Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

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

Trump should be leading, not lying.

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Let there be snark.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

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

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

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

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

You are here: Home / Rage Needs an Outlet

Rage Needs an Outlet

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Unless you have been living under a rock, Ted Cruz, a Senator from Texas and possible Zodiac Killer is in a very tight race against a young fellow by the name of Beto. He’s under a lot of pressure, although Texas being Texas, he still has a decent chance at winning. Regardless, he’s getting it from all angles, as he should:

Now as you long know, I am not a fan of crowds in general or of making a scene, and while I would probably not do something like this, I am not going to judge those who do. This is, after all, the entirely predictable outcome of when the majority will of the country is being systematically ignored and oppressed by a venal and self-serving minority. In normal times, this would not happen. But when a majority of the population votes for one person and another becomes President, when clear majorities oppose virtually everything the party in power is doing but can’t do anything about it, this is what people like Cruz should expect.

People should be able to vent their frustrations at the ballot box, but when everything is gerrymandered, people are disfranchised by minority party intentional actions, when an archaic electoral college and the undemocratic apportionment of Senators all work together to make the ballot box in large part irrelevant, you just don’t get to have your $500 cavatelli with the missus in peace. Them’s just the breaks.

The upside is that unlike the tea party losers who were upset at the LEGITIMATE election of a President, they aren’t carrying guns and threatening to use them. They’re just pointing out that you’re a, in the words of wingnut columnist Bret Stephens, a “a serpent covered in Vaseline” who “treats the American people like two-bit suckers in 10-gallon hats.” As is their right. I’m sorry your Japanese Kampachi Crudo was ruined.

Oddly enough, no decent human beings had their dinner shouted down last night. Funny how that works.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    Bobby Thomson

    Dr. Ford has to pay for private security and is in hiding because of credible death threats against her and her family. Funny how none of the tongue cluckers have much to say about that.

  2. 2.

    Mary G

    I was thinking about it, because I was socialized not to make fusses, and I thought doing it would hurt the other diners, one or two of whom might be a decent human being, then I decided it was fine because it was Ted, and I have enjoyed all the shocked indignation of right wingers on twitter. For anybody else, I’d probably stay outside on the street and yell at him as he or she was going in and coming out.

    Your point is great, because these dicks don’t have real town halls or constituent services and if screaming in a restaurant, or a ballpark, or in the halls of Congress, is the only way they’ll hear, screaming it is. Darrell Issa had telephone town halls, where only Republicans got to speak, and I’ve been shocked at the number of representatives that don’t even do that, don’t even pretend.

    And if Democrats don’t win in November, all bets are off, because that means the vote will have been rigged.

  3. 3.

    gene108

    Read about this on Wonkette earlier today. They postulated this may wake up some Texans up, who were going to sit this election out, but might decide to vote for Cruz to stick it to D.C. liberals.

    Beto tweeted out his sympathies for Ted and Heidi and said everyone should be able to eat dinner in peace.

    I know these displays can be cathartic, because as John points out, a determined minority is imposing its will on the majority, but these may not be the most strategic moves.

    Anyway, I do find it humorous Republicans are not getting any peace in D.C. anymore. They have to do their job in a city that hates them.

  4. 4.

    Mary G

    It's traditional for the President to send congratulatory letters to boys who have reached the rank of Eagle Scout. Parents or troop leaders request these letters. It's routine. Here is the letter my friend's son received from Donald J Trump. pic.twitter.com/Y706P2iMyT— Indivis Northville (@indivis_Nville) September 24, 2018

    For those who don’t want to click over, it’s a tepid letter of condolences for the death of Barbara Bush.

  7. 7.

    Tokyokie

    @Mary G: Back in the day, I ordered waaaaaaay too many high school graduation notices, and because I had plenty of extras, I thought, what the hell, and sent one to President and Mrs. Nixon. I got an appropriate reply, only it came postage due.

  8. 8.

    Jay

    Social Scientists note that shunning and shameing come first,

    after that, all bets are off.

    Given all the indignities and violence visited on the Rest of America on a daily basis, Calgary Cruz should count his blessings.

  9. 9.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Mary G: I am sitting here wondering if there is anything they can’t fuck up. I thought I had something for a moment: If I gave them a task and told them “I want you to fuck this up” they would invariably fuck up in trying to perform the task of fucking up. I thought there might be some kind of cancellation resulting in there being no fuck up, but after some deliberation I have convinced myself that they still would have fucked it up. Getting back to the point at hand, there isn’t anything they can’t fuck up.

