Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The words do not have to be perfect.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Let’s finish the job.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

Ah, the different things are different argument.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Everybody saw this coming.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

We’re not going back!

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

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Monday Morning Open Thread: Teflon President Joe

Monday Morning Open Thread: Teflon President Joe

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Chance favors the prepared mind, goes the saying, and Fortune favors the prepared President…

Reader Interactions

167Comments

  1. 1.

    MisterForkbeard

    Biden: So awful he’s only pulling the country out of despair.

    If only he was like Trump and would step up to cause despair, but noooooo.

  4. 4.

    debbie

    Yellen’s statement of changes taking effect over 10 years needs to be repeated more loudly.

  6. 6.

    debbie

    I’m not sure if your comms team is writing these idiotic tweets for you, or if they’re just standing by laughing and letting you make a fool of yourself — but either way it’s clear they *hate* you.
    — Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) May 1, 2021

  7. 7.

    Baud

    Biden has consciously cloaked himself in grandma’s freshly baked toll house cookies. Can you taste the goodness?

  9. 9.

    Baud

    Biden has consciously cloaked himself in the feeling of a warm spring day after a harsh and bitter winter.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Biden has consciously cloaked himself in the legacy of the Jesus of the Bible rather than conservative Jesus.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    By the way, when did Biden invoke FDR?  I know other people have tried to draw the connection, but I don’t recall Biden doing it.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    I don’t think it’s all that obvious.  Seems like spin to me.  But I don’t think it’s Biden’s spin, as far as I can tell.

  16. 16.

    PenAndKey

    @Baud: He hasn’t, but it’s a pretty logical comparison given his “spend big and get shit done” style of liberalism since taking office. Republicans see that as a bad thing and, apparently, don’t notice they many of us are cheering it on in approval.

  19. 19.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    By the way, when did Biden invoke FDR?  I know other people have tried to draw the connection, but I don’t recall Biden doing it.

    He does it every day, by being a socialist/Lie-beral, and doing socialist things (cue scary/ominous music) and talking like a Demon-rat. And “Build Back Better” is a palindrome of “New Deal.” [Oops, sorry, that’s “Notlob.”]

  22. 22.

    germy

    Cheating seems to be the way forward:

    An Arizona Republic reporter was ejected from Republicans’ audit of presidential ballots after he photographed ex-AZ state Rep. Anthony Kern — a Republican — reviewing ballots. Kern, who’s own name is on the ballots he’s auditing, has spread election lies. https://t.co/weVPNBEARM

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 2, 2021

  23. 23.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud: 

    You know how conservatives operate. At one of their Panic and Policy huddles someone must have made the horrified observation that Biden’s tenure could well turn out to be as transformative for America and as destructive to Republican priorities as FDR’s New Deal, and being a muddle-headed gobshite Cornyn has only remembered the names and forgotten that, to the vast majority of Americans, being like FDR isn’t actually a bad thing.

    It’s what comes from being bad people surrounded by other bad people and only vice-signalling to other bad people. You get really, really bad at what you think you’re good at.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    @Tony Jay:

    Right.  But I’ve also seen FDR invoked by lefties.  Someone said Biden “promised” to be like FDR the other day.  It’s weird.

  25. 25.

    germy

    And so, even as he ramped up campaigning in the general election, Biden was carving out time to study his would-be predecessor, reading or rereading titles like Jean Edward Smith’s “FDR” and Jonathan Alter’s study of Roosevelt’s first 100 days, “The Defining Moment.”

    Long a student of history, and of a favorite poem that proposes “hope and history rhyme,” Biden was particularly focused on how Roosevelt tailored his response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression with an eye toward an even bigger threat to the nation.

    “He would look to be informed on a president who had faced a significant crisis, and a crisis both in terms of the pain in the country, but also questions about the democracy,” Mike Donilon, one of the president’s closest and longest-serving advisers, said in an interview. “Obviously, what he’s facing is different. And he’s put his own stamp on how to deal with it.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/action-action-now-how-fdr-s-first-100-days-inspired-n1265895

  26. 26.

    Tony Jay

    @AxelFoley:

    Happy Birthday. Have some Infrastructure Week cake and enjoy the quick/slow scrabbling descent of the Republican Party down the pebbled slope of Mount Failure.

  30. 30.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Congratulations on another successful orbit around the sun, Mr. Foley.

  32. 32.

    AxelFoley

    Thanks, everyone!  I’m feeling every bit of my 48 years these days.  Time to really get back into shape (as I’ve been promising myself for some time now).

  33. 33.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    Well, yeah, it’s not a bad comparison when you’re looking at the scale of the task and the steep drop-off into societal carnage if it doesn’t succeed. The difference is Rightwingers look at the concept of FDR-level political realignment and shudder, while Leftwingers look at the same thing and get stirring feelings down in their netherbulge.

