Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

The lights are all blinking red.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Morning (Not-Garden) Turkey Shoot Open Thread

Sunday Morning (Not-Garden) Turkey Shoot Open Thread

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If one must go about this mundane globe wearing a sign that says MOCK ME, one should endeavour to have it be a hand-crafted, gilt-edged, premiere-pricing version in bold Black Fraktur of true calfskin vellum…


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Apart from noting that Jane Austen would most certainly have approved of our japery, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?


Reader Interactions

176Comments

  1. 1.

    NobodySpecial

    God, they really are insecure, aren’t they? Everything about that whole thing screams I’M IMPORTANT, NOTICE ME!

    I’ll be so glad if any of them end up in jumpsuits.

  2. 2.

    satby

    The icing on the whole shit sammich is that he carries his own tourniquet and that he’s practiced putting it on himself. He thinks the world works like an episode of The Blacklist.

  5. 5.

    satby

    And good morning to everyone! Unexpected day off for me, the office called last night to tell me not to come in. So no rushing to get out the door the same time as my son is trying to leave, bonus!

    Edited to add: especially good morning to you rikyrah!

  6. 6.

    cynthia ackerman

    Freud: “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. [Sees Gorka’s toy collection] But this guy is one twisted fuck.”

  8. 8.

    Derelict

    Gotta carry TWO pistols!

    The fantasy world people like this must live in is terrifying. I wonder what he thinks he’s going to be doing with those if bullets ever start flying in his vicinity. If those bullets are intended for him (i.e., an assassination), he’d be dead before he even though about the guns or the tourniquet. If he’s just part of a crowd when a random nut opens fires, he’ll likely be grabbing the first toddler he sees to use as a human shield.

  9. 9.

    Anne Laurie

    @Derelict:

    If he’s just part of a crowd when a random nut opens fires, he’ll likely be grabbing the first toddler he sees to use as a human shield.

    Come to think of it, “human shield when the random ammosexual goes off” is probably the best use of a Sebastian Gorka…

  10. 10.

    MattF

    It’s a detail, but the left thumb in the pants pocket adds just that special soupçon of swagger.

  11. 11.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    We finally had Thanksgiving dinner last night, a success except that I burned the garlic toast twice(third time’s the charm). I played a little joke on the kid, by changing my computer speakers to the Echo Dot in the bathroom and started playing “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Well, that was a first.

    Put on a Korean movie. In the opening credits the English subtitling misspelled the name of the film.

  14. 14.

    Alain the site fixer

    @satby: thank you. Met with the Rev to review my mom’s life yesterday, prepping house for visitation and family staying here. It’s going to be a rough week but I will finally be able to rest and not stress next weekend.

  15. 15.

    lowtechcyclist

    I didn’t know Gorka could do something that would make him look even more like a one-man clown show than he’s already been. But dayum, he took it to a whole new level here.

  19. 19.

    burnspbesq

    @Derelict:

    Gotta carry TWO pistols

    Well, the first one could jam … since he probably knows fuck-all about how to clean and maintain it.

  23. 23.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Amir Khalid: yes! I miss this place and all you wonderful folks. I’m slowly getting use to having had my world ripped apart. It will be good to treat her with he reverence and respect she engendered in teachers around the world. And with that, must go start moving furniture to prep for people giving their respects. That’s Tuesday and Funeral and interment Wednesday, what would have been her birthday. ???

  25. 25.

    JGabriel

    Rita Konaev via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    Not pictured: a constant, almost existential need to overcompensate.

    She must be looking at the picture with the gun cropped out.

  26. 26.

    satby

    @Alain the site fixer: My dad passed away after an intense but brief battle with cancer. He was only 54, and no one was ready to admit he wasn’t going to survive. But at some point I realized that wishing he had survived in the state he was in was basically wishing for him to continue in unimaginable pain and suffering just to spare me from losing him, and that made it easier for me to accept his passing.
    Our parents live on in us, and they are free of suffering. She is with you Alain.
    Edited to remove redundancy

  30. 30.

    Jeffro

    Co-sign on that Jesse Singal idea…

    Anyway, this was just lovely to wake up to today: Elitists, Crybabies, and Junky Degrees-A Debate Over Higher Education Funding. In the WaPo of all places. Sure didn’t read like much of a “debate” to me…

    “Why does a kid go to a major university these days?” said Antenori, 51, a former Green Beret who served in the Arizona state legislature. “A lot of Republicans would say they go there to get brainwashed and learn how to become activists and basically go out in the world and cause trouble.”

