Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The revolution will be supervised.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

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

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

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

Everybody saw this coming.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

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

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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

This blog will pay for itself.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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

People are complicated. Love is not.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces

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Several posts already about the hearings, and I watched them live until the lunch break, at which I couldn’t take anymore. If the goal of these hearings was to make Strozk look good and the majority party in congress look like idiots, well, mission accomplished.

What I never understand about these hearings is why these people seem to just relish the opportunity to go on camera and act the fool. I get that Louis Gohmert and Steve King actually ARE probably stupid enough to not realize how dumb they look, but what I don’t get is why the people of Steertaint, Texas and Cornpone, Iowa keep sending those morons back to congress to humiliate them.

Trey Gowdy is a different case- he’s from South Carolina, and he’s actually a pretty bright guy, he’s just a hack and has accurately determined that his voters are as dumb as he thinks they are, so he just doesn’t give a fuck.

I just don’t get it. When I was a kid and we went on vacation, my mother would scream at us if we did something like put our feet up on the windows of the car when we were on the highway- “YOU CAN’T DO THAT WE HAVE WEST VIRGINIA PLATES THEY WILL THINK WE ARE ALL HILLBILLIES AND HICKS.” We were little brand ambassadors everywhere we went for the good state of West by God Virginny.

Any time Joe Manchin is on television I sit in terror waiting for him to say something awful- I sit there watching the tv as if I am on the phone with my doctor waiting for an STD test result. Fortunately, he never says much of anything, so my fears are usually misplaced.

But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

Reader Interactions

202Comments

  1. 1.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

    Every last one of them looks in the mirror and sees John Wayne looking back.

    Also, do steers have taints? Just wondering.

  4. 4.

    BlueDWarrior

    The Republican Party is deranged to a point where I think consensus based politics is impossible.

    And given the ideological distribution of the American electorate… yeah it bodes ill for the future.

  5. 5.

    Omnes Omnibus

    But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

    John, they are Republicans.

  6. 6.

    lollipopguild

    Fox and the Right wing have very sucessfully created an alternate universe where all of these morons are heroes.

  9. 9.

    lamh36

    @stealthygeek
    3h3 hours ago
    More
    It’s funny how Jim Jordan expects Peter Strzok to have perfect recollection of email conversations when he can’t remember dozens of boys being sexually assaulted while he watched.

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    @lollipopguild:
    True. Today aptly demonstrates the strategy’s limits, but as to any consequences I’ll believe it when I see some. Gowdy still has a jerb after Hillary batted him like a wiffle ball.

  12. 12.

    lamh36

    @trollhattan: Apparently Cohen duped both Dems and Repubs…Cheney, Palin, Howard Dean, Alberto Gonzales, Bernie, Trent Lott, Patraeus, Ted Koppel, and more

    And like I said on the previous thread… like what dafuq did they say or what types of questions did Sasha Baron Cohen ask, that they willingly answered…that they are NOW putting out statement about being tricked…when the interviews were obviously done MONTHS ago!!!

    Hell, they used Cheney signing a “water boarding” bottle for the commercial for the show!

    I do NOT like prank comedy, and I’m not much a fan of SBC’s brand of prank comedy especially, but as I said,

    I am intrigued

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    Quinerly on the previous thread put up a link to Rick Wilson in the Daily Beast. It was really good, and captured the dynamic.

    Republicans Thought Peter Strzok Would Be a Punching Bag. He Just Knocked Them Out.

    Those who forget the lessons of televised congressional hearings are doomed to repeat them, which is why the morning segment of the Capitol Hill show trial of veteran FBI agent and former head of the Bureau’s Counterespionage division Peter Strzok turned into a disaster for Republicans.

    Donald Trump’s congressional enablers, sycophants, and political suck-ups wanted a punching bag, but Strzok instead delivered one of the rarest of moments: the full Joseph N. Welch.

    …. This morning, it was Strzok’s turn. After an hour of drama-queen badgering from Trey “Benghazi” Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte, Strzok issued two passionate statements that will be the takeaways from an otherwise disorganized and contentious shitshow of a hearing before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.

    The first was a ringing defense of the FBI, with Strzok showing the kind of real passion that makes for great television. The FBI lifer issued a ringing defense of himself and his agency, punching Gowdy hard in the nose.

    “I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, at no time, in any of these texts, did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took. Furthermore, this isn’t just me sitting here telling you you don’t have to take my word for it. At every step, at every investigative decision, there are multiple layers of people above me, the assistant director, executive assistant director, deputy director, and director of the FBI, and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, supervisors, unit chiefs, case agents and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions. They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them.”