    Given the position America is in and what the Biden Era could come to mean for the future, what other shorthand comparison comes to mind?

    ETA – Ah, but did they mean “promised” as in what Biden had claimed or “promised” as in what Biden could potentially be?

    Either way, it’s an expression of hope and trust, which is nice to see after four years of dread and disgust, innit?

  36. 36.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    One of the things I read was that the in-the-tank “auditors” were using blue or black pens when “auditing”, which is supposed to be prohibited (as it can lead to ballots getting modified without a REAL auditor being able to tell). I don’t know if they’re using blue/black in addition to red, or instead of, or what. Or if the reports are even true (although I suspect they are, given who’s doing the “auditing.”)

  40. 40.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: FDR is a commie failure in Wingnut land. According to them the New Deal was ineffective, it was the WWII that ended the Great Depression, because the military is government spending.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Tony Jay: Steve Bannon wanted Trump to be the right-wing FDR and make massive infrastructure investments. That was what the “Infrastructure Week” farce was all about. But Republicans would not do it and Trump certainly could not do it.

  42. 42.

    WereBear

    What shouldn’t astonish me, but continually does, is how the combo of massively botched global catastrophe/old white guy with calm manner works so well to make Republicans scream with impotent rage.

    They reflexively attack, and have trained their cult followers, to be repulsed by any deviance from the old white guy template. Now, they got nuthin’. No facts: and no illusion of facts, either.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I finally got around to reading Biden’s not-SOTU speech this weekend (was sleeping off the second COVID shot so missed it live), and IIRC, Biden invoked FDR by name.

  46. 46.

    germy

    Nice going, morons! https://t.co/bTcSPFn7y1

    — Roy Edroso (@edroso) May 3, 2021

    Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.

    Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

    Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

    How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

  47. 47.

    SFAW

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    According to them the New Deal was ineffective,

    “The Constitution in exile” (which they peg to FDR and the New Deal, if memory serves) has been, I think, a popular thing with wingnuttia for a number of years — well before Clinton, but I think that’s when I first heard about it. I seem to recall Dead Rushbo referring to it, but maybe I’m conflating that with “America held hostage” (which he used to say about Clinton).

  49. 49.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @germy:

    Kern, who’s own name is on the ballots he’s auditing, has spread election lies.

    This is not aimed at you, germy, but at the author of the tweet you linked.

    I think I have a new grammatical pet peeve: the use of who’s as the possessive of who. No; who’s is a contraction of who is. The possessive pronoun is whose. The proper formulation is “Kern, whose own name is on the ballot…”

    I don’t know whether this error is more prevalent now than it used to be, or if I’m just noticing it more often, but I see it a lot and it makes me twitchy.

    #pedantrybeforebreakfast

  51. 51.

    Danielx

    Getting shit done, not wasting time in daily spewing of insults and insanity, showing actual empathy…no wonder Rs are fumbling for an effective response.

    But hey, relitigating the election is better than nothing, amirite?

  52. 52.

    germy

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’ve noticed it to.  :)

    Just kidding.   I wonder if it was spell correct on his phone.  I don’t know.  I see more mistakes like that in online news articles also.

    Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to lay off all the editors.

  53. 53.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Baud: I think he actually talked about this a little last Summer. Basically, saying that after Trump there was a real chance and need to be transformative like FDR, to go big because we had to after the mismanagement of the previous years.

  54. 54.

    Kay

    In May of Trump’s first (only) term:

    White House pushes for vote on health bill despite GOP division
    White House aides said Monday that they expected House Republicans to move quickly this week toward a vote on repealing and replacing ObamaCare, now that they have reached a deal with Democrats on averting a government shutdown. Republicans, however, remain sharply divided on the health-care overhaul. GOP leaders have won over conservatives by offering an amendment that would let states opt out of ObamaCare protections, such as provisions forcing insurers to charge the same rates to sick and healthy people, and provide guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions. Moderates object to these changes, saying they could hurt low-income people. Trump said Monday that the legislation would keep everyone protected. “I want it to be good for sick people. It’s not in its final form right now,” he told Bloomberg News. “It will be every bit as good on pre-existing conditions as ObamaCare.“

    The article after that one is “Trumps says he will move to break up ‘Wall Street banks”

    Lol. You could do this every day thru his whole term.

  55. 55.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    I appreciate it. I looked it up.

    In another era when our democracy was tested, Franklin Roosevelt reminded us—In America: we do our part. That’s all I’m asking. That we all do our part. And if we do, then we will meet the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong. The autocrats will not win the future. America will. The future will belong to America

  58. 58.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    The future will belong to America

    And the Rethugs and RWMFs are on board! I mean, they’re singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” which is the same thing, right?

  59. 59.

