Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

This really is a full service blog.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

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

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

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102Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    Ron Fournier’s “journalism” would seem to have a sell by date, once it’s apparent the radicals in the Republican ranks have more power than their enablers intended.

  2. 2.

    gf120581

    Fournier, even David Brooks is more in tune with reality than you.

    I’d say he’s the Beltway journalist with his head farthest up his own ass, but then I remember there’s always Mark Halperin.

  7. 7.

    Frankensteinbeck

    He’s not a partisan! He’s an independent who just HAPPENS to agree with the Republicans on everything and hate basically all Democrats. But that’s only because we won’t agree with things that are obviously correct, like everything Republicans want. Any Democrat who is willing to be reasonable, he’s cool with. That’s bipartisanship! It’s the essence of not having a label!

  8. 8.

    WisconsinInsider

    No, no, no. I’m the only one that is allowed to be an independent and a centrist. I set the standard. Anyone to my left is a communist and anyone to my right is a fascist. Everyone is partisan except for me. Besides only a partisan would call someone out for partisanship which just proves that everyone else is partisan except for me. Also the only label I wear is a big label that reads “No Labels.” I’m special!!!!

  9. 9.

    Warren Terra

    You know that famous Upton Sinclair quote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”?

    It’s difficult to get Fournier to admit he’s a Republican hack, when his salary depends on his not admitting it.

  10. 10.

    bemused

    If you have to keep saying you are a non-partisan independent over and over, you might be wrong.

  12. 12.

    gratuitous

    Nitwit.

    I had a friend who was in a group of folks doing junior year abroad pulled from all over the country. The young woman from Illinois confidently announced that she was the only one without an accent. In her Midwestern twang accent. It totally escaped her that her “no accent” voice would be perceived as an accent by everyone else.

    I don’t think Ron Fournier is a 20-year-old college girl (but I don’t know for sure); his fatuous argument that everyone but him is “partisan” smacks of the same “you don’t get out much, do you” naivete evinced by my friend’s traveling companion.

  13. 13.

    Bobby Thomson

    Sure you’re non-partisan, Mr. Would-be McCain Press Secretary. Sure you are. You and Glenn Reynolds and Mark Halperin.

  14. 14.

    Elizabelle

    @gf120581: Weirdly, Mark Halperin has had a few true comments lately. Bear in mind, he was deploying them against Morning Joke; that may give him protective cover.

    I know. Gotta stop checking in on that trainwreck. But have to wait until 7 a for BBC morning news….

  15. 15.

    Gimlet

    Victor David Hanson

    Wiki

    Hanson is a registered member of the Democratic Party but a conservative who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:

    Who’s he talking to?

    Greg Sargent. This is in response to Sargent saying:

    @ron_fournier Really time to drop the act in which everyone who disagrees with you is merely "partisan" while you are "above" partisanship— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 13, 2015

    The real BS by Fornier is the claim that “Those are facts, not insults.” They may well be facts- at least the one about party affiliation- but the way Fornier uses it, calling somebody a partisan and a Democrat most certainly is intended as an insult.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    BTW, there is no political disagreement in which “I’m an independent” is a meaningful response.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    Is it possibly a parody?

    Or, like the twitter account is out of Fournier’s control — up in Canada, oh yeah, like that Indiana pol who had to resign recently when his iPhone sent out porn or something. (And it wasn’t even the guy’s first sex scandal ….)

  20. 20.

    Gimlet

    Wiki

    In July 2008, while investigators for the House Oversight Committee were looking into the death of Pat Tillman, they uncovered a 2004 email from Fournier to Karl Rove encouraging him to “keep up the fight.”[5]

  25. 25.

    beltane

    @Roger Moore: As someone who knew Greg well back when we were young people, I am feeling very proud right now. It’s a wonderful thing to see an intelligent person get under the skin of a pompous, corrupt idiot.

  26. 26.

    dedc79

    I still think the best way to deal with Fournier is to ignore him. I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of his clicks were from people who read him b/c they hate him.

  27. 27.

    Thoughtful David

    @Elizabelle:
    No you don’t have to wait for the BBC: intertubes. The BBC has great programs going on all day regardless of your time zone, especially if you can do without pictures and just listen to audio (=radio). So don’t be miserable with US TV crap.