    Hmmm…perhaps the reporters could have talked to a wide number of current college students, to hear straight from them about why they are attending college? Or go look up some easily available data, or at least a previous story from the Post? Perish the thought!

    State lawmakers blame the cuts on falling tax revenue during the recession; rising costs of other obligations, especially Medicaid and prisons; and the need to balance their budgets*. But even as prosperity has returned to many states, there is a growing partisan divide over how much to spend on higher education. Education advocates worry that conservative disdain threatens to undermine universities.

    *translation: we needed that money instead of raising taxes on the rich…we needed that money as the Boomer Bulge squeezes through, so we shortchanged higher ed spending…

    In July, a Pew Research Center study found that 58 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents believe colleges and universities have a negative effect “on the way things are going in the country,” up from 37 percent two years ago. Among Democrats, by contrast, 72 percent said they have a positive impact.

    Check and see how often anti-college and ‘safe space’ stories pop up on Fox News…there’s your ‘negative effect’…

    A Gallup poll in August found that a third of Republicans had confidence in universities, which they viewed as too liberal or political. Other studies show that overwhelming numbers of white working-class men do not believe a college degree is worth the cost.

    Great…then don’t go. Stay home and keep watching your precious Fox.

    A single year at many private universities costs more than the median U.S. household income of $59,000. Though most students receive financial aid, a four-year degree can cost more than a quarter-million dollars. Tuition at public universities has soared, too, and a degree can easily cost more than $100,000.

    This is just LA-ZY (in addition to being a bit of a bait-and-switch). Start with the crazy sticker prices of the Ivies, note in passing that most students receive financial aid but oh by the way, $59,000 x 4 = a quarter million dollars. And then ‘switch’ to talking about publics…which have a huge number of Pell Grant students…and community college transfer students…and no, a degree easily DOESN’T cost more than $100,000.

    Antenori views former president Barack Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer who taught at the University of Chicago Law School, as the embodiment of the liberal establishment. Antenori said liberal elites with fancy degrees who have been running Washington for so long have forgotten those who think differently.

    “I got functional degrees that helped me move up in the corporate world,” he said, crunching through the parched grass on his 40-acre ranch in the southeastern Arizona desert. Compact and muscular, wearing a red T-shirt and dusty work boots, he speaks with jackhammer bluntness.

    Antenori said many young people would be better off attending more affordable two-year community colleges that teach useful skills and turn out firefighters, electricians and others. Obama promoted that same idea, launching new efforts to boost community college and workplace training. But Antenori said he believes Obama pushed young people too hard toward four-year degrees.

    “It’s…it’s NOT THE SAME IDEA AS OBAMA, okay?!?!” UH HUH, as rikyrah would say…

    Antenori said when he was in high school in the 1980s, students were directed toward college or vocational training depending on their abilities.

    “The mind-set now is that everybody is going to be a doctor,” he said. “Instead of telling a kid whose art sucks, ‘You’re a crappy artist,’ they say, ‘Go follow your dream.’ ”
    “If you don’t do everything that their definition of society is, you’re somehow a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal cave man,” Antenori said.

    …said the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal cave man.

    Antenori was drawn to Trump, he said, because he was the “reverse of Obama,” an “anti-politically correct guy” whose attitude toward the status quo is “change it, fix it, get rid of it, crush it, slash it.”

    Even though Trump boasts of his Ivy League degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Antenori said he “had a different air about him.” Unlike Obama, Trump has not emphasized the importance of Americans going to college.

    UH HUH part 2

    Go read the whole thing, and then remember it’s important that these assholes not cut higher ed to fuel yet more tax cuts for the .01%

    I’m off to email the reporters, asking them if the pro-education side could perhaps lead off the “debate” next time

  31. 31.

    Paul

    Tourniquet instruction sheet:

    Wrap tightly around neck, tie to overhead sprinkler system, stand on stool, JUMP!

  33. 33.

    bemused

    @satby:

    I don’t think a vest like that has ever been in style more than two seconds even in the 70’s/80’s. It also looks like his shirt is a pale pink or maybe it just looks that way on my monitor. And those saggy jeans although he may need the room to carry a shotgun in his pants. I had no idea there was such a thing until I recently saw an ad for urban carry on the tubes and the guy in the ad wasn’t wearing saggy jeans. Astonishing anyone would actually buy one and the logistics of using it without blowing off a foot or something else not good, imo.