    Betty Cracker

    Was just reading a report about a controversy in Warren County, Ohio. High school seniors elected two 18-year-old girls (a couple) prom king and prom queen. Some parents were fine with it, but others aren’t happy. Here’s a quote from a school meeting held to address the issue:

    ‘Sorry but, I believe that there are still two genders, a male and a female,’ one parent said at the heated meeting, WLWT reported.

    She continued: ‘I think tradition stands for a queen that has a vagina, a king that has a penis and testicles. Period. That’s the way it should stand. that is the way God has intended it to be.’

    I’m rapidly becoming an old lady, and there’s a lot I don’t understand about Kids Today. But I think they’re onto something with their efforts to completely smash societal notions of gender. Go kids!

  60. 60.

    Tony Jay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That Bannon character wasn’t just acting when he set out to resurrect National Socialism for the 21st century, was he?

    And it’s no coincidence that Bannon and Co seem to have got their claws into Flobalob Johnson via his pole-dancing American mistress back during his Mayor of London days. That’s a whole fetid area of interest that the British Media seem dead-set on never investigating. Wonder why that could be? /s

  61. 61.

    SFAW

    @Tony Jay:

    Wonder why that could be?

    Maybe all your “investigative” media types did their internships in the USA, learning from muckrakers like MAGAt Haberman?

  62. 62.

    Amir Khalid

    @germy:
    I’ve been wondering: if this strange audit in Arizona somehow finds a win for TFG, does that finding have any legal force; and if it did, would it be enough votes to overturn the election, so that TFG could return to DC in triumph? (I really hope not.)

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Firmly ensconced in the Top Twenty of grammatical gaffes which cause the teeth to gnash, right along with:

    Lose/loose
    Rein/reign
    Compliment/complement
    Lightning/lightening
    Sight/site/cite
    Principle/principal
    .

  64. 64.

    zhena gogolia

    @debbie:

    The tweet is plagiarized, I saw somewhere else — either from Politico or The Hill. His tweet about how Biden doesn’t tweet was plagiarized from Politico.

  68. 68.

    zhena gogolia

    Thank you, Anne Laurie, I love waking up to these optimistic Biden posts.

  70. 70.

    Ken

    I see the inflation hawks are, for the one-hundred-sixty-eighth straight quarter, predicing hyperinflation is just around the corner.

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    In a word, no. It’s a woeful stunt to keep the lie alive and (to mix metaphors) milk it for every last drop of sour grapes.

  73. 73.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Betty Cracker: Kids are so great on this. Someone was recently telling me about her third grader matter-of-factly talking about pronouns for the kid’s classmates and how some kids hadn’t decided yet and some kids used “they.”

    I’m someone of good will on this topic who needs to listen to the kids and learn something

  74. 74.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: Calls out for a performance artist at the school meeting, suitably attired in sleazy trenchcoat, to step up and say “Like the previous speaker, I am intensely interested in the genitalia of high school students. It is my one focus in life, the center of my existence….”

  75. 75.

    germy

    @Tony Jay:

    • Cost of Boris Johnson flat refurb = £200,000
    • Cost to install sprinklers in Grenfell tower = £200,000

    Remember, it was Johnson who closed 11 fire stations and axed 500 fire staff.

    Thanks to @RD_HaIe for this m”astute observation.

    — Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) May 3, 2021

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    To be fair, Neuteronomy is very clear about eligibility requirements for homecoming royalty.

    Fixed?

  78. 78.

    WereBear

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s the inevitable effect of treasuring people for who they are… not who they are supposed to be.

    So no wonder wingnuts hate and fear it: it upsets their tiny, strangled, sense of what the world is.

  79. 79.

    Ken

    @zhena gogolia: But is it truly plagiarism if the person who copied the text clearly didn’t understand it?

    (Did I just hear one million high-school teachers chorus “Yes”?)

  80. 80.

    SFAW

    @NotMax:

    Lo these many years ago, I saw “Linux is a tsunami which will spread like wildfire.” It was written unironically.

    ETA: Not commenting on the tech/market analysis, of course.

  82. 82.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:

    ‘Sorry but, I believe that there are still two genders, a male and a female,’

    I thought “gender” was supposed to be applied only to grammar, and “sex” to humans and animals? Yeah, I know they don’t want to say “sex” or “sexes.”

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    “Gender” also applies to baby showers that are highly destructive to human health and the environment.

  84. 84.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Betty Cracker: Our Prom King was an openly gay dude, and this was in the late 90s/early 2000s. People thought it was great.

    I have a friend who grew up in the 80s, where they had two women as prom king/queen. It wasn’t about gender or anything then either, it was just a thing. People thought it was cool.

    A lot of this stuff conservatives complain about isn’t new. It’s just fashionable to whine about it now. Fuck ’em.