    I’ll put in a plug for THE best talk/discussion program EVAH*: Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” on BBC Radio 4. No, it’s not news or politics, it’s science/art/philosophy/history/literature, but it’s amazing stuff every week. You can get it as a podcast, as I listen to it.

    * No, I don’t work for the BBC, I’m not related to Melvyn Bragg and have never met him. Just a fan.

  29. 29.

    mai naem mobile

    I’m convinced Fournier was dissed in some way by the Clintons. The Clintons are an obsession for this guy. I don’t know if he didn’t get invited to an important party/event…maybe a seat on air force one…maybe Bill was much nicer to a competitor of Fournier. It’s something personal.

  30. 30.

    RaflW

    Ron Fournier’s brittle, thin skin strongly suggests he’s an IINO. I’m sure the dude votes “R” since no one is (supposed to be) looking.

  31. 31.

    Gimlet

    Rush:

    it is clear that Ron Fournier is a longtime AP journalist, which means he’s a liberal Democrat, whether he knows it or not. And it’s also clear that he has put blind faith in the decency and goodness and honesty of liberal Democrats, that they’re kind and compassionate and so forth.

    And he’s really, really having a tough time coming to grips with all of this. From the way he’s writing and speaking, it’s making it sound like he’s really tortured over this sudden realization that the people he respects and loves in politics are a bunch of lying skunks.

  32. 32.

    RaflW

    Plus the f’king dweeb blocked me on Twitter. I have all of 200 followers (half are probably ‘bots) and I went back and looked and I had two, count ’em two tweets that in some small way griped about him.

    What a sad, tiny man he is.

    @mai naem mobile: As I say just upthread, he is amazingly brittle and seems to take slight at anything. How one can attempt journalism with that little self-esteem (but very high self-regard) is mystifying.

  33. 33.

    Patrick

    @Gimlet:

    In July 2008, while investigators for the House Oversight Committee were looking into the death of Pat Tillman, they uncovered a 2004 email from Fournier to Karl Rove encouraging him to “keep up the fight.”[5]

    So Fournier was against the Oversight Committee learning more about Tillman’s death?

    Can I assume Fournier has also sent emails to Hillary Clinton urging her to keep up the fight against the Benghazi committee? After all, he claims he is an independent.

  34. 34.

    dedc79

    @Thoughtful David: I like everything about Melvin Bragg’s show except Melvin Bragg. He has a milder version of Charlie Rose’s tendency to interject too much when he should be letting the experts lead the discussion (a much milder version).

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @dedc79:

    He takes himself way too seriously.

    The Clintons weren’t and aren’t always on the up and up but the preening sanctimony of Clinton critics always made me like the Clintons more, not less.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    In happier news, G just got offered a job! It’s a part-time job with crappy pay, but it’s in the field he’s switching careers to (library science) and it’s in one of the best local library systems. It was actually super-competitive (they had 50 people test, 12 interviews, and 4 open positions) so we’re pretty excited.

  40. 40.

    Brachiator

    You are a partisan. I am not. You’re a Democrats. I’m an independent. Those are facts, not insults. And not an act.

    Really don’t give a shit. He is to be judged by the quality, or lack of quality, of his “journalism,” not by any label he chooses or disdains.

    @Gimlet

    Victor David Hanson

    Isn’t he the guy with the weird fetish for the ancient Spartans?

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    The gun store verdict: minor bought a gun and shot two officers. They sued. Store didn’t check the purchaser.

    STORE IS GUILTY.

    ETA: Milwaukee. But woo hoo!

  42. 42.

    trollhattan

    @Brachiator:
    Yup. And he’s got a few acres of grapes in the San Joaquin Valley so is an expert in agriculture and water politics. Just ask him.

  45. 45.

    Pogonip

    @gratuitous: I have what Americans perceive as a neutral accent. When I speak Spanish to native Spanish speakers I can tell they’re struggling with my heavy foreign accent. Accents are in the ear of the behearer.

  49. 49.

    Elizabelle

    Andy Borowitz is way smarter than Ron Fournier.