  37. 37.

    bemused

    @Amir Khalid:

    I saw a pic of him golfing and that yuge saggy belly has to get in the way of his swings. I don’t know if there is spanx for men but he should look into that.

  45. 45.

    debbie

    The vest seems a bit tight. Won’t that restrict his assuming the proper stance for firing that thing?

  46. 46.

    Eric U.

    @Jeffro: Of course, a significant amount of the cost increase at public universities has been driven by Republican legislatures defunding the schools. No need to mention that either, I suppose

  48. 48.

    JR

    They really are a bunch of second estate dumbshits and they don’t even have generations of inbreeding to blame for it.

  50. 50.

    debbie

    Last night, everyone was comparing Trump’s and Obama’s Time Magazine covers. This morning, there’s a photo on my FB feed of Hillary’s 25 covers. I think this would stick in Trump’s craw far more than Obama’s covers.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    @JR

    It’s as if Roman Hruska anticipated and was cheerleading for the entire sorry lot of ’em way back in 1970.

  54. 54.

    Yoda Dog

    The Constitution is not a fucking “Owner’s Manaual” for fucks sakes. Fucking fascist carries the thing around in his pocket and doesn’t have the first goddamn clue what it is or what it means.

    Good morning, everyone.

  55. 55.

    R-Jud

    @Jeffro: Oh, for Christ’s sake. Frank Antenori is my dad’s cousin. I have been politely waiting for him to shut the fuck up at family gatherings for years, and now the nation gets to join me, courtesy of the Post.

  60. 60.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hueyplong: At this point, I doubt the Rightwing has any “best” to send. Look who they elected as President and look who they have running for the Senate in Alabama. Sexual predators.

  62. 62.

    Yoda Dog

    @R-Jud: Indeed, I just became aware of this man and he lives thousands of miles from me, but I still have a gnawing urge to find him and tell him to shut the fuck up forever about everything.

  64. 64.

    Honus

    @burnspbesq: I’ve always believed that Glocks are for people that don’t know how to shoot guns. And I know about the SEALs. The picked for that very reason.

  66. 66.

    R-Jud

    @Yoda Dog: It’s further proof that there’s no afterlife to me: my grandfather (his uncle) had a “junky” MA in history paid for by the GI Bill and advocated tirelessly for better access to higher education for the poor and (largely) black high school students he taught for 30 years. Frank’s BS would make him furious enough to administer an ass-whooping from the grave.

  67. 67.

    Patricia Kayden

    @debbie: Obama/Clinton combine the two things that Trump hates the most — women and Black people. He likes his women like Melania — hardly speaks in public and completely dependent on him. And he likes his Blacks like Ben Carson — an ignorant yes man. Knowing that in the real world (outside of his Fox News bubble), President Obama is more popular than him must cause his heart to beat extra hard. He’ll never have what President Obama has (love, respect, dignity, etc.) and he knows this. Between that and Mueller, I doubt Trump is having much fun in the White House although he’s grifting hard and playing loads of golf (all at our expense).

  69. 69.

    Ian G.

    Tom Nichols and Rick Wilson are two of my favorite Trump-hating Republicans because of snark like this. Has David Frum not weighed in on Gorka?

  71. 71.

    Starfish

    I saw that photo of Tomi and Seb on Twitter and just did not want to know. Thank you for telling me the story in its full glory.

  74. 74.

    Jeffro

    @R-Jud: lol…that’s actually pretty funny. Please pass along a shut-the-heck-up from me too (and be sure to ask him about his own personal ‘safe space’ as well ?)

  75. 75.

    Honus

    I also like the concept of “every day carry”. I guess he has another ensemble for special occasions.

  77. 77.

    Honus

    “Frank Antenori shot the head off a rattlesnake at his back door last summer — a deadeye pistol blast from 20 feet. No college professor taught him that. The U.S. Army trained him, as a marksman and a medic, on the “two-way rifle range” of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

    Give me a fucking break. I did that when I was 12.

    “Useful skills. Smart return on taxpayers’ investment. Not like the waste he sees at too many colleges and universities”

    Yeah, because killing rattlesnakes is so much more productive and valuable than say, cancer research or computer science. How can the Post print this bullshit?

  78. 78.

    gene108

    @R-Jud:

    You should send a letter to the editor given your personal history. It would carry some weight and show, even in his own family his views are not universal.

  79. 79.

    JPL

    @Honus: Did the reporter ask him what type of pasta he liked? Richard Fausset who writes for the NYTimes, thinks that might be important to know.