    He closed with this fastball:

    “That is who we are as the FBI. And the suggestion that I in some dark chamber somewhere in the FBI would somehow cast aside all of these procedures, all of these safeguards and somehow be able to do this is astounding to me. It simply couldn’t happen. And the proposition that that is going on, that it might occur anywhere in the FBI, deeply corrodes what the FBI is in American society, the effectiveness of their mission, and it is deeply destructive.”

    The second was a shot across Donald Trump’s bow: “I understand we are living in a political era in which insults and insinuation often drown out honesty and integrity. I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart.”

    This latest spectacle was designed for one purpose only: the destruction of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia ties. ….

    None of [GOP bloviating/rightwing media fantasizing] will deter the Terminator in the Special Counsel’s office. None of it will change the facts of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and Trump’s ass-deep ties to Russian money and influence. Trump’s unhinged, shithouse-rat-crazy tweets today should tell you how deeply he fears Mueller.

    I think the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee actually have the average viewer asking “how deep does the rot go? How many of these jerks are in Russia’s pocket?”

    Because they came off as that unhinged. And dangerous.

    And Strzok came off as genuinely passionate, as opposed to the fakeness and ugliness of his persecutors.

  14. 14.

    trollhattan

    @lamh36:
    Need to befriend somebody with Showtime, I am.

    And I’m with you on prank stuff–had to watch “Borat’ in half a dozen segments as I couldn’t take the cringing in one go.

  15. 15.

    Lavocat

    Surely, you’re asking a rhetorical question: the fuckers are all Republicans after all.

  16. 16.

    bluefish

    Just astonishing. Glad they’re every bit as stupid and repulsive as they are. The mad benzedrine fueled panic of the complicit. Plus lots and lots of sweat. Trump is imploding abroad and they just will not shut up. Makes a perfect backdrop. It’s like they don’t get that we’re watching levels of nuts.

  17. 17.

    lamh36

    @tommyxtopher
    2m2 minutes ago
    More
    WTF? GOP rep says “I’m a dentist. I read body language very, very well” at #StrzokHearing. Yes, now you have officially heard it all.

    DAFUQ?

  18. 18.

    Major Major Major Major

    Couldn’t watch it. Might do a small highlights reel, some day. I just don’t get anything out of drinking from the firehose of shit.

    As for the idiocy—I think a lot of republicans, including in congress, actually believe all the crap that’s in the alternate reality they’ve been feeding to the rubes the whole time. Trump is obvious proof that they lost control of their monsters; stuff like this just demonstrates that they’ve become them.

  19. 19.

    Spanky

    @Elizabelle: @Elizabelle:

    Trump’s unhinged, shithouse-rat-crazy tweets today should tell you how deeply he fears Mueller.

    I somehow* missed those tidbits. Where (not twitter) can I find what he said?

    (* – by being offline, actually)

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    FYI, for those who may not know, “A Confederacy of Dunces” is a damn good novel.

    The saga in real life of the travails and demise of the author, John Kennedy Toole, though, is a somber one.

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    Now what’s Donny up to?

    Donald Trump has said the UK will “probably not” get a trade deal with the US, if the prime minister’s Brexit plan goes ahead.

    He told The Sun the PM’s plan would “probably kill the deal” as it would mean the US “would be dealing with the European Union” instead of with the UK.

    The president told The Sun newspaper that the UK’s blueprint for its post-Brexit relations with the EU was “a much different deal than the people voted on”.

    On the subject of a future trade deal, he said the Chequers deal would mean it would be “most likely … we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal”. He said he had told Mrs May how to do a Brexit deal, but: “She didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me.”

    “Didn’t listen.” Huh.

  27. 27.

    trollhattan

    @lamh36:
    Guessing one who sizes up his female patients ages 15-35 before deciding how much gas to administer. You know, “body language.”

  28. 28.

    MomSense

    The hearings are just soundbite generators for FUX news. They will cull some angry accusations by the Republicans and edit Strzok’s responses so it sounds like he apologizes for his Democrat deep state attacks on trump.

  29. 29.

    chopper

    @lamh36:

    sounds like a twitter meme in the making. “i’m an avocado salesman, so i know rocketry really, really well”

  30. 30.

    gene108

    But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

    There is a multi-billion dollar network of right-wing fuckery there to back up whatever they do.

