Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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

Consistently wrong since 2002

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The revolution will be supervised.

Let there be snark.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

This fight is for everything.

Let’s finish the job.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

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

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

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

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

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

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

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

It’s a doggy dog world.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

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Point & Mock the GOP Open Thread: I Have Here In My Hand…

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Joe McCarthy trained Roy Cohn; Roy Cohn trained Donald Trump…

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139Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    You’d think he’d be almost as concerned about the ones who didn’t answer with an unequivocal ‘Trump won’. I’m sure they’re just waiting for the right moment to stab him in the back. You know, people like Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

  5. 5.

    mrmoshpotato

    Dump’s final days of rage and denial — Moody and sometimes depressed, he barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises and, instead, rewarding friends, purging the disloyal, and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies but he will forever be a traitorous Soviet shitpile mobster conman who sucks Kremlin asshole, and everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 is forever fucked with this legacy of fascist shit.

    Fixed.

  8. 8.

    prostratedragon

    Donnie Favorite’s mojo is sputtering, and the ones most at risk seem to be his former enablers.

  10. 10.

    PsiFighter37

    What do folks make of Bacerra for HHS? Feels a bit out of left field, and I am unsure why Lujan Grisham didn’t get the nod (she was perceived frontrunner).

  12. 12.

    Wag

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I’m trying to figure out how this is different than before the election.

     

    Now he is too lazy and distracted to actively try to mismanage the pandemic. Instead, all of his energy is focused on trying to destroy our democracy, and it is only his passive inaction that is allowing the pandemic to continue to spiral out of control.

  13. 13.

    cain

    So, anybody watched Chuck Todd’s  Meet the Asshole and did he press any of this to his guests? My guess? No.

  15. 15.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @PsiFighter37: Probably because Biden doesn’t want to make the same mistake that Obama made and pulling Governors and Senators from states that may not end up with a Democrat replacing them.  Bacerra was thought to be a favorite to replace Harris, Alex Padilla’s chances just improved to get the Senate seat(DiFi has endorsed him).  He’s a SoCal guy and has an Engineering degree from MIT.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    @PsiFighter37:

    Warning Politico:

    […]

    At one point last week, plans were in place for Biden to announce Raimondo as his HHS nominee. The president-elect never directly offered the position to Raimondo, but people close to him indicated the job was hers if she wanted it, and preparations were underway with the assumption she would fill the role, according to three people familiar with the process.

    But then Raimondo made a public announcement Thursday, saying she would not be Biden’s health secretary. Josh Block, a spokesman for Raimondo, pushed back against the notion that Raimondo turned down the Biden staff, saying her focus remained on Rhode Island.

    […]

    Still, the selection is likely to calm the nerves of Democrats puzzled by the drawn out search for a health secretary — and narrow the race for a pair of other high-profile positions. Becerra had been among the contenders to be Biden’s attorney general, as well as to fill the California Senate seat vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

    It may also ease tensions between the Biden camp and Latino groups that have pushed hard for Lujan Grisham to run the health department.

    Minutes after the news of his appointment broke, Latino lawmakers and advocacy groups said they were excited and relieved that a son of Mexican immigrant would be in charge not only of addressing Covid-19 but health access more broadly.

    “To have someone who knows our community is really gratifying,” said Janet Murguia, the president of UnidosUS and a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “Diverse communities have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and I think the country is going to benefit from the wealth of his experience.”

    The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which had been lobbying for Lujan Grisham, called Becerra “a champion for working families.”

    Lujan Grisham, a co-chair of the transition, had made it clear that she wanted to serve as the health secretary, but people familiar with the process said Biden’s team had favored other candidates. Grisham, who served as New Mexico’s secretary of health, turned down the Biden team’s offer to be secretary of Interior, which hurt her candidacy for other positions in the administration, those familiar with the conversations said.

    On Sunday night, Lujan Grisham released a statement saying she already has “the best job in the world as Governor of New Mexico” and that she looks forward to working with the Biden administration from that post.

