Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

T R E 4 5 O N

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

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

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

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

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Late Night Open Thread: Everyone’s A Cynic Now

Late Night Open Thread: Everyone’s A Cynic Now

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It is tree-pollen season here, and while I have a bunch of Serious Constructive articles tabbed up to post about, all I want to do is take another mouth-breathing, stunned-into-submission nap!

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  1. 1.

    EBT

    A friend is hooking me up with an old wacom tablet. Soon my interactive fiction will have awful pictures to go along with my not very good writing!

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    @EBT:

    Hey, Allie Brosh has made an entire career out of drawing awful pictures, as has Randall Munroe. Drawing skills are no longer required to have a successful drawing career.

  4. 4.

    prob50

    Is that really O’Reilly sitting there next to Trump?

    Doesn’t look fat enough, though.

  5. 5.

    EBT

    @Mnemosyne: If I could draw as well as Allie Brosh I should be so lucky. We shall see what I can reasonably do. Currently I am thinking a picture for every “page” turn, so I need to make about 1200 so far. I know that a simple style can still be descriptive, I just need to develop one.

  6. 6.

    amk

    my fav 23rena williams tweet.

    Serena Williams won a grand slam while she was pregnant so every man should probably shut up about everything forever.— Travon Free (@Travon) April 19, 2017

  8. 8.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Serious criminal evidence against Mitch McConnell would scare me. He is the most corrupt and ruthless asshole in our government who is actually competent and in a position of power. He would happily destroy everything to protect himself.

    On the other hand, if he were to be gotten rid of… it would be a drastic realignment of our political landscape.

  9. 9.

    TheMightyTrowel

    I just found a tiny (dead) caterpillar in my tea. I found it with my mouth. Today sucks.

  10. 10.

    Major Major Major Major

    It is tree-pollen season here, and while I have a bunch of Serious Constructive articles tabbed up to post about, all I want to do is take another mouth-breathing, stunned-into-submission nap!

    My husband got eaten alive by mosquitoes overnight and is doing basically the same thing. No, it’s not bedbugs.

  11. 11.

    Keith P.

    Amazingly, Bill O’Reilly is a cranky dickhead even when he’s supposedly enjoying a baseball game. And he makes Donald Trump look downright festive.

  12. 12.

    Redshift

    I am very glad that tree pollen doesn’t seem to bother me much. Before climate change, I used to have some trouble from flower pollen in the early spring, and a miserable time from weeds in the late summer/really fall.

    Now I have a miserable stretch in the early spring, a bit of a break right now, and then I pretty much live on claritin again through the summer and fall.

  13. 13.

    prob50

    It’s truly instructive how out-of-sync Trump’s “wave” is with the rest of the crowd

  16. 16.

    prob50

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    I just found a tiny (dead) caterpillar in my tea.

    I can’t decide if that was more or less disgusting than finding a live ‘pillar’ would have been. I suppose ‘live’ might speak to the healthfulness or purity of the product, but still, IIIICCCKK!

  18. 18.

    Ian

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    Had the Dems thrown a few more thousands of dollars at Bruce Lundsford in 2008, who came as close as any to McConnell, history would be very, very different now.

  19. 19.

    Major Major Major Major

    @EBT: I just remembered my birthday is in two weeks, so ??

    The Intuitos Comic looks like a decent request for something from The Whole Family.

    Edited to fix autocorrect, which I guess knows I own quicken.

  20. 20.

    TS

    I’ve never joined twitter. Living with somewhat of a short fuse, I am sure I would tweet in anger and regret it the second after the tweet was posted.

    Reading, but not yet fully comprehending the mass of information in the previous thread from Adam – if Trump and his few and varied appointees stopped using twitter the world would be a safer and saner place. I find it batsh!t crazy that world politics is being played out in sentences (well groups of words) of 140 characters or less.

  22. 22.

    Major Major Major Major

    @TS:

    I’ve never joined twitter. Living with somewhat of a short fuse, I am sure I would tweet in anger and regret it the second after the tweet was posted.

    You’d go crazy in five seconds, you’re right. I’ve got a non-short fuse (not that it’s especially long) and *i* stopped using twitter like a year ago except in rare circumstances like checking breaking news or tweeting a bad pun I came up with.

    if Trump and his few and varied appointees stopped using twitter the world would be a safer and saner place. I find it batsh!t crazy that world politics is being played out in sentences (well groups of words) of 140 characters or less.

    And to think I rolled my eyes at people who foresaw twitter, when it launched, as a force to radically cheapen and stultify our way of communicating. I didn’t see it lasting two years.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    Cannot decide if this edible is too clever by half or just plain silly. Found during random internet travels.