  85. 85.

    Yoda Dog

    @Honus: The guy admits the only way he knows about what happens at college is by perusing some right wing website… What a fucking joke. I don’t blame this man for being this fucking stupid, I blame the Post. Wtf is our media doing out there? I’m aware the country is rife with incredible stupidity, apathy and hate. THIS IS NOT NEWS.

  86. 86.

    Jeffro

    @gene108: Seconded. And I hope everyone will write these two reporters. If they want to feature every Trumpov supporter in the country one by one, good for them, but let’s not call it a “debate”.

  87. 87.

    Amir Khalid

    @Honus:
    If a rattlesnake is 6 metres away (i.e. you’re out of its striking range) and not shaping up to strike, why shoot it at all? To show off your marksmanship? That sounds like gratuitous cruelty.
    ETA: I say this to criticise not you but R-Jud’s cousin Frank.

  90. 90.

    J R in WV

    @Honus:

    My Grandma taught me to shoot, and do it well. Snakes are no big deal, I prefer to remove them to a place where they won’t annoy me and can live in peace in their favored environment.

    The biggest eastern Rattlesnake I ever met was coiled up by the FJ-40’s door when wife went to get in after a day in the New River Gorge back before it was a national park. When it rattled, before she got within stepping on it range, she slowly backed away and got in the truck on the other side and slid over. Then I got in and we drove away, leaving Mr Rattlesnake to his riverside life. About 1975 plus or minus a couple of years.

    Shooting a snake in nothing to brag about in my book. If it has you trapped somehow, maybe. You can always use a hoe or a shovel, it only takes one of two hits to do one. They’re fragile in many ways.

  91. 91.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The clothing is to new, the guns are to new, he clearly doesn’t read that pocket Constitutions and Gorka doesn’t like comfortable enough with at it. What lame bluff. Want to bet Gorka doesn’t know how to clean those guns he owns?

  92. 92.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:
    I will say this again:

    They attack education because it is the way that non-Whites have been able to improve themselves. It gives non-Whites the credentials with which to compete in this world, and they don’t like it.
    So, must have a way to disrupt that.

  95. 95.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Also Gorka remind me of the comment my housemate made to his girlfriend’s ammo sexual hick brother “I lived on and on off in the murder capital of the country for decades now and never felt the next to carry, and you live in Mayburry, USA, what is you problem?”

  96. 96.

    Villago Delenda Est

    You’ll note that the copy of the Constitution is untouched and unread, as if it’s just there for show.

    Well, yes, it is just there for show. Fuckhead here has no idea what the 3rd Amendment is about, for example. Or the 6th. The 2nd he’s totally ignored as usual the first clause.

  98. 98.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:
    Forgot to add..

    Don’t think that Attorney General White Citizens Council didn’t look at the picture of the incoming freshman class at Harvard, which is majority non-White and seethed.

    Once again, they are angry that non-Whites are using education to improve their lives, and they want it to stop. They don’t believe in genuine competition- that’s just bullshyt. They long for the delusional days of Mad Men, where they could pretend that they were big fish in the ocean, when, in fact, they were small fish in a pond where 90% of rest of the fish were locked up in sardine cans. But now, the cans are open, and they have to call compete with all the fish, and they don’t like it.

  101. 101.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Jeffro: Give the man credit; Trump is powerful argument that the value of a Ivy League Degrees can be over exaggerated.

    And he shoots rattlesnakes, I see, another east coaster out to tell us all we are doing to wrong in the West.

  102. 102.

    debbie

    FFS you fucking rascist, how can the guy who prosecuted the Birmingham Four be weak on crime?

    The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017

    I endorsed Luther Strange in the Alabama Primary. He shot way up in the polls but it wasn’t enough. Can’t let Schumer/Pelosi win this race. Liberal Jones would be BAD!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017

  104. 104.

    BellyCat

    @Jeffro: Thanks for this post.

    Former public univ prof here. Had a talented AA student, from out of state (so he paid full-boat) who was accepted to Harvard for grad school for a modest paying public sector profession. With $150,000 in undergraduate student loans, he could not afford to go.

    Is college worth attending for young millennials: Educationally? Absolutely.
    Financially? It depends.

    By contrast, my SIL works for the post-office. Entire career. She makes more than my wife (a tenured PhD) and can retire with a solid pension in 4 years. My wife is still paying educational loans.