  85. 85.

    grandpa john

    @AxelFoley: Well I can tell you from my own experience, that it is certainly easier  to do it at 48 than when the numbers get reversed

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @MisterForkbeard: I think one reason conservatives are focused so much on culture-war issues is that they know they are on the losing side of the real political issues. It’s like bringing pitchforks to a gunfight.

  87. 87.

    Ken

    @SFAW: “Linux is a tsunami which will spread like wildfire.”

    Sounds like one of those baby showers Baud mentioned. Mixed metaphors aside, it was a pretty good prediction if you include virtual machines in the census.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    They’re on the losing side of the culture war issues even more.  They’re only hope is a return to Jim Crow, which is why they are so anti-democratic right now.

  89. 89.

    Soprano2

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: According to them the New Deal was ineffective, it was the WWII that ended the Great Depression, because the military is government spending.

    I have always gotten a kick out of conservatives who say without any irony at all “The government spending money in the Great Depression didn’t get us out of it; it was WWII that ended the Great Depression. So see, the government spending a bunch of money doesn’t help at all.”. They don’t seem to realize that military spending is government spending!

  92. 92.

    Barbara

    @Baud: ​
     Sadly, I think it depends on the specific culture war issue you are talking about. LGBTQ issues, yes, but not necessarily gender and racial inequity.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: They think of war as having a special élan vital that social-welfare programs don’t. I also get the impression that some of them regard wartime rationing and austerity as part of the character-building spark that fixed everything (don’t ask how they feel about environmental regs though).

  94. 94.

    cmorenc

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’ve been wondering: if this strange audit in Arizona somehow finds a win for TFG, does that finding have any legal force; and if it did, would it be enough votes to overturn the election, so that TFG could return to DC in triumph? (I really hope not.)

    What exactly are the GOP auditors in Arizona looking to prove?

    • that ballots were miscounted by election officials (um…Az has a GOP Secretary of State)
    • that election officials permitted fraudulent ballots to be introduced and counted?  Again, how do they purport to prove ballots were counterfeit?)
    • ineligible voters cast ballots?  (But how do they prove that from the ballots themselves, except possibly via point 2 above?)
  95. 95.

    grandpa john

    @AxelFoley: Well I can tell you from my own experience, that it is certainly easier  to do it at 48 than when the numbers get reversed

  96. 96.

    Betty Cracker

    @MisterForkbeard: It’s not a new concept, but I do think young folks now are taking it to a different level than my demographic cohort ever managed back in the day. Good for them.

  97. 97.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: But I think they’re onto something with their efforts to completely smash societal notions of gender. Go kids!

    I continue to be gobsmacked at the things these people get their panties in a twist about. Who gives a shit about stuff like this? If the parents hadn’t thrown a fit, few people even would have heard about it!

    This reminds me of an incident that happened in my city back in the mid 80’s. The local state university scheduled a few performances of “The Normal Heart”, which is about the AIDS crisis. Someone I knew who was involved with it said that it was scheduled as the serious fall play, and they thought fewer than 50 people would come to each performance, so most people wouldn’t’ have even know it happened. Then a local woman, who was a state rep., threw a fit about it based on complaints from two constituents. She tried to force the university to cancel the play, which of course they wouldn’t do. One of the people involved in the play had his rental house burn down; it was never proven, but a lot of people thought it was arson done by someone upset about the play. And of course, people stood in line to buy tickets for the performances, and every one was sold out!!! If you didn’t know better (and you do, that woman was certifiable and now her son is my state senator, that’s a whole ‘nother story) you’d think the people who put on the play were in league with her.

  98. 98.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: They think of war as having a special élan vital that social-welfare programs don’t.

    This is covered in chapter III of my not-at-all-plagiarized book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.  The destructive nature of war ensures that the government spending doesn’t result in excess goods improving the lifestyles of the proles and perhaps making them question the policies of the state.  Of course the requirements of national security also discourage the asking of questions, with a jackboot if necessary.

  99. 99.

    lee

    This is the 3rd tweet of Cornyn’s that has backed in to a compliment of Biden.

    As someone earlier posted either his comm’s team hates him or he’s an idiot (or both).

  100. 100.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    There was a major controversy over “The Last Temptation of Christ.” I didn’t see the movie, and I don’t remember what the specific issue was, but it was a big deal.

  101. 101.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: I also get the impression that some of them regard wartime rationing and austerity as part of the character-building spark that fixed everything (don’t ask how they feel about environmental regs though).

    I think they believe that they would have been onboard with all of that, while the whiny liberals wouldn’t have. We see how that worked out with Covid, though, and know who the real whiners would have been. Can you imagine these people’s reaction to ration cards? Holy cow…..

  102. 102.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Oh yeah, I remember that well, with the local wingnuts picketing the theater that showed it. Evidently none of them ever watched it or knew what it was actually about.