    Live girl, dead boy? Doesn’t matter, as long as they are loyal to the conservative cause.

  34. 34.

    lamh36

    @lamh36:

    Wow, they saved the stupidest part of the hearing for last. “I’m a dentist, Okay. So I read body language very, very well.”

    @joshtpm
    2/ Strzok has a genuinely hard time not laughing at the rep.

    @joshtpm
    3/ watch the vague smirk that comes over Strzok’s face right about at 10 seconds into the clip, when he realizes just how big an idiot the guy is.

    https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1017543043296219136

  36. 36.

    Shakti

    “but what I don’t get is why the people of Steertaint, Texas and Cornpone, Iowa keep sending those morons back to congress to humiliate them.

    Some combination of being that dumb.and these guys hating the right people.

  37. 37.

    SFAW

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Can you please spell the guy’s name right fer chrissake? STRZOK.

    Jesus, don’t strzoke out over it.
    Dzie(n)kuje.

    ETA: Shakes fist ineffectually at westyny

  38. 38.

    lamh36

    @Green_Footballs
    4m4 minutes ago
    More
    I think Peter Strzok is kind of a dick himself, but I find myself cheering him on for not taking shit from these Republican parrots.

    I agree…

  40. 40.

    Gelfling 545

    @lamh36: “when he realizes just how big an idiot the guy is.”
    Ladies and gentlemen, your elected representatives.

  41. 41.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    I don’t know John, but I think we should all just give up because the Republicans are awful people and think we’re dopes for being decent. Oh and drink your victory gin also too. //

  42. 42.

    different-church-lady

    But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

    What’s wrong with them is 40% of the voters in this country think they’re just great.

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    @dm:

    Here is the Actblue page for JD Scholten, who is the Democrat running against Steve King

    Or it would be, if you had linked to it.

  47. 47.

    Amir Khalid

    If the goal of these hearings was to make Strozk look good and the majority party in congress look like idiots, well, mission accomplished.

    It’s Strzok. (I’m bringing this up now just to make sure I get on your good side.)
    I suppose they’re well aware that to you this stuff makes them look like idiots headbutting a brick wall again and again. But what they also know, and what really matters to them, is that to the base that votes for them this stuff makes them look like heroes fighting for the cause. They’re not seeking the truth here, they’re campaigning.

  48. 48.

    jimmiraybob

    “I get that Louis Gohmert and Steve King actually ARE probably stupid enough to not realize how dumb they look, but ….”

    I believe that Gohmert’s performance was enhanced by excessive sipping of the hootch before the games.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    The bleat goes on. (WaPo link.)

    President Trump pledged Thursday that he will “of course” raise the issue of Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election at his Monday summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he said he has little recourse if — as expected — Putin denies that Russia interfered.

    “Look, he may. What am I going to do? He may deny it,” Trump said at a news conference on the second day of a NATO summit. “All I can do is say, ‘Did you?’ And, ‘Don’t do it again.’ But he may deny it.”

    Trump continued to strike a friendly tone toward the Russian leader, calling him a “competitor” rather than a U.S. enemy — while declining to label him as a security threat to the United States or European nations. Source

    “All I can do” – feckless to infinity and beyond.

  53. 53.

    MelissaM

    What’s with the facial hair on Gowdy?? Is he trying to look all neanderthal man while he attempts to shoot the Strzok mastodon? Because he ends up just clubbing himself.

  54. 54.

    Shell

    Whats wrong with them? They think theyre starring in a movie that, alas, only exists in their own minds. Brave, stalwart Congressman, courageously standing up for the TRUTH as the music swells and America swoons.

  55. 55.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: Uh, no. 15 minutes if you obey the posted speed limits (which nobody does at 0430 on a Sunday.) But I thought you had Sunday morning to yourself, though. What time’s your flight out?

  56. 56.

    lamh36

    @mkraju
    Follow Follow @mkraju
    More
    Goodlatte now NOT letting Peter Strzok respond if members use their five minutes to make speeches and not ask him any direct questions. After Biggs attacks him for five minutes, Strzok asks if he can respond, and Goodlatte says: “No, you may not.”

    6:10 PM – 12 Jul 2018

    https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1017546700825792514

    Why DAFUQ is this hearing STILL going on…smh

  58. 58.

    lamh36

    @spectatorindex
    Follow Follow @spectatorindex
    More
    JUST IN: Trump says Europe is ‘losing its culture’ because of immigration

    6:23 PM – 12 Jul 2018

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @Shell

    We need to come up with a new term for the polar opposite of grandstanding that is on display.