    […]

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  18. 18.

    mdblanche

    @mrmoshpotato:

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    or rats’ feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death’s other kingdom
    Remember us – if at all – not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

  19. 19.

    TS (the original)

    @PsiFighter37:

    Many health issues at the minute seem to involve the law (ACA, GOP fights against covid restrictions) so having someone with experience in these areas sounds like a good idea.

    From Wapo

    During the Trump era, Becerra has been among the most outspoken state attorneys general, leading coalitions of Democratic colleagues in challenges to the current administration’s policies on immigration, the environment and health care, suing the federal government more than 100 times since taking office.

    Notably, he has been the lead attorney general for a score of fellow attorneys general fighting to preserve the Affordable Care Act in a case that is now before the Supreme Court.

     

  21. 21.

    Geoboy

    @PsiFighter37: Speaking as a New Mexico resident, Michelle Lujan Grisham is a fantastic governor and replaced a horrible one, so I’m very grateful we get to keep her.

  26. 26.

    Mary G

    Becerra is a fighter and knows how to hire a good staff. He’s beat the current administration like a drum in court, which is why we still have fuel standards for cars. We’ll need somebody with those skills, because the lawsuits will be flying from Koch, Citizens United, and Judicial Watch hoping to govern through Roberts and the five minor fiends.

  27. 27.

    dww44

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Exactly right. We’ve only begun the payback and weakening of the GOP concurrent with sharing up our democratic institutions which they cowardly enabled the attacks upon.

  29. 29.

    waspuppet

    “I don’t read your newspaper and I’m going to insult it now. But send me the information you gathered for free.”

    Gee, I cannot imagine how this guy didn’t get more people to vote for him.

  30. 30.

    opiejeanne

    I’m not sure who invited her but Jane Orient is going to speak before the Senate. She’s not just against Socialized Medicine, she’s also an anti-vaxxer.

  31. 31.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl:

    too tired

    ETA: I’m a person with a name that is constantly misspelled. Both of them, in fact. I’ll get an e-mail from someone with it misspelled, and the correct spelling is right there in my signature. It pisses me off so bad.

  33. 33.

    Mary G

    The mob is getting bolder:

    Jocelyn Benson just released a statement: “As my four year old son and I were finishing up decorating the house for Christmas on Saturday night … dozens of armed individuals stood outside my home shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns in the dark of night.” pic.twitter.com/LqwHNBa72U— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) December 7, 2020

    She’s Michigan’s Secretary of State.

  36. 36.

    opiejeanne

    Michael D. Shear

    @shearm

    · 2h

    NEWS — Senate Republicans have invited a leading anti-vaxxer to be the lead witness at a Homeland Security committee hearing on Tuesday at a time when the US is preparing the largest-ever vaccination campaign to fight Covid. From @SherylNYT https://nytimes.com/2020/12/06/us/politics/anti-vax-scientist-senate-hearing.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  39. 39.

    BR

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    @PsiFighter37: Probably because Biden doesn’t want to make the same mistake that Obama made and pulling Governors and Senators from states that may not end up with a Democrat replacing them.  Bacerra was thought to be a favorite to replace Harris, Alex Padilla’s chances just improved to get the Senate seat(DiFi has endorsed him).  He’s a SoCal guy and has an Engineering degree from MIT.

    I still somehow hope Newsom appoints Jerry Brown as a seat filler in the senate.  Not only would he be someone who has had widespread support among California voters many times around, but he also wouldn’t put up with any nonsense and would allow the voters to have a proper primary for the seat in the next election.

  45. 45.

    BR

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I think there are so many potential up and comers among CA elected officials that it’d be a bad move to just appoint someone (who might end up being in the seat for 30 years).

  48. 48.

    dmsilev

    @Gin & Tonic: Rand Paul? Marsha Blackburn? He hasn’t been sworn in yet, but Tommy Tuberville looks like a real contender.

