Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

We still have time to mess this up!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

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

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: GOP Party Sheeple

Late Night Open Thread: GOP Party Sheeple

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Given how insistently they proclaim their status as Independent Free Thinkers, maybe we just don’t mock the Repubs enough for their timidity, their tendency to flock up like pampered barnyard animals…

the “reasonable” people are so angry at the media and the libs all the time because they know their weakness and are embarrassed. they know they’ll once again be summarily shoved back out of the way the next time the open fascists sense an opportunity

the reasonable people are petting zoo animals the fascists keep around to distract everyone while they do their work advancing fascism. january 6th illustrated it perfectly.

anyway, this is my big takeaway. everyone pretended to be mortified but then returned to their lib-owning, media-dunking, tu-quoqueing hobbies. it was just another bump sharpied on a hurricane or access hollywood tape. the perfect farm animals for fascism.

fascism cannot succeed without a cover story. naked fascism runs out of runway too fast because it’s deeply unamerican and unpopular and will be fought tooth and nail. the reasonable people, willingly or unwittingly, running cover are very necessary for it to establish itself

fascism cannot succeed without a cover story. naked fascism runs out of runway too fast because it’s deeply unamerican and unpopular and will be fought tooth and nail. the reasonable people, willingly or unwittingly, running cover are very necessary for it to establish itself.

We’re never gonna change the minds of the high-dollar grifters quoted, but maybe a steady stream of abuse would discourage potential GOP Death Cult recruits from becoming ‘farm animals for fascism’?

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @Jerzy Russian: Big fight between the teacher’s union and the city, especially the mayor. Teachers don’t think it’s safe to do in-person instruction, what with the whole omicron thing and all, mayor’s response was basically to say either it’s in-person or nothing, we’re not doing remote instruction.

  8. 8.

    patroclus

    @Jerzy Russian: The teachers don’t want to go back to work while Omicron is spiking, so the Union voted not to.  They’ll be back in due course and school will last into June.  The kids, like many college students, get a longer winter vacation than normal.  It’s not that big of a deal, but Hewitt can waste his time on it if he wants.

  9. 9.

    Edmund Dantes

    @Phylllis: it also helps the Mayor (either rightly or wrongly) is not liked a lot by the media as she has a very abrasive style (they love Trump and Christie though). She has also burned some bridges with the machine politics of the town. So it’s a bit of a slugfest

     

    – she also has not always played well particularly on some of the Cop violence stuff. I think she got caught out in emails slow playing or lying about what she did or didn’t know about certain cases.

  11. 11.

    James E Powell

    @dmsilev:

    Here in Los Angeles, our return to classes has been delayed one day to allow everyone – teachers, staff, and students – to get tested before we go back.

    I am wishing that the district had not lifted the deadline for all students to be vaccinated. The original deadline would have had them all vaccinated before our scheduled return next Monday.

  12. 12.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jerzy Russian:

    What is going on in the Chicago schools, and why should it be national news? 

    Because even downstate, in our state capital even, “Chicago” is code for the N word for racists*.

    *I wish I remembered the episode of The Professional Left podcast where driftglass and bluegal point this out.  They live in Springfield, IL, btw.

    -Signed,

    A white guy born, raised and still living in Chicago.

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    @dmsilev:

    You have to have your priorities: 

    L.A. County reports record 37,000 daily coronavirus cases but says Super Bowl still on.

    Right now, the plan appears to be ‘hope this all blows over in a month’.

    Shaun Super Bowl of the Dead?

  15. 15.

    Redshift

    @Jerzy Russian: The pundits have decided schools being closed in Chicago is all the fault of teachers unions, which is somehow significant despite hundreds of other schools being closed where that isn’t a factor.

    (Also it’s because Obama is from Chicago, the same reason wingnuts endlessly focus on crime in Chicago.)