    Paltrystanding?

  61. 61.

    Aleta

    @lamh36: Question is how much body vocabulary he knows. For a dentist this is about it: “You’re causing me pain,” “Let me out of here,” and “Thank god it’s over.” Maybe “You want MORE money?”

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s Strzok. (I’m bringing this up now just to make sure I get on your good side.)

    Amir, I expect you already know this, but just in case you don’t:
    What REALLY works with John is to send him an e-mail IN ALL CAPS. HE REALLY LIKES THAT.

  63. 63.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: I thought it over and decided I didn’t really want to putz around all day and then get home @ 11pm. I know I can’t sleep worth a shit on the road so I figured I’d go to the reunion, drive up to Braintree and get a couple of hours of crash time and get home before noon. I get buggy when I’m on the road solo.

  65. 65.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    It’s the Bullshit Debt. I think that’s what Josh Marshall called it. If it wasn’t that, it was something like it. When a party keeps shoveling horseshit to its followers, there comes a point when reality just looms up and overwhelms all the horseshit claims they’ve been making all this time. When that happens, the leaders in the party have to choose between two things: They can own up to what they’ve been doing all that time and tell everybody they were selling lies and fever dreams all that time; or they can just go all out and leave reality behind altogether and pray that when the potato gets too hot to hold any longer, they won’t be the one holding it.

    These guys are diving headlong into this pool of shit because they have no other choice. If they don’t wallow in it and swear up and down that it’s the cleanest, coolest, most refreshing crystal pool in the world, their voters will turn on them hard. I think most of them understand what they’re doing, and that there’s only so long they can keep reality from barging its way into their, and their voters’ fantasies. They’re all just betting that they can stave that day off until they’ve willingly left the game.

  66. 66.

    danielx

    There are a lot of answers to the question, but the simplest one is the answer to the question posed in Thomas Franks’ book, What’s the Matter With Kansas?

    Answer: it’s full of of assholes.

    More complicated than that, but King’s and Gohmert’s districts (to name two among many) obviously have enough people in them who like what they say for them to be elected and re-elected. Q.E.D.

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    Another story about America today. The world championships of ultimate frisbee are taking place in Cincinnati starting this weekend. Teams come from all over. A team from Colombia was on a Greyhound bus yesterday from Columbus to Cincinnati. Being from Colombia, they were naturally speaking Spanish. So the driver threw them off the bus and left them, and their luggage, by the side of the road. It was well past dark.

    Thankfully the police came by and were wondering why these people were by the side of the road, and ended up taking them to their hotel in Cincinnati.

    Welcome to America.

  68. 68.

    p.a.

    Anybody still with trumpov will believe the fox/limpbaugh spin on today’s hearing. no knockout. you’re the knockout.

    november is our (ideal America’s) only hope. and they’re trying mightily to stack the deck. fascism without the militia- so far.

  69. 69.

    lamh36

    Uh huh…already seeing folks trying to claim…”it’s the Sun” so it’s fake news…now WH confirms he said what he said.

    @jdawsey1
    White House aides confirm Trump’s explosive comments in The Sun interview. Expected piece to post tomorrow morning, per senior U.S. official. Saw the piece when he left the dinner tonight.

    5:47 PM – Jul 12, 2018

  71. 71.

    danielx

    @lamh36:

    Jesus, I hope I’m never one of the guy’s patients – not a god sign when the guy acts like he enjoys pureeing live kittens.

  77. 77.

    Major Major Major Major

    Ugh, I just used the “when in doubt blow something up” trick in this short story I’m writing, and it worked.

  79. 79.

    moops

    @Amir Khalid:

    But what they also know, and what really matters to them, is that to the base that votes for them this stuff makes them look like heroes fighting for the cause. They’re not seeking the truth here, they’re campaigning.

    I’m not sure this style of campaigning works well. I mean, the base will barely remember who this FBI agent is. Maybe they can play it as Fighting the Deep State? I still can hardly grasp the Alex Jones Deep State pivot.

  81. 81.

    JMG

    Somewhere between a third and 45 percent of the American electorate are horrible human beings. We are the primary danger to the world. You will never see that acknowledged by the media or even the Democrats (look at Bernie!). It’s too scary to contemplate.