    LAS VEGAS (The Borowitz Report)—If Tuesday night’s Democratic Presidential debate fails to produce any memorable fireworks in the early going, CNN will “cut away to whatever Donald Trump is doing,” the network’s president, Jeff Zucker, confirmed.

    “Obviously, we have instructed our moderators to goad the Democrats into attacking each other as personally as possible,” Zucker told reporters at CNN headquarters. “But if ten, fifteen, twenty minutes go by, and they’re just talking about the issues and so forth, we’re going to Trump.”

    ….“As news professionals, we have an obligation to show our audience what they want to see,” Zucker said. “So the Democrats should be aware that, as far as tonight goes, they are on a very short leash.”

  50. 50.

    mdblanche

    Oh please. Fournier’s Republican leanings are even more obvious than most of his ilk’s.

  51. 51.

    Mike J

    @Elizabelle:

    “Obviously, we have instructed our moderators to goad the Democrats into attacking each other as personally as possible,”

    I know this is a joke, but I remember how ANGRY Republicans were in 2008 when Democrats didn’t physically attack each others with chairs.

  52. 52.

    Thoughtful David

    @dedc79:

    I agree he sometimes does jump over one of his panelists, but usually I see it as a way to steer the talk back on track and to make sure the time doesn’t get away. There have been some times I have been irritated with him for doing it but those times are pretty rare. Nonetheless, the show is great.

  54. 54.

    Betty Cracker

    From further down Sargent’s Twitter feed:

    Greg Sargent
    6h6 hours ago
    Greg Sargent ‏@ThePlumLineGS

    @digby56 feels to me like there’s an anti-Hillary sentiment on the left that’s getting channeled into Draft Biden 1/2

    @digby56 folks still angry at HRC/Clintons for attacking Obama in 2008 see Biden as rightful custodian of O’s legacy 2/2

    I think there’s some truth to that.

  57. 57.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Gimlet: But even that is another ruse, hardly a generic “conservative”, the man is an out and out white supremacist, male supremacist, and reactionary. (And would-be intellectual crank.)

  59. 59.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Gimlet: Typical Christian conversion narrative. “I was an atheist”, “I was a Jew”, “I was a Roman Catholic” until I saw the light.

  60. 60.

    Cacti

    Fournier is the type of “independent” who believes “bipartisanship” consists of Democrats giving Republicans everything they want.

    Pass.

  61. 61.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sounds exciting. Hopes he finds the job fulfilling (and stable). I picture the library as this kind of exciting, dynamic place, because the public flocks to good libraries.

  62. 62.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Emma: Weren’t there some comics about heroic librarians (steampunk/mystical, not historical)? I can’t recall what they were called but they were fun.

  63. 63.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Cacti: From his tweet, seems more like he wouldn’t be satisfied until they have been harried from the land, their homes burned, their sacred places defiled, and their names obliterated from monument and memory.

  64. 64.

    Turgidson

    @RaflW:

    All I did was use Twitter to try to encourage Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier the help he needs for his quite obvious case of head trauma, which forces him to write the same column over and over (Obama can’t lead!) regardless of context, facts, or anything else, and then act as if he’s penned the greatest piece of political journalism since John Stuart Mill.

    For that act of concern and kindness I was blocked. Now I just mock him indirectly.

  65. 65.

    LeonS

    @Baud: Seriously. An argument should be just as strong or weak regardless of who makes it. As a corollary: there is no political disagreement where “you are a partisan” is a material point.

  66. 66.

    Turgidson

    @Kay:

    Exactly. I have never been more supportive of Hillary than I’ve become the past few months. She hasn’t always been easy to like, but watching the likes of Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier try to bring her down over trumped-up bullshit just for the sport of it has made me into something of a fan.

  70. 70.

    Patricia Kayden

    “You’re a Democrats”

    And Fournier is a Republican. So? He must be so upset that the Benghazi and email “scandals” are falling apart for his boys.

  71. 71.

    Turgidson

    @Patricia Kayden:

    He doesn’t have enough self-awareness to realize that those “scandals” are falling apart. They’re huge, consequential stories because he says so, dammit.

