Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

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

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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

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

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

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Russiagate Open Thread: Maybe Mitch McConnell Is the GOP Green Lantern?

Late Night Russiagate Open Thread: Maybe Mitch McConnell Is the GOP Green Lantern?

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Elsewhere in the twitterverse…


To be fair, I don’t think it was actually necessary for Putin or his online bullyboys to buy off McConnell. Mitch is a hardcore racist with a vested financial interest in keeping the current kleptocracy unexamined; his personal interests aligned neatly with those of America’s (other) enemies, and that’s probably all that really mattered in the run-up to the 2016 election.

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47Comments

  2. 2.

    seaboogie

    I believe that McConnell is one of the most cynical motherfuckers in the known universe. Quite possibly compromised, but I think he’d do most any traitrous thing just for sport.

  4. 4.

    SectionH

    There are no words to express how much I loathe McConnell (and frankly, most of the rest of the McConnells I’ve dealt with in Kentucky. White male privilege from before there was even a state. Which is one of those things I doubt a lot of ppl “get” – Frankensteinbeck and Le Comte probably do, but you have to have lived there to feel the full effect. Mitch is poison.

  5. 5.

    Yutsano

    @seaboogie: Not for sport. Only if it would get him money. It wouldn’t shock me if Yertle was getting election funds from wifey’s family in China and in order to keep that pipeline open he has to keep uncle Vladdie happy.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    It’s hard to make a selection of who, if I could choose only one, would be on the rocketship to the sun, would head the tumbrel manifest…Donald, Yertle, or ZEGS.

    Yertle has to nose the other two out though, based on the Garland bullshit alone. Vile racist shit Yertle.

    When confronted with a Voight-Kampf test, we’d all score as replicants.

  7. 7.

    Cacti

    @Ken:

    Trump would be a combo of Yellow Lantern (fear), Red Lantern (rage), and Orange Lantern (greed).

    AFAIK, there isn’t a color that draws its power from stupidity, so that would be the missing element of his spectrum.

  8. 8.

    SectionH

    @Yutsano: I’m not sure I can even give him “credit” for much greed motivation, although obvs there’s some of that. If you want an example of the srsly evil but not stupid – y’know, the horribly reactionary, evil dude who can still talk in complete sentences without spittle coming out of this mouth – that would be Mitch.

  9. 9.

    SectionH

    @Villago Delenda Est: Tough enough. The ZEGS comes in a fading 3rd there. Srsly, I think IQ45* is second.

    *I saw that recently and laughed and laughed. The stress is getting to me.

    eta: cool, we agree re #1 I’ve also always kinda hated that turtles got slimed with being compared to him. I used to call him fish-face when speaking or writing about him. Which, I know, but there are some fucking ugly fish faces out there.

  10. 10.

    eemom

    Might be nice if Bargoyle Bush started a trend of sorts amongst elderly gasbag republicans. #jussayinzall

  14. 14.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Oh no. Not the Bully Pulpit people.

    It’s so childish.

    And predictably, Corey Robin is a Wilmerite.

    If rhetoric is the silver bullet, then why hasn’t Wilmer passed anything in 30 years in office.

  17. 17.

    patroclus

    Corey Rubin is an idiot who completely misunderstands what happened during the Obama years. In his first two years, with a Dem Congress, he got a lot of legislation enacted, including the ACA, Dodd-Frank, the JOBS Act, the Card Act, the trade deals and a lot of other smaller things as well as Sotomayor and Kagan on the USSC. It was only after the Dems lost control of the House in 2011 and McConnell started filibustering everything that the legislative progress was stopped although progress continued with EO’s (DACA), court decisions (gay marriage) and in international affairs (Iran, Cuba). I certainly never used the term “green lantern” and if it was applicable, it only applied to Republican obstructionism on legislative matters.