  82. 82.

    kindness

    I’m pretty convinced Republicans only care about the news coverage they receive on Fox. Everything else they now rank as fake news in the eyes of their base, so why bother going farther? They don’t really care about the informed voter, the moderate voter or the liberal voter. Hey it’s worked for them since Obama. Now we realize it was a just a bunch of festering racist angst going on with Right wing base voters wrt Obama. It wasn’t political at all.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I remember reading an essay by a fairly famous author of gothic novels. She finished writing a scene and then called a friend to say, “I just stabbed the Contessa.”

    Her friend said, “What? Why? Who did it?”

    And the author said, “I need to figure that part out.”

    Just don’t be like Raymond Chandler, who famously had a minor character turn up dead in The Big Sleep, but never decided whodunnit.

  88. 88.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m trying to figure that out. The last couple of Southwest trips I have been but I’ve never applied for it. This is on their site

    U.S. Citizens who are Rapid Rewards® Members that the TSA deems eligible and opt-in to participate in the program

    I am a Rapid Rewards and I paid the xtra $15 for extra special zoomy boarding so maybe so.

  93. 93.

    moops

    @NotMax:

    “Look, he may. What am I going to do? He may deny it,” Trump said at a news conference on the second day of a NATO summit. “All I can do is say, ‘Did you?’ And, ‘Don’t do it again.’ But he may deny it.”

    there are many things you *could* do, you moron. Become hostile to a foreign threat to our democracy. Tell him our intelligence on this is solid. A good reporter could have brought up a huge list of things Trump could do if he denies it. Trump gave them the opening, by asking his rhetorical question. Just treat it like Trump asking you a real question and give him an answer.

    Every reporter around Trump should be exploiting his habit of bullying his interlocutors with moronic rhetorical non-answers.

    …but that oh so important “access”. feh. What good is access if you are just stenographers?

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @moops:
    Details, details … The base don’t care about details. What fires them up is seeing their guys sticking it to the liberals.

  98. 98.

    Amir Khalid

    @lamh36:
    Bring this up whenever you discuss this interview: POTUS giving an exclusive interview to The Sun is like the British PM giving an exclusive interview to The National Enquirer.

  104. 104.

    jimmiraybob

    Who was the republican goober who declared that the U.S. was not a democracy but was, instead, a constitutional republic? He then immediately became terribly confused and his time ran out with him babbling incoherently? I assume that he, his dentist buddy and the already sloshed Gohmert are already at their favorite Hill bar high fiving their pending Trump approval. Thanks in advance for the answer, I have a history lesson to put together.

  107. 107.

    lamh36

    @Amir Khalid: Oh, I understand that completely…which makes the fact that the WH has to issue a statement to “clarify” what the POTUS said in an interview with a tabloid publication…even sadder.

  108. 108.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    Amir, I expect you already know this, but just in case you don’t:
    What REALLY works with John is to send him an e-mail IN ALL CAPS. HE REALLY LIKES THAT.

    Bonus points if you include your credenza.

  109. 109.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    The Page 3 Girl is really just the bait that attracts working-class males to The Sun’s Murdochian right-wing propaganda.

  111. 111.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    @Amir Khalid: What fires them up is seeing their guys sticking it to the liberals.

    It’s Cleek’s Law, all the way down!

  113. 113.

    Mnemosyne

    @Quinerly:

    Of course they are. They’re mad that they got caught and, like anyone with the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old, they’re doing petty shit to get revenge on the people who are the source of their embarrassment.

  115. 115.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Don’t GOP congresscritters always look stupid when dealing with competent people? Remember Obama’s friendly conversation about the ACA?

    I think journalists who point out that “GOPer proceeded to ask a stupid question, and wondered why the witness placed the lead for a donkey in his hand – apparently unable to realized he’d just had his ass handed to him” lose access or something.

  119. 119.

    jimmiraybob

    @Quinerly:

    Same guy? Congressman Body Language is Congressman We’re Not A Democracy? Geez, my brain must have been having a harder time processing the BS than I realized. I hope the damage isn’t permanent.

  120. 120.

    Amir Khalid

    @LongHairedWeirdo:
    Journos who worry about that need to ask themselves if it’s really worth the compromises to maintain access to a proven liar/idiot/both.

  123. 123.

    moops

    @Amir Khalid: Stenography journalism can be offshored. I hear there are plenty of literate Russians looking for work repeating and amplifying everything the GOP says. Internet Research Agency will the same job for free*.

    These “journalists” are participating in their eventual extinction.

  126. 126.

    James E Powell

    But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

    What’s wrong is that they don’t see anything wrong. They have no morals other than lust for power.

