Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

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

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

I really should read my own blog.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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

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

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  1. 1.

    dr. bloor

    Cut them some slack, their Texas-based history textbooks did as good a job explaining Black Friday as they did the cause of the civil war.

  4. 4.

    MikeEss

    …unaware of what happened in 1929…?

    There were already signs of impending doom long before the Stock Market crashed, but most were too occupied with survival or partying to notice…

  5. 5.

    AnderJ

    Not being from the US and not finding it directly by using teh Google, what happened in 1928? Or is the thing that they the stock market crashed in 1929 one might want to hold off on all that dancing?

  8. 8.

    Woodrowfan

    and the 1928 election was marked by a LOT of religious bigotry with the KKK attacking a religious minority in order to elect a republican. huh.

  9. 9.

    Roger Moore

    @AnderJ:

    Not being from the US and not finding it directly by using teh Google, what happened in 1928?

    The tweet says it fairly exactly: the Republicans took complete control of all three branches of the government. The point, of course, is that they’re happily ignoring what happened next.

  10. 10.

    sixthdoctor

    And looking at that list, three of the items they took were by treason (Pres), theft (SC), and cheating (House)…

  13. 13.

    Spanky

    This post is in Grease the Guillotine With the Fat Of Billionaires,

    Nice! Who else shall we add to the manifest?

  14. 14.

    gvg

    @AnderJ: Yes we are referring to the Great Depression which started with the stock market crash of 1929. All of the Republican economic business ideals repeat the mistakes that lead to the great depression and this has been pointed out over and over for quite a few years now. It’s taken time for us to “forget” and then dismantle the safety we built into regulations. for those who study history, it’s pretty infuriating.

  16. 16.

    Tim C.

    The major difference is that the plutcrats are using abortion and hating on the gays to get the rubes to go along with their looting instead of prohibition.

  17. 17.

    JMG

    As luck would have it, I am currently re-reading J.K. Galbraith’s “The Great Crash,” written in the late ’50s. It is wonderful droll prose recounting the 1929 boom and the weeks of the Crash. Highly recommended.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ve been too busy riding my new motorcycle around to pay much attention to news and politics for the last few days, but I’ve noticed an infuriating (but not unexpected) trend on Twitter: People blaming DEMOCRATS for the shitty GOP tax bill, even though not a single Democrat voted for it. Basically, the line is that they didn’t oppose the shitty bill vigorously enough, or if they did, their messaging was crappy.

    This kind of bullshit drives me nuts. Approval for that fucking bill is literally at Crazification Levels, and it sure as hell wasn’t Republicans who were telling people how bad it was. A bill that Trump and the rest of the GOP liars are framing as a huge tax cut is less popular than past tax HIKES. The messaging worked!

    Some people just can’t help slashing the goddamned tires on the town’s only fire truck in the middle of a raging inferno. Makes me want to break things.

  20. 20.

    gene108

    They are not ignoring what happened next. They celebrating it. Their hope is that next time their is an economic calamity, their won’t come an FDR or Obama to save the country. They hope they can use the calamity to make the government more regressive.

    I am done giving right-wingers the benefit of the doubt.

  22. 22.

    Nicole

    Holy cow, that’s one of your best lyric choices for a post title. Works on so many levels! Lauds! Lauds! Slow clap! Slow clap!

  23. 23.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Betty Cracker:

    People blaming DEMOCRATS for the shitty GOP tax bill, even though not a single Democrat voted for it. Basically, the line is that they didn’t oppose the shitty bill vigorously enough, or if they did, their messaging was crappy.

    Clearly we need to primary Joe Manchin!

  25. 25.

    oatler.

    They’ll always need Democrats to absorb the hate when their Nazi plans wreck the country. “Yeah we voted for scumbag Trump! Look what you made us do!!”

  28. 28.

    MomSense

    @Betty Cracker:

    Most of them have ? next to their names.

    Even though the Southern Democrats screwed my. Grandma out of Social Security, she was a diehard Democrat because she lived through the Depression. Her very simple description of the difference between the parties was Republicans are for big business and the wealthy and Democrats are for the rest of us.

  30. 30.

    Manyakitty

    Truly a crisis of education. Only an idiotic ignoramus would crow about impending disaster.

  31. 31.

    Spanky

    @Major Major Major Major:

    And there was actual jumping

    They learned from that. They installed nice financial safety nets (including golden parachutes) so their little MOTU heads needn’t get splattered on the sidewalk.

