Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

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

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

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

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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

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

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Let’s finish the job.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Late Night NATO Open Thread: They’re Not Laughing *With* Him, They’re Laughing *At* Him

Late Night NATO Open Thread: They’re Not Laughing *With* Him, They’re Laughing *At* Him

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It’d be funnier, if not for the war crimes part…

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54Comments

  6. 6.

    mrmoshpotato

    And now to be serious.

     

    Fuck this Soviet shitpile mobster conman.  And fuck you Susan Sarandon.  And fuck you Bernie-or-busters.  And fuck everyone who didn’t want to get “Hillary stink” on their voting record.

  8. 8.

    hells littlest angel

    The comments on the first tweet are full of “Canadians” indignant that Trudeau is being mean to Trump.

  9. 9.

    HumboldtBlue

    It’s just not funny anymore.

     

    I said that to a former co-worker in the summer of 2016.

     

    It’s gotten exponentially worse.

  10. 10.

    Jay

    @hells littlest angel:

     

    some are “Canadians”. We have a loud handful here, filled up with Nazis, Incels, homaphobes, anti-semites and islamophobes  that went full QAnon bugnut crazy when Trudeau was first elected.

     

    check out Yellow Vests Canada Exposed on Twitter.

     

    of course, a bunch of them arn’t Canadians as well.

  14. 14.

    John Revolta

    <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbulj7L-pHQ”>Crackin’up</A>

    I’m gettin’ ready to go

    Had enough

    Can’t take any more

    No pills that I can take

    This is too real

    And there ain’t no escape

    It scare the daylights

    It’s like a nightmare

    I’m tense and I’m nervous

    Everybody all around me

    Shakin’ hands and sayin’ howdy

    I don’t think it’s funny no more………………….

  16. 16.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    So no one else has to sully their browser:  I checked Fauxnews and they haven’t mentioned Trump’s “cookie cutter” comment yet—probably still working on photoshopping a photo of Obummer being mercilessly mugged by Xi.

     

    Off topic, but I just found out and my jaw is still on the floor; am I the only person unaware John Oliver is married to a republican?  He met her at the 2008 republican convention; he’s married to a woman who presumably voted for Sarah Palin. I’m done watching his motherfucking show.

     

    By 2008 the perfidy and naked racism of the republican party was glaringly obvious; would he marry a fucking National Socialist?  “Well, she doesn’t hate Jews, she just voted for a party built on anti-Semitism.”

  19. 19.

    jonas

    At some point, the media, the public, everyone, is going to have to grapple with the growing tide of evidence that the president is mentally, shall we say, “unwell.” Every time a staffer resigns, they talk about how Trump is cognitively declining: he can barely read, doesn’t remember things he said or was told a few minutes earlier, babbles incoherently, can’t find words, etc., etc. And that’s in addition to usual blizzard of lies and bullshit he spews throughout the day. How can you not watch the pressers he does nowadays and not go “there is something seriously wrong with this guy’s head”? How much longer can his handlers keep up the charade that he’s not in the throes of dementia?

    Also, has any journalist worth his or her salt actually ever followed up on the bizarre story of Trump’s recent unannounced “routine” physical late on a Saturday night at Walter Reed Hospital? This is the kind of stuff that would have sent the media into a complete meltdown tizzy for weeks 10 years ago. Remember when Hillary felt slightly unwell at a rally? They had 10 news copters circling her house for days. Now? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  22. 22.

    Tony Jay

    One unalloyed plus of having the Spraytanned Shitberg docked in the Port of London is watching Johnson’s flailing election campaign trying to keep him Happy while trying – and failing – to keep that patented Trump Shit off their grubby little faces.

     

    One big debate over here has been the fate of the NHS should the Tories cling onto power. Labour have pointed out the teams of evidence, including secret US/UK trade negotiations begin by the May Government, that make it clear any post-Brexit Free Trade Deal means basically opening up the whole NHS to American Health Industry plundering, and the Tories unconvincingly denying it.

