Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You cannot shame the shameless.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

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

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

No one could have predicted…

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

I really should read my own blog.

I was promised a recession.

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

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

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

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Ammosexuals / Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Colorado Congressman

Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Colorado Congressman

by | 66 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

It’s always performative bullshit…

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    No one is coming for your inoperable gun, Ken. #ShootingBlanks

    Well done, Congressman Swalwell.

  4. 4.

    JWR

    Re Swalwell’s tweet, there’s gotta be a joke in there about Buck’s inoperable gun and a porn actors flaccid peni$, but I’m coming up short. Guess I’m #ShootingBlanks

  5. 5.

    Kent

    @NotMax: Kind of surprised there’s been scant, if any, mention of the swastika banner unfurled by a nutball at a Wilmer rally.

    It’s gotten about as much mention as the crazy vegan protester at Biden’s rally.  How much mention do you think it deserves?

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    While I don’t think we need to dote on it, some comment about whether it is an isolated incident or an opening salvo might be in order.

    Call me old fashioned but I don’t find vegans the same class of threat as I do Nazis.

  8. 8.

    West of the Rockies

    Meanwhile, Republicans shit themselves over Schumer’s (perhaps inartful?) SCOTUS observation.

  9. 9.

    chris

    @NotMax:here you go, the guy’s a professional neo-nazi. Youtube took his site down today. Thread:

    The man who unfurled a Nazi flag at the Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona yesterday is Robert Sterkeson, a neo-Nazi who lives in the Phoenix area.Here are a few things you should know about him. (CW: racist, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs/hate.)A thread. ? pic.twitter.com/tlJkadG1Pn— Nick Martin (@nickmartin) 6 March 2020

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    I don’t know, which is why some discussion might be in order. Experience tells that such people do not operate in a vacuum.

  12. 12.

    Poe Larity

    Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was the lone dissenting voice in the Senate; he joins Colorado Rep. Ken Buck and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs as literally the only Members of Congress who refused to support a funding bill to help in the response to the ongoing COVID-19 threat.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    @chris

    Thanks for the info. One off damage control or does YouTube check out accounts of his followers/others he follows?

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    Apparently the Secret Service has been discussing whether or not Sanders and Biden should get protection prior to being officially nominated, which is usually when SS protection kicks in.

    Obviously, in the wake of these two incidents, they should both get it.

    ETA: FWIW, I suspect it was more of a hahahahaha you’re a loser dick move than a threat, but that’s what the police should be investigating.

  15. 15.

    chris

    @NotMax: I don’t know for sure but I think they take it down when they get enough complaints. After this I’m sure his followers are being looked at. He’s pretty toxic if Gab banned him.

  17. 17.

    Martin

    So, the more I dig into nCoV and related data, the more fascinating it is. The feds say they have 12M N95 masks stockpiled, but CA has 21M stockpiled. How many does your state have? How uneven is this distribution going to be? How quickly can China get back to work and make more if we keep cocking this up?

    So, assuming the fatality rates so far which seem relatively stable, we’re looking at a peak number of  fatalities of 1.8M. That’s if every person in the country gets it, but also if every person gets adequate health care.

    The typical occupancy for hospitals is 65%. So, we’ve got about 300K beds to work with. But if you put infected people in regular beds, you’re going to infect that other 65% (who presumably are already sick, so doubleplusbad). I’m not sure how they’re planning on addressing that.

    There are 100K ICU beds in the US, but they tend to have higher occupancy, so we really don’t have a ton of capacity there. Sure you could put a nCoV patient there, but you might be turning away someone having a heart attack. There’s about 50K mechanical ventilators and about ⅓ are in use at any time.

    Assuming we don’t get this shit under control, I estimate we run out of mechanical ventilators and ICU beds before the month is out based on the current fatality rate (rather than infection rate which we know is a useless number). We have a longer runway on regular beds because there’s more capacity there and more flexibility.

    We’ll see what the fatality curve looks like. It could be distorted by the cruise ship, but if it holds we’re at 110 dead by one week from today, 750 by two weeks from today, and 5200 by 3 weeks from today. Not evacuating that cruise ship makes those numbers far more likely.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    You honestly don’t perceive deliberately waving a swastika at a Jew to be a threat? What about spray painting them on a synagogue or on headstones? Just spirited hijinx?

  19. 19.

    Martin

    Wuhan extended their quarantine period to 28 days since some people still testing positive after 14. Not sure I trust that, but worth keeping an eye on.

  21. 21.

    Poe Larity

    @Martin: If the mortality rate is 15% for over 70, have to factor in nursing home beds, Some 1.7M per the intertubes.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    Flag code violation: Check! DC municipal magazine ban violation: Check! John Cooper’s 4 Rules for firearm safety violation: Check!