    But there are still baseball bats.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    Dan Drezner in the Washington Post today

    The absolute best way for Trump and Trumpism to be repudiated is through democratic and not merely legal means. If Doug Jones defeats Roy Moore in Alabama despite a presidential endorsement, that represents a blow to Trump in the same way he was humiliated by the Virginia state elections last month. If the GOP loses badly in the midterms despite a healthy economy, that is an even bigger repudiation of the head of the Republican Party. And if Trump loses bigly in his quest for reelection in 2020, such a resounding defeat might shock the GOP into repudiating white identity politics.

    The GOP is made up of bigots so I’m not sure how they change.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/04/how-donald-trump-needs-to-exit-the-white-house/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.6e1fb5761b7a

  34. 34.

    JMG

    @Spanky: Actually, in Galbraith’s book, he looks at statistic and while there were some highly publicized suicides of financiers 1. They mostly shot themselves, not jumped, and 2. The overall suicide rate did not increase. The jumping thing is a Depression era urban legend.

  37. 37.

    JPL

    Lindsay Graham said that all Americans should leave South Korea, so how does that relate to 1929. I’m not sure that I want the answer.

  38. 38.

    RepubAnon

    @Major Major Major Major: There’s an old Charles Addams cartoon where a broker is telling a client that the economic indicators are falling –
    through the broker’s window, the client can see Wall Streeters standing on window ledges.

    Of course, these days the government would bail out the brokers with taxpayer money…

  39. 39.

    oldgold

    Taking an estate planning tip from Charles ‘aw shucks’ Grassley, I am not partying like 1928; rather, I have stopped spending any money on women, booze and movies!

    My grandfather used to joke he spent all of his money on bad women, good booze and the rest he wasted.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    @Manyakitty: I saw that on Twitter too. Didn’t know where it originated, but I’m not a bit surprised to hear it’s the Bernie Bros. Reid apologized for saying what basically every Democrat in Florida was saying 10 years ago, and Crist accepted her apology. If the MSNBC takes any action against Reid, I will be so fucking done with them, even if it means boycotting my beloved Rachel.

  46. 46.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @oldgold:

    I’m going the complete opposite direction – I’m intent on blowing every dime on a dissipate life; my constant companion shall be excess in all its forms. Overeating, guzzling liquor, reckless sex, gambling. That way, I’ll at least get to enjoy it before the next conservative crash.

  47. 47.

    BlueDWarrior

    @schrodingers_cat: The thing that most infuriates me of the Punditocracy over 50 is that apparently the Democrats are always in position to stop Republicans from acting out their insanity. Just like we were all talking about Tweety on Friday: if the Republicans have the majorities (and with Reconciliation, the Senate just acts like a smaller HOR for the time being), and categorically refuse to hear Democratic arguments, there is fuck all the Democrats can do except go outside the halls and try to appeal to the ‘better angels’ or whatever moderates are left.

    How this should be read is one of two ways, and both being related:
    1) There are no real moderate Republican office holders left in general, a few might not be so rabid on particular issues, but they are doctrinaire conservatives or are willing to vote as such
    2) There is no real moderate Republican base left; they are all either conservatives or blind partisans

    We have a center-right party that has long since gone off the rails and become a far-right reactionary party, but the polite punditocracy still feels they are the Republicans of the early 60s (right before the Evangelical and Dixiecrat poison got in their systems) instead of the Republicans of 2017.

  48. 48.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker: @schrodingers_cat:
    I sometimes feel like, “Why aren’t the Dems doing more!?” But then I realize who holds the media venues in thrall. Who gets air time. How people have internalized the idea that Dems are feckless — they couldn’t even beat Trump type exasperated outbursts.

  49. 49.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Betty Cracker:

    Basically, the line is that [Democrats] didn’t oppose the shitty bill vigorously enough, or if they did, their messaging was crappy.

    Chris Matthews was spouting this last week, querulously grilling various panelists. He never did explain what exactly they were supposed to do.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    @JPL: Drezner’s a fucking idiot: if (and when) charges are brought against the president*, then you impeach. You don’t give him a pass until 2020 just because it’d be “difficult” for the nation. The past fucking year has already been “difficult” for the vast majority of this country and impeachment (and tarring and feathering and RICO-ing his sorry ass) would be a relief.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @JPL: @Tata:

    Americans should leave South Korea?

