Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

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

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

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

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Come on, man.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Yup, Mitch Is Glitching, Again

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Yup, Mitch Is Glitching, Again

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And he’s being treated like any other aging, failing autocrat — the bottom feeders and sycophants who remain on his staff are busily working to scrape the gilding off the walls and steal the resalable goods out of his closets while they still can, propping him up for ‘live events’ before friendly audiences…

From what I see of right-wing twitter, Republicans are currently divided between calling McConnell a RINO who should hurry up and die already, and insisting that ‘Sleepy Joe’ is just as physically incapable of doing his job. Of course, President Biden has more class (political / emotional intelligence) than to respond in kind…



Opinions differ…

No doubt, whoever the Kentucky GOP chooses as a replacement will be a worse person than McConnell, but I don’t believe they’ll be anywhere near as effective, so I’m willing to risk it!

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  1. 1.

    lowtechcyclist

    Frist?

    No, Frist was in TN; this is Kentucky.​

    ETA: What, Frist is still alive? Who knew?

  2. 2.

    chrome agnomen

    yeah, he can live for another 20 years as far as I’m concerned.   in exquisite pain, with no recourse.   and let Kentucky keep re-electing him in that state.

  4. 4.

    Hildebrand

    I have compassion for anyone who is suffering.  That said, I can’t muster any sympathy for someone who seemed to absolutely revel in the suffering of others.

  5. 5.

    wenchacha

    Multiverse forgive me, I feel something for the human being in poor health. I also recognize that this particular human has never found a point so low that he said “we won’t go there.”

    He is a depraved version of human, at least to my unschooled eye. I don’t know why he is twisted in that way. But he sure is.

  8. 8.

    Steeplejack

    Another “divide by zero vapor lock.” H/t Stonekettle from the first time in late July.

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    My Suwannee River aunties and uncles who were in the path of this morning’s storm are all accounted for and tolerably comfortable, so WHEW!

    What a day! It will be weird working tomorrow as if it’s just a regular old Thursday. And yet it will be, at least for those of us who didn’t get squashed this time.

    Also, I made a pot of jambalaya this evening, and it was GOOD!

  10. 10.

    Baud

    People get sick and die. Including people in power. It’ll happen to me one day. Life goes on. I’m having a hard time getting caught up in the drama of it all.

  12. 12.

    Ruckus

    His replacement will have zero seniority and they will have to find a new majority leader. That should be fun to watch….

    And I agree they likely will go with most worthless, asinine, doofus they can find.

    I also agree with Jean-Michel Connard – after his run the country isn’t better, it’s the opposite. And his replacement will be as I described above. So at least we won’t be going any lower

     

    Oh and I’m having fun this week – it’s jury duty week. At least I don’t have to go to a courthouse and sit in a room all day waiting for the boredom to either go away or kill me. But LA does this thing now, they email me every night and tell me that tomorrow you don’t have to show up or you do. This is better, but not much.

  13. 13.

    Basilisc

    The US political system – where anonymous billionaires buy and sell legislators, laws, judges, and judicial decisions, at every level of government- is McConnell’s legacy.

    Along with the Republican Party’s strategy of staying in power by rigging the rules of the game. 

  15. 15.

    Hungry Joe

    McConnell probably doesn’t retire in order to spend time with his family because his daughters — progressives all, I believe — won’t have anything to do with him.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ruckus: My guess is Thune, that sun-kissed son of the prairie™️, will be the consensus replacement after a very ugly knife-fight between Rick Scott and assorted others. The uglier the better!

  18. 18.

    Steeplejack

    “He was eventually lead led away.”

    Autocorrect and voice-to-text are killing us. Also general sloppiness.

  19. 19.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    The uglier the better!

    I see we think alike.

    But come on, how could it not be ugly? Wanna bet they hate each other as much as they seem to hate almost every other breathing human?

  21. 21.

    MattF

    @Betty Cracker: I can see Scott trying to divide-and-conquer the Republican Senate caucus. It’ll be interesting to see who is truly die-hard MAGA in the Senate— McConnell’s dominance has made that question moot.

  22. 22.

    Dman

    Look I despise Mitch as much as everyone else,  but it looks like emotions got the better of him and his past evils starting flowing through his thoughts

  23. 23.

    Steve in the ATL

    @glc: “how many stills can you fit in yonder hollow?”

    Uh, no offense to our Mountaineer friends and blog hosts!

  25. 25.

    grumbles

    I doubt this particular combination of dysfunction, pathos and sad weirdness is uniquely American, but sometimes it sure seems like the way we do it is particularly bald and shameless.

    I have no idea, of course, but given the extent to which he’s a political animal with his identity entirely wrapped up in being King of the Senate, it would not surprise me if he intends to keep at it until he drops dead on the Senate dais. It just seems like it would be so much better for literally everyone, him and the country included, to have options here.