  10. 10.

    Tokyokie

    Oh, and by the way, I live in Fort Worth, the most Republican city in Texas, and over the last few months I have seen a total of one yard sign/bumper sticker for Cruz, compared with literally hundreds for Beto. One. Lose with Cruz, GOP.

  11. 11.

    sukabi

    @Mary G: WTF??? The incompetence is staggering. How on earth does a condolence form letter for Barbara Bush get sent out as a congratulatory letter to an eagle scout?

    These clowns can’t get even the basic jobs done right.

  13. 13.

    Jerzy Russian

    @TS (the original):

    And if you watch the video – Cruz took off without his wife – as usual.

    Maybe his wife walked slower so that the separation between them grew larger with time? I wonder if his daughter still flicks him away whenever he is nearby?

  15. 15.

    Aleta

    Voters Not Politicians gathered 425,000 signatures in Michigan for a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot creating a citizens’ commission for redistricting.

    Michigan (one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation) is the largest of four states voting in November on proposed changes to how voting districts are drawn after each census. A win in could be a turning point for the growing effort to end partisan redistricting one state at a time.
    …
    The crowdsourced campaign held 33 town-hall meetings in 33 days, wrote a ballot proposal to give redistricting powers to a citizens’ commission, and fanned out across Michigan with clipboards and petitions in hand.

    (The) proposal would amend Michigan’s constitution to create a 13-member redistricting commission made up of regular citizens: four Republicans, four Democrats, and five independents or members of minor parties. People would apply to join, and the commissioners would be randomly selected from among the qualified applicants, though legislative leaders would be able to strike a few names from the list. To keep political insiders off the commission, the proposal bans partisan elected officials, candidates for partisan offices, lobbyists, political consultants, members of party governing committees, state employees outside civil service, and their close relatives from serving on the commission.

    … “We directly make gerrymandering illegal,” (Fahey) says. “Districts shall not provide a disproportionate advantage to any political party,” the proposal reads. “Districts shall not favor or disfavor an incumbent elected official or a candidate.”
    …
    The group had 180 days to gather 315,000 signatures in a state of 10 million people.

    The article explains how they did it.

  16. 16.

    Martin

    Yeah, I would normally disapprove this, but we have an expectation that institutions will function on our behalf, and a LOT of people don’t see that happening. When democratic institutions fail, undemocratic ones take their place. As Jay notes, shouting someone out of a restaurant is the first rung of a ladder we really don’t want to see climbed, but climbing it we are.

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies

    @Tokyokie:

    What are the latest polls showing? Signage is interesting as long as a bunch of sullen morons aren’t nursing their rage and will vote for Cruz to “own the Libs.”

  18. 18.

    Martin

    @Aleta: Sounds familiar. California’s process includes town hall meetings in each proposed district to talk to residents. They tend to get astroturfed a fair bit, but that’s not too hard to spot. There are lots of communities that are difficult to identify as such. These meetings are designed to reveal that.

    Good luck to Michigan. I hope it passes.

  19. 19.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mary G: Hmmm, that must be a new tradition; I didn’t receive a letter from the President when I became an Eagle Scout 45 years ago. However the President’s signature does appear on my Eagle Scout card. I did receive congratulations from Congressman Goldwater.

  21. 21.

    Lymie

    What if you just walk up to these jokers and smile and tell them what despicable people they are?

    You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s
    Really sick and they won’t take him

    And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and
    They won’t take either of them

    And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin’ in, singin’
    A bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an
    Organization!

    And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day
    Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out? Friends
    They may think it’s a Movement, and that’s what it is THE Alices’s
    Restaurant anti-massacre movement!

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    Well, I finally got a genuine laugh out of one of Trump’s fuckups. That poor kid.

    Even worse, people in that thread say that this has been going on since at least May of this year. They just can’t get the simplest fucking things right.

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    @Aleta: That was one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen since Nov. 2016. It proves the grassroots can get big changes done. A lot of people were saying they were wasting their time and wouldn’t get enough valid signatures, then when they did that they said the Republican-controlled courts would never let it through, but they did. Great news for 2020.

  24. 24.

    jacy

    We are at an inflection point in history where people like Ted Cruz should be driven, weeping, from the public square. History will judge us poorly otherwise.

    In other news, I’m putting down my marker now that someday we will have president Beto O’Roarke. Mark it, libs!

