House ‘Freedom Caucus’ Christmas Party looks like a raucous affair with Louie Gohmert on guitar. pic.twitter.com/yd1ZzufgwO
— Ron Filipkowski ???? (@RonFilipkowski) December 13, 2022
Take (cold) comfort: Your company’s holiday party may be excruciatingly lame, but at least it doesn’t feature Gohmert on guitar. Or, it is to be hoped, cheez whiz as the main hors d’oeuvre…
It's very funny that there's an endless parade of center-left pundits and consultants worried that totally unobjectionable left candidates will alienate swing voters while the only one worried about the right's pack of crazy loons doing that is mitch mcconnell https://t.co/yWjt3gQABf
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) December 13, 2022
Underdiscussed imho that virtually every prominent figure on the right being totally insane may be more off-putting than like, saying we should be nice to marginalized people, but maybe that's just my woke mind virus talking
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) December 13, 2022
Some of you genuinely seem to believe that grudges from online beefs and annoyances at HR culture outweigh an attempt to violently overthrow American democracy and frankly, I find that a little bit sad even by my abysmal standards.
— Checkless Starfish Who Can Change His Name (@IRHotTakes) December 12, 2022
I will also add that the benefits of an imaginary Mars colony do not outweigh damage to the actually existing country in which most of us live.
— Checkless Starfish Who Can Change His Name (@IRHotTakes) December 12, 2022
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
ʇsɹᴉɟ
Chetan Murthy
Does Qbert not know what “charcuterie” is? I guess not.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@Chetan Murthy:
she’s waiting for Oz to bring out the crudités platter
Chetan Murthy
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch: I guess she couldn’t have said “Mmmm, crackers!” without getting in trouble with ….every other person present.
Anoniminous
Cheeze-Whiz at a gala? CHEEZE-WHIZ?!?!?!
Is every Right Winger an uncultured boor?
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
To paraphrase Mark Felt famous quote: “Forget the myths the media’s created about
the White HouseMitch McConnell. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”Mitch could have been rid of Dump by impeaching him, thereby disqualifying him. But no, now he’s stuck with him.
piratedan
just remember, while we find these “candidates” appalling on a national level, back where they are running… well, we just better remind our collective selves to not take anything for granted… sure, the voters rejected Kari Lake and Herschel Walker, but these loons still managed to have a million people vote for them. Sobering shit that is.
until the propaganda spigot is shut off, we have to continue to reach out and convince more people to vote and convince them that it will always mater.
Jim Appleton
That video (yeach!!!1!!, but I’m glad it’s there) is a shameless bookend to the irrelevance of who, sadly, so many of our neighbors think should run things.
columbusqueen
I need brain bleach now. Oy vey.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, as we build the pie higher… Phys.org:
A Bisection Protocol for Political Redistricting.
Interesting, and a clever way to make things fairer (at first blush).
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
The video of that “party” is so weird. Did they intend to mock parties by serving Cheez Whiz and Mountain Dew?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Those House Freedom guys sure look like a pack of middle age guys who still think they are teens.
different-church-lady
@piratedan: Another way of putting this: the margins are verrrrrry thin.
Amir Khalid
I’m surprised that whoever hosted this didn’t think to organise some wine, and pay a caterer for some decent canapés and finger sandwiches.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jesus’s birthday and they’re serving cheese from a can?
Blasphemers
MagdaInBlack
@Amir Khalid: Oh no, that would be “elitist.” These are just common folk, no upscale lib food for them. I am a bit surprised there’s no cheeseball. ( Tho Gohmert might pass for that)
Ten Bears
I have had some trouble with this notion some people have that you can just pick a cornfield up out of Iowa and put it back down on Mars and everything will be groovy. Doesn’t work that way. Every good reason presented to go to Mars is a good reason to go to Luna, the moon; every bad reason presented for not going to Luna are the bad reasons to go to Mars.
But everybody looked …
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, And were the marshmallow jello, were is the ranch dressing to offset the spicy cheese-wiz?
Chetan Murthy
@Ten Bears: s/Luna/Antarctica/g
Geoduck
The Cheez Whiz.
Dan B
@MagdaInBlack: They should be serving Cheesus of Nazareth, doncha think?
cain
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know – if you look carefully, you’d have seen some cheez-whiz during Jesus’s last supper. It was everywhere.
sab
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch: How did you do that?