    Our problem is that there is nothing in the world of reality that has given them the kind of feedback necessary to show them they are wrong. They have been behaving like this for over 20 years and it has put them in positions of power that they only dreamed possible. In particular, the future had to look pretty bleak for them on November 5, 2008. But here we are ten years after and they are in apparently unfettered control of all three branches of the federal government and nearly two-thirds of the states.

    And it isn’t like Obama and the Democrats governed badly. They didn’t launch a war based on lies, they didn’t collapse the economy, they didn’t announce they were going after social security.

    A recent Marquette Law School poll shows Scott Walker leading all of his potential Democratic opponents. After all that has happened, he is still leading against any Democrat. Are that state and this country just fucked up beyond repair, beyond hope? Is it going to take some kind of major catastrophe to break the hold that the Herrenvolk Republicans have on white people?

  129. 129.

    A Ghost To Most

    Donald Trump threw a massive tantrum on Thursday over the 20-foot baby blimp replica of him that is flying above London as he arrives in the UK.

    In an interview with The Sun, the 72-year-old man-child said the balloon makes him feel “unwelcome” and he’s going to try to stay away from the city during his trip.

    chickenshit

  130. 130.

    Mike J

    Anybody been to Bagram? My next door but one neighbor went last month, in a role that will mean she won’t be trekking to the hinterlands. What would you want, excluding bourbon, bacon, and relatives of either? I know tabasco (or better yet, taco bell sauce packets(no glass)) is popular with people who go out and have to eat MREs, but she doesn’t do that.

  133. 133.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Mike J: on first read I thought this said ‘Belgium’ and was gonna be like… Belgium isn’t *that* bad.

  136. 136.

    Olivia

    Well,looking at MAGAt comments on Twitter, you would think that Gohmert was a brilliant statesman, Gowdy showed everyone who is boss and the rest of the questioners nailed an arrogant Strzok to the wall. This is all meat to throw at the toothless hordes who are high fiving that they pwned the libs.

  138. 138.

    Villago Delenda Est

    But really, what the hell is wrong with these people?

    Nothing a tumbrel ride in Paris can’t resolve.

  140. 140.

    Yarrow

    @raven: Make sure you figure out where to put gas in your rental car at that time of day too. The last time I rented a car at Logan I drove all over trying to find a gas station. That was several years ago so maybe it’s easier now.

  143. 143.

    raven

    @Yarrow: Ha, taking one back to Midway I couldn’t figure out how to open the goddamn gas filler door! I’m going to leave Providence after the gig so I’ll fill it in Braintree.

  144. 144.

    Dave

    @Mike J: That’s hard to say. Bagram isnt exactly lacking in amenities. I hated it but that’s because we were stuck there for a month on a our way out of a small combat outpost and we’ll a bunch of crap. Good coffee maybe? It’s always worth it to ask what they are lacking or really craving.

  147. 147.

    Yarrow

    @raven: Ugh. Had that happen once. Turns out you just pushed the gas door and it opened. Was ransacking the car looking for the gas door unlock lever but it was nowhere to be found. Of course no manual in the glove compartment. Some guy at the pump next to us to us what to do.

  148. 148.

    Amir Khalid

    @moops:
    To expand on your point:
    Steno journalism doesn’t even need to exist any more. Now that government agencies and corporations have their own websites and YouTube channels and social-media presence, they are free to send their message out unfiltered and unexamined by a third party. For now, we’re in a transition phase where a substantial section of the news-consuming public still believes that a third party news org adds credibility, and thus value, to such “news” by repeating it. And mainstream media is still making a living on that. But people in Malaysia got wise to that shit a while ago. Online media played a big part in how the election played out, and ave finally upended the cosy relation between mainstream media and the suddenly-no-longer-ruling coalition.I think people in America can get wise too.

  150. 150.

    raven

    @Yarrow: Exactly, I couldn’t find the damn manual either. I think it probably was just a push job but it was 4am and I was dopier than usual.

  151. 151.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Gravenstone:
    They still have the “orifice.” THAT appendage isn’t removed. Its the large round future rocky mtn oysters, that are removed.
    (Farm kid here)

  152. 152.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: When you’re coming up from the south on 93, there’s an easy off-on 24-hour gas station at Exit 15. That’s about a mile or two before you get into the Big Dig stuff and have no options.

  153. 153.

    NotMax

    @Mike J

    How about a small selection of entertaining paperbacks?