  16. 16.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jerzy Russian: Ran out of editing time, but, to clarify, Chicago Public Schools/Mayor Lightfoot vs the Chicago Teachers’ Union shouldn’t be a national story, because it’s really not.

  18. 18.

    eddie blake

    covid is raging through the nyc school system. a lot of people just don’t give a fuck about teachers.

  19. 19.

    Anne Laurie

    @VOR: Serious question: why does anyone pay the slightest attention to Hugh Hewitt or Ben Shapiro?

    Serious answer: To get their priors confirmed.

    Hewitt, in particular, established his credentials post-9/11… depending on what the C+ Augustus was shoved out to announce any given morning, Hewitt moved from ‘Four legs good, two legs baaaad’ to ‘Four legs good, two legs baaaeeeter’ without missing a step.

    Shapiro, AFAICT, amuses them with his fussy, frenetic, shrieky little performances.  He’s their pet… not-Christian Judeo-Christian, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    I find it very interesting that the late Senator Johnny Isakson’s funeral was scheduled for January 6th, in Atlanta.  He died on December 19th.  

    Gives all these weird flocking Republican birds an excuse not to be in DC, and that seems incredibly convenient.  The family could have scheduled on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, but no, they chose Thursday, January 6th. Uh huh.

    The FTF NY Times has a story.  Seems like nostalgia for the former GOP, but also reads a tad like snark. (If so, well done.) And the funeral was bipartisan!  Raphael Warnock (also a Senator from Georgia) was there! And a former governor, also a Democrat. And … silence.

    I cannot access the Atlanta Journal Constitution (some issue with EU privacy standards; not available in Germany). Does anyone know of other major Democrats in attendance at this funeral? (Save me from watching Mitch McConnell’s eulogy, in the event he names them!)

    NY Times: Republicans and Democrats come together in Atlanta to remember Senator Isakson on Jan. 6.

    ATLANTA — On a day when Washington’s partisan divide felt as deep as it has in decades, lawmakers from both parties gathered in an Atlanta church on Thursday to honor one of the U.S. Senate’s great champions of bipartisanship, Johnny Isakson.

    Mr. Isakson, a moderate Georgia Republican who once called bipartisanship “a state of being,” was 76 when he died on Dec. 19, having retired prematurely from the Senate in 2019 because of health complications. He was battling Parkinson’s disease.

    In Washington on Thursday, most Republican legislators refused to take part in the commemorations of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. But they came together at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, to honor Mr. Isakson.

    Among the attendees were Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democrat who was elected to Mr. Isakson’s old Georgia seat last January.

    Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, delivering words of remembrance, acknowledged that the funeral resonated in a spirit of comity that the Senate was once known for, but that has lately become more scarce.

    “I haven’t seen this big of a bipartisan group of Senators together off the floor since September,” he said. That, he said, was the date of an annual, “Johnny Isakson barbecue lunch,” a social tradition that Mr. Isakson started and that lawmakers have continued in his absence.

    Former U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, an old friend of Mr. Isakson’s, also delivered remarks, noting that in his farewell speech to the Senate, Mr. Isakson said that he divided the world into two categories: friends and future friends.

    Mr. Chambliss recalled that Mr. Isakson also quoted Mark Twain’s advice to do the right thing, on the grounds that “It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

    Mr. Isakson held firm conservative beliefs, opposing the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage, but he also bucked the party’s status quo at times, and he was not afraid to publicly criticize Mr. Trump.

    Along the way, he made numerous friends in both parties; Mr. Chambliss said that former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, a Democrat, once quipped, “If all Republicans were like Johnny Isakson, I would be a Republican.”

    The pews were packed with friends and admirers from both parties, including Mr. Barnes. …

    When they sang “God Bless America,” the mourners stood up en masse.

    They stood up. In Atlanta.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    I am really curious about that Bipartisan Funeral.  Four states south, on January 6th.  I can imagine Tim Kaine attending …  Maybe Democrats are not as recognizable … it was a strange story.

  25. 25.