    SIL drives a new Mercedes. We drive a fifteen year old car with 160,000 miles on it. SIL thinks we’re crazy and we sometimes wonder if she might be right.

    Of course, values, values, values.

    What I can say is that universities are very worried, and rightly so. Administrative numbers and salaries have ballooned in the last 15 years, while cost-cutting is rampant for everyone but them.

  105. 105.

    Schlemazel

    @debbie:
    He prosecuted white guys for the bombing. Had he done the right thing & rounded up them coloreds and shipped them to the farm he would be a shoe-in

  106. 106.

    bemused

    @rikyrah:

    I want to know how many of these back to the 50’s culture whities who think too many brown/black folks are being educated over whites get their medical needs taken care of by non-white physicians, surgeons, nurses, had their lives protected and saved by non-white police officers and emergency techs, etc, etc.

  107. 107.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    Since this is an open thread, I have a bird question. A male cardinal has been battering himself against our windows on all sides of the house. I’m guessing he sees his own reflection and thinks it’s a rival. Should we be doing anything to discourage him beating himself up?

  110. 110.

    Feathers

    @rikyrah: Also, the majority of college degrees are now earned by women. For whites, 60% of college grads are now women. But that couldn’t be a part of this guy’s issue, could it?

  112. 112.

    Amir Khalid

    @debbie:
    It’s certainly absurd to accuse a public prosecutor of being weak on crime. But then Trump is not actually using “weak on crime” and “wants to raise taxes” etc. as meaningful phrases. He is using them not to make any sort of argument against voting for Doug Jones, but to signal his base that Jones is of a hated ilk, the Democratic party:

  113. 113.

    Emma

    @BellyCat: Current employee of private university. I agree but, to me, that wasn’t the point. Obama’s administration put some effort into directing young people into community colleges and trades and yet this f_ckwit never even knew that his own pet cause was being implemented? Instead he attacks Obama as too liberal and elite and prefers Trump because “he has an air”? Really? Stupid or racist. You decide.

  114. 114.

    Schlemazel

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
    you need to break up the reflection in the glass. If you can put a screen over the window that would work. Some people put a little soap on the glass but obviously that blurs the view so it would depend on how you feel about that. I don’t know if one of those bird silhouettes would help. They look like hawks or owls & it supposed to scare the other birds away

  115. 115.

    Felanius Kootea

    @debbie: By “weak on crime,” he means “prosecuted the wrong color people.” I’m sure the fact that Doug Jones successfully brought some of the bombers to justice is a mark against him among a certain group of Drumpf supporters.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    Don’t think that Attorney General White Citizens Council didn’t look at the picture of the incoming freshman class at Harvard, which is majority non-White and seethed.

    Actually, Sessions is trying to pit races against each other. The Justice Department is investigating whether Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans, resurrecting an old case that had no merit.

    Conservatives believe that pushing this case would result in more white and Asian American students and fewer Latino and black students at Harvard.

    This would be a double twist racist victory. Racist crackers could continue to be ignorant and insist that they didn’t need no fancy college education while simultaneously keeping blacks and Latinos from being able to pursue higher education.

  119. 119.

    BellyCat

    @rikyrah: Agreed on the benefits of non-whites attending high quality universities.

    However, the absence of ample financial aid is creating another type of problem — penury for many of these talented kids.

  120. 120.

    martian

    The tourniquet reminds me of my college roommate flunking her first aid test for getting one question wrong: they asked her what to do for a bleeding head wound. She answered, “Apply a tourniquet to the neck.”

    I had been listening, full of sympathy for her tale of woe, right up until that point. Then I laughed for a long time while she just kept saying, “ONE wrong! It was only ONE question!!”

    Perhaps it’s not too much to hope for that Seb Gorka both has my old roommate’s shortsighted approach to problem solving and finds a pressing need for that tourniquet rather sooner than later.

  121. 121.

    Gretchen

    @BellyCat: right. I could earn enough in the summers to pay my tuition at U of Michigan. My kids started life with loans. One daughter got an Ivy League masters in public health and owes over $100,000. I know a young doctor who owes over a quarter million.

  123. 123.

    BellyCat

    @Emma: Truth. Obama understands the problem.

    Given the choice between trying to repair healthcare and education (especially higher-ed), his efforts were (perhaps understandably) more vigorous about the more universal and (should have been) bi-partisan topic of healthcare.

    Student-debt is the next housing-loan bubble and it’s hard to imagine this can continue as-is.