    Yes, it’s a sushi donut (that’s rice under the fish flesh, not dough, for the edification of those already recoiling). Imagine it’s a PITA to eat without a knife and fork.

  25. 25.

    Keith P.

    @amk: Yes, while pregnant in my 3rd trimester. I also played tennis a day after aborting a (different) 3rd trimester fetus..

  28. 28.

    Anne Laurie

    @TS:

    I’ve never joined twitter. Living with somewhat of a short fuse, I am sure I would tweet in anger and regret it the second after the tweet was posted.

    Fortunately for me (if not for you guys), one can *read* twitter without having to join it.

    I agree some other people — lookin’ at you, Donald — should know their limitations, or have their tiny thumbs forcibly removed from short-form social media. On the other hand, I love the immediacy of Twitter; you can get the whole range of voices on any topic just by reading what the right users re-tweet. Like an RSS feed, but for those of us with ADHD!

  30. 30.

    TenguPhule

    @Redshift:

    and a miserable time from weeds in the late summer/really fall.

    Thanks to Trump you may not have to worry about that ever again.

    And I really wish that was the punchline to a joke instead.

  33. 33.

    TS

    @Anne Laurie:

    Fortunately for me (if not for you guys), one can *read* twitter without having to join it.

    I do the same – some of the humor is a delight to read – the comparisons, however, between the way the current admin uses twitter and the way members of the Obama admin used it – are stark. WWIII won’t need an assassination to start it – 140 characters of stupid will suffice.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    A good Stonekettle Station blogpost I’m reading as I drink my first cuppa joe.

    The Hubris of Ignorance

    Might be a good antidote to yesterday’s article from Wyoming County, NY, where cows outnumber (and probably out-intelligent) the local rubes. Who majority-voted for Trump and muse about his strengths as possibilities as they collect food at a government-funded foodbank.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    Beginning at 6 a.m.Eastern on Friday, TCM is showing all eight Torchy Blane movies. Maybe not high art but certainly entertaining in their own right. Glenda Farrell elevates the lead role above the two-dimensional. Her portrayal of Torchy was said to be the inspiration for the creation of comics’ Lois Lane by those kids in Cleveland.

    Looking ahead into the weekend, Brute Force airs at 10 a.m. on Sunday. Gritty prison drama. Slight physiqued Hume Cronyn gets to strut his stuff as a vicious and sadistic captain of the guards, and even is given a fight scene versus burly Burt Lancaster.

    5:45 p.m. Sunday, Witness For the Prosecution. ’nuff said.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    The Buffalo News. I guess these are the late and unlamented (here) Tim Russert’s real man of the people types. Perry, NY has hit my “don’t even think of spending money there” map.

    Even at Wyoming County food bank, unwavering support for Trump

    PERRY – The crowd at a monthly food pantry in this Wyoming County town of about 4,500 turned out to be a perfect microcosm of the most pro-Trump county in New York, where 72 percent of voters pulled the lever for the rebellious Republican candidate for president.

    Waiting to gather their food from a nonprofit that might have to shut down if President Trump’s budget becomes law, seven out of 10 people interviewed last week said Trump was still their man, their president, no matter what his budget says.

    “I’d vote for him again 20 more times if I could,” said Hal McWilliams, 59, a self-employed contractor from Portageville. “Build the wall! …Democrats do everything in their power to destroy this country. Hillary Clinton was everything I am against. She was out to destroy the culture that made this country: Hard work, guns, freedom.”

    Voters talk like that in every corner of this county of rolling farmland just east of East Aurora, where the 40,000 human residents are, according to federal statistics, outnumbered by the cows by a margin of about 2 1/2 to 1.

    …. Community Action runs a host of programs, from job training to rental assistance to housing weatherization, all funded by the Community Services Block Grant and other federal programs that Trump wants to eliminate or dramatically cut.

    That seemed to be of little concern to most of the people packing their pickups with fresh produce and other items at last week’s food bank.

    Told that the food bank was in danger, McWilliams shrugged and said: “I grow most of my own food anyway.”

    So he’s just freeloading then? Because he did not plan to grow enough food (and he’s an itinerant contractor, anyhoos.) Picking up a strong dudebro whiff off Mr. McWilliams.

    …. What matters more to Clark is what he sees from the new president day in and day out.

    “He’s about action,” said Clark, who didn’t vote for Trump but said he would do so if he could vote again now. “I believe he’s doing pretty much everything he promised to do.”

    That’s what Keith and Bobbi Muhlenbeck think, too.

    “We love him,” said Keith Muhlenbeck, 46. “We support him in everything he’s doing. He’s a businessman who knows how to get things done, and you can tell he has America’s best interests at heart.”

    The Russian intercepts will prove it.