    Poe Larity

    I’m worried Rod Dreher might kill some puppies after Francis’ comments on selfish pet owners. Anything to get noticed.

  26. 26.

    Mary G

    @Poe Larity: Papa F is way too liberal for Dreher’s tastes these days, but a Deep Fake tape from TFG Benedict advising it could get Dreher into a shelter armed to the teeth ASAP.

  27. 27.

    the pollyanna from hell

    I’ve been repeating that question from the reporter: is the pandemic out of control? It was in the control of the anti-virus majority for a while, now it is in the control of the pro-virus terrorists.

  28. 28.

    Sam

    I don’t think passing voting reform will solve the problem.  It will solve a problem, but not the problem that puts our democracy at risk.

    A very large chunk of the electorate has indicated that it doesn’t believe in laws or traditions, and is pursuing power.  More laws will not solve that problem.

    I’m really scared, and I’m scared of my fellow citizens.  Only one electoral loss will produce the deluge, and nobody bats 1000.

  29. 29.

    opiejeanne

    @dmsilev: The mayor of Chicago seems to have a lot of power over what schools do in that city. Most school districts I’m familiar with would tell the mayor to take a flying fuck.

  30. 30.

    James E Powell

    @Sam:

    A very large chunk of the electorate has indicated that it doesn’t believe in laws or traditions, and is pursuing power. More laws will not solve that problem.

    We need voting reform, we need to end partisan gerrymandering, we need to somehow undo Citizens United, and, you are correct, sir (Ed McMahon voice), we need to work on that great mass of white people who want herrenvolk democracy.

    But it’s like Commoner’s first law of ecology:  Everything is connected to everything else.

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    PSA: Don’t watch a food review just before bed.  Time to dream of Aussie meat pies.

  34. 34.

    the pollyanna from hell

    @Sam: Five years ago I suggested moving cross country to vote in a more strategic election, but then I was not free to follow my own advice. Now I might do it, and the rents here in Denver are too high anyway. Looking at red states I have family in Idaho and Missouri, and I suppose I could survive in either one.

    If a million liberals joined me in migration we could solve half the problem. Pioneer liberal communities are already in place to welcome us with open arms. Just let this pandemic simmer down a little bit…

  35. 35.

    Sebastian

    Is the identity of KT known? I follow them on Twitter and see them being quoted here quite often. However, it’s the name of a Vonnegut character so I’ll wager it’s a pseudonym.

    Anyone know more about them?

  36. 36.

    Brachiator

    Oh, Hugh…

    @hughhewitt If you turn on cable news today and the channel is going wall-to-wall w/ 1/6 coverage, know you are not watching a “news station.” I opened my show w/ a fact-based summary of 1/6, but 75% of show is devoted to #chicagopublicschools, by far the most important news story of today.

    The contemporary best example of the banality of evil.

  37. 37.

    JPL

    @Brachiator: Fulton Cty Georgia schools did not have

    did not have in person learning this week.   I haven’t heard mention of that at all.

     

    Good Morning!   It’s cold this morning.

  38. 38.

    Jay

    @Sebastian:

    not really. If you search 25 Conservatives worth following on twitter, you will get a couple of links referencing him, if they open, ( they don’t for me),

    he doesn’t really have an online bio, aside from being a tech bro, former ReThug/Libertarian/NeverTrumper, who has had the John Cole Epiphany in 2015.

  39. 39.

    gene108

    @James E Powell:

    Part of the problem we cannot tackle is EC votes and EC electors. EC electors actually choose the President, not the voters, and there’s room to exploit this by Republicans to say fuck you to Democratic voters.

    If Pete Navarro is correct, they thought they could manage this in 2020, on January 6, 2021, before the insurrection. The terrifying thing is a Senator and Representative objecting to a state’s certification is perfectly legal.

    A lot of the Republican voting bills passed last year aim to fine tune this constitutional loophole in selecting Presidents, so Republicans can claim the presidency even if they lose both the popular vote and EC vote, on the first pass of voting before EC votes are certified.