    Sounds silly, but maybe as a lark that astronaut ice cream stuff?

  156. 156.

    Steve in the ATL

    @NotMax:

    FYI, for those who may not know, “A Confederacy of Dunces” is a damn good novel.

    That’s an understatement–it’s one of the all time greats!

  161. 161.

    Steve in the ATL

    @raven: I was in bargaining today so I didn’t catch anything, but I assume she brought much shame and embarrassment to my district.

  165. 165.

    guachi

    I haven’t seen anyone mention this today so I will.

    I work at Ft. Gordon in Augusta, GA. Someone accidentally(?) posted the following on the official Ft. Gordon Facebook page – a picture of Trump with the caption “Sometimes I get the feeling that Trump was installed by a foreign enemy to weaken and destabilize America…”

  166. 166.

    moops

    @Amir Khalid: I don’t think a self-publishing media world is all that desirable. That’s how we get nothing but echo chambers and bubbles.

    There is a valuable service journalist *could* be providing. The Jack Welch bending NBC news to serve the bottom line was a huge part of the problems we are in. Rupert Murdoch pays good money to run a propaganda network.

    but we took a bad turn. Internet News put up the paywalls, and the readers didn’t come. The value a journalist could bring was not deemed valuable enough, or they were just not any good at actual journalism to justify people paying good money for it.

    I think we might have learned a hard lesson these last few years and there is perhaps and opportunity for a media model to make money and provide needed journalism. I know that at least *I* am looking for someone to take my money and do real journalism whereas before I thought the value proposition wasn’t there.

  168. 168.

    Shana

    @NotMax: Isn’t Marmite Australian? I’ve been to Britain a number of times and never seen Marmite at a breakfast, or anywhere else outside a grocery.

  169. 169.

    Gravenstone

    @lamh36: Apparently he wants to blow up the British government on his way out. A consolation prize for not totally blowing up NATO?

  170. 170.

    sukabi

    @A Ghost To Most: mission accomplished then. Do you suppose we could invest in thousands of them to fly everywhere in the us he goes…maybe he’ll leave the country and go somewhere he’s wanted.

  172. 172.

    chris

    @Shana: Vegemite is the Australian version. They’re both gross IMHO.

    ::runs for cover::

    ETA Great minds or something…

  173. 173.

    SenyorDave

    @p.a.: I looked it up, it was Jay Gould. He was considered a particularly despicable guy, standing out even among the other robber barons.

  175. 175.

    frosty

    @Yarrow: I’ve called two rental car companies while I was sitting at the gas pump because I couldn’t figure out how to open the gas door. Berated them for taking the owner’s manual out too. Now I try to remember to look for it before I leave the rental lot.

  177. 177.

    Amir Khalid

    @moops:
    Having worked in it myself, I don’t think corporate news media is that desireable either. I think the best we can hope for is a variety in approaches to news gathering and delivery that lets these approaches compensate for each other’s flaws.

  178. 178.

    Gravenstone

    @MagdaInBlack: The missing orifice is the vagina, with the taint being the skin between it and the anus. So yeah, steers ain’t got no taint.

    Hey, beats talking about Trump…

    /Also ex-farm kid

  179. 179.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I am going to speculate and say – Trump has something he is blackmailing these Gohmert and Kings with and Trump ordered them to harass Strozk. That would fit Trump’s theory that the rest of the world must lose in order for Trump to win.

  180. 180.

    Brachiator

    @A Ghost To Most:
    I think that the UK government has tried to minimize the time that Trump will spend in London. He will spend some time in Scotland at one of his golf courses, and he has deluded himself into believing that the people there like him.

  181. 181.

    Amir Khalid

    @Brachiator:
    He’s half Scot, and his mother’s people hate him all the more for that connection. Given their creativity in expressing such feelings, I expect there will be some new gems about Trump for the rest of us to savour.

  182. 182.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Vegemite is Australian. Marmite is British. Don’t ask me which one is more disgusting.

    The food of the gods. It’s not for mere mortals.

    (As I sit in front of my monitor munching on my crumpet with vegemite.)

  183. 183.

    Platonailedit

    Of course, the traitorous thug ‘endorsed’ another traitorous thug, brexit boris, as UK PM, while he was there as a ‘guest’. How do you like them apples now, Theresa?

  184. 184.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Amir Khalid: it was a Scot who first named him the Shitgibbon!