  127. 127.

    rikyrah

    GOP senator: Millionaires deserve the tax breaks because poor people “create nothing”
    By Matthew Chapman | November 1, 2017

    Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby believes that the wealthy are the ones who deserve tax cuts because they are productive and poor people are not.

    The Republican tax scheme to give handouts to billionaires and corporations at the expense of millions of working families is increasingly unpopular — so much so that the GOP delayed the release of their draft bill.

    The richest Americans and corporations have grown even richer over the past few decades, while the middle and working have seen their earnings stagnate. So writing news laws to favor the 1 percent makes no sense from either an economic, fiscal, or moral perspective.

    But according to the Hill, GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama has a simple reason why he believes that giving tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy is important.

    “People with money save money, create jobs, create risk,” he said. “People with no money — I’ve been there — create nothing.”

    Shelby is essentially saying the poor are economically useless, whereas the wealthy make valuable contributions to society and therefore deserve even more money.

    https://shareblue.com/gop-senator-millionaires-deserve-the-tax-breaks-because-poor-people-create-nothing/

  129. 129.

    BellyCat

    @Gretchen: The debt required of a young person of modest means to educate themselves is truly jaw-dropping.

    The well-heeled don’t even blink, since they can afford full-boat (and to equip their kids with $250k supercars to cruise campus — paid with cash, as a title registration agent told me recently).

    Given the incomes involved in your example, your daughter will likely be paying off her debt much longer than the young doc.

    In the end, this is little more than another form of class stucturing, suppression, and capitalist dependence aimed at all those libtards who insist upon higher education for their kids. “Welcome to the machine…”

  130. 130.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    But according to the Hill, GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama has a simple reason why he believes that giving tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy is important.

    “People with money save money, create jobs, create risk,” he said. “People with no money — I’ve been there — create nothing.”

    Shelby is essentially saying the poor are economically useless, whereas the wealthy make valuable contributions to society and therefore deserve even more money.

    This needs to be transmitted all over social media to all the people who think that Trump and the Republicans love them and will take care of them.

  135. 135.

    Suzanne

    @Jeffro:

    Even though Trump boasts of his Ivy League degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Antenori said he “had a different air about him.”

    This underscores what I have been saying for soooooo long: the hatred of Obama—and everything else culturally coded as liberal—is deeper than just racism or sexism or all the things we talk about. It is entirely about the fact that jackasses like this used to command respect, and now they don’t. They used to be depicted positively in media and our cultural products, and now they are not. People used to look up to them, and now they don’t. Regardless of who is the president, it is the social influencers of the day who really determine the trajectory of the culture of this country. The deplorables thought that by electing Donnie Two Scoops that they could change that. They can’t.

  139. 139.

    Amir Khalid

    @scottinnj:
    Pelosi is quite right to insist on due process before she does any punishing. The weak thing to do here would be giving in to mob pressure and punishing Conyers before any finding of guilt.

  141. 141.

    Seanly

    What’s going on in those network green rooms that he needs to carry 2 pistols (but no spare magazines) and a tourniquet?

    Tourniquets are tricky to apply properly and bring a whole bunch of issues. Why not carry a fistful of tampoons for stuffing in the bullet holes?

  142. 142.

    Suzanne

    @Emma:

    Instead he attacks Obama as too liberal and elite and prefers Trump because “he has an air”? Really? Stupid or racist.

    White trash (yes, let’s use the term, because without it, we are talking around the issue) are sick of being considered white trash. We don’t hate them—not the way they hate Obama—but we think they’re gross. We think their “culture” is backward and mostly unproductive. They like Trump because, for all his money and education, he behaves the way they do, and adopts the cultural symbols they do (Big Macs, KFC, etc.).

    I seriously think we underestimated how badly trashy people wanted to see themselves reflected in the White House.

  145. 145.

    Schlemazel

    @scottinnj:
    blah, blah, blah.

    @Amir Khalid:
    OK, you said it nicer than I did but seriously I am sick to the teeth with this BS that the current leadership has to go & then finding every excuse under the sun try to fit that belief.

  147. 147.

    smintheus

    Is it too early to ask whether James Comey might just be a preening bumbler?

    The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, The Associated Press has found.

    Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting.

    “It’s utterly confounding,” said Philip Reiner, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who was notified by the AP that he was targeted in 2015. “You’ve got to tell your people. You’ve got to protect your people.”

  149. 149.

    Suzanne

    @rikyrah:

    They attack education because it is the way that non-Whites have been able to improve themselves. It gives non-Whites the credentials with which to compete in this world, and they don’t like it.

