Over the weekend President Obama had arguably his best stuff yet on display at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, ripping into Republicans, Democrats, and the Village alike. The annual scolding and pearl-clutching from the right is almost as hysterical, albeit for different reasons. This year’s accidental comedy routine comes from the pen of Assrocket himself, and it delivers loads of laughs.
There has been quite a bit of news coverage of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Don’t ask me why. The annual lovefest between Democratic politicians and Democratic journalists hasn’t generated any actual news in a long time. But this year’s event was perhaps notable because it exposed our president’s bitterness, as he approaches the end of his term. Humor is often revealing. Obama began with a joke that would be considered crude in a junior high school locker room:
After the midterm elections, my advisors asked me, “Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?” And I said, “Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.’” (Laughter and applause.)
Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. (Laughter.) New climate regulations? Bucket. It’s the right thing to do. (Laughter and applause.)
If I had said something like that when I was 12, my father would have whacked me. Now, we have a president so pitiful that he thinks such crudeness is appropriate humor.
Oh, how quickly we forget what actual crude humor from bitter presidents actually looks like.
Besides, when Assrocket was 12, George Wallace had just become Governor of Alabama, so if Barack Obama had said anything of the sort at the time in the state, he probably would have been lynched.
Oh wait, wasn’t he in Kenya at the time?
Ahh, but our friend grabs a shovel and digs deep for that cesspool at the bottom when it came to President Obama’s routine with Luther the Anger Translator on climate change, of course calling the president “uneducated”. and having “no idea what he is talking about.”
He then ends with this:
More stupidity. Every serious scientist says that adopting Obama’s plan of a 28% reduction in CO2 emissions would have no perceptible effect on the Earth’s temperature, even if the alarmists’ models are correct (which they aren’t). See, e.g., Dr. Judith Curry’s Congressional testimony to the effect that best case, if the bogus models were correct, Obama’s proposal would “prevent three hundredths of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100.” Obama is simply ignorant. And “snowballs in the Senate”? What is that supposed to mean? Just another gratuitous partisan insult, added on top of scientific fantasy. That’s our president!
At the Correspondents’ Dinner, Obama played the supposedly comic role of the lame duck. The end of his tenure in office can’t come too soon.
That sputtering “I found one scientist who says this so I win!” tirade has got to be pretty embarrassing for a guy so blockheaded that he was duped into thinking Harry Reid was beaten up by his brother and wrote an entire series of posts exploring how the “truth” was stifled by a compliant media.
The folks with the credibility and judgment problems really should keep their opinions to their damned selves, starting with this clown.
Snarki, child of Loki
“It must be very strange to be Buttrocket. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one stinky turd after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.”
chopper
I like how dr curry, who every month becomes more of a carnival barker among climate scientists, is considered the only ‘serious scientist’.
her testimony in front of congress was a joke.
dmsilev
Perhaps if Hinderaker would ever pull his head out of his ass and Google “snowball Senate”, he’d find that that was an actual thing, courtesy of noted moron James Inhofe.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
And on that day, I’ll start speaking in tongues, the rivers will flow backwards, cats and dogs living together, etc. etc.
El Caganer
@dmsilev: He’s actually getting stupider over time.
David Koch
The lame duck that just normalized relations with Cuba and then beat the teabaggers with a stick over closing DHS, and then wacked their religious hate bills, right after smacking Walker as an empty suit.
That duck’s got some major huevos
OzarkHillbilly
Just saw the “Anger Translator” skit, pretty funny. Especially the end.
Culture of Truth
Among their many pathologies, conservatives seem to have a habit of celebrating child abuse.
dmsilev
@El Caganer: To quote the late great Molly Ivins, “If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.’’
boatboy_srq
It’s 2015. “Uneducated” is the new “Uppity.”
schrodinger's cat
Is it really necessary to pay attention to every rabid lunatic on the right?
Patricia Kayden
I assume Powerline is a right wing site so I cannot take anything written there too seriously. The author of that smear piece sounds bitter that President Obama is effective — even as his administration is about to wrap up. I love that President Obama literally laughs in the face of his haters. He has not lost his swagger and never will. The fact that he’s unbowed and unconcerned about his detractors must drive them crazy.