MagdaInBlack
@Ten Bears: My question is : If we have all this knowledge and technology to terraform a planet to make it livable, why don’t we use it here to keep this one livable ?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@sab:
He posted from a VPN in Australia. 😉
lgerard
To be fair, they also had a PB and J Bar
sab
@lgerard: If I was idealogically Republican and politically active I would certainly leave the US and move to the UK just for the improved parties.
Since I am not Republican I am happy I am here.
MagdaInBlack
@lgerard: Reading that tells me this is just another “own the lbs” thing. We really do live rent free in their heads. They’re such silly people 🤗
And it should have been Wonder Bread, if they wish to be authentic.
Viva BrisVegas
@Ten Bears: Compared with Mars, Antarctica is a tropical paradise. Who wants to live in Antarctica?
opiejeanne
@eclare: And at one point someone refers to the CheezWiz on crackers as charcuterie. I thought they were making fun of Dr Oz.
opiejeanne
@MagdaInBlack: We don’t have the ability to terraform Mars, not until we can figure out how to replace the planet’s magnetic field.
ColoradoGuy
Compare Mars with the Gobi Desert, and the Gobi Desert is better in every way. 1G gravity (this is a big deal, people born on Mars can never return to Earth). Breathable air, for free, no processing required. Only hours away from civilization (by air). No perchlorate poisoning the soil. The Gobi Desert is an oasis of water compared to Mars.
The Moon is a little worse than Mars, but not by much. The biggest problem is the very long day/night cycle, with extreme temperature swings.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@sab: I’m in Australia where everything is upside-down.
Not only that, its already tomorrow down here, while in North America its still yesterday.
Martin
@MagdaInBlack: The problems aren’t technological. Hell, we knew how to prevent climate change a century ago – back when we weren’t causing it.
The problems are economic and political. Not that we don’t have enough money, but we don’t know how to tell the people that make money off of emissions that they’re no longer going to. And we don’t know how to tell Americans that they need to cut emissions by 75%, and that means we can’t have everyone rolling around in a truck (even an electric one) and running a space heater on their patio. That message causes you to lose your election, even if it’s an unavoidable fact.
Mars substitutes technological problem for political/economic ones. Those are easier to discuss and think about, even if they don’t solve the problem. As a species we’ve decided that discussing things is an adequate substitute for doing things. And when shit goes sideways, we discuss who is at fault for things going sideways.
Martin
@ColoradoGuy: No, the biggest problem is you can’t transit 8 billion people to Mars, under any scenario. The only people that find Mars to be an interesting puzzle to solve are the ones delusional to think they’ll make the short list to go there.
None of them will make the short list to go there.
piratedan
@Odie Hugh Manatee: and completely OT, ty for the follow over on TheDerm
sab
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Omg. I thought you were joking.
sab
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch: North America is always yesterday. That is who we are.
ETA But we are always right side up.
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: Thank you for saying what I knew in my heart. It’s mostly a rhetorical question, because I know its lack of will to do whats necessary, because some folks would make less money and some folks would be inconvenienced.
ian
Is this one of those cocaine fueled orgies I hear so much about?
Martin
@opiejeanne: That’s conceptually easy – just inject a few lunar masses of iron at 5000K into the core of Mars and add a lunar mass in orbit to generate tidal forces in that molten iron to spin up the magnetic field.
We should start by melting down all of the cars.
Mai Naem mobile
Where’s Baud? Is he okay?
Martin
Heh. Just saw that the $39K F-150 EV has had its price raised for the 3rd time to $55K.
We ain’t gonna consume our way out of this, folks.
Chris T.
@Martin:
Same idea that, when you tell your kid that, no, he can’t have birthday cake for dinner every day, you get fired as a parent. The only difference is that the fired-as-a-parent thing doesn’t actually take.
Chris T.
@Martin:
Probably easier to crash some nickel-iron asteroids into Mars, but I do see how this would solve a different problem. 😈
Steeplejack
@Mai Naem mobile:
Baud is reported to be traveling. Doesn’t post then.
eclare
@Steeplejack: Thanks for the update.
Shalimar
Cheez Whiz isn’t bad. Or at least it wasn’t bad 25 years ago, when I last had some.
Mai Naem mobile
@Steeplejack: so he can’t post from Iowa? I am assuming that’s where he is, kicking off his POTUS campaign ?