     

    Over comes El Blobbo and he gives a hilariously scripted speech denying that he has any interest whatsoever in the NHS, going so at as to say that he’s never even thought about it and wouldn’t take it if Johnson offered it to him on a “silver spoon”.

     

    All jokes about spoons in mouths and tools for recreational drug use aside, the Tories really seem to have thought that they could plug the NHS shaped hole in the listing pirate ship they call a Party with The Capo di Balding Capo’s denial, stubbornly insisting that anyone still giving credence to Labour’s claims was “calling POTUS a liar”, to which the Media responded with a long, drawn out “ahhhhhhhhhhh” of embarrassed discomfort. Could they – really – call the thin-skinned conman an inveterate bollocks-merchant to his face in the middle of an Election and a NATO summit? Would that breech laws against Press and TV News neutrality? Or, more importantly, would it make the Tories very angry with them?

     

    Never mind, President Hate-Wattle came to the rescue as usual, dispelling any temporary confusion over whether he was a lying sack of putrid rat innards by claiming that he had never even met Royal Teen Molestor and current best advert for getting rid of the monarchy Prince Andrew, despite all the available evidence showing that he did, up to and including boasting about their golfing together the last time he waddled across the Atlantic to make a Tory Prime Minister look shamefully weak.

     

    Yeah, not even the Murdoch Press could let that one go without mockery. So thanks, Donny Brass-Cock, thanks for being you and dumping a barrel of your own malicious incompetence all over the Tory Party’s best laid plans to gaslight the electorate. Please do more.

     

    Personally I’m hoping for an unhinged Twitter rant on British politics before he goes back to face Impeachment. Really smear yourself all over the Tories, Don, get “essence of you” into – all – their crevices.

     

    Then fuck off. You’re not welcome.

  24. 24.

    opiejeanne

    @mrmoshpotato: I hear you.

     

    The despair I felt on November 9, 2016 was reminded to me today and I am in a funk, torn between depression and rage.  I think I’ll go work a crossword puzzle to help me go to sleep.

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

     

    @Tony Jay: I…….do not know where to begin.  You have a hell of a way with words, sir.  “an inveterate bollocks-merchant” “whether he was a lying sack of putrid rat innards” “Royal Teen Molestor and current best advert for getting rid of the monarchy Prince Andrew” “dumping a barrel of your own malicious incompetence all over the Tory Party’s best laid plans to gaslight the electorate” and lastly, “Really smear yourself all over the Tories, Don, get “essence of you” into – all – their crevices.”

     

    I hope for all of this and more.  It will make Mock The Week especially hilarious and really stick it in Nigel’s face.

     

    Thank you for your update on British politics, Tony.  Keep them coming. :)

  26. 26.

    mrmoshpotato

    @opiejeanne: Oh, I felt like I was going to vomit for the rest of November.  Seriously, I walked around with that ‘Am I going to puke?’ feeling for the rest of the month.  I attended the Women’s March here in Chicago which lifted my spirits, but we all knew a shitshow of horribleness was going to come.

     

    I am eternally grateful for the Professional Left podcast and especially for their podcast on the day after.

  27. 27.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Tony Jay: Yeah, but they’re still ahead in the opinion polls and heading for something between a small to comfortable overall majority.

     

    Personally, I’m hoping for a joint press conference, or at least a shout out, where he praises Boris as the greatest British Prime Minister ever and his bestest friend.

     

    That might move some votes, or at least persuade some people to stay home on the 12th, but the Brexiteers I talk to are so obsessed with “getting Brexit done” they are ignoring, denying or explaining away everything else.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    @Sloane Ranger:

     

    If enough potential Labour votes go Tory because they’re stupid enough to think Brexit is going to do anything but make their lives worse then, yes, Johnson and Co might eek out a win. There’s bugger all to be done about that. Labour is doing its best to prove to them that rebuilding their communities after decades of Tory area-bombing might be a better bet, but if the need to ethnically purge ‘those people’ is so strong they’re willing to ignore everything else then we’ve got about as much chance of winning them around as Democrats had of holding onto the ‘Solid South’ in the wake of the Civil Rights movement.