Love it!
P.S. Haven’t watched the WHCD as yet but definitely will given all the consternation it has caused in the “liberal” media.
Germy Shoemangler
Cecily Strong:
To President Obama: “Your hair is so white now it can talk back to the police.”
“Let’s give it up for the Secret Service. I don’t want to be too hard on those guys. You know, because they’re the only law enforcement agency that will get in trouble if a black man gets shot.”
kc
Some vintage Hinderaker: http://www.minnpolitics.blogspot.com/2005/02/jd-guckert-and-powerline.html?m=1
Keith G
@schrodinger’s cat: No, but it’s a great time saver.
Find something stupid/outrageous said by some twat, type a few sentences of original material and presto(!) an new post is born.
Eliminate that and two-thirds of the blogosphere (and maybe one half of Balloon-Juice) vanishes.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not only was it funny but it was certainly cathartic to have Luther and the PrezO saying what we all feel about the climate science deniers.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense:How is your new puppy? You haven’t shared any photos in a while.
schrodinger's cat
@Keith G: I would say paying attention to the actual office holders and those commenters who have credibility outside the right wing bubble makes sense. However paying attention to those preaching to the choir, like the person referenced above serves little purpose.
LAC
Gosh, I hate it when the president works blue. ?
catclub
There is an article at Bloomberg view about statements made by George W Bush about Obama. It got 2200 comments in 2 hours.
That was last night.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-27/george-w-bush-bashes-obama-on-middle-east
Now it has 6820.
The end line had some balance:
Jerzy Russian
@El Caganer:
Do you mean Mr. Hinderaker or Senator Inhofe?
RaflW
Deep down, Hindrocket knows Obama is 1) so much smarter than him and 2) funnier, that it drives him into writing jr. high pimple-boy screeds – this one is particularly pathetic.
Bobby B.
“Why aren’t there any conservative comedians?” There are… Dennis Miller, Adam Carolla, Victoria Jackson…they don”t help themselves by raising that question.
jibeaux
It was really funny. I think Obama might be the first prex to leave office and command absurd speaking fees that he actually kind of earns.
Karen in GA
@LAC: He’ll never get a sitcom if he can’t work clean.
lowercase steve
I have (seriously) never been more furious than when I saw Bush’s WMD skit back in 2004. Flippant doesn’t even begin to capture how disgusting it was. He is a sociopath of the highest order.
different-church-lady
We spend time thinking about this idiot why?
Cervantes
Humor is, to a large degree, subjective.
Hinderaker’s article begins by criticizing the President’s “bucket list,” a joke that I agree was infra dig.
The rest of Hinderaker’s article has no merit whatsoever, nor is this a surprise.
g
And “snowballs in the Senate”? What is that supposed to mean?
Ask the fucking idiot who brought it.
Jerzy Russian
@different-church-lady:
Pointing and laughing.
Linda Featheringill
I nominate the word “Bucket” as the new equivalent for “Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!”
Go, Mr. President, go!
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes. Ask Charles at LGF. He has been mocking Charles C. Johnson over and over. Now people who should be on Charles C.’s side are also mocking him.
RaflW
Somewhat OT, but I just found out that lowly me, with just 209 followers on Twitter (and how many of those are ‘bots?) has been blocked by mighty broderist Ron Fournier. What a fragile flower he is!
I guess I said something critical of him at some time in the past on the Twit-box, and so of course he blocked me. Boo hoo a random person in Minnesota said something meeeeeeeaaaaan.
Pathetic.
scav
@OzarkHillbilly: What I loved about the anger transition (sic) was how it somehow upended everthing about “Oh this is a big joke among the bestest loving buds” sort of thing. Threw it into question. And the choice of topic to use it on? Tin foil sword, tin foil sword, little flash of stiletto, tin foil sword, butterknife, broadsword. That was some fine politicking on an available platform. And it was a better level of comedic performance and joke. Could be over-reading it – but that played “bleeding into real” thing worked at multiple levels for me at least and had that nice real blood laugh slice.
boatboy_srq
@RaflW: Epistemic closure at its finest, there. Poor Fournier can’t hear anything “negative” (translation: accurate) about his BSDIism: it might make his world implode (and we can’t have that).
