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