    Darlin Leach @ daylinleach
    Hey @ realDonaldTrump I oppose civil asset forfeiture too! Why don’t you try to destroy my career you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!
    12:58 PM – Feb 7, 2017

    and there was an on-line petition to get the Giant Baby Balloon authorized to fly over his golf course. I hope they pull it off

  185. 185.

    J R in WV

    @lamh36:

    Wow, they saved the stupidest part of the hearing for last. “I’m a dentist, Okay. So I read body language very, very well.”

    @joshtpm
    2/ Strzok has a genuinely hard time not laughing at the rep.

    @joshtpm
    3/ watch the vague smirk that comes over Strzok’s face right about at 10 seconds into the clip, when he realizes just how big an idiot the guy is.

    Thanks for sharing that bit with us. Mr Strzok does lose his poker face there for a moment. It was good to see. And how does a Congressional Dentist read body language looking into someone’s mouth, anyway!?!?

    ;-)

  186. 186.

    Jay

    @moops:

    There’s “news”, “news” and “news”.

    I get some of my “news” from the CBC, the Independent and the Guardian,

    I get my “local” news from CBC, KFJC TV online, Castanet, ( all online) and The Tyee, ( online).

    I get my “opinion and analysis” online from a large variety of bloggers, reporters and analyists that I have grown to “trust”, even if I don’t like what they write.

    Most people in the US however consume their media from Social Media like the Book of Faces, which is a completely different thing.

  187. 187.

    SFAW

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I am going to speculate and say – Trump has something he is blackmailing these Gohmert and Kings with and Trump ordered them to harass Strozk.

    Nah, they’re just evil/stupid/crazy assholes. They do it because they can, and because their moron electorate thinks they’re being tough on the Libs.

  189. 189.

    SFAW

    @J R in WV:

    And how does a Congressional Dentist read body language looking into someone’s mouth, anyway!?!?

    It would surprise me not one iota, were we to find out that the “dentist” uses nitrous (or equivalent) on his hot-looking female patients, because he could tell by their “body language” that he should put them to sleep so he could abuse them. “Hey, c’mon, you KNOW you wanted it, bay-bee! Your body language was unmistakable — if your lying back in the chair wasn’t a come-on, then why did you do it?.”

  192. 192.

    Platonailedit

    @lamh36:

    If dentists were all naturals at reading body language, they wouldn't have needed to invent that "Raise your hand if I hit a nerve" rule.— Andrew Amster (@smudgeworxpress) July 12, 2018

  195. 195.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Mnemosyne: I agree with you, but since I admire Chandler & have read all his books & a lot of his short stories, I have to explain that cliche.

    In the novel and in the movie there were multiple murders, but in the book it was pretty clear that the victim’s homosexual lover was avenging his “roommate’s” death (roommate was a photographer who was killed after blackmailing a spoiled society girl who had allowed him to take nude photographs of herself). Of course that had to be left out of the movie, so even though Chandler wrote the screenplay himself, he had to maintain the fiction that the first murder victim and the second killer were just two guys who barely knew each other and there was no explanation as to how they were connected.

  196. 196.

    Mnemosyne

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop:

    Intriguing — I’ve never heard that explanation. I may need to read the book to see if I agree. ?

    I wouldn’t be surprised, however. Classic hard-boiled detective novels are full of that stuff. John Huston managed to sneak “gunsel” into The Maltese Falcon and clearly knew exactly what it meant, though he didn’t let the Breen office know.

  198. 198.

    momus

    Perhaps, the constituents of Grommet, King et al. Simply don’t want a politician who might be smarter than they are to be their Congressman.

  199. 199.

    Procopius

    @lamh36: Any time I see the word “prank,” I go to another site. I won’t in this case since you say you hate it as “comedy,” which I do not think it is. Same way I will not watch any appearance of Jimmy Kimmel. I can never unsee that image of him tousling Trump’s hair. Yuccckkk. When I see the word “prank,” I think of those godawful people who had a “reality show” facebook page or YouTube channel where family members supposedly “pranked” each other by pretending one did something wrong and then all the others screamed at that one until they revealed the “prank” at the end of the eleven minutes. Basically it tried to make child abuse cuddly and funny.

  200. 200.

    Miss Bianca

    @A Ghost To Most: Oh, God, couldn’t we get one of those things to fly over Washington DC? Like, constantly? I’m sure the mayor of DC would be down with it.

  201. 201.

    jl

    So, what is this about Manchin’s knowledge of Cole’s STDs? I sense a blog ethics scandal in the air.

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