Patricia Kayden
@RaflW: Consider yourself blessed.
Karen in GA
@RaflW: That’s why I’m not on Twitter (that, and I have nothing interesting to say). I’d immediately start telling people like Ron Fournier and Luke Russert how useless they are and very quickly get myself blocked, and then it would be no fun anymore.
gogol's wife
@Linda Featheringill:
I’m hearing that in the voice of Charles Coburn.
Southern Beale
Classic deflection from Assrocket, currently being humiliated for biting at the false Harry Reid drunken brawl story.
Botsplainer
@RaflW:
Fournier blocked me on Twitter months ago. So did Chuck Todd.
I guess I made them sad.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
She is fantastic. She is settling in really well as long as she is vigorously exercised multiple times throughout the day. Yesterday I looked out the window and my youngest son and his friend were outside with her. They were running by and she was happy as can be wagging her little tail.
I need to send AL some pics so you can see how much she has changed. She has a wicked mane of golden fur around her neck.
Randy P
@scav: Oh yeah. It gave him cover to express real anger at climate deniers, under cover of the joke. Very well played.
@Karen in GA: I’d say most sitcoms these days go waay past “rhymes with bucket”. Assrocket is incorrect. Also, too, sky blue and sun rises in East.
the Conster
@Botsplainer:
I have a twitter account but never use it, because what fun is it if the best and highest use of twitter which is to talk back to morons ends up with the morons blocking you from talking back?
different-church-lady
@Jerzy Russian: Meh. The thrill is gone.
Mustang Bobby
@the Conster: Okay, cool. My mission is to go to twitter accounts of those with delicate fe-fe’s and get blocked. Sounds like fun.
balconesfault
What irritates me about the climate deniers who cite statistics on the futility of the US doing anything … why is it that they seem to understand and advocate for the leadership of the US on so many issues – but don’t understand that for us to press the third world on climate change we need to be doing something ourselves?
Matt
Welcome to wingnuttia, where precisely describing the real-life televised antics of Tea People is a “partisan insult”.
Also, keep an eye out for the change-up that Hindrocket et al are working on: there’ll be a tipping point when they go straight from “climate change is totes not happening” to “OMG we’re fucked and its all you hippies’ fault for being shrill when you told us this would happen”.
bemused
@lowercase steve:
Making even worse was that plenty of people in the audience laughed.
Cluttered Mind
@schrodinger’s cat: TIME Magazine certainly thinks so.
Cluttered Mind
This is going to sound strange…but I feel like Obama would have been a much better president had he not had the deal with the burden of also being the first black president. I think he’s had to suppress a lot of who he is and how he really feels in order to make sure that he’s also setting a good template and showing that it’s really not such a big deal if the president isn’t white. Every other elected president to date got to take office with the goal of advancing their agenda, but Obama had a second burden stuck on him of having to be a big first. He had his own goals but he also didn’t want to be remembered as the first non-white president and also the last one for a good long while.
I’m not sure how much sense I’m making, but I think that it explains why Obama in casual situations like this one where he can actually be himself is such a different person than the Obama so many firebaggers were screaming about in 2010-11.
CONGRATULATIONS!
If you’re looking for the guy who turned the presidency into a fucking joke, one who took the dignity of the office and dragged it through the mud, well, you need to go no further back in time than the last president, one George W. Bush.
In other much weirder news, I am a ham radio operator (they still exist, believe it or not). The FCC is apparently considering closing at least 2/3rds of their field offices. This is a Bad Idea, and to the hams (who are pretty much almost all white, all Republican and 95% over 70) unthinkable. But I heard something I’d never expected out of this group of people last night: blaming Reagan. And even more telling: not one person defending Ronaldus Magnus.
The era of No True Scotsman looms nigh, folks.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Little tail? Is that a term of endearment, because she must be huge by now. What does she weigh?