  26. 26.

    jacy

    @Mary G:

    My kid got no tepid letter of congratulations from Trump upon achieving Eagle Scout! If he had, I would have used it to light a spliff, so, whatever.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    BTW, if anybody is thinking of chasing these scumbags out of a restaurant,

    You can get bootleg Trump Campaign “Fuck Your Feelings” Tshirts, online from Mexico.

    Snark MAGA red hats as well.

  29. 29.

    Aleta

    @gene108: everyone should be able to eat dinner in peace.

    Luckily for them they have lots of ways to eat dinner in peace, fully protected, whatever food they want, maybe for the rest of their lives. Their tax cut will even pay for more guards and private rooms.

    It’s OK to shun people who act with extreme cruelty but walk free, imo.

  31. 31.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Mnemosyne: They just can’t get the simplest fucking things right.

    We should count our lucky stars for this. For a (wannbe-)Fascist regime, they’re remarkably incompetent . Other Fascist regimes were much more competent. And hence, much more dangerous. We should count our lucky stars.

    Also: those folks who booed Cruz out of that restaurant — good on ’em, and yeah, if that happened all over the nation, maybe things would change faster. I think @Martin has it exactly right. And sure, Beto’s gotta tut-tut the protestors, but hey, if he didn’t, that’d be a bad sign. Nobody wants our pols encouraging violence.

    And last: @Tokyokie: I grew up just west of there (Weatherford). Man, it sure is red, isn’t it? I had no idea, back then. Was a member of the Young Republicans Club. Got taught all *sorts* of rubbish in high school. What a waste. I remember back then (late 70s) there was, like, one Chinese restaurant, Peony, on the west side of Fort Worth. Had dinner there once, and then years later again (after 4yr in Houston for college). Lordy, such awful food! I hear Fort Worth and Tarrant County have really changed. Also read someplace “as goes Tarrant County, so goes Texas” when it comes to voting.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I gave money to Beverly Powell this cycle (and Annie’s List) — maybe it doesn’t work, but hey, if you don’t try, you won’t succeed.

  32. 32.

    B.B.A.

    I’m going to dissent here on humanitarian grounds, because I think this kind of thing does more harm to the protesters than to Cruz. They have to be in the same room as Ted Cruz, which to me sounds like a punishment worse than death. No Democrat should be made to suffer like that.

  33. 33.

    delk

    My husband and I got married in Iowa because they had same sex marriage before Illinois did. When we got to the hotel, Rick Santorum’s campaign bus (his 2012 presidential) was parked in the lot taking up all the spots near the front door. We looked everywhere for him. We walked all over the hotel holding hands waving our license but did not see him.

    I would have interrupted his dinner or anything else he was doing.

  34. 34.

    Jay

    @Aleta:

    These people have and are doing vile things under the cover of vivility and comity.

    There isn’t any civility or comity in the ICE Concentration and Rape Camps.

    Just like the Barbequeing While Black Civil Patrol members, Nazi’s, other Deplorables, they need to be named, shamed, and chased out of public spaces.

    For a lot of these Establishment Deplorable’s, you won’t be able to take their jobs, wealth and power, but you can stop them from showing their faces in public.

  36. 36.

    Aleta

    (WaPost tonight) Liz Swisher, who described herself as a friend of Kavanaugh in college, said she was shocked that…he strongly denied drinking to the point of blacking out.

    “Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him. I watched him drink more than a lot of people. He’d end up slurring his words, stumbling,” said Swisher, a Democrat and chief of the gynecologic oncology division at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “There’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. . . . But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”

    Lynne Brookes, who like Swisher was a college roommate of one of the two women now accusing Kavanaugh of misconduct, said the nominee’s comments on Fox did not match the classmate she remembered.
    “He’s trying to paint himself as some kind of choir boy,” said Brookes, a Republican and former pharmaceutical executive who recalled an encounter with a drunken Kavanaugh at a fraternity event. “You can’t lie your way onto the Supreme Court, and with that statement out, he’s gone too far. It’s about the integrity of that institution.”

    Brookes, Ramirez’s roommate for a year, said she was present one night when Kavanaugh participated in an event with his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. Brookes said she believes there was “no way” he remembered all of the behavior she observed that night, when fraternity brothers pushed pledges to get “ridiculously drunk” and do “ridiculous things.”