    They attack education because they are too stupid/lazy to have it and everything they don’t have must be DUMB.

  152. 152.

    Suzanne

    I should also note that I am fairly unsympathetic to stupid people who resist self-improvement and their disappointment at their waning cultural influence. I still want to provide them with a safety net because I’d feel liberal guilt if we didn’t, but apart from that, I have no desire to make them feel restored to the social strata they (mistakenly) thought they occupied.

  153. 153.

    MomSense

    @BellyCat:

    I was going to say that universities have become pyramid schemes at this point. My son got an incredible financial aid package but that do don’t include all the other expenses associated with going to college. It’s a damned nightmare.

    I have a new postal carrier and he is so practical about his career choice. His parents are college educated, struggling, and both hate their jobs anyway. He earns a great salary, has fantastic benefits, and will retire with a good pension. He walks everyday listening to music on his headphones and when he finishes he can do what he wants. Have to say I think he is in the right track.

  154. 154.

    Millard Filmore

    @rikyrah:

    “People with no money — I’ve been there — create nothing.”

    Obviously labor is a useless expenditure for big rich companies. Walmart, Hobby Lobby, McDonalds, and the rest should simply cut their useless labor force. Their profits would go through the roof!

  155. 155.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Suzanne: But then the trashy people are all hung up on “respect” and the need to show it. I know that they mean “deference” rather than “respect,” and that it mostly applies to people they don’t like rather than to everybody, but still the inconsistency is galling. Trump is the most disrespectful person who has ever sullied American government.

  159. 159.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rikyrah: @Brachiator: This is pretty similar to the “I never got a job from a poor person” line they occasionally trot out, though. I’m not sure Trumplings would even find it offensive.

  161. 161.

    MomSense

    @Aimai:

    Well we are both dealing in anecdotes but when you compare job opportunities out there (increasingly gigs) the postal service is a very good option.

  162. 162.

    BellyCat

    @Aimai: The post office is an unusual place. Policies are utterly inflexible and no accommodation is made for many extenuating circumstances.

    It’s run in a military fashion — highly regimented and largely heartless.

    That said, smart and energetic people are given significant opportunities to advance, as long as they play by the rules. That’s the sweet spot. To be a life-long mail carrier could be brutal depending on the route and the personalities above you.

  163. 163.

    feebog

    Who wears a pink dress dress shirt with a velour vest and jeans? I thought the official Nazi uniform was a white polo shirt and Khakis. Please try to keep up Gorka..

  164. 164.

    Adam L Silverman

    @smintheus: More of a classic example of the intelligence/counterintelligence officer culture: 1) If you needed to know it you already would and 2) if I don’t share it with you then I have more power than you do.

  165. 165.

    sharl

    @smintheus: One thing I didn’t see come up in that article is whether there was a specific FBI office in charge of warning people about those Russian hackers. I’m gonna guess that the NYC office of the FBI was somehow complicit here. Presumably those folks were the anonymous sources for this late October 2016 NYT article, which – despite a lot of us yelling at them on social media about it – the responsible editors/managers have never explained:
    ……… Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia
    One of the two authors of that piece is no longer with the NYT, the other is now with their eastern Asia bureau. As far as I know, neither of those reporters is talking either.

    There have been numerous reports of the NYC office of the FBI having become politically compromised over the years, after long time and very friendly interaction with, and staff movements between that office and the NYPD, especially those elements long allied with Twitler’s favorite top cop, Rudy Giuliani, a crook and racist who – with the help of big media – made out like a bandit after 9/11, despite his fuck-ups* leading up to destruction of the WTC towers (*as reported in the insufficiently publicized official 9/11 report).

    Here’s one piece on the politically compromised NYC office of the FBI, by the late Wayne Barrett:
    ………Meet Donald Trump’s Top FBI Fanboy

    Comey’s greatest crime in all this is putting his agency’s reputation – and by extension, his own reputation – ahead of the nation’s security needs. He deserves to be slammed HARD for that alone, but official DC has always really sucked at getting the most roguish aspects of the FBI under control. Some of that is institutional habit, going back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover having files on everyone with information that could be used for blackmail. But there is also a long history – originated by JEH and cultivated ever since – of the FBI being very diligent about their media management, with both positive reinforcement (granting access to reporters, movie producers) and negative (among many examples, check out what happened to Ted Flicker after his movie The President’s Analyst came out in the 60s).