Henry is up to a big 9.5 pounds now.
WaterGirl
@Mustang Bobby: Since I think you’re home sick, you could use something to lift your spirits!
SatanicPanic
Fuck Judith Curry
Mike in NC
Maybe Assrocket should interview Richard Cohen for his deep thoughts on the WHCD.
Mike J
@Bobby B.:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/why-theres-no-conservative-jon-stewart/385480/
Cacti
@Cluttered Mind:
Conversely, I don’t the teabaggers are aware that history is going to remember them primarily as a racist backlash to the election of the first non-white President.
Elizabelle
C-Span 1 now. Awaiting swearing in of Loretta Lynch as new AG; Joe Biden will officiate, then speech.
A big bucking deal.
Per C-Span: 83rd Attorney General. Her confirmation took longer than the previous 7 AGs combined.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Funny. I was thinking too, “how could Korra have a little tail?”
But she’s a darling, no matter what.
Jeffro
@Matt: They already did that on the current & future California water crisis…I was like wait, what??
SteveM
Hinderaker’s law firm has Koch Industries as a major client. His climate-change denialism is bought and paid for.
Elizabelle
Biden speaking now.
ETA: Just did a shoutout to Lynch’s father, a Baptist minister, on the courage required to raise children in those days. First topic up is civil rights and family, and we’re not even into the speech.
J R in WV
Hindraker…> buttscratcher?
Oh, just bucket!
Elizabelle
@SteveM: I prefer not to hear anything else out of Hinderaker unless someone pays me to read it.
Just because there’s dog droppings on the sidewalk, we need not all stop and discuss the quality of the droppings at length. Sometimes you need just to step over, or scoop up and deposit in the trash.
Biden: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s about TIME this woman is sworn in.”
Applause.
Hinderaker will never be Attorney General.
Karen in GA
@Cacti: I don’t the teabaggers are aware
that history is going to remember them primarily as a racist backlash to the election of the first non-white President.FTFY.
Matt McIrvin
How dare Obama waste our tax dollars on the national swear jar!
Randy P
@Mike J: Interesting article. It’s a question I frequently ponder, being more than a little interested in the question of “what makes things funny”? I was reading the comments and… Ann Coulter is their shining example of a funny conservative?
Ann COULTER?
These people really don’t live in the same universe I do.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Epistemic closure at its finest is a useful principle in theory of knowledge!
Whereas when Cato’s Julian Sanchez used the term to criticize some conservative/Republican attitudes, he was referring to little more than confirmation bias.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
She sort of stopped growing. She weighs 40 pounds and looks like a lab/shepherd who is the size of a large beagle. I bet she’ll max at 50 lbs.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Epistemic closure at its finest is a useful principle in theory of knowledge!
Whereas when the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez used the term to criticize some conservative/Republican attitudes, he was referring to little more than confirmation bias.
BobS
@Elizabelle: Which means Michael Dyson’s swoon will be televised live on MSNBC hourly starting at noon today.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
She is a darling. I call her Miss Wigglebutt. It’s practically twerking the way she wiggles when she sees us.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Really?! How interesting!
I was doing some reading, trying to figure out how big Henry will get. I guess different breeds tend to have growth spurts at different times, so it’s tricky to figure out how big they will get. I thought for sure that Henry might get to 15 pounds or so, but now i think it will be closer to 10-12.
It’s an adventure! I’m glad to hear things are going well. The whole couch eating thing can’t have been fun. Henry sets his sights a bit lower – a pillow instead of the arm of the couch, for instance. Though he did munch on the blinds when I was only out for about 5 minutes picking the heads off the dandelions.
Did I mention that he got his head stuck in the fence. I have an open fence with a couple inches open on the bottom, as well. Henry managed to lie down on the ground, inch his head under the bottom of the fence, then stand up so it his head was stuck on one side and his body on the other. Thank god I was there! I couldn’t get him out – I wasn’t able to push on his head and his body at the same time to get him low enough to get his head under the fence to back out. I tried for about 10 minutes and ended up having to call HELP! in the hopes that one of my neighbors would hear us, which they did. Fun times!
