Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

No Justins, No Peace

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Please don’t feed the bears.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Friday Evening Open Thread: Every Grifter Finds Their Mark

Friday Evening Open Thread: Every Grifter Finds Their Mark

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If they were only killing themselves, and not spreading the plague…


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85Comments

  3. 3.

    JPL

    I’ve been trying to push heartworm pills, because you just need a blood test once a year. Truth be known, they probably need a blood test anyway.

  4. 4.

    SpaceUnit

    Maybe I’m a bad person but I’m more or less okay with just sitting back with a bowl of popcorn and watching these clowns grift one another into bankruptcy and early graves.

  6. 6.

    VeniceRiley

    @SpaceUnit: If only it wasn’t devastating our hospitals. Right there with you. Been hanging out more on r/hermancainaward than here recently, as my current mood suits and I’m trying to not shitpost in such a nice blog.

  10. 10.

    Mike in NC

    There’s probably a warehouse someplace filled with cases of Trump Vodka they couldn’t give away. Relabel them as “Trump COVID Elixir” and see how they fly off the shelves.

  11. 11.

    bbleh

    So, wait, are you actually saying that there is a large subpopulation of Americans who haven’t changed much in their “thinking” since the days of traveling snake-oil salesmen 150 years ago?

    Unpossible!

  15. 15.

    SpaceUnit

    @VeniceRiley:  Yeah, the collateral death and destruction is awful, but we’ve entered a world of next-level fuckery.  These people are beyond the reach of you or myself or any sensible person at this point.  All we can do is watch with our fingers over our face.

  16. 16.

    dr. bloor

    @Mike in NC: ​
     

    There’s probably a warehouse someplace filled with cases of Trump Vodka they couldn’t give away.

    An inability to give away booze is certainly consistent with bankrupting a casino, that’s for sure.

  26. 26.

    moops

    Every grift is profitable if the real purpose is to launder Russian mob money into US dollars and real estate.

  27. 27.

    MomSense

    @SpaceUnit:

    He apparently is the con artist who turned my beloved niece into a right winger/trumper/anti vaxxer.  WTAF

    He’s ridiculous. He’s a fast talking, vacuous, gritting bullshit artist.

  29. 29.

    dmsilev

    Seen elsewhere:

    The Stages of Non-Vaccinated Covid Grief

    • Denial that the virus is serious, or that you should do anything at all to avoid it.
    • Anger and disbelief that you were wrong and Covid is serious.
    • Bargaining and begging  for “thoughts and prayers” now that you are super sick, or caused someone to be.
    • Depression and regret that your poor decisions landed you or someone you love in the hospital.
    • Acceptance of the ventilator from the people who warned you in the first place.
    • GoFundMe
  30. 30.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: I should market Essence of Baud.

    Remember to stock up on glass-topped vials, cuz I’ve been told it will eat through metal or plastic…

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Can I make a suggestion?

    Save the supply for delivery of a larger amount than a normal delivery. And remember the more you save the more there will be to ferment for a better delivery reward. I’d suggest a tanker truck.

  34. 34.

    Roger Moore

    @SpaceUnit:

    Maybe I’m a bad person but I’m more or less okay with just sitting back with a bowl of popcorn and watching these clowns grift one another into bankruptcy and early graves.

    There are three problems with this:

    1. We really do have a responsibility to protect people from scams.  Yeah, it’s funny that the people falling for the scam this time also believe in all kinds of awful stuff, but even bad people deserve to be protected from criminals.
    2. A fair bit of the money is getting funneled back into all kinds of awful stuff: selling paranoid right wing propaganda, funding Republican political campaigns, etc.  Shutting off the right wing grift empire would also do a lot to shut down the right wing propaganda machine and the Republican party as a whole.
    3. In the specific case of COVID scams, this is helping the disease to spread, endangering everyone.
  36. 36.

    MomSense

    @SpaceUnit: Thanks.  At least she lives on a remote ranch in Montana so hopefully she won’t die from COVID and orphan her two babies because of that Hershey’s squirt.

  37. 37.

    cain

    @SpaceUnit: ​
     
    The truly amazing thing is that they’ve convinced themselves that they are independent free thinkers and all the liberals are sheeple. It’s just amazing.
    Part of it of course is that they live in a world that is ‘faith based’ and of course ‘good people’ like Ben Shapiro would never cheat the ‘faithful’ – but the ‘faithful’ have been feeding the capitalists thanks to fear and jesus.