  103. 103.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Geminid: This is definitely right. They’re losing badly on most of the political fights and have been since the mid-aughts. People want better health care, day care, education, progressive taxes, better medicare, etc.

    So they fight on things they can get people riled about. Racism, sexism, bullying people who don’t fit ‘the norm’. And then when they get their votes, they move on their really unpopular political plans.

  104. 104.

    PST

    @Betty Cracker: Whenever I read a story about parents objecting to something like two women being selected as prom king and queen, I always imagine them as people for whom life has been a continuous source of disappointment since high school. In short, a bunch of Al Bundys, with a little bigotry thrown in. The whole idea of a formal dance to prepare the little darlings for a lifetime of galas at the country club is comical, and I know that even decades ago students were treating it with the seriousness it deserved, like going in groups and making duct tape tuxes.

  105. 105.

    Soprano2

    @cmorenc: What they are doing makes no sense because it’s based on a crazy QAnon theory about watermarks on the real mail-in ballots. Somehow they believe Trump made sure the real mail-in ballots had a watermark that shows under UV light, and he did it to expose the Democrats’ fraudulent ballots. That’s why they’re looking at them with UV lights. It’s insane…..

  106. 106.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Barbara: To be fair, I think part of the reason we had a gay prom king is because the ‘position’ doesn’t matter the way it used to 30-40 years ago. It used to be a popularity contest and was used to push norms and standards. Still is. But now some schools are using it as a way to lift up underrecognized people, and using it to elevate great people rather than to ‘standardize’ behavior.

    That said, I’ve also been told that despite actions like this there was still a fair amount of anti-gay bullying in my high school, and there was a real split between some of the white (popular and/or farm) kids and the mexican kids. I noticed the latter but not the former at the time – white cis privilege, I imagine.

  107. 107.

    Ejoiner

    @Soprano2: Exactly. The same conservatives who want to argue that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery – it was states’ rights! SMH.

  108. 108.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’ve been wondering: if this strange audit in Arizona somehow finds a win for TFG, does that finding have any legal force; and if it did, would it be enough votes to overturn the election, so that TFG could return to DC in triumph? (I really hope not.)

    It does not, no. The Arizona SoS said at the start that this will not affect the election results. But that’s not really true.

    The idea here is to find/fabricate problems. If they can’t get anything substantial they’ll still use it nationwide to push ‘reforms’ that suppress and damage the democratic vote. If they can plausible fabricate real problems, they want to make this an excuse to start similar bullshit “audits” in other states and drive a narrative that Biden cheated and doesn’t belong in the presidency.

    If they can get this accepted the same way they got “Hillary is corrupt”, then they win. It probably won’t work outside of the right because they’re really goddamn inept but it’s definitely what they’re aiming for.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    The high school students are ruining her high school prom experience. She had her own prom. Why is she butting into theirs?

    Another thing they’ve changed that I think is really positive is they now brag about not spending anything on prom. The more borrowed, thrift store, homemade the better.

  110. 110.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    Yes. I can’t find now who it was who exposed it. It’s lifted from some political rag like Politico, but I don’t think this one is from Politico, like the other one was.

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: They’re going to come back concluding that sadly, not a single legitimate vote was cast in the state.

  112. 112.

    lee

    @MisterForkbeard:

    My senior year we did the ‘uplift’ thing. We voted in 2 of the nicest people you would ever meet. Not the most popular or the best looking but just good people that every one knew and liked.

    Here in deep red Texas my daughter and her girlfriend were Juniors on the Homecoming court. They had a good chance of winning their Senior year but declined to run. They had 2 of their friends nominated and those friends won.

  113. 113.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Soprano2:

    We see how that worked out with Covid, though

    Right. They want to brag about self determination, using privation as a growth opportunity, and doing hard things to help the nation or greater good.

    It’s all a lie. They won’t even wear a simple fabric mask, let alone try to stay home for even a few weeks to drive spread way down.

  114. 114.

    Ejoiner

    @Baud: if I remember correctly, the last temptation is to leave the cross and live out a normal, happy life. It depicted Christ doing so and having sex, raising a family, etc. which freaked out the usual suspects. Christ eventually rejects the temptation and returns to the cross at the end. Willem Dafoe is one of my favorite Jesuses (Jesi?) on film, and the soundtrack by Peter Gabriel is a masterpiece.

  115. 115.

    Hildebrand

    @Baud: It’s a good movie – actually takes seriously  Jesus’ wrestling with his identity and purpose.

    What the fundies freaked about was that the ‘last temptation’ was Jesus being tempted by not going to the cross but settling down with Mary Magdalene.  There is an incredibly modest ‘sex’ scene after they marry.

  116. 116.

    Brit in Chicago

    @NotMax: More: “might” versus “may”. And then there’s “lie” versus “lay”. But don’t get me started….