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Hey, I call Henry Wiggle Boy!
Howlin Wolfe
@schrodinger’s cat: “Forget it, Zandar; it’s Powerline.” But it’s still a great movie!
Ruckus
@SteveM:
He may think he is being paid to write this crap but I’d bet he really is being paid to be himself. His job is lawyer, his profession is Assrocket.
Culture of Truth
@RaflW: Fournier is very sensitive. But remember, the Clintons can’t take criticism.
ThresherK
@Randy P: I hadn’t heard of “The Flipside” or the host’s name. Wondering how else a fellow named “Kfir Alfia” would be welcomed by the right for anything in general.
PS It takes some kind of Bizaarro Comedy blindness to hold counter- (i.e. pro-Iraq invasion) demonstrations circa 2003. Like The Yes Men, except this guy means it.
Chris
@Randy P:
Isn’t the old saw that conservative humor is only funny if you think bigotry or cruelty is funny?
fuckwit
Why the fuck is anyone paying attention to that assrocket anymore?
He ceased to be relevant a decade ago.
Heh, indeed.
Patrick
@balconesfault:
These are the same idiots who thought it was a GREAT idea to spend trillions of dollars on attacking Iraq for no good reason, but they think it is futile for the US to do anything about climate change. I think I just want to go and scream…
RaflW
@Matt:
Today Prof. Krugman expertly chronicled the right-wing going from ultra-doom about ACA to, yeah we knew it would work so none of these successes means a damn thing.
I’m sure we’ll be treated to endless clips of GOPers ‘pushing’ for cap-n-trade way back when, eliding all the wingnut insanity in the intervening decades.
patrick II
From Dr. Judith Curry’s testimony to congress:
First, she acknowledges that climate change is happening, but she thinks it is happening more slowly than the consensus of climate scientists. Her best case is we won’t have catastrophic effects until the 21st century. It is evidently o.k. if our grandchildren bear the brunt of our recklessness, just so long as its not us.
Second, and once again in contradiction to the consensus of climate scientists, she questions the evidence supporting human-caused warming and says it is “misleading and unsupported by evidence” Climate change is happening but its not our fault.
But she offers no alternative theory to increased CO2 and its affects on climate change, she just knows that all of those other scientists are wrong because…she says so.
Third. Dr. Curry said that “Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command and control’ solution…” That’s interesting, but:
a: if she does not agree that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are the problem, any suggestion she has for fixing the problem is fixing the wrong problem.
b: the “command structure” for fixing the problem is not a scientific problem, and one that as a scientist she has no more say than anyone else. At the most fundamental level scientists describe the problem, describe why its happening, and offer possible fixes for the problem and (in a democracy) everyone else or their representatives decide the proper political structure for implementing the fixes (if, at this point there is one). Dr. Curry may believe there should be no “command and control” — read that as only free market solutions allowed, — but really has nothing more to say than anyone else about it — probably less because she refuses to admit the problem.
Cervantes
@patrick II:
Not what she said.
patrick II
@Cervantes:
On a second reading, you are right, she is not saying climate change cannot be linked to human causes, only the extreme weather events we are experiencing that cannot be linked to human caused warming. And, although individual events are difficult to link to climate change, the general trend isn’t. It reminds me of when tobacco companies would have to admit in court that cigarettes might cause cancer — but there is no proof it caused lung cancer specifically for this two pack a day Camel smoking plaintiff, so we should not be financially responsible in any way.
LAC
@Karen in GA: exactly! especially one that ABC will run on Friday nights.
Cervantes
@patrick II:
One may remind you of the other but, again, another look may be warranted.
russell
Bush wasn’t bitter, he just didn’t give a crap.
Cpl Cam
@jibeaux: “It was really funny. I think Obama might be the first prex to leave office and command absurd speaking fees that he actually kind of earns.”
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, the man can speechify. His speech at the 2012 democratic convention was by far the bright spot of the election (aside from Romney losing of course.)
Steve
Nothing but laugh tracks in his speech