    I hope something about that NYC office of the FBI will figure prominently in whatever report comes out of Mueller’s work, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I do seem to recall that Mueller removed one or two NYC field office people from his investigative team relatively early on, so there is at least that.

  167. 167.

    Adam L Silverman

    Just a quick note: there is no way, shape, or form that this is Seb’s everyday carry. While open carry is allowed in Virginia, any time he has to go into the district for work or a meeting or anything else, he’d have to leave his guns at home. There are only a handful of conceal carry permits issued in DC despite the Heller and MacDonald rulings. Moreover, there is no way he is carrying both pistols on his body – open or concealed carry. I’ve had to carry a full size semi-auto firearm(Beretta M9) for work (in Iraq). I preferred a pancake holster (like the one the Smith & Wesson is in in Seb’s picture) on my belt. Even with a proper belt, the damn thing pulls on your waistband. It is likely, given how he’s got the GLOCK set up that he’s carrying that one off body – most likely in his briefcase. This is absolutely a recipe for disaster. And you’ll notice he’s decided to present his “every day” carry as a New York reload (two guns), rather than one comfortably carried and/or concealed gun and one or two spare magazines.

    Finally, let’s talk about his knife: the hisatsu. I have one of these. Specifically in desert tan. It was part of my kit for Iraq. I carried it when outside the wire. For a couple of reasons: 1) The Iraqis are both fascinated by knives and somewhat freaked by them. The former because of their tribal backgrounds and the latter because Saddam Hussein and his sons and henchmen would use them, along with semi-automatic pistols, for summary executions. So I was often able to get Iraqis to talk to me by talking about knives, their preferred knife, etc – conversation starter. 2) I actually know how to use one of these things properly because of my martial arts training. So it is an effective close quarters backup weapon for me if necessary. It is not a small knife. It is not concealable. I have several small, concealable knives including a very small, very thin razor sharp tanto (basically a tanto spike), that I carried concealed in Iraq. This included my folding utility knife and a small multitool. There is no way he’s carrying one full size pistol, one carry size pistol, one full size Japanese style knife, and all this other crap every day, every where.

  168. 168.

    Suzanne

    @FlipYrWhig: Yes, you are right, they mean “deference”. They don’t get that “respect” is a fairly low bar. “Respect” just means that I’m going to be civil and polite and not try to use force of law to interfere with your lifestyle. But I’m not going to pretend that living in Pigsknuckle County for one’s whole life and having no education past high school and gunhumping are admirable or aspirational.

  170. 170.

    bluefish

    This cosplaying idiot lives just around the corner from my father’s house here in Northern Virginia. Not popular with the neighbors. There was some talk of adding an F to his Art of War license plate. One sees him sometimes walking his beautiful Blondi style dog, looking all sad and romantic, shouldering his lonely burden. What’s a Hungarian fascist to do? Assume the position, I guess. The immaturity of these little boys, trapped in their big arrested development dreams like flies in amber, is something that should be shoved in their nasty mugs every single day. Another one, like his idol Bannon, who imagines himself A World Historical Figure, A Towering Intellect, refusing to accept that millions of us are just not that into him.

    On the other hand, the house is rather modest, and his parties don’t disturb the barrio. Plus the dog is beautiful. And the perfect accessory. I gather his wife is still working downtown in a legitimate job while he hangs out at the Breitbart Embassy, polishing the samovars and cleaning out the ashtrays. He was quoted in an interview saying that pillow talk at the Gorka shack proper revolves around ISIS and how to combat it. The couplings must be … homeric! Zeus and Hera.

  171. 171.

    scottinnj

    @Amir Khalid:

    Pelosi is quite right to insist on due process before she does any punishing. The weak thing to do here would be giving in to mob pressure and punishing Conyers before any finding of guilt.

    . I assume you think Trump is quite right to insist on due process The weak thing here would be to give into mob pressure and punish Moore before any finding of guilt.

  172. 172.

    J R in WV

    @scottinnj:

    Your time would be better spent telling us your favorite pie recipes. Your comment is politically naive and intellect free. Thanks anyway, for 0.

  173. 173.

    Origuy

    I wonder if Gorka ripped out the pages of his Constitution that contain the 13th and 14th Amendments?

  174. 174.

    Gvg

    White trash was never respected. Some of these gullible people have been sold a revisionist history where people like them used to have it good but it was fools gold and didn’t happen. Back when it was good for white males, the smart ones, the hard workers, got ahead of the lazy ones.

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