    Hard to beat Gohmert in the House though.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    My surname hasn’t been misspelled that I can recall. However there are two different, equally probable pronunciations from looking at the spelling.

    Have never given a rodent’s posterior which version anyone chooses to use. Whenever asked I respond “You can use both pronunciations” – making a point of pronouncing “both” as if it rhymes with goth.

    ;)

  57. 57.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @PsiFighter37: Luhan Grisham has said that she feels her job right now is to be the best governor New Mexico has. And that’s what she’s doing. She’s made it official that she intends to stay here

    ETA: I see others have made this point.

  59. 59.

    opiejeanne

    @WaterGirl: My last name is compounded of two common English nouns, ring and land, and after asking how it’s spelled, they always say, “Oh, just like it sounds.”

    I had a lot of trouble getting a passport the first time because it came back with the last name spelled “England”. No doubt because of that stupid woman at Abu Ghraib, Lynndie England being in the news right at that moment.

  60. 60.

    Yarrow

    @TS (the original):  Remember, half the people are below average in intelligence. Also, people don’t really follow politics very much or very well. Only a few things break through. And Republicans sell fear and fear works to get votes.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Extra-extra-special gift received as a child is a very good telescope (still have it). Manufactured in Japan.

    Anyway, inside the lid of the large and beautiful wooden storage box for it is glued a sticker with some info and care and handling instruction in English. Very first thing on that sticker, in bolded letters five times the size of any others, all alone on a single line, is this:

    NTOE!

  62. 62.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    Pronunciation is a different matter. You can’t blame people for that (unless you’ve told them a million times). But when they write to you and the correct spelling is right there below what they write, it’s maddening.

  63. 63.

    Cheryl Rofer

    fun fact: every Republican now panicking because Trump is destroying their party voted to acquit him

    “But I never thought they would eat my face…”

    More seriously, this is the history of revolutionary parties. We have been reminding them of Lenin and Trotsky, of Stalin in 1937, the French Revolution, and so many others. Or they might have learned it themselves from a history course…

  65. 65.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: Our first new car after we got married was a 1970 Toyota Corona, and it ran and ran and ran for 14 years and 170,000 miles. Lovely little car, well made, and was very sad when we sold it.

    It came with a package of tools and other goodies, including a can of touch-up paint. The color name on the can was Horizontal Blue.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl: The Rethuglican party is just showing itself to the fascist shitpile it’s really been for decades.

    Dump completely ripped the mask off.

  73. 73.

    Ruckus

    @PsiFighter37:

    Remember these are large bureaucracies to run, and the secretary runs them, guides them, insures that the people are actually doing the work that needs to be done. That is the job and one he’s done well at in CA, at a not insignificantly sized bureaucracy. A problem a lot of people have is not understanding the actual role of the secretary of federal departments, especially the ones currently acting as secretaries. The secretary is there to run the place, not set policy, that is done by congress through the law, and by the president. The secretary needs to agree with the president and understand the concept of the business of the department, how to motivate and guide the employees, how to organize towards that concept. They need to understand the concept of the department, not be the accountant or the doctors or a member of the armed forces.

  76. 76.

    Leto

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Or they might have learned it themselves from a history course…

    Does reading it in the totally accurate Bill O’Reilly series of books “Killing *this titular figure*” count? Maybe one of the other Faux News hosts series of history books count? /s

  84. 84.

    Leto

    @WaterGirl: well it is 4-6 letters longer than necessary. Honestly anything more than 8 is just oral gymnastics at that point. Or Welsh, but I repeat myself :p

  85. 85.

    Yarrow

    @WaterGirl:  So the weird back button thing is happening now. I commented up thread a bit. I’m reading the comments so I’m now well down below my comment. I see a comment, say yours at 79 that says “Ha!” I want to know what NotMax said that made you say “Ha!” (because you’re replying to his comment). I click on his nym in your comment, it takes me to his comment. I click the back button to go back to your comment and it takes me to my comment, which at this point is well up thread at 60. That’s how it’s worked forever and apparently hasn’t changed, despite any changes you made yesterday.