    The logic being, I’m assuming, “You’re making it harder for us to pull the trigger on North Korea, even if it means tens of millions of South Koreans and Japanese will die – so evac, dammit!” Makes me want to tie ol’ Lindsey to a fencepost overlooking the DMZ…

  54. 54.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    I just saw Trump’s claim that it’s “unfair” lying to the FBI is “destroying Flynn’s life.” The idea that lying is illegal must be incomprehensible to anyone in the Trump family.

    He also says Clinton lied “multiple times” to the FBI which Comey testified there was no evidence of. He can’t let Clinton go. He’s obsessed with her and Obama. Probably because they’re both smart, successful, respected, competent people.

  55. 55.

    mike in dc

    @Jeffro: Exactly. I want Trump voters to be traumatized by the consequences of their failure to check their own worst impulses, and for the white supremacy underlying much of it to be thoroughly rebuked and discredited in the public sphere. Trump in an orange jumpsuit would do wonders for both of those causes.

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    Anyway, I thought the conservative vanguard’s theory of 1928 was that Hoover was a liberal squish, and his taxing and spending caused the Depression–good old Silent Cal would never have let it happen.

  57. 57.

    Tom

    One thing that I think is underappreciated (and which I would like the economically literate to comment on) is the degree to which the fact that the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency has enabled the Republican fiscal irresponsibility which began with Reagan and continued whenever they had power right up to the present. I would not be a bit surprised if China takes advantage of our imbecile president and Congress to replace it with a basket of currencies, and the effects on us will not be pretty. The saddest thing is that the last two years of Clinton’s presidency we actually ran a surplus (if you include Social Security, which is a bad idea and along with Vietnam is LBJ’s greatest shame), and had we continued with Clinton’s policies we might be close to deficit neutral. Ah well, we’ve been through worse and we’ll fix this too.

  58. 58.

    randy khan

    Am I the only one who saw the beer emoticon in that tweet and was reminded that Prohibition was still in effect in 1928? (I mean, forget the Great Depression, that’s a *really* important part of American history.)

  59. 59.

    Jeffro

    Meanwhile, the president*s lawyer asserts that it’s not possible for POTUS to obstruct justice.

    Donald Trump’s personal lawyer on Monday made the controversial claim that the President cannot be found guilty of obstruction of justice.

    The “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” John Dowd, who is handling Trump’s defense in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, told Axios.

    This is a new assertion for Dowd, who over the weekend took credit for writing a tweet sent from Trump’s personal account that said the President felt compelled to dismiss national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence—and the FBI—about his contacts with Russia. Legal observers said that the tweet, which was written in Trump’s characteristic bombastic style, strengthened the case that Trump knowingly obstructed justice when he later dismissed FBI Director James Comey.

    How entirely unanticipated!!

  63. 63.

    BlueDWarrior

    @d58826: Apparently every woman should be made to suffer in silence like they have. And no, I don’t get it either, but that’s Conservative Patriarchy for you.

  66. 66.

    Mike in NC

    @Tata: Maybe Dotard has decided to cancel the Winter Olympics since the family cannot personally profit from them. He has other ‘fireworks’ in mind.

  67. 67.

    Roger Moore

    @Jeffro:

    Drezner’s a fucking idiot: if (and when) charges are brought against the president*, then you impeach.

    And you still impeach even if you don’t think you’ll be able to get 2/3 of the Senate to go along. Force the Republicans in the Senate to justify voting to keep the bastard in office. Hang him around their neck.

  68. 68.

    Immanentize

    @Jeffro: Dowd makes the same mistake all despots make -. Assuming that being President (and therefore the head of the executive branch) makes you head of everyone in the country, the judicial branch included. It doesn’t. So certainly a president can obstruct justice.

    I guess the question Dowd is trying to address is whether a President can obstruct justice by commenting on an investigation fully within the confines of the executive branch. That is not a full on stupid argument.

  69. 69.

    vhh

    @JPL: Japan had occupied Korea since 1910. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931as it began its slide into military rule. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Mussolini was dictator of Italy beginning in 1922.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jeffro:

    The “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” John Dowd, who is handling Trump’s defense in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, told Axios.

    Funny, that’s not what they said when Obama expressed his personal opinion of the Trayvon Martin case, or said that the cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr, on the porch of his own home had acted “stupidly.” Then, the Republicans were full of screeches about the president trying to undermine justice.

  71. 71.

    germy

    Here’s my (impossible to answer) question:

    The young conservatives in the above tweet; the “party like it’s 1928” fools… will they grow up to be old conservatives, or will they evolve?

