Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

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

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

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

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

This fight is for everything.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

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

Tick tock motherfuckers!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Let there be snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Was your father as bold as the sergeant major

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  2. 2.

    JPL

    It’s the 2016 that bothers me. The Bush family needs to just stay on their compound in Maine.

  3. 3.

    Halcyan

    Akin to Utah! which they wanted to have as their official state name. “We will force the excitement upon you!”

  4. 4.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    Doesn’t he realize that when Charlie Pierce refers to him as Jeb! he’s being ironic? These guys just don’t get humor, do they.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    The exclamation point is the mark of lexical hegemony of the Bush family over all the ‘lesser’ symbols.

  9. 9.

    Germy Shoemangler

    LOLGOP on twitter has a redesigned Jeb! logo with W’s face for the dot under the exclamation

  11. 11.

    lgerard

    Jeb!

    sounds like some dubious carbonated beverage sold at Dollar Stores throughout the south

  18. 18.

    gogol's wife

    It’s such a cliche for titles of musicals that the parody musical this year is Something Rotten!

  22. 22.

    lgerard

    Have to laugh out loud at someone using his nickname in a run for the presidency.

    Puts him in the company of some other memorable politicians such as “Stretch” Lincoln, “Slim” Taft and ‘Skeets” Harding.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    So ¡Jeb! is finally declaring? Took him long enough. I recall a commenter (or maybe it was Betty Cracker) saying the exclamation mark is recycled from a bumper sticker from one of his campaigns for Governor.

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    @lgerard: Well, Lincoln is referred to as “the Rail Splitter” and “Honest Abe” on campaign posters and ribbons.

    Still, Jeb! reminds me of a bad off Broadway musical.

  28. 28.

    RSA

    @Baud:

    O’Malley’s is as ugly as Hillary’s, but the expert liked it.

    Yeah, I don’t get that. Not that I always agree with designers, but both seem pretty bad to me.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @ascap_scab: How can we forget that? That gave us Alan Keyes and hence the Crazification Factor. It also brought the phrase ‘Parisian sex club’ into our political discourse.

  32. 32.

    MazeDancer

    @Baud:

    2016 is going to be the year of bad graphic design, isn’t it?

    I feel your pain

    The Hospital H did look less “turn here” road sign as the shape of a stage than it does on a bumper sticker.

  33. 33.

    Ken

    With respect to the R candidates, I despise Jeb less than most, more than some. But the exclamation mark is OK sloganeering

    I mean, it’s no “I like Ike”, but it’s serviceable

  34. 34.

    LWA (Liberal With Attitude)

    @Halcyan:

    “We will force the excitement upon you!”

    Yep- when you have to explain how exciting you are (ref. Trump, Donald, re: “Look how successful I am!”) its a sign you aren’t.

  35. 35.

    sharl

    @MattF:

    Tragic Sans, the Font of Regret.

    Hahahaha, I soooo badly want Tragic Sans to become A Real Thing.

    Wait a minute
    …{opens separate tab, searched for “Tragic Sans”}
    …it apparently is already out there (over 4000 hits). Scroll down a bit here (or do Ctrl-F on tragic; second hit).

    Why was I not informed?

    I love graphics arts folks, and am rather envious of them as well.

  36. 36.

    Heliopause

    The logo would be more effective if it was a picture of a woman in a bath with Archbishop Makarios looking on.

  38. 38.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog

    Jeb with a “!” vs. Jeb without a “!” ?

    What’s the difference between a schmuck and a putz?

  39. 39.

    Hungry Joe

    @Brachiator: “Jeb!” as a bad off-Broadway musical … man, I’d pay to see it: President W is dominating the first scene — Inauguration Day 2001, maybe — when all freeze, the lights dim, and a spotlight hits Jeb, far stage-right, just watching. Orchestra swells as he begins his first solo, “Forgotten Son.”

    I could go on …

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    Is that a photo of Jeb at the first link? When I looked at that photo I thought it was a slightly younger Donald Rumsfeld. :: shudder ::

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: YES! Where are they getting these designers? I’m pretty sure I could do better than what I’ve seen from the candidates so far and I’m not even a graphic designer.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    I’m pretty sure I could do better than what I’ve seen from the candidates so far and I’m not even a graphic designer.

    You could probably do better as president also.

  49. 49.

    Cap'n Phealy

    Jeb!
    I can only remember your brother’s failures
    And that time you made them keep poor Terry Schiavo alive
    And Jeb, I think you’re trying to make the nation suffer again.
    Jeb!…

  51. 51.

    Minstrel Michael

    Back in the early days of the intertubes, when non-alphabetic characters got used for random purposes, those characters got nicknames. The nickname for the exclamation point was “bang.” I wonder if that’s Jeb’s (handlers’) intention.

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I can only hope Jeb! campaigns extensively in Hamilton! Ohio. Maybe he could open Rand McNally’s closed mind.