    … As for Trump’s proposed budget cuts, Muhlenbeck doesn’t worry that the food bank his family depends on will be forced to shut down.

    “I’m sure they’ll find the money somewhere,” he said.

    Magical fucking non-thinkers.

    The line at the food bank should come as no surprise, given the state of the Wyoming County economy. Heavily dependent on agriculture, the local job market swings with the seasons. The unemployment rate sank to a mere 4.3 percent last August, but then shot up to 7.7 percent in February.

    Beyond the farms, the county lost a quarter of its manufacturing jobs over the past decade, and locals complain that young people continue to move away in pursuit of the jobs they can’t find here. The Census Bureau estimates that the county has lost 3.3 percent of its population in this decade alone, continuing a 20-year trend that has seen the county shrink by 7.2 percent.

    In other words, Wyoming County is much like the struggling rural counties of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin that made Trump president.

    While Wyoming County has long been heavily Republican, Trump exceeded the vote total of the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, by 8 percentage points here, as voters embraced his promise of bringing back jobs that had disappeared.

    Again, the magical thinking Tinkerbell will get right on it.

    Locals – especially farmers – came to see Democrats as job-killers, several Wyoming county residents said last week. Farmers in particular pointed to an Obama-era regulation that expanded Clean Water Act protections to small wetlands and streams, a move that could have limited how farmers use the ponds and creeks on their own property.

    “When you talk about why Trump did so well here, it’s things like that,” said Daniel Leuer, supervisor of the Town of Middlebury.

    Trump quickly moved to repeal that Clean Water rule, and it’s those sorts of moves that make him popular here, said Rep. Chris Collins, R-Clarence, whose district includes Wyoming County.

    “These folks don’t like government,” said Collins, a strong Trump supporter who himself fought that Clean Water rule for years.

    I guess in time the foodbank will be the waterbank too.

    Maroons. Some of them probably got some education in school, but these interviewees are straight out of Fox News World central. Being around the stupidity must wear one down. Keep running, young ‘uns wanting to make a better life elsewhere.

    … Besides, people in Wyoming County could relate to Trump far better than they could Clinton, his Democratic opponent, said Tom Marquart of Marquart Brothers Farming, a dairy and produce farm in Gainesville.

    “Hillary and Trump, they live in a different world, but at least he knows what the other world is,” said Marquart, who thinks Trump inherited “a big mess” and is doing his best to clean it up.

    Despite Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, even some of the Bhutanese refugees who work as farm laborers here voted for Trump, said Pat Standish, founder of Angel Action, a Community Action effort that enlists volunteers to work on everything from early childhood education to emergency help for families in need.

    “One of them told me that Trump loved the country more than his party,” Standish said.

    These are Onion-grade delusional thinkers.

  40. 40.

    TS

    @Major Major Major Major: I would probably never get past sh!t posting.

    But speaking of twitter as we were – this is what I like about it

    @Stonekettle
    Trump knows more than the Generals
    But apparently not more than the Admirals when it comes to the location of the Korean Peninsula

    Jim does it so well

  41. 41.

    sukabi

    @Keith P.: hope you’re being sarcastic…not fun dealing with constant nausea, puking, headaches, and all the fun that goes along with hormonal changes.

  44. 44.

    Elizabelle

    @TenguPhule: h/t to TenguPhule.

    Was too lazy to go back and see where I’d read it, but did take note when you posted it yesterday.

    Desperately sad; depressing, really. Just have to find a way to co-exist with these types, and avoid becoming one.

  46. 46.

    GregB

    @Elizabelle:

    A few more profiles of these should unlock the secrets stored in their acorn sized brains.

    At least they are embracing the Biblical anti-Christ sent to destroy them.

  47. 47.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Major Major Major Major:

    We visited the Temple of Literature, a 1000-year-old Confucian college.

    The time I went there, turned out to be university graduation day. All the students thought it was hilarious that a Euro dude with a Ho Chi Minh beard was wandering around and wanted me in their class photographs.

  49. 49.

    Elizabelle

    @GregB: It’s an antidote to what the Vichy media tries to sell us.

    Acorn. Something that can grow and change and become stronger.

  50. 50.

    Cosima

    @TheMightyTrowel: If you’re eating, read no further (I’ve warned you): Along the same lines, but much worse…….. Many years ago my ex-husband, the mighty Republican misogynist killer-of-wild-animals (and psyches), shot a very large caribou. He brought its skull/rack home and tossed it in the spare room, meaning to clean it off and have it mounted. Months later when I was clearing the room to turn it into a nursery I found that it was crawling with bugs, freaked and pitched it out into the yard for him to deal with. In a glorious show of the universe giving someone what they deserve, soon after that he was eating a cup-of-soup (the ones that were in Styrofoam containers, add boiling water, cover & leave a bit, then eat), and noticed that the cup was leaking, because it had lots of tiny holes at the bottom of it. Turned out that those bugs had eaten their way into the cup of soup, and pretty much all of the noodles that he’d been eating were actually larvae.