  72. 72.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: WTF is a Senator doing giving advice that is the prerogative of the State Department? And by All Americans does Sen. Butterbutt include our massive troop build up there?

  74. 74.

    PaulWartenberg

    Republicans still think everything that happened from 1929 onward was some fanciful flight of fiction, that there never was a Great Depression or New Deal or War Against Nazis or Integration of the Military or Brown v. Board of Education or the Civil Rights acts and Voting Rights acts or Nixon resigning in disgrace or Reagan overseeing an era of massive deficits and debt or Dubya overseeing worse deficits alongside a horrendously mismanaged invasion of Iraq or a Biracial man from Hawaii winning the Presidency TWICE…

    So yes, let’s party like it’s 1928. Because we’re about to go through the exact same shit for the next 90 years.

    Remember the Battlestar Galactica reboot? “This has all happened before…”

  75. 75.

    germy

    @randy khan:

    Am I the only one who saw the beer emoticon in that tweet and was reminded that Prohibition was still in effect in 1928?

    Yeah, but they’re arrogant.
    In the 1928 they romanticize, they’d simply have the best bootleg liquor, and never go blind from drinking sweetened rubbing alcohol.

  77. 77.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The @youngcons are going to have to wait their turn for their tumbrel ride. Plenty of folks ahead of them on the manifest.

  78. 78.

    low-tech cyclist

    So tonight they’re gonna party like it’s 1929.

    Lots of mentions of 1929 in this thread, but nobody connected it to Doug’s thread title? You guys need another cuppa!

  79. 79.

    J R in WV

    Display a total lack of historical awareness.

    What did happen right after 1928? 1929!!

    But does that mean anything to them?? Nope!

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jeffro:
    The “chief law enforcement officer” claim aside (I always thought that was the Attorney-General) John Dowd seems to be defining justice as whatever POTUS asserts it to be in any particular case. That can’t be right.

  81. 81.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Spanky:

    Nice! Who else shall we add to the manifest?

    The manifest is already long, filled with luminaries such as Chuckles the Toddler and Chris Cillizza.

  84. 84.

    d58826

    Racism, fundamentalism, fear and propaganda: An insider explains why rural, white Christian America will never change
    Forsetti
    Forsetti’s Justice, AlterNet
    30 Nov 2017 at 15:45 ET The problem isn’t a lack of understanding by coastal elites. The problem is a lack of understanding of why rural, Christian, white America believes, votes, behaves the ways it does by rural, Christian, white America.

    good read

    https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/racism-fundamentalism-fear-and-propaganda-an-insider-explains-why-rural-white-christian-america-will-never-change/#.WiUi08Ftpb4.twitter

  85. 85.

    catclub

    @germy:

    beer emoticon in that tweet and was reminded that Prohibition was still in effect in 1928?

    Prohibition was too late for MacCawley to include in his Great Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. But it fits!

  87. 87.

    catclub

    @d58826: never is a long time.

    the things that rural america used to lose their shit over (a la Emmett Till) are changing.
    But change is very slow.

    I would think things like the ‘it gets better’ campaign, are important, too.

  90. 90.

    randy khan

    @germy:

    In the 1928 they romanticize, they’d simply have the best bootleg liquor, and never go blind from drinking sweetened rubbing alcohol.

    If you’re blind already, it doesn’t make any difference.

  91. 91.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    He never did explain what exactly they were supposed to do.

    If I remember my catechism from the OBAMA DIDN’T. EVEN. TRY. days, I think it’s “lead with leaderly leadership, and also ‘messaging.'”

  92. 92.

    catclub

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also because he knows that Clinton won the popular vote and is vastly more popular than he is

    Certainly in 1992, Clinton did not get a majority, due to Perot, I somehow think that was also the case in 1996, also due to perot.

  94. 94.

    Boatboy_srq

    @BlueDWarrior: This sounds suspiciously like the argument that good girls need to act to prevent boys from taking advantage, because Boys Will Be Boys® and it’s always the girl’s fault for looking/walking/talking/studying/working/whatever like that. It’s admission that one whole party, just like one entire sex, has abdicated all responsibility, and somehow that’s somehow perfectly natural.

  95. 95.

    Boatboy_srq

    @germy: And this time around, booze is legal, so anyone can get sh!tfaced without worrying whether there’s a Treasury agent watching.

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    @catclub: And Republicans flogged those facts as hard as they could to insist that Clinton was not a legitimate President, unlike their last few Presidents, who had won real majorities and electoral landslides.