  38. 38.

    SpaceUnit

    @Roger Moore:  You’re absolutely right, of course.  Only there’s precious little I can do about it.  I’d love to shut off the right wing grift empire, but I just don’t have access to that particular valve.

  39. 39.

    hilts

    Glenzilla has recognized the error of his ways regarding tweets about Chelsea Manning and can now return to being a dick in his written exchanges with everyone else.

    Glenn Greenwald apologized Friday for gross comments he made in his public spat with Chelsea Manning.

    Manning, a former U.S. Army intel analyst who was imprisoned for giving classified information to Wikileaks, called out her former friend and tweeted Thursday, “Glenn Greenwald, I don’t have $10,000 right now but if I get it I want to send it back to you from a donation you once did. I can’t deal with this anymore. Im terrified of you and everything you do. You’re greedy, unprincipled, and Im embarrassed for ever considering you a friend.”

    Greenwald responded with a Twitter thread that included this line: “When she was in prison trying repeatedly to kill herself, I was one of the only one who visited, spent hours on the phone, raising money for her.”

    Bringing up someone’s past suicide attempts that way in an internet argument was a pretty appalling move. When someone brought that up Thursday, Greenwald defended himself:

    The next day Greenwald ended up apologizing.

    “When I read Chelsea’s tweets, I felt it as betrayal from a friend,” he tweeted Friday. “My reference to helping her through her (publicly reported) suicide attempts was to express why I was hurt, but I see how it was viewed & apologize. I stand by everything else I said & that’s my last word on this.”

    h/t https://www.mediaite.com/news/glenn-greenwald-apologizes-for-gross-response-to-chelsea-manning/

  41. 41.

    SpaceUnit

    @cain: I want to think that they’ll eventually snap out of it and come to their senses, but I honestly can’t imagine what it would take at this point.  They’re literally ready to kill themselves just to stick it to the libs.

  42. 42.

    Hungry Joe

    A small and not particularly noble part of me understands where these grifters are coming from. And yes, I use this quote every chance I get:

    ”It is immoral to allow a sucker to keep his money.” — Canada Bill Jones

  47. 47.

    Anne Laurie

    @hilts: Glennzilla realizes he’s gone too far for his ‘both sides’ defenders, and that his legions of slavering fanbois don’t have the clout to replace those Very Serious Media dollars.

    Fortunately for him, the NYTimes op-ed editors have the memories of mayflies…

  48. 48.

    cintibud

    Anyone remember the old show “Green Acres”? There was a recurring character on it named Mr. Haney who was always trying to sell the main character (Mr. Douglas) some form of snake oil. It was always hilarious at the absurd claims and long windy stories while Douglas just got more and more exasperated. Surely the writers had a good imagination! Or maybe not. Apparently Mr. Haney had a lot of children who have risen high in the right wing environment

  52. 52.

    Baud

    My reference to helping her through her (publicly reported) suicide attempts was to express why I was hurt, but I see how it was viewed & apologize.

    The proverbial non-apology apology.

  53. 53.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Then fuck his non-apology apolgy.

    In happier news, how’s about this:

    FUN FACT: Due to overwhelming public pressure, GoDaddy is kicking the Texas Whistleblower website to the curb in 24 hours.

    YOU GUYS DID THIS.??
    — BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) September 3, 2021

  54. 54.

    Splitting Image

    @Anne Laurie:

    Fortunately for him, the NYTimes op-ed editors have the memories of mayflies…

    Like their forebears, they learn nothing and remember nothing.

  56. 56.

    Bill Arnold

    @MomSense:

    He’s a fast talking, vacuous, gritting bullshit artist.

    Has she seen this?
    Absolute destruction by Andrew Neil leaves Ben Shapiro lost for words – The conservative YouTube sensation’s interview with the BBC broadcaster may be the only one he never claims victory, and with good reason (Tom Peck, 10 May 2019)
    Ben Shapiro: US commentator clashes with BBC’s Andrew Neil – BBC News (Youtube, May 10, 2019, 16:06)

    In case it’s not clear, Andrew Neil is arguably the best known interviewer in the UK, and Ben Shapiro had never heard of him, and Andrew Neil is fairly right wing (not rightmost, though, sigh) and recently left the BBC to start a new TV outlet, GB News. (Which is not doing well. And he left after 2 weeks and may not return[1].)