    I can think of many people in politics who I hope will soon be served similar karmic justice.

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    @Cosima: Bring back canned soups.

    Wow.

    How is little cosima? How is all working out with the classmate in need of emotional therapy?

    In Barcelona; glad someone else is up and commenting at this hour!

  52. 52.

    Cosima

    @Elizabelle: Little Cosima is doing much better, thank you. The other girl is in/out of school often these days for various infractions, and all staff are under strict instructions to keep them separate. Little C is enjoying her martial arts classes, hopefully feeling more empowered, and also feeling much more confident about going to staff when she feels threatened.

    I don’t know what the long-term solution will be for the other girl, but the children will soon start transitioning into academy (the equivalent of 7-12th grade), and I hope that there will be resources there to get her the help that she needs. I, personally, think that she would be better served by getting the therapeutic support that she needs, rather than attempting to mainstream her with a bunch of children who feel terrorised by her, but what do I know, I’m just a parent?!

    We’re all off to Dumfries/Galloway for a long weekend away this afternoon, so I’d better get to packing, which means my commenting must come to an end (I’ll check back before we leave, though). Hope that you’re enjoying Barcelona (if you are able to go, Ronda is hands-down my favourite place in Spain) — Spain is amazing.

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    @Cosima: Ronda! A man on the cruise ship recommended Ronda, and it’s on the “Must see” list.

    Hanging out with a pal who’s a French writer with a temporary flat in Barcelona. We are plotting for me to rent a car to see more of Spain. And why not a ferry to Morocco for a day or two? Ronda is on the list. Sounds incredible.

  54. 54.

    Cosima

    @Elizabelle: Ronda to Morocco is next on our list of trips when we venture outside the UK (maybe next spring), I even went so far as to look at places to stay in Morocco, but ultimately decided to put it off until our visa situation is a bit more resolved. I so love Ronda, and have some wonderful memories of that amazing city. You’ll love it. It is such an interesting mix of cultures, and the dramatic cliffs, and the bridge! Wow. If you, as so many other American children did, read ‘Ferdinand the Bull’ when you were little you may gain new appreciation for it when you see that its illustrations very clearly show Ferdinand living in Ronda. Enjoy your time in Spain!

    Now I must be off!

  55. 55.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Elizabelle: Please put a warning tag before you reprint such tripe. I’m rooting for injuries for such stupid people. May their suffering be epic.

  57. 57.

    HRA

    @Elizabelle:

    Lord! I am really embarrassed now in considering my response yesterday to a comment about anyone from the Buffalo area should ask the county exec about building a wall.

    I am not really surprised at the Trump voters in Wyoming County. I looked up the map of voters for the election results a few weeks after the election and saw a lot more red than blue.in the state. The only major blue was NYC, the area of the Clinton residence and some Long Island locations.

    There was also a lot of anger at the Clintons coming to live in NYS and more anger when Guiliani dropped out the health reasons giving Hilary the win for senator.

    The question of the food bank or pantry being in jeopardy by not getting government aid is confusing when it also runs on donations. I know some people donate regularly. Once a year the USPS sets a yearly date for picking up donations of non-perishable food at our mailboxes. I set a big box of food every year out there.

    Going back to bed now. All of this worry over our country does not give me my proper sleep time.

  60. 60.

    Elizabelle

    @Patricia Kayden: I know. If these folks were hit by a plague of locusts, they might just think “protein!, that Trump provided.” If they are smart enough to consider it as an alternative food source. Which they might not be.

    @Cosima: Thank you for the head’s up re Ferdinand. Now I will be looking to score a copy of that classic, in Spanish. I love Ferdinand. Today I found a Spanish language cookbook with food and commentary from Alfred Hitchcock films. Will be fun to try to parse that out, and learn metric for the recipes.

    I hope your visa situation gets sorted out, and that you see Ronda again, and Morocco, post-haste. Also glad to hear that little c is thriving, and maybe packing up for a 3-day weekend too.

    @HRA: All the red exurbs. Something has gone so desperately wrong in our country. It may be coming to a head.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @evap: Thank you.

    Personally, I think now is the time to be seeing Cordoba, etc., before it heats up, but my friend is having a hugely creative month of writing. So no interference from me. I am just happy to be out of the US of A for a spell.

  62. 62.

    Bill

    That Trump, Bill-O gif is near perfect.

    The combined awkwardness and disdain leaps off the screen.

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