Princess
If anyone things this is their actual party, I have a bridge to sell you. This one is to fool their supporters and tease the Libs (us). The oysters and cocaine came later. The only reason these people went to congress is to get money and spend it.
raven
From Altman’s “Three Women” complete with a cheese whiz and crackers gif!
Millie Lammoreaux as played by Shelley DuVall
“I’m famous for my dinner parties”, she exclaims, while trying on one of her many yellow dresses in front of a mirror. The menu is out of this world. There is canned cheese on store-bought crackers with an olive on top. There is store-bought chocolate pudding in store-bought pastry shells topped with canned whipped cream.
Geminid
I am glad that goofy Gohmert ended his congressional career with a hapless run for Texas Attorney General. Now he’s just a Texas problem, and there is one less Washington problem. What a buffoon!
eclare
@raven: That movie sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out. But I’ll pass on penthouse chicken.
raven
@eclare: It is one of the strangest films ever made. Sissy and Shelley are incredible.
StringOnAStick
@raven: Truly a strange film; I saw it when it came out and I still have disjointed memories the what a confusing and emotionally uncomfortable experience that was. I was barely out of my teens and found the film very hard to parse
The Thin Black Duke
@raven: Robert Altman was brilliant.
zhena gogolia
@columbusqueen: I love how on the word “virgin” they flash on Boebert.
SFAW
@Geminid:
“Ended his Congressional career”? Since when?
Ripley
@Martin:
A good portion of my work team are hardware/network/systems people, while I’m working end user software/service/workflows. I keep telling my boss “We can’t hardware this place into the 21st Century.”
It’s somewhat shocking how adamantly people will cling to the notion that “different stuff! new stuff!” will somehow turn things around and make everything A-OK. Or doubling down on provably outdated processes. (“If we just… more!”). smh
Capri
The GOP has a much bigger problem than bad candidates. It’s how they got those bad candidates – their voters prefer them to mainstream republicans. It’s not like there’s a smoke-filled back room where they are selected. In the primaries the voters could pick between Average Joe and Nutso the Clown and they went for Nutso every time. How are they going to change that?
Another Scott
@sab:
(ƎꓷOꓛINꓵ ɟo ɔᴉɓɐɯ ǝɥꓕ)
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tinare
@Princess: I don’t understand how their supporters don’t see that they are mocking them.
Geminid
@SFAW: Gohmert did not run for reelection. Instead he ran for Texas Attorney General and came in third. This will be his last week as an active congressman. His term will end when the new Congress meets.
Geminid
@Capri: I think the only thing that will change the dynamic you describe will be Democrats thrashing the Republicans for at least two more cycles. Then the radicals might give up the steering wheel, but it could be a hollowed out Republican party by then.
Tony G
@eclare: I have nothing against people who like junk food. The problem is that they are garbage people.
Another Scott
@Geminid: If I had to bet, it would be more along the lines of Planck’s principle:
Moscow Mitch will eventually be gone. Same with all the rest of the monsters. Different monsters will replace them. A common thread is that they will always want to win re-election, so they will attempt to find ways to rile up their voters, squeeze money from their supporters, and tilt the playing field to make that happen.
Politics is people, with all that entails. And individual people don’t like change, while people as a group are changing all the time.
Grr…,
Scott.
Chief Oshkosh
@MagdaInBlack: I am lucky enough to work with and have friends and family across a wide, wide socioeconomic and cultural range. Even my cousins who self-describe as “hicks from the sticks” would never serve Cheez Wiz and Mountain Dew at an office holiday party that is indoors (and that distinction is a real thing).
apocalipstick
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
If you have Cheez Whiz, you should consult a urologist.
apocalipstick
@opiejeanne: I think they were trying to pretend that Dr. Oz was being satirical or ironic?
NotMax
@Geminid
In no way means he cannot toss his hat in the ring for Speaker.
Just sayin’.
//
Kathleen
@eclare: The “party” was the pretense for the real GQP knee slapper holiday event – videos of children dying from hunger and disease.
Kathleen
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: And refuse to admit they are procreative appendage challenged.
Kathleen
@cain: I bet one of them claims they saw the face of Jesus in the Cheez Whizzed Ritz cracker.
Ruckus
@Viva BrisVegas:
I wanted to visit Antartica for a while, a long time ago. But I found out how long I had to sign up for the military to even have a chance at going. Seemed just a tad excessive, time wise, especially with zero guarantee I would get assigned there.