Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

A consequence of cucumbers

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

He really is that stupid.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Second rate reporter says what?

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

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

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Bark louder, little dog.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: Two More Repubs “Suspend” Themselves

Open Thread: Two More Repubs “Suspend” Themselves

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christie whines sheneman

(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)
.

Hardly a game-changer (barely a surprise), but Chris “Krispie” Christie and Carly “Baby Parts” Fiorina have officially suspended their campaigns.

NBC, on Christie:

… The day-long delay in formally announcing his departure from the race was in part due to waiting for the nearly 50 staffers to come together in New Jersey for a personal meeting where Christie could give his thanks directly…

… also to give the media time to lose interest and wander off, in case Christie started screaming at the poor minions. Fortunately, by shivving Rubio so effectively, he should’ve guaranteed himself a nice cushy schedule of private planes and high-dollar hotel rooms while backing up either Trump or Jeb for the next few months. If only because he’s the camel in the old political proverb about keeping him inside the tent, pissing out.

iCarly, per Yahoo News:

… “While I suspend my candidacy today, I will continue to travel this country and fight for those Americans who refuse to settle for the way things are and a status quo that no longer works for them,” Fiorina wrote in a statement released Wednesday, one day after finishing in 7th place in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.

Fiorina vowed to continue fighting against the forces of crony capitalism that she warned in her campaign have led to an unfair partnership between government and the rich and powerful, while disadvantaging normal working class Americans. The only woman candidate in the Republican primary contest, Fiorina also encouraged women and girls to define feminism on their own terms…

That’s a lot of delusion/dishonesty to pack into two paragraphs, but then, Fiorina’s a pro at both. I always assumed she was actually running for vice president — Palin Mk II — but which of the remaining Repub boys would offer for her?
***********
Apart from schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    Jeffro

    No one left in the race will pick either of these two jerks for VP, so they may as well look for other work.

    Wait…either would make Cruz look sociable, just by comparison. So ok, he might pick one of them.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    After evaluating how this primary is going, I’ve decided my best strategy is to focus on voters between the ages of 39 years, 8 months and 41 years, 3 months, and 6 days. If I can establish a beachhead with these “in betweeners,” I’ll be able to expand out from there into Hillary’s and Bernie’s base voters.

  4. 4.

    Turgidson

    Christie is hoping to be on the next GOP president’s Attorney General shortlist, I would think. Let’s hope he’s waiting at least another 8 years or so for that opportunity.

    I will give Big Chicken props for fragging Rubio on his way out. Much obliged, Big Chicken.

  5. 5.

    Major Major Major Major

    Regarding Paul In KY’s earlier question, this is San Francisco. They can evict you for sneezing. My second in two years, actually. Can’t buy your way out of it if you tried.

    Or, as the cool kids would say: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

  6. 6.

    Major Major Major Major

    Oh yeah speaking of pizza my friend’s book hits today, Kirkus starred review and everything, apparently I’m 50% of a character so I’m dreading reading it. The launch party has $500 of pizza. Open bar though.

  9. 9.

    khead

    Here’s a question for Balloon Juice. Consider this the Family Feud bonus round.

    How many indoor cats are too many?

  13. 13.

    Iowa Old Lady

    After commenting on free college tuition in the previous thread, I realized I don’t know what I’m talking about. No surprise to the rest of you, I know. But would this be for public universities only? If so, those are state run now. So how do the feds interact with that system to make tuition free? Are private schools included, no matter what the cost? I have no idea, so I’ll shut up.

  18. 18.

    jl

    I will perform a quiet and very quick remembrance and mourning ceremony for 2 thugs who had no chance to win, but were capable of doing great harm to the GOP cause while still candidates.

    OK, done. Can check that off.

    So, who is this Pawhacky dude, and what did he do?

    Edit: I will miss Christie and his heavy leaden blows on the campaign trail, though. I will.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @lamh36: I should have explained that “in betweeners” don’t include Juicers. I’m completely taking all of your votes for granted.