  117. 117.

    hueyplong

    The AZ thing feels like GOPers fumbling around for a narrative that will permit them to retain power when they even more clearly become a minority.  They start with a result (we won) and work back to whatever fraud narrative catches on with enough people for them to promote it.

    Obviously, voter suppression is Plan A.  But the pandemic-mandated easier voting in 2020 has forced them to confront what it looks like when everyone gets to vote and, in AZ, it looks like maybe the narrative being floated for states run by red legislatures is that voting is so irredeemably corrupt that the legislature simply has to seize the initiative and install GOP electors.  No more elections when the wrong side wins.

    Freedom loving voters vs mindless, Demoncrat-controlled illegals… this isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic… etc., etc., anything to retain power.

  118. 118.

    SFAW

    @cmorenc:

    What exactly are the GOP auditors in Arizona looking to prove?

    They’re trying to prove that at least 10,458 votes cast for President Biden (or some combination leading to the erasing of his 10,457 margin) were “fraudulent.”

    Also: altering cast votes or otherwise committing fraud to “prove” that TFG “won” IOKIYAR.

  119. 119.

    Hildebrand

    @Ejoiner: Yep – the soundtrack is amazing.

    Not sure about Judas as a red-head – though Harvey Keitel is always good.

    Loved David Bowie as Pontius Pilate.

  121. 121.

    SFAW

    @MisterForkbeard:

    It’s all a lie. They won’t even wear a simple fabric mask, let alone try to stay home for even a few weeks to drive spread way down.

    “I could do that for 10 years, if I wanted to, because I’m a manly man. But no pansy Lie-brul is gonna tell me what I can and can’t do. This is ‘Murica, dammit!”

  123. 123.

    Joey Maloney

    @Baud:  I’m old enough to remember people getting their panties in a twist over Jesus Christ, Superstar.

  124. 124.

    Ken

    @Hildebrand: Loved David Bowie as Pontius Pilate.

    Though I kept expecting him to start singing “Last night I dreamt, I met a Galilean….”

  126. 126.

    sab

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t remember “vaginas” or “penises and testicles” even being mentionable in polite society when we were electing our prom court in high school. What is wromg with these parents?

  127. 127.

    Ohio Mom

    Alex Foley:

    Happy Birthday!

    If getting back in shape is too intimidating a task, concentrate instead on maintaining what you already have. That will also be an accomplishment.

  129. 129.

    zhena gogolia

    @sab:

    Sort of on the same topic, I was amused by this passage in an article in the NYT about A. Cuomo:

    “Can I tell you my favorite thing about the governor?” Joe Biden, then the vice president, once told a Cuomo aide privately before a 2015 jobs event in Rochester, according to the aide. “He’s got tremendous balls. Absolutely enormous balls.” The future commander in chief cupped his hands as if cradling melons. (A White House official said, “This does not sound like something President Biden would say.”)

    It doesn’t really sound like Joe, despite BFD, but I am amused by trying to picture it.

  132. 132.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @cmorenc:

    What exactly are the GOP auditors in Arizona looking to prove?

    That it is impossible for colored people to win against white people without cheating. This is a fundamental truth to racists, and any evidence to the contrary, again, just means the colored people cheated and that evidence is invalid. I guarantee that the vast, vast majority of elected GOP believe it. They’ve been claiming it for decades. Trump just made it very specific, in-your-face, and made them feel they could finally crush everyone they hate if they just proved the cheating.

    @MisterForkbeard: ​

    Right. They want to brag about self determination, using privation as a growth opportunity, and doing hard things to help the nation or greater good.

    Not quite. They want to brag about doing macho shit and that macho shit saving the day. They imagine themselves war heroes and guerilla fighters. They don’t want quiet personal sacrifice or kindness to save the day. It doesn’t comfort their insecurity.

  133. 133.

    Almost Retired

    @SiubhanDuinne:  Yup, the “who’s” for “whose” error, while common, bugs the spit out of me.  You know what I hate more?  When the young ‘uns say “on accident” instead of “by accident.”  I think we should refuse to cancel any student loans for anyone who propagates this error…. And now let me get back to my oatmeal and Metamucil.

  135. 135.

    MisterForkbeard

    @SFAW: I see it now, too. People are adding “I got my covid vaccine!” frames to their facebook profiles. I keep a couple of old conservative ‘friends’ on facebook, most of whom have spiralled down into insanity and grievance politics.

    Every single one has a “I don’t care about your vaccine” frame on their profile. And they’ve spent most of the last year trying to say COVID isn’t ‘real’ in the sense that it’s just a bad flu, totally not something we should shut things down over, that numbers are inflated, etc. They’re really invested in this alternate reality where they’re the commonsense americans and everyone else is stupid.

  136. 136.