     

    OTOH, the polls don’t seem to be taking into account the massive surge in new (mostly young) voters who might well have something very cutting to say about the kind of country they want to be living in. And there’s also the possibility that Jo Swinson’s Lib-Dems can steady the ship and replace the Labour-leaning votes they’re losing with not-insane Conservative votes in those all-important Lib-Dem/Tory marginals.

     

    We’ll see, but I fully agree that a complete thunderfuck of a press-conference with Tangster extemporising on the hoof about just what “My friend Boris” needs to do “to beat this fake news Impeachment witch-hunt about the NHS that Corbyn and the Ukrainians are trying to pull with Randy Andy, who I do not know well” would be all kinds of win. We’re getting into the last week of electioneering now, people are starting to pay some real attention to what the Parties are offering. Since all the Tories are offering is bags of obvious lies and negative campaigning, as opposed to Labour’s sunnier offerings, I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel just yet.

     

    Bear in mind, on the few occasions Johnson has been unable to dodge interactions with actual members of the real-life public he’s almost always been sent scuttling away after a barrage of furious complaints about Tory Austerity. There’s a – lot – of anger swilling around out there, and despite the Media’s deliberate decision to ignore or misrepresent it I’m hoping it gets deposited by the barrow-load into ballot boxes across the nation on the 12th.

     

    Keep your spirits up, long way to go yet.

  31. 31.

    Aleta

    (Reuters) – …  Jared Kushner has added another role to his long list of White House duties – U.S.-China trade negotiator – as Washington and Beijing try to reach an initial agreement to avoid new U.S. tariffs on Dec. 15.

     

    People familiar with the talks said Kushner, who helped bring the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) to fruition, has increased his direct involvement in the negotiations with China over the past two weeks.

    …

    A White House official confirmed Kushner’s involvement, but declined to provide specific details on the influence he has had on the negotiations. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Kushner has recently met with Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States.

    The two have met multiple times since Trump took office, establishing a kind of back-channel relationship, trade experts say.

    “trade experts”   Would that be like Ivanka?

     

    “establishing a kind of back-channel relationship”  (April 2019, NYT)  Jared Kushner Dismisses Russian Election Interference as ‘Couple of Facebook Ads’

     

     

     

  32. 32.

    Patricia Kayden

    So after eight years of the first Black President, Trump is the best Republicans could do?  He’s a national embarrassment.  They will never rid themselves of his carcass even long after he’s out of office.

     

    Biden needs to stop naively claiming that he can bring Democrats and Republicans together.  Not gonna happen.

  35. 35.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Aleta: Why do my eyes roll out of my head just before I go to sleep?  This is really getting tiresome.

     

    I’ll see myself out (to the nightly unconsciousness).

  36. 36.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Patricia Kayden: It’s not the ‘best’.  It’s what 40+ years of racism and bigotry wanted.

     

    ETA – and Joe thinking he can working with Russthuglicans…

    His boss extended every olive branch, and, well, you know.

  37. 37.

    topclimber

    @Tony Jay: I echo the consensus that you have elevated purple prose to an exquisite indigo shade. You should use it exclusively and stop inserting direct sentences. Heavy on exposition rather than invective, these sometimes crop up in your posts. Someone needs to tell you and who better than me (or “than I” as one might say in the King’s English)?

     

    Brevity is nothing more than a sop to those BJ-ers whose one and only common ground with Trump is their declining mental capacity. Hard to believe about a blog dominated by aging boomers, but they seem more numerous every day.

     

    Complicated phrasing apparently confuses  these twits (note, Olde English rather than media meaning of the term). In the name of the sharpest most infectious thorns thrust by pewter-addled, gladiator-humping Roman legionnaires on the immaculately innocent skull of Sweet Jesus Himself…Bugger them!