  73. 73.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Elizabelle: No, when you click on the tweet, you’ll see the full context. Apparently Fournier is upset that Greg Sargent is questioning the validity of the email “scandal”. That must have set Fournier’s teeth on edge. I wonder how he’ll cope when Secretary Clinton wins next November. That should be fun.

  75. 75.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Roger Moore: Yes, Read or Die and ROD the TV as well, I definitely approve!

    I was totally thinking of something American I had seen. (R.O.D. has their own kind of Independence Day scene involving the white house and the POTUS … not going to spoil but it was kind of unforgettable.)

  77. 77.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Turgidson: She’s also doing a much better job Dem-whispering than she did in 2008. She’s not even promising more of the same, she’s talking about fighting for progress. Back in 2008 I just remember the 90’s Nostalgia Chorus line and a lot of nasty shit about why BO can’t win.

  78. 78.

    rk

    @Betty Cracker:

    If Obama can get over it and appoint her secretary of state then so can everyone else. She was incredibly loyal after the primary was over and Bill Clinton gave a wonderful speech at the Democratic convention in 2012. It’s ridiculous to hold anything against her on Obama’s behalf at this point.
    What I did not like about her was the incompetent buffoons she surrounded herself with (Mark Penn?). Otherwise she’s smart, knows her stuff inside out, works harder than most of the idiots in congress and is totally capable of being a good president. She tried really hard in the 90s with healthcare reform, but was stymied by jackass republicans. And I say this as a person who did not support her, disliked her in 2007 and was totally pro Obama.

  81. 81.

    Patrick

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I wonder why people like Fournier think the email issue is a scandal? Because of national security may or may not have been at risk? If so, was Fournier at least as outraged when George W Bush declassified classified information when it suited him just to get the approval ratings up for the Iraq war?

  83. 83.

    boatboy_srq

    I’m beginning to think “Independent” is actually codespeak for “Republican, but not quite ready to drink the Teahad Kool-Aid.”

  84. 84.

    jl

    OG Fournier goes big brave and bold. A man’s man, striding the blasts for fortune.

    I was hoping he got in some shouting match with Cole. That would be big fun.
    But he’s just going apeshit over a statement of the obvioius by some pundit. So… same old same old… whatever…

  85. 85.

    A guy

    Omnes- that you think that I do nothing to make the world a better place does not excuse the headline

  88. 88.

    A guy

    Omnes- well they should care. I will admit I’ve dropped the f bomb here. I shouldn’t have and I’m embarrassed for it. This blog I think could have a lot to offer. I was attracted here because it’s run by a West Virginian. But man, it’s hard. This is nothing but a place of anger. That’s sad if the goal is to bring peace.

  90. 90.

    Jim Filyaw

    Fournier an independent? Sure, like Pat Caddell, Doug Schoen, and Joe Lieberman are Democrats.

  92. 92.

    danielx

    You are a partisan. I am not. You’re a Democrats. I’m an independent. Those are facts, not insults. And not an act.

    Right. And I don’t piss water, but rather 18 year old Macallan single malt and am consequently in very high demand for parties.

    Jesus, what a tool.

  101. 101.

    My Truth Hurts

    “You’re a Democrats” = “You are (a) rat(s)”

    No partisan here. Move along, move along.

  102. 102.

    Julia Grey

    In a further sidebar further down the tweet column there, a guy wants to know if Greg Sargent has ever written a negative article about Hillary’s email problem (Sargent has already noted that he has written at least 4 negative articles on Clinton, but this guy is not satisfied:

    @ThePlumLineGS @ron_fournier on her emails Greg.On her server. Every statement she's made has been proven false. And she knew that when made— mcbob (@mcbob) October 13, 2015

    So this is the litmus test in this guy’s world: if you have not written that “every statement she’s made on the emails has been a lie,” you are a hopelessly unreliable journalist, blinded by partisanship.

    So apparently you’re supposed to subscribe wholeheartedly to every REPUBLICAN opinion or fantasy or you will not be considered an “independent” or unbiased observer. Like Ronnie.

    The snide, insinuating stuff This Fking Guy wrote about Al Gore was my first inkling that the AP was no longer going to sustain the illusion of objectivity in their coverage of the 2000 campaign. That’s how long TFG’s been in the Republican propaganda business.

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