    Tony Jay

    @SFAW:

    Maybe all your “investigative” media types did their internships in the USA, learning from muckrakers like MAGAt Haberman?

    Ha! They wish. The coveted Washington Correspondent perch can only go to one stenographic arse-kisser, the rest of them just dream about being so crap at their supposed jobs that they get selected for it.

    No, Conservative-whispering is an ancient journalistic tradition over here that informs everything the Fourth Estate does, and with this regime’s aggressive installation of loyal bed-shitting nutwackers in every available sinecure it’s only going to get worse.

  139. 139.

    Ken

    @Almost Retired: You think you have trouble understanding the young people? In my day, we had the Great Vowel Shift. Damn whippersnappers with their diphthongs….

  141. 141.

    Tony Jay

    @germy:

    That’s exactly the kind of illuminating comparison the British News Media should be making, especially now they’re trying to make ‘Wallpapergate’ the only Johnson scandal of interest (as opposed to all the other ones they’re steering well clear of) but somehow they missed it.

    Conservative corruption kills people, no matter who happens to be the Top Conservative at the time. They’re all culpable.

  142. 142.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: That it took the slaughter over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor to get the Conservatwats to open their wallets and stop fighting everything FDR was doing says it all.

  143. 143.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Amir Khalid: The MAGA hats have already screwed the audit up so even if they “find” votes the courts will shoot them down. This is all about maintaining their narrative at all costs.

  144. 144.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ejoiner: ​Pretty much.

    It’s been decades since I last read Nikos Kazantzakis’s original novel, Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός (O Teleftéos Pirasmós)[1], but for years I would encourage people to read just the first chapter[2] – one of the most sensuous prose pieces in existence[3] -and if it didn’t completely blow them away, recommend they limit their pleasure reading to corporate quarterly reports, because they had no poetry in their souls.

    Kazantzakis – arguably the most deserving author never to win the Nobel Prize, though nominated in nine different years – was a favorite of mine lo those decades past. (When I toured Greece in 1997 I made a point of visiting his last resting place,

    at the highest point of the Walls of Heraklion, the Martinengo Bastion, looking out over the mountains and sea of Crete

    & I bought a couple of t-shirts (that I probably no longer fit into) featuring the epitaph on his tomb:

    Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φοβούμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λέφτερος.

    I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

    I have most of his novels on my shelf[4] & probably need to get back to them in my current decrepitude.

    [1] The English translation, natch. It’s all Greek to me otherwise…

    [2] See note 1.

    [3] Even in translation. The only other work in translation whose prose I ever found as striking was Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle – and he did win the Nobel.

    [4] See note 1, dammit!

  145. 145.

    Almost Retired

    @Ken:  Yeah, after the Great Vowel Shift, I felt like everything I learned as a child in my Middle English class was wasted….

  146. 146.

    Just Chuck

    That’s it, I’m no longer getting dressed in the morning, I’m going to “consciously cloak” myself instead.

  147. 147.

    gene108

    I would welcome inflation. It’d be nice to get more than 1% interest on a CD, and not worry about negative interest rates on money market accounts.

  148. 148.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    It’s a woeful stunt to keep the lie alive and (to mix metaphors like a boss) milk it for every last drop of sour grapes.

    :-)

  149. 149.

    Sloane Ranger

    So Joe Biden is a US Government Official (see tweet). Well, blow me down, I never knew that!

  150. 150.

    bluefoot

    @NotMax: ​
      It’s gotten to the point where I am surprised when people use the words on your list correctly. Nails on a chalkboard…

  151. 151.

    Barbara

    @Ejoiner: As my BIL used to say to his dad when he made this point, “a state’s right to do what? Perpetuate slavery.”

  152. 152.

    Soprano2

    That it is impossible for colored people to win against white people without cheating. This is a fundamental truth to racists, and any evidence to the contrary, again, just means the colored people cheated and that evidence is invalid. I guarantee that the vast, vast majority of elected GOP believe it. They’ve been claiming it for decades. Trump just made it very specific, in-your-face, and made them feel they could finally crush everyone they hate if they just proved the cheating.

    This, 100 times.  Notice  that they never say there is fraud or cheating in the rural areas where mostly white people live; it’s always happening only in the cities where “those people” live. When I ask them how they know there was fraud they say something like “I just know”, and then I say “You do know that people in cities voting isn’t fraud.” They’ll agree with that; I never mention race, because that gets their back up. I asked one of the people I work with who supports TFG whether he trusted the election results in MO after he told me he didn’t trust the election results. When he said yes, I asked “Why, because TFG won?” and he admitted yeah, that was why. Then I asked him if he thought the Democratic candidate could win any election fair and square, and he said “Yes, but not in those states where TFG should have won, that’s suspicious, you know there was a lot of bad stuff that happened in those places”.  They are absolutely convinced that “those people in Democrat cities” voted for the Democratic candidate multiple times somehow, and they all did it by mail because it’s easy to cheat that way. Of course, they can’t explain how other Republican candidates in those states overcame this other than to say “Well, they were paid to vote only for president” without explaining who would do this or why they would do it. I’ve got a customer at the pub who tells me, when we talk about politics, that he’s from IL and hates the way the city of Chicago runs everything, because he thinks it should be “more fair”. I’ve said to him “I guess that means you don’t think the majority should govern when they get the most votes”, and he’ll deny that! What he wants is for the white, rural areas with the larger land mass to run things because they’re “better”, but he’ll never actually say that to me.