    [1] Andrew Neil poised to quit GB News – Veteran interviewer has not presented his evening show since June 24, just two weeks after launch, and insiders believe he will not be back (Ben Woods, 3 September 2021)

  61. 61.

    Barbara

    @SpaceUnit: It does none of us any good to bang our heads against the wall as we  wring our hands, wailing that there must be some way to reach them. Nope nope nope.

  62. 62.

    Doug R

    @cain: Yeah the same people who tell me not to trust big media have no curiosity about who really funds their favourite sources.

    I know big media doesn’t really want to kill me since that’d lose them a source of revenue. Those sketchy sites spreading Russian propaganda-not so much.

  64. 64.

    Villago Delenda Est

    My problem here is the same one that prevents me from becoming a televangelist, that is, I have scruples.

  65. 65.

    brendancalling

    @VeniceRiley: that page is astounding. The sheer level of magical thinking—“prayer Warriors, flood heaven with prayers,” WTAF YOU’RE A FUCKING ADULT SANTA ISN’T REAL EITHER—makes my head hurt. One of those wretched fools was saying that the HCA nominee was having a stroke but they rebuked it in the name of Jesus, “because we’re not having that.”

    It’s sad, infuriating, and downright EMBARRASSING. The whole world must be seeing this—my ex in Canada says everyday it’s like a new joke, what are the Americans up to THIS week?

    I feel no sympathy at all for the ones who go down, not even the redemption stories. They leave behind families suffering unfathomable grief, and very likely huge financial burdens as well. And my God, the number of orphaned children—WTAF.

  67. 67.

    Marmot

    @Roger Moore:

    1. A fair bit of the money is getting funneled back into all kinds of awful stuff: selling paranoid right wing propaganda, funding Republican political campaigns, etc.  Shutting off the right wing grift empire would also do a lot to shut down the right wing propaganda machine and the Republican party as a whole.

    This is actually my idea, I swear. Tougher laws on quacks kicks the crackpots in the nutsack, economically speaking.

    Stealer!

  69. 69.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    What the Fuck is wrong with Facebook?  Part 10,000

    (Can someone here remind me again why the fuck anybody wants to have a Facebook account? Fuck Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandburg, and all the other lowlife scum that run this motherfucking monstrosity!)

    Facebook apologized on Friday after one of its algorithms identified a video featuring Black people as being about “primates.”

     

    The video was posted to Facebook by The Daily Mail on June 27, 2020, and featured a montage of Black men in confrontations with police officers and White civilians. Recently, users who watched the video received a prompt asking if they wanted to “keep seeing videos about Primates.”

     

    The company called the labeling “an unacceptable error.”

     

    “As we have said, while we have made improvements to our A.I., we know it’s not perfect, and we have more progress to make,” said a spokesperson for Facebook. “We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations.”

     

    h/t https://www.mediaite.com/tech/facebook-apologizes-for-ai-labeling-video-of-black-men-as-being-about-primates/

     

  76. 76.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @hilts: ​
     

    This is interesting. When Manning was placed on suicide watch people like Griftwald denied it and said it was an attempt to torture Manning. So it was true all along.

  77. 77.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Bill Arnold: I really really like Andrew Neil’s interviewing style. I prefer him to Jeremy Paxton. They both do their research and have the facts at their fingertips, but Paxton comes over as aggressive while Neil just sounds relentless.

  79. 79.

    Bill Arnold

    @BeautifulPlumage:
    Thanks for that.
    From the dark heart of Project Veritas itself:
    BREAKING: Project Veritas Headquarters Destroyed – Urgent message from James O’Keefe following devastating flooding in Mamaroneck, New York (September 02, 2021)
    A lot of collateral damage. It has also added some absolutely true oomph to global heating narratives. Basically, Ida’s track took it over the hottest parts of the Gulf of Mexico (hot to a depth of 100 feet plus) picking up strength and moisture, and the moisture was then dumped on land.

    A very recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece has two extra words at the end of the headline, which I’ve helpfully striked.
    Climate Change Brings a Flood of Hyperbole (WSJ, Steven E. Koonin, Aug. 10, 2021)

  84. 84.

    Warren Lorente

    @Baud: “I do not avoid the company of women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my essence” – Brig. General Jack D. Ripper

  85. 85.

    Chris Johnson

    @Bill Arnold: That was a very special moment, yes. Ben getting haughty and accusing the British right-winger of being a liberal.

    That reaction of ‘if you only knew how much of a fool you’ve made of yourself’… priceless.

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