    On 28 May 1986, as part of a plan to increase publicity about Hamilton, the city council voted 5-1 in favor of adding an exclamation point to the city’s name. Thus, Hamilton officially became Hamilton! While used extensively in the city’s documents, letterheads, business cards and on local signage, “Hamilton!” was not successful in getting Rand McNally to use the new moniker on state maps and the change was not recognized by the Federal Board on Geographical Names. The city’s website does not use the exclamation point.

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    The obvious thing about the logo is that it omits the word Bush.

    On purpose. The campaign recognizes it is a four-letter word, and not in a literal sense.

  58. 58.

    henqiguai

    @Minstrel Michael (#51):

    Back in the early days of the intertubes, when non-alphabetic characters got used for random purposes, those characters got nicknames. The nickname for the exclamation point was “bang.”

    No, I seem to recall the ! = ‘bang’ is Unix-speak; pre-dating the intertubes.

  60. 60.

    Keith G

    I just have to point this out from today’s WAPO

    RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. — Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

    People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

    I am sorry that the news app I am using does not give access to the url.

  63. 63.

    Tree With Water

    “Because if our military leadership thinks we’re on path to degrade and destroy ISIL, they need to be fired.”

    Lindsey Graham said that today. It mirrors the philosophy of Cheney-Rumsfeld (et.al.). They would reduce graduates of our military academies to attack dogs, and the senior leadership that emerges from them to political cat-paws of the republican party (the party of war). Those people are are a mortal threat to both our democracy, and our Republican institutions.

  65. 65.

    lol

    @RSA:

    Something that gets only touched on a little is repurposing the logo for different aspects of the campaign. The great thing about the O-bama logo was that you could have variations that were GLBT or Women or Af-Am or Farmers or any sort of demographic and it would still be iconically recognizable as the Obama logo.

    The H-illary logo has the same property and none of the other campaigns except for O’Malley have that.

  67. 67.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @henqiguai:

    No, I seem to recall the ! = ‘bang’ is Unix-speak; pre-dating the intertubes.

    It actually goes back to the 1950s:

    The exclamation mark did not have its own dedicated key on standard manual typewriters before the 1970s. Instead, one typed a period, backspaced, and typed an apostrophe. In the 1950s, secretarial dictation and typesetting manuals in America referred to the mark as “bang,” perhaps from comic books where the ! appeared in dialogue balloons to represent a gun being fired, although the nickname probably emerged from letterpress printing.

  68. 68.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Tree With Water: I don’t think the US should deploy 10000 troops to Iraq. However, I’m not going to argue that a democratically elected president, constitutionally defined as commander-in-chief of the armed forces doesn’t have the right to fire senior military personnel who disagree with his policies.

    It’s not like Graham’s being coy. If he’s elected president, it’ll be because his bellicose posturing has the support of a majority of Americans. It would not then be the generals’ place to tell him where he could and could not attack. They could tell him he was fucking nuts, and he could fire them for it, and it would all be in keeping with democratic tradition.

  72. 72.

    rea

    @Hungry Joe: man, I’d pay to see it: President W is dominating the first scene — Inauguration Day 2001, maybe — when all freeze, the lights dim, and a spotlight hits Jeb, far stage-right, just watching. Orchestra swells as he begins his first solo, “Forgotten Son.”

    Good lyrics, though:

    Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of Bush;
    And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
    Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
    Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
    Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
    Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
    Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
    And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
    To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
    He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
    To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
    But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
    Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
    I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
    To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
    I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
    Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
    Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
    Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
    And that so lamely and unfashionable
    That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
    Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
    Have no delight to pass away the time,
    Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
    And descant on mine own deformity:
    And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
    To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
    I am determined to prove a villain
    And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

  73. 73.

    Keith P.

    Seems like Jeb is (and was) trying to riff off big brother’s own campaign branding (“W.”…and I *still* see those bumper stickers!) Not really a great way to differentiate oneself from one’s family.

  74. 74.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Keith P.:

    (“W.”…and I *still* see those bumper stickers!)

    The one I see quite frequently is not a bumper sticker per se but a window decal that says (depending on whether it was installed before or after 2005) “W: The President” or “W: Still the President.”

    I also occasionally still see “Palin/McCain” stickers. And yes, the candidates are indeed listed in that order.

    This remains a bright red area.

  75. 75.

    PatrickG

    You know, I thought HRC’s logo was absolutely awful. I thought it would hurt her if/when she gets the nomination. But if she goes up against Jeb!, there’s a clear logo advantage.

    Have people been giving political graphic designers some sort of new, untested drug?

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Color me totally unimpressed.

    John Ellis Bush is dogshit, like the rest of his family.

  80. 80.

    RSA

    @lol:

    Something that gets only touched on a little is repurposing the logo for different aspects of the campaign.

    Cool, thanks! That’s an angle I’ve never thought about or heard of before.

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