  86. 86.

    Raoul Paste

    So did Maria Bartiromo interview Rudy in person this morning, or did she do it remotely?    I’m wondering if she is sweating bullets tonight

  87. 87.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raoul Paste: word on the street (Twitter Blvd) is that whatever they tell the audience they despise, Fox personnel are pretty cautious about the Rona. Laura Ingram was always one of the few people masked at the trump rallies she attended

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Word on my street, at my house in particular, is that we (me and my 2 dogs and 2 kitties) suspect that Rudy doesn’t have covid at all.

    I think it’s just an excuse so that it’s not apparent that they are yanking him off the stage because he is such a mess.  Another person making Trump look like a fool.

    As if Trump needs any help with that.

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    This is ridiculous. I screwed it up again.

    @Leto

    How ya feel about palindromes?

    WaterGirl, please feel free (and encouraged) to delete the faulty versions cluttering up the place.

    ;)

  96. 96.

    Geoduck

    @WaterGirl: Nah, if he’s actually in the hospital, he caught this crud, and is getting pumped full of cutting-edge rich-person drugs. As incompetent as this crew is, they wouldn’t undermine their relentless “COVID is nothing” talking point if they could help it.

  97. 97.

    Yarrow

    @WaterGirl:  I think when I tested it yesterday in that thread I didn’t test it the same way I did today. I knew something I was doing didn’t seem the same. Doing what I did today, as described in the comment above, is pretty much what I do when the back button always takes me back to my comment, no matter how far down the thread I am at the time.

  98. 98.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Danke schön.

    Stepping on the punch line is a constant hazard I too often for personal liking do not surmount. My coat of arms ought to show a hobnailed boot descending on a rubber chicken.

  101. 101.

    Yarrow

    @Geoduck:  Is he in the hospital? How can we know for sure. Who told us that? Rudy’s representative? Trump? I mean, can we trust any of those people to tell us the truth.

  105. 105.

    Leto

    @WaterGirl: Haha :)

    @NotMax: palindromes are good; there was either a School House Rock or Sesame Street ditty on palindromes that always goes through my head when I see/hear the word.

  106. 106.

    WaterGirl

    @Geoduck: I hadn’t heard that Rudy was in the hospital, just that he had covid.  And I thought that info came from Trump, so that didn’t give me a ton of confidence.

    If he is in the hospital, I agree. It disgusts me that all these irresponsible awful people get life-saving drugs that regular people don’t get.

  112. 112.

    Yutsano

    @Leto: My last name is six letter long. Two words. Shouldn’t be that hard to pronounce right?

    WRONG!!!!

    I give extreme credit to anyone who gets it right the first time. I mean yeah it’s not common for the E letter in English to be a hard schwa as the only vowel. But it’s not THAT hard to figure out how to pronounce.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Aleta

    When Life magazine was running a humorous picture on the last page the only one I recall was one showing a 4-way intersection of freshly painted streets with the word SOTP in big letters on the pavement.

  119. 119.

    frosty

    @Yarrow: @WaterGirl: Ditto for me with the back button, same as it’s been. I’m back to clicking on the date before the nym as a workaround, at which point the back button sends me where it should.

  120. 120.

    NotMax

    @a href=”https://balloon-juice.com/2020/12/06/point-mock-the-gop-open-thread-i-have-here-in-my-hand/#comment-7989287″>mrmoshpotato

    Was once part of the cast for a one-time only skit put on for a fundraising party which included among the parody lyrics substituting “pastrami on rye” for “this Jesus must die” from a certain Superstar musical’s number, not all that long after the play became widely known.

    And no, neither remember the rest of the ditty nor kept a copy of the lyrics.

  123. 123.

    frosty

    @WaterGirl: Sorry, no. It sends me back to the last comment that I did the date/nym thing. I think. At any rate, it didn’t return me to yours at 121.