  24. 24.

    Kent

    @West of the Rockies:What is wrong with Kentuckians that they elect McConnell and this clown over and over?

    Quick peek at google tells me that Kentucky is 87% white and just 24% college educated.  That seems to be the toxic combination in the 21st Century.

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    @Poe Larity:

    Relatedly…:

    The best thing I read last month: John Quiggin: Climate Change and the Strange Death of Libertarianism http://crookedtimber.org/2020/01/18/climate-change-and-the-strange-death-of-libertarianism/: ‘It wasn’t that long ago that everyone was talking about the “libertarian moment” in the US. Now, libertarianism/propertarianism is pretty much dead. The support base, advocacy groups and so on have gone full Trumpists, while the intellectual energy has shifted to “liberaltarianism” or, a more recent variant, Tyler Cowen’s conversion to “state capacity libertarianism“. Most of those departing to the left have mentioned the failure of libertarianism to handle climate change. It was critical for two reasons. First, any serious propertarian response would have required support ofr the creation of new property rights (emissions permits) and the restriction of existing ones (burning carbon). That would imply an acknowledgement that property rights are not natural relations between people (owners) and things (property). They are socially constructed relationships between people, allowing some people to use things and to stop other people from doing so. Second, the effort to deny the necessary implications of climate change inevitably resulted in denial of the scientific evidence that climate change was occurring. That contributed to a situation where most former libertarians are now Trumpists, happy to deny the evidence of their own eyes if that’s what the leader requires of them…

    Poor, poor Rand…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    Kent

    @NotMax:You honestly don’t perceive deliberately waving a swastika at a Jew to be a threat? What about spray painting them on a synagogue or on headstones? Just spirited hijinx?

    Of course it is a threat.   But for the sake of curiosity, how many death threats do you think Bernie gets per week?  I have no idea.

    To some extent this is like how televised sports no longer show it on screen when fans disrupt the game by jumping onto the playing field and running around.   How much media attention do we give these sorts of attention-seekers?   When it is obviously attention that they seek?

  30. 30.

    West of the Rockies

    @Kent:

    I hope the clown faces REAL consequences:  jail time(?), loss of a job, familial shunning.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    The attention they deserve – trying to (not physically) pound it into thick skulls that opprobrium and repulsion is what they generate. Not by dwelling on it (or on them) but also by not tacitly accepting it through avoidance as some sort of subset of normal and not as dangerous and aberrant.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    A hate crime is not necessarily a direct physical threat to a specific person. It’s usually meant to terrorize an entire community, not threaten a specific person with harm. My point was that Sanders was probably not in personal danger from this asshole but, again, that’s why the asshole needs to be investigated and that’s why Sanders should get Secret Service protection ASAP. Is that clear enough for you?

  34. 34.

    Kent

    @NotMax:The attention they deserve – trying to (not physically) pound it into thick skulls that opprobrium and repulsion is what they generate. Not by dwelling on it (or on them) but also by not tacitly accepting it through avoidance as some sort of subset of normal and not as dangerous and aberrant.

    Attention as in getting their asses locked up and their entire life and all known associates investigated with a microscope and anal probe?  Then yes.

    Attention as in national TV coverage making them celebrities within a certain vile subset of the population?  Not so much.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Clear as mud. Threats do not have to include immediate violence to be threats.

    Your words:

    I suspect it was more of a hahahahaha you’re a loser dick move than a threat

    A specific person? How about if he was seen as a representative (that status earned or no) of a class of people?

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    The other side of the coin being that if they are not called out for vilification each time (don’t have to use the names, just the acts) then it is wide open for some who otherwise are not as radicalized to interpret silence as assent.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    Yes, I’m a secret anti-Semite who doesn’t take hate crimes seriously. You finally caught me after all of these years. Happy now? ?

  42. 42.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Martin: I saw back-of-the-envelope calculations that depending on severity and spread assumptions, our hospitals may be full some time in early-mid May.

    I also found a fun JAMA study finding that N95 respirators and surgical masks are equally effective for preventing flu in healthcare workers, for whatever that’s worth. Not really able to evaluate it obviously but it was an interesting finding building on earlier findings https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214

  43. 43.

    Kent

    @JWR:Don’t forget the Kovington Kiddy Korner.

    Those are actually Ohioans who moved across the river for the lower taxes in KY.

  45. 45.

    Kent

    @NotMax: I don’t have all the answers.  But I don’t think giving attention seekers national attention is necessarily productive.  A couple of months in the lockup and all of their associates subject to FBI investigation might be more productive.