    I’m not sure what can be done to stop this.

  40. 40.

    gene108

    @JPL:

    Lots of school districts, teachers and staff (union or non-union), and parents are struggling to figure out whether to have in person learning or virtual learning right now. It’s not unique to Chicago.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @JPL:

    in my Department today, we have 3 out, 2 full time, one part time, in a Department that has 5 staff, so there’s just me, and one part timer left.

    they, ( MGMT) has been “dredging in” anybody who ever worked   there to try to fill in the gaps, even though they don’t know the current procedures, policies, software, ( and it’s quirks), or the products.

    Tomorrow, by the schedule, ( and it should be a busy day), the two full timers won’t be there, ( Covid) and the part timer scheduled to show up at 5pm. So, nobody there from 6am to 5pm.

    Luckily, it’s my 1 day off.

    Fun Times.

  42. 42.

    Jay

    @gene108:

    it’s not unique to the US, here, all the post Secondary have gone back to remote learning, until this “wave” has passed.

  44. 44.

    ThresherK

    @Jay: I did not know that about KT. Good on him–many people have had their Road to Damascus meaning during Trump’s reign, but I consider the late-Obama era a time when few did this, as there was still the veneer (or woodgrain plastic applique) of “respectable” R’s all in on birtherism and other crap.

  45. 45.

    sab

    I went in to my local Staples yesterday to replace my dead printer and there were two employees in the whole store. One ran the cash register and the other ran the customer service/print service desk. It was nuts. They hadn’t had time to line up the few remaining printers in stock with the display models so I needed help to even find out what the prices were

    ETA Response to Jay at #41

  46. 46.

    Jay

    @sab:

    yurp, it’s f’d.

    and MGNT knew that was coming, and did nothing.

    in my Department, they have been “throwing” James in. He’s a good guy, but less than 8 hours training, in an extreme Customer Service job, plus major broad based technical knowledge,  when his prior job was lifting and returning carts,  WTF?????????????

    On the bright side, the morons in MGMT have decided he can “mirror” me, for a couple of days, ( that’s how desperate they are now that Omicron has “hit”, ) so, at least, I can teach him the  very basics.

    He’s a nice guy. smart, soft spoken, takes care of his parents, I hope I can help him, just not on the job, but dealing with the BS of the job.

    It’s f’d up big time.

  47. 47.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Jay: I have to laugh at “mirroring.” That’s how my company trains everyone. Cause you know, training is over-rated.

    P.S. It’s 3 degrees in Chicagoland this morning. * whine whine

  50. 50.

    lowtechcyclist

    Yesterday, No Labels put out the most bullshitty of all bullshit polls on Twitter.  It asked:

    In marking the events of one year ago today, do you want our elected leaders to come together or to sow division? #January6

    You could respond, “come together” or “sow division.”

    Well sure, I’d love it if our elected leaders came together to repudiate the coup attempt of 1/6/21, along with the slow-rolling coup in progress right now. And I’d also like a pet unicorn.

    But if standing up against those who would destroy our democracy is defined as ‘sowing division’ then there’s no other reasonable course.

    I didn’t think No Labels could manage to be more ridiculous than they’ve been, but I think they managed it yesterday.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The pile on is gross, and it’s not just on the Right. It’s all so dumb and lazy. They compare one school district with another without taking any of the differences into account. Public schools are public and they’re mandated to report just about everything. They have all the information they need to do real comparisons and come up with valid criticisms and/or praise for various districts but they’re too lazy to read it.

  53. 53.

    Kay

    Will Steakin
    @wsteaks
    ·9h
    January 6th rally organizer Amy Kremer appears to be calling out Trump for not helping to raise money for Jan 6th defendants:

    She wants to know why Donald Trump hasn’t set up a legal fund to help them. Because he doesn’t give a shit about any of you and the way this works is you give him money and he keeps it?