     

    In particular, you should never mess up your posts by starting them with a concise executive summary. That is a clear sign of someone paid by the word who is padding their character count. Next thing will be paragraph headings and rampant use of the passive voice!

     

    I say this as a former hack writer and Palme D’or graduate of  L’Ecole Macron: Straightforward prose is for losers. Try it on BJ and your audience will flee like intellectuals who have stumbled upon a Trump rally.

  39. 39.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @topclimber:

    Brevity is nothing more than a sop to those BJ-ers whose one and only common ground with Trump is their declining mental capacity. Hard to believe about a blog dominated by aging boomers, but they seem more numerous every day.

    This may surprise you, but as an aging Boomer I actually managed to read all the way to your second paragraph and not lose my place.

  42. 42.

    Raven

    @jonas: “Every time a staffer resigns, they talk about how Trump is cognitively declining: he can barely read, doesn’t remember things he said or was told a few minutes earlier, babbles incoherently, can’t find words, etc., etc.”

     

    citation please

  43. 43.

    Alien Radio

    Polling is showing a swing to Labour, but given the last election was a mandate for Brexit Election, and polling promised a Tory Landslide when they actually lost seats, I can’t help thinking that UK polling Orgs are either applying inaccurate likely voter models, or pulling a Rasmussen and substituting better polling practices for straight up propaganda polls as the election date nears so as not to be constantly embarrassed by the 10 point lead in the polls the tories always have regardless of the outcome.

  44. 44.

    Butter Emails

    @hervevillechaizelounge:

    By 2008 the perfidy and naked racism of the republican party was glaringly obvious; would he marry a fucking National Socialist?  “Well, she doesn’t hate Jews, she just voted for a party built on anti-Semitism.”

    It’s not exactly difficult to understand why someone who served in Iraq as a combat medic and worked as a veterans advocate would vote for John McCain.

  46. 46.

    topclimber

    @different-church-lady: Sadly I was paid by the written word, not the read kind. Old habits die hard. Or should I say Hard dying transpires with habitual patterns of behavior that are no longer functional in the current node of the space time continuum?

     

    Also, see TJ’s comment 30 for the non-optimized style alluded to in my original post. See, it just doesn’t work, right?

  47. 47.

    Shantanu Saha

    @Tony Jay: Great post, Tony! Your takes on the insanity that is the Tory party and Brexit are wonderfully snarky, too on-the-nose for the comfort of the comfortable, and a refreshing reminder that we colonists don’t have a monopoly on unhinged bigotry and hate. But what I love about this particular story is the desperate attempt of the Tories to disassociate themselves from Trump, who is apparently hated by a lot of their own supporters, while trying to agree with most of his views.

  51. 51.

    Sab

    @Tony Jay: I aam not a monarchist, but I do feel sorry for your elderly queen. Usually, US presidents turn up in UK maybe once in a term. This horrible critter is turning up annually.

  52. 52.

    topclimber

    @chopper:

    Yea the snark shall beget snark or merely the mumblings of the not so Swiftian.

     

    I used to be paid for my hack work, which is why I said former.  Now I share it for free.

  53. 53.

    J R in WV

    @chopper:

     

    i’m just kidding, boomers don’t have ear trumpets, they have $20,000 hearing aids. from what the kids tell me.

    My retired (boomer) ER doc buddy has one of those. He quit wearing it because “It amplifies all the sounds, including background noise you never wanted to hear…” So we just yell for him so he can hear us, or ignore him whichever seems best at the time.

  54. 54.

    Boris, Rasputin's Evil Twin

    @jonas: My Beloved Wife is certain the “half-physical” is part of a plan to get the Tangerine Ballsac out of office via the 25th Amendment. “Oh, he sacrificed his health for the country! We can’t prosecute him now, no matter what those mean Dems say.” I think she’s right.

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