  153. 153.

    J R in WV

    @AxelFoley: 

    Thanks, everyone! I’m feeling every bit of my 48 years these days. Time to really get back into shape (as I’ve been promising myself for some time now).

    Happy birthday, you spring chicken!!

  154. 154.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: Though, going back to the Sixties when the youths were boomers, “I can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl” was a popular attack on the hippies. This seems to be a perennial source of anxiety.

  155. 155.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: @sab: Though, going back to the Sixties when the youths were boomers, “I can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl” was a popular attack on the hippies. This seems to be a perennial source of anxiety.

    Oh, we all know what that’s about. They made a whole movie about that in 1992.

  156. 156.

    J R in WV

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    That it took the slaughter over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor to get the Conservatwats to open their wallets and stop fighting everything FDR was doing says it all.

    And now we have more than half a million Americans slaughtered by Trump, and the Conservatwats ( love that new word, gonna keep it forever!! ) still won’t do anything about the plague OR Trump. Won’t even get their shot, for Christ’s sake!!!

    That says it all over again one more time ~!!~

  157. 157.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ken: ​
     

    That was also the thesis of “Goldstein’s Theory of Modern Warfare” from 1984. IIRC, Orwell revealed at the end that Big Brother wrote and disseminated Goldstein’s Manifesto but deliberately left open the possibility that its ideas were completely valid, and that the government allowed them to propagate in a manner that indelibly associated them with Goldstein (the subject of the daily Two Minutes Hate) so that most people would automatically reject them emotionally rather than arguing against them.

  158. 158.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: ​
     

    I finally got around to watching it years after it was released and saw nothing objectionable about it. But then, I’m sure most of the people complaining hadn’t seen it either. For them, “Jesus” is just a fetish object to waive around.

  159. 159.

    Miss Bianca

    @Joey Maloney: Hell, my parents got their knickers in a knot over my high school production of Godspell, ffs, being “blasphemous” – Godspell! the most anodyne “Hippie Jesus is awesome!” thing ever.

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @Frankensteinbeck: ​
     

    I had a realization a few years back when I was still watching The Walking Dead. In an actual zombie apocalypse, the greatest threat would probably come from the Doomsday Preppers. Because they would all be heavily armed and insane, and they would most likely spend their time trying to kill other survivors rather than zombies so they’d have less competition for food and supplies.

  162. 162.

    Citizen Alan

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: ​
     

    Indeed. I remain convinced that even after Pearl Harbor, we’d have never gone to war against Germany had Hitler not been a delusional nutcase and declared war on us first. Had he been smart, he’d have given a big speech about how shocked he was by the perfidy of the Japanese attack and that he was breaking off his alliance with Japan and that he wished the US good will. That would have given the Republicans cover to block any effort to expand the war to Europe, which would have fallen to Hitler in short order.

  164. 164.

    JaneE

    When I was working, the biggest hit to my productivity was the telephone.  We put up a “help desk” number and insisted that all calls not directly related to the current projects we were working on go there.  At least one of my co-workers refused to answer his phone at all.  He would listen to messages about three times a day.

    I can’t imagine a President – of anything, much less the United States – just taking calls.

  165. 165.

    SFAW

    @NorthLeft12:

    That is how they show them that they are not “elite”.

    One of the great things (where “great” == “fucked up and completely self-unaware”) about RWMFs is how they talk about how they’re superior to/better than those damn elites (they really mean “elitists,” of course) who they claim look down their noses at the RWMFs.

  166. 166.

    SFAW

    @Citizen Alan:

    Indeed. I remain convinced that even after Pearl Harbor, we’d have never gone to war against Germany

    What are you talking about? After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, we HAD to retaliate.

    Where TF did you learn your history? Some Lie-beral “college”?

  167. 167.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Soprano2: The dirty little secret a lot of Congresspeople believed starting in the 50s and going forward, was that military spending was the only reliable way to make sure the economy was growing. I think the subconscious experience of the Great Depression and WWII skewed domestic spending for decades afterward (i.e. still going on). This is when the Military-Industrial Complex was born.  It was necessary during WWII and has been on steroids ever since. Military spending = jobs and a good economy.

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