  25. 25.

    beltane

    @jl: Fiorina was already irrelevant, but Chris Christie was just coming into his own. The next debate will just be four crazy people and Donald Trump.

  26. 26.

    CaseyL

    Christie shivving Rubio, and delaying his announcement so he could tell his campaign workers first… every so often, a decent human being tries to peek out from his eyes. Ah, well.

    Open thread: I am icing my butt and my right knee, after being hit by a truck (!) while crossing the street this morning on my way to work.

    Obviously, I wasn’t hit full on, or at top speed, or I would be in no condition to tell the tale. He saw me at the last instant while I was running like the wind to get onto the sidewalk- so the corner of the truck swiped me, sent me sprawling and rolling onto the sidewalk. I felt reasonably fine, but figured to wait a couple days before assessing damage since it can take that long for soft tissue injuries to manifest.

    About an hour ago I started to feel bruised and achy, so left work early, came home, and now… I think I have a bone bruise deep in one buttock, and my right knee feels slightly wrenched.

    (Yes, I got the driver’s contact info. Told him if he didn’t hear from me by the weekend I was probably fine.)

  27. 27.

    jl

    @beltane:

    I read that Christie kept up the tough guy stance in statements to reporters. Something like “Aww fug dat shid, I gah no regrets I gah beddah things a do”.

    First person I regret leaving. He could leave such wreckage in his wake.

    I guess, his sugar daddy pulled the plug. Except for Trump, that is what it comes down to with these people.

  29. 29.

    dedc79

    To Fiorina’s credit, at least she helped bring attention to the illegal conduct of two anti-abortion zealots, paving the way for their indictment. Just as she intended….

  31. 31.

    Seanly

    Chris “Krispie” Christie and Carly “Baby Parts” Fiorina

    I’m so using those names & nicknames for customizing my soldiers in XCOM2. I suppose I should do a Klown Kar Squad – Ted “The Creep” Cruz, Donald “The Yam” Trump, and Rick “Frothy Discharge” Santorum.

  33. 33.

    lamh36

    For your Black History Viewing Pleasure

    check out this PBS doc called: Our American Family:The Clarks
    “A Black family with 7 children, experiences the Great Depression, WWII and racial tension”

    Or Independent Lens doc about Misty Copeland: A Ballerina’s Tale

    Few dancers make it to the highest levels of classical ballet; of that already small number only a fraction of them are black women. Misty Copeland pulled herself up the ladder at American Ballet Theater from studio company to featured soloist. Watch her rise in A Ballerina’s Tale.

    Next week’s Indpendent Lense will be on The Black Panthers

  34. 34.

    jl

    @Baud: Sorry to hear that. I thought your very classy terrific and first rate, the BEST! cheap rot gut and P 0 RN O Z would have been enough.

    And you unlike Trump were doing pesonal demos on how to use them. Wunner what went wrong?

  36. 36.

    rk

    I’m not sure that it was Christie who destroyed Rubio. Rubio pretty much did this to himself. No one forced him to repeat himself like a parrot (yes I’m old fashioned, none of these glitchy robot analogies for me). How delusional and self unaware is Rubio that he thinks he can run for president with his anxiety issues? Sooner or later he would have imploded. If not Christie, then Trump would have finished him off. Christie just acted as a catalyst.

  38. 38.

    jl

    @rk: I dunno, a self-respecting parrot with any education at all would have put more variety into it. And I did have a room mate who owned a parrot long ago, a really big parrot, so I have some experience with parrots. He got rid of it after it started, bit by bit, eating the house. Rubio can’t compete with a parrot on that point either.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I think Nora Ephron’s rule was that if you were going to base an unflattering character on an actual person, you should always give the character a very, very small peni$ so the person will be reluctant to complain about how you portrayed them.

    But, yeah, I don’t envy you. It’s like having to watch yourself on video when you didn’t know there was a camera.

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @CaseyL:

    Go get checked out. Blood clots are a bitch and can be fatal. The at fault driver’s insurance will have a med pay benefit that the hospital/provider can bill directly.

  43. 43.