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I saw a lot of visible online support for the John Deere union workers when they went on strike.

    Not so much for teachers unions.

    Wonder why? T’is a mystery.

    ETA: And Kellogg workers.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Chris Hayes decided he should weigh in on it- his research consisted of asking people on Twitter questions like “what did schools do with the covid money?”. There are 600 school districts in Ohio alone. He’s going to need a lot of Twitter replies.

    Aren’t these people supposedly employed full time in gathering and disseminating information?

  58. 58.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m on the open schools side, as you know, if there is such a thing, but I don’t want to be on a team with the rest of the open schools people- they’re horrible and lazy- it’s just a gross uninformed pile on and bashing for the sake of bashing.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I read a longer article about a husband and wife who had supposedly left the cult after January 6th arrests but by the end I could see they were wavering and hadn’t really split off at all. I felt the headline was misleading :)

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The “tell” is people who never bothered with public schools before (hence, they know nothing about them) just eagerly jumping in this pile on.

    13 districts of the largest 100 in the country were either closed or had closed some individual “buildings” (districts call individual schools “buildings”) due to covid. Two were closed due to weather. Some are in strong union areas, some are not.

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    his research consisted of asking people on Twitter questions

    Call me hypercritical but I’m sensing a problem with the methodology.

    “Research, Chris? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

    //

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The “tell” is people who never bothered with public schools before (hence, they know nothing about them) just eagerly jumping in this pile on.

     
    In the internet age, everyone is an expert.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    He could even use Twitter!

    There’s a nonprofit news source that covers public schools. It’s called “Chalkbeat” and this is a good reporter:

    Matt Barnum

    @matt_barnum ed policy reporter and wannabe wonk

    @chalkbeat
    ; fake stats vigilante; [email protected]

    Chris Hayes could just read him and he’d get all the charts. The NYTimes education reporter is also good- she’s really thorough and she talks to people who run schools.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    Oh, it got worse. They took the total amount of funding and divided it by number of schools- thereby determining how much money each school got. But that’s not the way it works. The money went to states and that’s just the first factor that makes their division problem just nonsense.

  67. 67.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    She wants to know why Donald Trump hasn’t set up a legal fund to help them. Because he doesn’t give a shit about any of you and the way this works is you give him money and he keeps it?

    And in the end, she’ll still crawl over broken glass to support and vote for him, because he will put those uppity Others in their places and put all the LIE-berals in extermination camps.

  68. 68.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    He said he set up a fund.  Doesn’t mean they’ll see any of the money.

    Not to pick nits, but this is closer to his usual practice.

  69. 69.

    ...now I try to be amused

    One Kilgore Trout post was duplicated. Here it is with what followed, and IMO it’s the key post in the thread:

    fascism cannot succeed without a cover story. naked fascism runs out of runway too fast because it’s deeply unamerican and unpopular and will be fought tooth and nail. the reasonable people, willingly or unwittingly, running cover are very necessary for it to establish itself

    the reasonable people have all the power in the relationship. they can quit at any time, and quitting would wreck the fascists. yet they behave as if they have no choice. so yeah in a way the reasonable people are actually a little morally worse than the open fascists

  72. 72.

    BigJimSlade

    @dmsilev: It will be Super Bowl LVI, Omicron edition – you know, Roman numerals and Greek letters go together well.

    Speaking of omicron, there are 9 letters between delta and omicron, what happened to all those variants?

  73. 73.

    J R in WV

    @lowtechcyclist: ​

    …I didn’t think No Labels could manage to be more ridiculous than they’ve been, but I think they managed it yesterday.

    I signed up for that “poll” — you had to give them your name, so my first name was “Convict Trump for” and my last name was ” his Treasonous Insurrection”… wonder if that made a point?​

    ETA:

    @lowtechcyclist: Worth noting that ‘sow division’ won, 93% to 7%.

    OK, that’s pretty interesting, thanks for that detail~!~

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