    People of these ilk usually have a shitload of other things to hide.  Put them under the microscope and lock them up for all the weapons and drug and tax violations they are probably also guilty of.  They aren’t usually model citizens who just happen to have fringe points of view.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    We’re not at cross purposes. It’s a delicate balancing act. And the mass media don’t do delicate with much if any proficiency.

    That said, I don’t believe a bit of mention on an almost top 10,000 blog is going to bestow martyrhood on anyone of any stripe.

  49. 49.

    Major Major Major Major

    @NotMax: couldn’t tell you, but here are the models

    N95 respirator models studied were the 3M Corporation 1860, 1860S, and 1870 (St Paul, Minnesota) and the Kimberly Clark Technol Fluidshield PFR95-270, PFR95-274 (Dallas, Texas); medical mask models were the Precept 15320 (Arden, North Carolina) and Kimberly Clark Technol Fluidshield 47107 (Dallas, Texas).

    ETA the only difference between the construction and medical versions of the 3M ones seem to be FDA approval/additional fluid resistance

  50. 50.

    Kent

    @NotMax:

    @Kent

    We’re not at cross purposes. It’s a delicate balancing act. And the mass media don’t do delicate with much if any proficiency.

    That said, I don’t believe a bit of mention on an almost top 10,000 blog is going to bestow martyrhood on anyone of any stripe.

    Of course not.  On the other hand it isn’t going to be productive to give him 5 hours on FOX news discussing:

    “OK that was bad but does he maybe have a point about the socialism?”

    “Both sides….because Cuba and the Sandanistas are bad too”

    “Is Sanders inviting extremists by his extremism?”

    etc. etc.

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Ah, there we are. Anti-microbial scrubs. Not, apparently, particularly effective.

    CONCLUSIONS

    We found no evidence that either antimicrobial scrub product decreased bacterial contamination of [healthcare workers’] uniforms or skin after an 8‐hour workday Source

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Near as I can tell we’re in complete agreement on the table setting and just have minor differing outlooks as to how the place cards should be laid out.

  55. 55.

    trollhattan

    Will give the genius congressman this: if you give that gun to Tamir Rice it’s real enough.

    Asshole.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    I don’t see the point in continuing any conversation since you consistently decide to put the worst possible construction on everything I say. This is not even close to the first time you’ve done it, so I am now putting you in my pie filter for everyone’s sake. Goodbye.

  58. 58.

    NobodySpecial

    Upon seeing that, I wish Sanders had said, ” And THESE guys are the ones claiming our ideology is a failure.”

  59. 59.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    So you won’t see this, and about that I honestly do not care.

    Your long standing truculent denial there might exist the shadow of a possibility you have been mistaken about anything rears its head again.

    I forget, is it a red or a white that goes with complacency?

  60. 60.

    Gvg

    @NotMax: look in a mirror.

    your excessive anger to a minor disagreement makes you less persuasive not more. Talk more dispassionately and you will get more engagement. Attack people, and they will push you away, and not listen to you.

    it’s actually hard to figure out the best possible response to hate attention seekers. I have seen several different responses to this kind of thing including both yours and mnems, and I didn’t see great results for any strategy. Deplorables don’t want to be marginalized and are actively trying to defeat all such strategies is the problem and the reason no one answer actually works.

  61. 61.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    That gun, good lord, that’s like some Anime fan with their cheesy wall hanger Katana; they took a deadly weapon and Disneyfed so they could treat it like a toy.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @Gvg

    I’m not angry so much as perturbed but when someone essentially characterizes a vile display as “Wassamatter, can’t you take a joke?” I’m not going to placidly let that pass either.

  64. 64.

    debbie

    @opiejeanne:

    Not just another MAGAt.

    The man who unfurled a Nazi flag at the Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona yesterday is Robert Sterkeson, a neo-Nazi who lives in the Phoenix area.
    Here are a few things you should know about him. (CW: racist, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs/hate.)

    A thread. ? pic.twitter.com/tlJkadG1Pn

    — Nick Martin (@nickmartin) March 6, 2020

    “>Thread

  65. 65.

    PenAndKey

    @NotMax: essentially characterizes a vile display as “Wassamatter, can’t you take a joke?

    Then I guess it’s a good thing for us that nobody here has actually, you know, done that.

  66. 66.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: Call me old fashioned but I don’t find vegans the same class of threat as I do Nazis.

    Excuse me, but you don’t just pick up & come 25 light-years to a rather ordinary G2V star for your health. I mean dang, they may want something a bit more involved than a recipe for mango-peach salsa…

    (Of course this has all been done before – in Contact Carl Sagan gave us Vegans & Nazis in the same message…)

Comments are closed.