    Brookes said she remembers seeing Kavanaugh outside the Sterling Memorial Library, wearing a superhero cape and an old leather football helmet and swaying, working to keep his balance. He was ordered to hop on one foot, grab his crotch and approach her with a rhyme, Brookes said. He couldn’t keep balanced, she said, but belted out the rhyme. …

    The Post contacted Brookes and Swisher last week because they lived with Ramirez at different points during their undergraduate years. Neither returned calls or emails until Tuesday. Ramirez previously told neither of them about her allegation — she accuses him of exposing himself to her while both were drunk at a party — but Brookes and Swisher said they believe her account.
    …
    Another former classmate who has publicly supported Ramirez, James Roche, said Kavanaugh frequently drank to the point of incoherence. “He hung out with the football players and soccer players, and they drank a lot and were bros,” Roche, who briefly shared a room with Kavanaugh during their freshman year, said in an interview this month. In a statement Monday night, after the Fox interview, Roche described Kavanaugh as a “notably heavy drinker” who “became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk.”

    Meanwhile, three Yale classmates who along with others endorsed Kavanaugh last month in a letter to the Judiciary Committee called Tuesday for an investigation into the sexual assault claims.

  37. 37.

    smike

    @jacy:
    We are working, contributing, and hoping for Beto to prevail.

    Texas GOPers are a special breed of hypocrite. Both BushII and Cruz are immigrants to this state, and that used to mean something to the mouth-breather crowd.

    I can’t wait for Beto to run for prez. We need people like him.

  38. 38.

    Jay

    @NotMax:

    The could have stuck to chants of “shame, shame, shame” like the citizens of Kings Landing in Game of Thrones.

    The could have chanted Zodiac Killer, or Kennedy Killer followed up with point, repeat.

    Or they could have changed anything Insane Clown POSus said about him or his wife during the campaign.

  39. 39.

    Millard Filmore

    @Aleta:

    “He’s trying to paint himself as some kind of choir boy,” said Brookes, a Republican and former pharmaceutical executive who recalled an encounter with a drunken Kavanaugh at a fraternity event. “You can’t lie your way onto the Supreme Court, and with that statement out, he’s gone too far. It’s about the integrity of that institution.”

    Roberts can kiss his legacy goodbye if Special K gets in. This period of time will be known as The Rapey Kavanaugh era.

  41. 41.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jay: Well, that’s disgusting. Sigh.

    @Millard Filmore: Oh look! He’s demonstrably lied! Again! In a matter that directly pertains to his defense!

    Think the media or republicans will notice this time?

  42. 42.

    SectionH

    @Mary G: Y’all told Issa to fuck off big time in ’16. I’m so proud of you. And esp in awe of you guys who regularly showed up at that asshole’s office to protest afterwards. Even if it wasn’t you personally.

    I’m in Ca-53, Susan’s fine. I used to live in CA-50 – there’s a reach for a D win, but damn… I’d be going for Ammar more if I hadn’t seen today he’s in favor of repealing the gas tax? Uh, WTF? Somebody needs to have a talk with that kid.

  43. 43.

    grammypat

    Was driving in rural areas south, east, and northeast of Austin on Tuesday. This is not blue-Austin, it is blood-red Texas territory.

    In >200 miles, saw a shitload of “Beto” signs in peoples’ yards and business … some huge.

    Saw a grand total of 2 small “Ted Cruz” signs. One was at the corner of a side road … not in anyone’s yard. It was as if they were ashamed to claim ownership. SAD!

  44. 44.

    oldster

    Tea-Party Jihadists talk about ‘Second Amendment Solutions,’ i.e. murdering elected officials elected by the majority.

    The Press: “I admire the earnest patriotism of these true American patriots!”

    Democrats shout at members of a corrupt regime that never did get a majority.

    The Press: “These uncivil monsters have gone too far!”

  45. 45.

    oldster

    If Kavanaugh gets on the bench–as is only too likely– then he and Gorsuch should be referred to as “the Russian Judges,” following the old jokes about the Olympics.

    And Russian judges they will genuinely be: appointed by the stooge that Putin installed in the White House.

    How long is the Russian occupation of Washington going to last? As long as the Republicans are in power.

  46. 46.

    Giddyyup

    Have not posted in a long long time. But. This is gold. As most of your posts mr. Cole. Except that the 0lace is ‘across the street’ nonsense. Good day. Giidyyup

  47. 47.

    Tehanu

    @Bobby Thomson:

    Dr. Ford has to pay for private security and is in hiding because of credible death threats against her and her family. Funny how none of the tongue cluckers have much to say about that.

    Exactly! Everything that isn’t projection with the right is hypocrisy.

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