    Then, of course, they won with a disputed electoral vote and a popular minority and were all GET OVER IT SORE LOSERS. I will grant that Bush actually did win a 50.7% popular majority in 2004, but that’s the only Republican Presidential candidate who ever managed that since 1988.

  97. 97.

    danielx

    @JPL:

    And if Trump loses bigly in his quest for reelection in 2020, such a resounding defeat might shock the GOP into repudiating white identity politics.

    And pigs might have wings. Also, the moon is totally made of extremely edible green cheese.

  98. 98.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Spanky: Or for his ‘gayness.’ That was the reaction of some christianists to revelation about Ted Haggard’s gay prostitute scandal.

    I think Mark Driscoll (minister of former Mars Hill church in Seattle) claimed men became adulterers or had gay ‘adventures’ when their wives refused sex or didn’t want to engage in oral or anal sex. His sermons on the OT book Song of Songs are notorious for claiming that that OT book advocated both oral and anal sex.

    Some have charged Driscoll appealed to hip young males in Seattle by promising them many young women in the congregation willing to engage in ‘non-traditional’ sex. More or less a temple prostitute, fertility cult.

  101. 101.

    Just One More Canuck

    When Black Friday comes, I’ll stand down by the door
    And catch the grey men when they dive from the fourteenth floor

  103. 103.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @geg6: 10 yo (?) anti-gay posts on her blog directed vs Christ. She’s appologized, he’s accepted.

    Classic case of ‘use dem values to attack dem.’

  104. 104.

    gvg

    @Amir Khalid: Justice is separate from the executive branch for one thing. For another, it’s very easy to obstruct if you are the CEO. He is offering a very incorrect argument about the role of the President based more on an idea of royalty than rule of law. the idea that Trump defines the law……a certain kind of stupidity.
    that argument is so weird, it actually makes it possible he was stupid enough to be involved in the latest Trump confession tweet while lawyers are saying no lawyer would be stupid enough to approve that tweet.

  106. 106.

    woodrowfan

    @Villago Delenda Est: let’s do like the airlines and board kids first!!! Young republicans and “Young Americans for ‘Freedom'” get to jump the line. We can test the blade on them….

  109. 109.

    The Truffle

    @woodrowfan: Elderly people vote. Elderly people are baby boomers. The GOP pissed off a whole voting bloc. Nice job. The knives will be out for them.

    I imagine a lot of Young Conservatives will also have a hard time finding work outside of wingnut welfare in the years to come. Even Heritage Foundation is a joke in RW circles.

  111. 111.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @MikeEss: Wasn’t it Charles Schwab who was told in 1928 he was crazy for thinking the market was about crash, went to a shrink who listened to Schwab and promptly took his own money out of the market?

  112. 112.

    catclub

    @woodrowfan:

    Which church was this? Asking for a friend…

    In the church of Aphrodite,
    Priestess wears a see-through nightie,
    Its an awfully righteous sightie,
    and its good enough for me.
    Give me that old time relgion…

  114. 114.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Betty Cracker:

    People blaming DEMOCRATS for the shitty GOP tax bill, even though not a single Democrat voted for it. Basically, the line is that they didn’t oppose the shitty bill vigorously enough, or if they did, their messaging was crappy.

    That message has been everywhere. basically “Why didn’t you liberals stop the Republicans from doing an incredibly stupid thing and don’t give me that not in power excuse?” Sort of High Broderism ad nauseam. Sort of reminds me of a parent yelling at the good son for not stopping the bad son from sneaking off and getting busted for a DUI while raping a chicken.

    I am taking it as a tab admission that the Democrats are the only adults in government and the first baby step on a Cole like journey out of Right wing fruit loop land.

  116. 116.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @gene108: There is nothing to give them the benefit of the doubt about. The really do believe that tax cuts are the solution to everything like they believe Jesus was a dinosaur rancher. Keep in mind if they were merely out for plunder and power all they would need to do is a massive infrastructure program as cover for a tax cut for the rich, that would bring money and job into their hick districts and do donor service. The whole impasse because their beliefs demand doing contradictory things like tax cuts and deficit reduction a the very same time.

  119. 119.

    Turgidson

    @Matt McIrvin: Don’t forget the infamous Hoot-Smalley tariff, which FDR imposed on the nation, causing the Great Depression, more than three years before he took office.

    This history lesson brought to you by Michele “faraway eyes” Bachmann.