    ETA: I wandered among the comments and the back button sends me here to 123 on all of them.

  124. 124.

    different-church-lady

    You know, this would all be much easier if Word Press ever did the same thing twice.

  129. 129.

    Leto

    @Yutsano: so my last name is 8 letters, two nouns. (If you look at the post from two years ago when Avalune introduced herself to the blog via announcing my accident you can see it) In South Carolina, there are two prominent families with similar last names.  First four letters are exactly the same, but last four are very different. I would routinely be called via the other name. This is when my name was printed on a list, like at school, and there was no excuse for it. 

    @dnfree: it’s all Greek to me… ok, I’ll see myself out :p

  130. 130.

    sgrAstar

    @PsiFighter37: I think Becerra is a great choice. He’s quite smart and has been a ferocious litigator on behalf of California: defending the ACA, contesting the retraction of CAFE standards…I think he’s filed over 100 lawsuits against the trump admin. He’s a seasoned manager and was in the House for 20+ years. A man to be reckoned with. I was hoping to see him in the Senate, but I’m ok with this.

  131. 131.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @zhena gogolia:

    Some day we’ll get a personal note of thanks from Mr. Strzok, I just know it.

    Wiktionary tells me that it’s a Polish name so the ‘rz’ is a retroflex sibilant.

    Could be worse… I was worried that it’s a Czech name, with ‘rz’ transliterating an ř. Do not try pronouncing Czech names at home; they should be handled by trained professionals.

  133. 133.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Sm*t Cl*de: My mother’s maiden name was Rezek.  Her father’s people came from the Czech Republic, although in those days it was part of the Astro-Hungarian empire.

  136. 136.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: My simple and very easily spelled Sicilian surname[1] admits of no less than four pronunciations (Italian, English & bastardized) that our family is fine with. It is simple and easily spelled – in fact, identical with a cobbled-together American-English term in use around the world** and so common that Google just turned up >12,000,000 hits, all but maybe 100 of which have nothing to do with my family.

    And yet people insist on misspelling it by changing or adding letters, which drives us nuts. I have a simple routine for spelling it over the phone that never fails to get a laugh – whereupon I explain to my interlocutor that if I tried any other way – even letter by letter using the NATO phonetic alphabet, which was designed for comprehension in 30 nations with no fewer than 25 different official languages – they were odds-on to misspell it.

    More weirdly, it is my mother’s maiden name that was misspelled by the immigration officials when her (illiterate) father applied for citizenship.[3] And was further twisted into a pseudo-American form when she and her 11 siblings were enrolled in WV elementary school. The family story goes that one day one of the kids found their dad’s citizenship papers in a drawer and saw the name was completely different. S/he brought them to school & showed them to the teacher – who went from classroom to classroom gathering up the 3 or 4 siblings and took them all down to the principal’s office to have the names on their records corrected all at once.

    I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when people come from peasant societies where surnames are a recent development (e.g., in the Mezzogiorno, where it’s hard to find any among the common folk before the early 1800s).

    [1] Which my father for many years was sure had been changed when his parents relocated to the USA – until I visited the ancestral stomping ground and found families with the same surname.

    [2] My Czech friends sent me a photo of it on a sign in Prague.

    [3] Some of our remoter relatives in the States still go by that altered spelling, which is pronounced the same.

  137. 137.

    J R in WV

    @Ksmiami:

    the GOP really stands for nothing. The Vaporware Party

    I must disagree, vehemently !! The Republican Party stands for many things, all of them un-American and bad.

    • Racism
    • Hatred
    • Anti-Semitism
    • Violence
    • Greed
    • Anti-Knowledge
    • Non-Science
    • un-Christian

    This list could be much longer, but I think I’ve covered most of the significant facets of their policy agenda.

  139. 139.

    Origuy

    @NotMax: If it were Welsh, FYWP would be pronounced Fee-oop

    Edit: Sorry that should be Fuh-oop. The Y is a schwa sound in multisyllabic words except in the last syllable.

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