    CaseyL

    @Baud: @Iowa Old Lady: Thanks! One of my kitties, who is a very determined lapcat, has insisted on curling up on me despite 2 icepacks and a laptop being in the way. She’s perilously near the icepack on the knee, and I’m wondering what’ll happen when chill penetrates her fur.

  45. 45.

    CaseyL

    @MomSense: @Mnemosyne: I really and truly appreciate the concern, but except for the bruise on my butt and the ache in my knee I feel fine. I didn’t land on my head, or on my side, or on anything bony. If things are worse tomorrow morning I will absolutely go to urgent care or even an ER.

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @CaseyL: That’s terribly scary! So glad you are (mostly) okay.

    My mom used to say you hurt the most on “the day after the day after”. I have always found that to be true. By her prediction, that would make Friday your worst day.

  49. 49.

    Calouste

    @rk: The most amazing thing IMO wasn’t that Christie called out Rubio after his third repetition of the phrase. It was that Rubio repeated the phrase for a fourth time after he had already been called out for repeating it three times. That was spectacularly incompetent and unselfaware.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    The Giant Evil Corporation has an internal employee website, and every day they’re featuring an interview with a different AA executive or employee who works here. I don’t remember them doing that last year, but I like it.

    Also, a (white) Facebook friend is posting links to information about famous AA’s of Chicago every day this month. Obviously, there are probably enough people to fill up the whole year.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @CaseyL:

    My doctor got mad at me for not going to urgent care after a bike accident where I had a truly impressive handlebar-shaped bruise. Apparently I could have bruised or damaged my spleen without realizing it. So I’m just passing her concern on to you.

    (Though she does sometimes lack tact. After I told her my stepbrother had died of lung cancer, she told me all of her stories of her nonsmoking, nonsymptomatic patients who got lung cancer and died. Awesome, doc, just what I needed to hear.)

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Am so old can remember back to when all the female non-custodial, non-secretarial employees were segregated to working out of one building only at said company.

  54. 54.

    Roger Moore

    @Turgidson:

    Hopefully he’ll also lose his Senate seat this November, but in Kentucky I doubt it.

    Of course he will. He’ll be successfully primaried by a crazy Tea Partier who’s upset because he’s insufficiently conservative.

  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    @CaseyL:

    She’s perilously near the icepack on the knee, and I’m wondering what’ll happen when chill penetrates her fur.

    If it’s really bothering her, she’ll move. I’ve never met a cat who would stay on a lap if it were genuinely uncomfortable.

  57. 57.

    CaseyL

    @Mnemosyne:

    After I told her my stepbrother had died of lung cancer, she told me all of her stories of her nonsmoking, nonsymptomatic patients who got lung cancer and died. Awesome, doc, just what I needed to hear.

    Maybe she thought you either blamed your stepbrother (if he was a smoker) or blamed the universe (if he wasn’t a smoker), and wanted you to know that…um… shit happens?

    Doctors aren’t really very good at expressing sympathy; they’re too interested in the mechanism of what’s happening. That’s why they have nurses, who can connect to patients on a human level.

  58. 58.

    PJ

    @CaseyL: You need to go see a doctor now. If you are in fact injured, the damage may not manifest itself right away, but if you need to litigate to recover damages, the fact that you did not go to a hospital will be used against you.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    A book may be coming out about that (I think) next year. It turns out that there were an unexpected number of previously unknown designers and inbetweeners who were quietly promoted from that building. Still a sadly small number, but more than previously known. I can’t say more because a publication date has not been announced.

    Also, too, to get back to Black History Month at the GEC, animator Floyd Norman jokes that he’s the last living animator to have worked on “Snow White” because he helped do cleanup for an unused sequence that was eventually used on TV.

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    Swerving back to the topic of books, I started reading commenter JoyceH’s Regency romance “A Feather To Fly With” over the weekend and I’m really enjoying it. If you like Georgette Heyer or the old Signet Regency romances, you’ll like it.