  121. 121.

    Turgidson

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Only a handful of the GOP caucus is sincere about caring about the deficit. And for almost all of them, relieving the rich of their tax burden is even more of a moral imperative than Dealing With The Debt, which can wait until a Democrat is elected and tries to do presidenting stuff.

  123. 123.

    Ruckus

    @oldgold:
    Your granddad wasn’t joking. What looked like laughter on the outside was crying on the inside that he couldn’t keep doing that forever. I had granddads too. Of course one of them died in 1936. I could tell you it was due to the depression but it wasn’t. He was playing tennis with my mother when his congenital heart condition made itself known. The heart thing was the major issue of course but think about what he was doing at the time and what year it was. And all of that meant nothing because his family immediately became rather poor, there was no democratic safety net at the time. Just like the same moronic republicans who want there to be no democratic safety net now. All of these fuckers are spoons, playing in the knife drawer, none of them are sharp in any way shape or form.

  124. 124.

    Boatboy_srq

    @Turgidson: And here we all thought that name was what she gave to the exclamation that she gave at first sight of Ladybird’s antenna.

  125. 125.

    Ruckus

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    The whole impasse because their beliefs demand doing contradictory things like tax cuts and deficit reduction a the very same time.

    These are not contradictory in their world view. How do you reduce the deficit? Cut government spending. How do you reduce taxes? Cut the need for them, cut government spending. To them these things are one and the same. The major point is that they don’t want government. They want to rule with the almighty dollar, mostly with that the almighty dollar sitting in their bank accounts. Or personal Scrooge vaults. It’s power to the wealthy, fuck everyone else. They want to be able to steal as much money as is humanly possible, with no ramifications. And because they are stupid, along with their many other faults, they don’t remember history, like what has happened at every other point in history when the rich tried to fuck over everyone else. Bottom line (a phrase they like), it never ends well for the rich. They think they have the advantage of money but they usually forget to pay their guards well enough to stay bought off and there are lot and lots more non rich people with nothing left to lose. So even well paid guards are not enough. I’m not endorsing violence, just acknowledging that history repeats itself often enough that it should be a lesson. But the people that need to learn that lesson never do.

  126. 126.

    Ruckus

    @Ruckus:
    Also that we have a government set up that while it currently supports the wealthy, it isn’t intended to be totally that way. Yes there are a few things that need to change to guard against this happening again. Automatic registration to vote for all citizens, vote by mail, early voting, voting day is a federal holiday, better safe guards against any individual having too much power in congress, no caucuses, regulated running times (say 4 months) to lesson the amount required to win an election and the endless speculative bullshit surrounding a candidate, possibly a certain amount of free political advertising for office, elimination of the EC, number of representatives in the house to further reflect equality of population…….. A short list of some needs that might address the issues.

  127. 127.

    TenguPhule

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Clearly we need to primary Joe Manchin!

    See if you’re saying that less sarcastically the next time he crosses the aisle. Or decides to endorse a Republican candidate for office.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    I learned to never give a right-wing nut job the benefit of the doubt before I was out of high school. So half a century ago.

  129. 129.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Major Major Major Major: I was a Westinghouse employee in Pittsburgh for a corporate Statistics Symposium the day of the October 1987 market tank. Most of the attendees had major chunks of their life savings in (W) stock, which dropped 25% that day. As we entered the 17th floor ballroom at the Westin William Penn for supper, there was a hotel staffer standing at each door to the balcony. I turned to a companion & said, They’re taking tickets – it’s Jump-By-Numbers tonight! (Easy for me to say – having seen the place from the inside, no way would I spend a dime for the stock. [& less than 5 years later the destruction of a once-proud US technology corporation was underway, & I was gone with the first great wave of layoffs {which was fine by me, the first ones out the door always get the best severance package…}])

  132. 132.

    Tehanu

    @gene108:

    Their hope is that next time their is an economic calamity, their won’t come an FDR or Obama to save the country. They hope they can use the calamity to make the government more regressive. I am done giving right-wingers the benefit of the doubt.

    Their hope is that what will come is what came in Germany after 1929.

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):

    I saw a comment on Charlie Pierce’s column today that basically said that the fact that Hillary was exonerated and there was no evidence to convict her of anything PROVED that she was guilty because it was “obvious” that “the system” is set up to cover up for Democrats. You can’t expect these people to pay any attention to facts or evidence, so why give them any room to open their stupid mouths?

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