    By contrast, Trump has a Republican Congress and other than Gorsuch and the tax giveaway, virtually nothing has been enacted by Congress. And this unfavorably compares to Obama’s first two years. Why doesn’t Rubin compare Trump’s first two years to Obama’s first two years? Why does he lump all of the Obama years into one category? Why does he not talk about actual legislation? Why does he pretend that the liberal blogosphere said something that it didn’t? Is this legitimate historical analysis? I think Rubin should wake up, and then do some reading and study, and then write something (and not on twitter) rather than following Trump and waking up and then blathering stupidly about anything that came into his head while dreaming.

  18. 18.

    joel hanes

    @eemom:

    from your keyboard
    *cough*Rupert*Murdoch*cough*sheldon*adelson*cough*
    to the ear of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

  23. 23.

    SectionH

    @EBT: I expect they do, good for them. And I’m completely aware that except for the Fpgers, no one can post pix, so yeah, that was a bit snarky, but I meant the Have fun comment sincerely.

  26. 26.

    matt

    I would be hard pressed to think of someone whose political opinions interest me less than Corey Robin’s. Walker Bragman maybe?

  28. 28.

    Feathers

    @patroclus: it has always amazed me that Obama haters of the left did not see that the things they freaked out about, drones and deportations, were obviously agencies run amok, and that he was doing his best without starting a war against them. Which would not have gone well.

    @matt: Corey Robin is one of those academics who is good on the long term historical, strangely blind when looking at contemporary political trends.

  29. 29.

    Bruce K

    I’ve said it before, McConnell scares me more than Trump and Ryan combined, because he’s evil, unprincipled, smart, and now desperate. If the GOP loses the Senate, he’s got absolutely nothing, and he’s already proven that he’ll resort to anything to get his way.

  31. 31.

    EveryDayIHaveTheBlues

    This was an issue I raised in a thread a few days ago. Why hasn’t anyone asked Mitch if he still disbelieves the assessment if the IC, and if not, what financial connections he has with Russia?

    IMO, the Democrats are being gentlepeople about this. As someone else said in that thread (think it was Patricio Kayden, apologies if I got that wrong), we’ve got to keep hammering on this. If the folks here at BJ are wondering why MM is treasonous, surely that is something others in the outside have considered as well. The way to deal with this is for people to start asking him point blank why he hates America, law enforcement, apple pie and patriotism.

  33. 33.

    Nicole

    I remember we did his book on book club here and he came to discuss in the comments once and was kinda rude when people had disagreements with his conclusions. We gave up part way through.

  34. 34.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    So I was looking at the Starbucks Twitter over the announcement of this unprecedented, super expensive training.

    Rose Twitter and the rest of the Bernie Bros seem upset that Starbucks isn’t addressing classism instead, that racism isn’t the real problem…

    I’m trying to figure out what that would even mean – does it mean that you’d train store managers to sit idly while aggressive panhandlers worked over the clientele? (and yes, I’m a bad corporatist neoliberal sellout that doesn’t fetishize the homeless by talking about the wisdom of the gibbering addict who wears shit in his hair as a fashion statement as he demands money).

  35. 35.

    msdc

    Corey Robin:

    Because a president’s words matter – despite all the considerable evidence that Trump’s words have had surprisingly little impact on policy or even on Republican Party positions in Congress…

    Um, yes. Which would be proof that the bully pulpit is an inherently weak lever for legislative action, that presidential “will” is overrated, and that Green Lanternism was always bullshit.

    We’re criticizing the president’s words because they expose him as a racist, a misogynist, an authoritarian and a thief, not because we’re afraid they’re going to move Congress to take up his agenda. The Trump agenda is already the GOP agenda, and vice versa.

    And Corey Robin has been angling to rival Thomas Frank as the most useless “left” academic for a while now.

  36. 36.

    Matt

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I’m a bad corporatist neoliberal sellout that doesn’t fetishize the homeless

    Nah, you just crank one out imagining them being tortured with Tasers and incarcerated for being dirty and weird in front of you. You aren’t a sellout, you’re just an awful person.