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    Posted this on an earlier thread, but that conversation was so dominated by the primary aftermath, it may have been overlooked there. So, an early Valentine’s Day tidbit.

    Internet affectionally comes through.

    A 93-year-old World War II veteran from the United States embraced his wartime girlfriend in Australia in their reunion Wednesday after more than 70 years apart.
    [snip]
    Last year, Morris asked one of her sons to look for Thomas online, and they found his name featured in an article about D-Day that ran in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper.

    Thomas and Morris reconnected via Skype. After their story went public, hundreds of people made donations to help fund Thomas’ trip to Australia from his hometown in Virginia Beach. Source

  66. 66.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Sounds like the Oregon standoff may be ending. @JJMacNab seems to have an audio feed, from which I quote:

    Unconfirmed activity at the Malheur Refuge (This one has a Facebook entry attached)

    The live audio feed from the Refuge is heartwrenching.

    FBI: “Put your weapon down David. Don’t make this situation worse.”

    Sandy: “Don’t come any closer.”

    Sandy begged someone not to threaten the feds.

    Oh god. Gunfire.

    FBI: “Step away from the vehicle.”

    FBI: Come out with your hands up and everything will be fine.

    FBI: Get out of the vehicle.

    ****
    That’s the latest. Happening now.

  68. 68.

    Mandalay

    Someone should tell Carly? that she is not even close in her bizarre definition of “feminist”…

    A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts.

    WTF?

  72. 72.

    Cheryl Rofer

    The occupiers are sounding pretty hysterical. David Frye is screaming “Go home, go home.” A lot about how they haven’t broken any laws, peacefully assembling, first amendment rights. Want supporters to come to help.

    Sounds like the vehicles are slowly moving in.

  73. 73.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    It’s really alarming. The chick screaming is hurting my ears (and my brain). I added this to the Ferguson thread. Without a link to here though.

    @redshirt: I’m cool with that.

  78. 78.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Mandalay: I understand, but I’m getting pissed off listening to this, and I overreacted. I’m a masochist.

    @Cheryl Rofer: They’ve called Matt Shea (who?) also. They are too fucking stupid to just surrender, so no one has to get hurt.

  84. 84.

    redshirt

    @Mandalay: It was meta, perhaps you didn’t get it.

    Regardless, we have an ongoing insurrection on our hands. Both specific to the Bundy situation, and in general with the continuation of the Civil War with Winguts V. Civilization this time. The stakes are pretty high. I’m sick of coddling.

  85. 85.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Michelle Fiore (NV – RWNJ) is on the phone. She wants to talk to the FBI. I’ve been hearing (probably) FBI voices in the background, but the occupiers have been screaming and crying so I can’t understand them.

    Fiore wants to be the negotiator. “Keep cool heads, and I want FBI on the phone.”

    Occupiers say there is a drone and snipers on the hill.

  89. 89.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Cheryl Rofer: Crazy is too mild. These people are insane. They are delusional to believe they are not subject to arrest. It’s making me a little crazy too.

  90. 90.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Fiore is at the Portland airport. She will let the FBI take her to the refuge to negotiate a solution, peacefully with no bloodshed. (more or less a quote from her)

    Wondering how it is that she knew to come to Portland.

    FBI Portland says that one of the occupiers went beyond the barricades in an ATV this afternoon, wouldn’t respond to agents.

  93. 93.

    Anonymous At Work

    Fiorna’s role in the race was to be non-man cover for the Republicans to trash Hillary without being “misogynistic” because, see!, they had a non-man candidate as well. If she’s gone and not the VP, they’ll have to be subtle (gods help them) about insulting Hillary. Anyone wanna take odds on how well they’ll do?

  94. 94.

    Sondra

    @Turgidson: I would have paid good money to see Christy stay in the game as the sniper who picks off the other candidates one by one. The way he dispatched Rubio was a thing of beauty . He was fast, efficient and deadly: all characteristics which have been on display in NJ for years but to which the rest of us out here in campaign land have not been treated. Hate him as a potential POTUS but love him as the deadly Don Rickles of the GOP debate team.

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