  37. 37.

    rp

    Robin’s argument is amazingly incoherent. So…(a) Obama supporters said the bully pulpit was overrated, (b) Trump’s words have had little impact on public policy, therefore (c) the green lantern theory is wrong. Do I have that right?

  38. 38.

    rp

    Also, it’s so greenwald to say “*I* don’t have an opinion about this or anything useful to say. I’m just saying that you’re being hypocrites.” Such a lazy and pointless argument, particularly when it’s not addressing a specific person or comment, and falling back on “some say.”

  39. 39.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rp: Corey Robin will never stop thinking that there’s some way to blather people into becoming leftists, or to realize that they were leftists all along but just needed a little nudge to unleash it, because if he didn’t trust in the power of blather it would negate his life’s work.

  40. 40.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rp: Ha, as I was writing the response I just posted I had a whole thing about the similarity between Robin and Greenwald, and then I edited it out.

    But, shyeah, dude, HE COULD HAVE CHANGED EVERYONES OPINION AND MADE BETTER POLICY BUT HE DIDNT. EVEN. TRY. was stupid then, stupid now, and will always be stupid. It was stupid when it was Obama, and it’s stupid when it’s now Trump, and it will be even stupider if we’re ever unfortunate enough to have it be Sanders, because Sanders seems to actually believe in the stupid theory.

  41. 41.

    the Conster

    @msdc:

    I can’t think of a single lefty white dude whose opinions matter. They’re all willfully blind to their role in perpetuating white male supremacy by their being willfully blind to it. I’ve given up on thinking non-whites/non-males have any utility as allies at all. Like Franks. What a fraud. If they perceive that their demands aren’t being centered by both parties every damn second, they’ll run back to their natural white male supremacist home in the GOP then come up with some bullshit excuse how the Dem party doesn’t get it. Fuck them all.

  42. 42.

    david

    Can’t wait until the Demos take over the Senate in ’19… at which point, Chuck Schumer will declare a return to normal order and McConnell will bring the place to a standstill with 41 votes all over again.

    But, of course, the Demos want to replace Pelosi as House Speaker because… whatever. Schumer will be the party’s downfall. If the voters remove the Republicans from both Houses and Schumer does his Schumer thing, the young vote will disappear in ’20. They’re not going through all this just to watch the Old Guard return to Old Guard normality.

  43. 43.

    msdc

    @the Conster: Well, I’m a white dude too (and I’m a lefty from just about any perspective other than that of Corey Robin and his fellow progressive betters, but perhaps that’s what you meant). I don’t think the left is in a position where it can afford to throw away anyone’s support, especially the second-largest demographic in the country (after white women). That would be a pathway to political irrelevance.

    But the Corey Robins of the world haven’t shown any inclination to support the actual, existing, diverse progressive coalition, and would rather spend their time sabotaging it from the backfield. If all you mean is that we should recognize them for what they are, then we’re in agreement.

  44. 44.

    FlipYrWhig

    @msdc: They’re working by an incredibly dumb theory of politics. Their theory is that affluent professional white people (WHO RAISED THEM) “should” be Republicans and that white people with hardhats and facial hair “should” be Democrats. The fact that the former category has been drifting D and the latter, R, FOR FORTY YEARS seems not to enter into it. Or that the drift has more to do with racial bigotry than something something neoliberal bourgois something. They were too young for 1968 so they’re trying to keep going back to that save-point and running it with different settings until they defeat that level and the present comes out how they’d like. Great plan.

  45. 45.

    Life in Queens

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Corey Robin is so awful. He padded his original tweet with a disinterested observer schtick so that he could condemn a criticism of the left without answering the criticism. Junk meta at its finest. Pretty much a highbrow version of tone policing.

  46. 46.

    EthylEster

    OK, nobody else has said this yet (that I’ve noticed): who is Cory Robin and why should I give a fuck about him?

    Remember, it’s a rhetorical question.

  47. 47.

    FlipYrWhig

    @EthylEster: Exactly, but a lot of my otherwise smart friends fall hard in love with Jacobin types and other above-it-all pseudo big-talking poseur radicals.

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