    Official Senatorial Old Folks’ Home, complete with fake chambers they can cosplay in? Or just a glue factory around back?

    (I still maintain the proper approach to Don Trump’s presidency would have been to route all his calls and tweets to actors, pipe produced video in to the Situation Room, and generally give him a great Disney-style Presidential Experience(tm) while the rest of us could have gotten on with life. Hell, he could still be in there, King of America. Put a bubble over the White House and write it off, it would have been a small price to pay.)

  28. 28.

    Jeffro

    Houle is right.  It’s a dirty little secret of the Senate that half of these clowns are distracted, addled, or senile idiots run by their staffs.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    OT politico

    The Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is recommending that the Drug Enforcement Agency significantly loosen federal restrictions on marijuana but stopped short of advising that it should be entirely removed from the Controlled Substances Act.

     

    The health agency wants the drug moved from Schedule I to Schedule III under the CSA, potentially the biggest change in federal drug policy in decades.

  31. 31.

    dmsilev

    @glc: Yet, somehow, the athletic program and the budget for the central administration remain intact. A real clear statement of priorities.

  32. 32.

    Alison Rose

    Re: the first tweet, I don’t think she was winking at them. It just looks like a little bit of a twitch, probably caused by the stress she’s feeling having to help navigate out of this mortifying situation.

    Re: McConnell in general…sigh. I know this will be an unpopular opinion here, and I’m okay with that. It’s not that I’ll be weeping and rending my garments when he passes, because yes, he is in general a bad person who has brought a lot of harm to this country. But I am personally uncomfortable with wishing for someone’s demise. True, putin might be an exception, (and I would hope folks here would see putin as worse than McConnell), but even then it’s tempered. Because if there exists someone so awful that their death is good news, that is what gives me tsuris. Finding relief or even joy in someone’s death means that their existence was a net negative for the world, and I wish it weren’t thus. I wish there weren’t people who use the free will God gave them to do ill. I wish we weren’t put into a position of wanting someone gone, because I would prefer a world without people cruel enough to engender such a wish in others.

    In cases like these, I think about what we know of the difference between how POWs captured by the russians are treated versus those captured by Ukraine. The latter, while being genocidal invading psychopathic orcs, are treated humanely. They’re given the choice to surrender peacefully, they’re given food, they’re not tortured, etc. I wouldn’t blame any Ukrainian soldier for wanting to inflict harm, but they don’t. Not necessarily because the orcs deserve it, but because your own humanity inside yourself deserves it. Because you don’t want to become what you revile in others.

    I’m not saying this to shame anyone for feeling otherwise, and I don’t think badly of you if you do. Just my four* cents.

    (*inflation hits everything)

  33. 33.

    Hoppie

    Ruckus:
    “His replacement will have zero seniority and they will have to find a new majority leader. That should be fun to watch….”

    No they won’t…

  34. 34.

    bcw

    The Democrats sure had better use McConnell’s exit as a chance to force a graceful exit for Feinstein at the same time. The Republicans have refused to agree to allow  a normal waiver to allow a replacement to the Judiciary Committee if she steps down or dies but they will be caught in the same bind if McConnell dies – they would have no Minority Leader. It has so long been the norm that Senators respect the other party’s right to introduce a new member when death or disability happens that this has never come up before.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    @Steeplejack: Aww, that’s sweet. :) We’re about 25 to 30 miles from the coast, so we avoided the Gulf water inundation towns like Crystal River got, and we’re far enough upriver that the current wasn’t reversed by the tidal push this far inland, so we avoided that source of flooding too. We lucked out!

  37. 37.

    kindness

    Will the Senate Republicans engage in a round of back stabbing (like the House did) in choosing a new Minority Leader?  Yes, of course they will.  Tell me if any one of them (outside possibly Romney) has any class at all.  Every single one of those dolts see’s themselves in the Oval Office and can’t quite understand why voters don’t see it too.

  38. 38.

    TS

    @Baud:

     I’m having a hard time getting caught up in the drama of it all.

    I’m waiting for the media to turn it into the drama of “He’s so old” Seems only democrats have to resign from politics because of age – trump & mitch are just fine. They can govern from the cemetery, from the jail or simply sleep on the job. All good.

  39. 39.

    Feathers

    Must admit that the thoughts that pop into my head are immediately followed by “may God forgive my sins against charity.”

  40. 40.

    mvr

    @dmsilev: My university cancelled classes and ordered alternative instructional methods today so that they could have a record crowd for a volleyball game on campus.

  44. 44.

    cain

    @Alison Rose: Well taken.

    I think the greatest thing I can do in regards to McConnell is completely ignore him and whatever that is going on with him.

    Of course, I do find him humiliating himself as the final touches of his legacy to be a lovely thing. Those videos of him freezing will be bouncing around the Internet for a long while.

  45. 45.

    cain

    @Mike in NC:

    There is no evidence he is KKK. But I suppose it would be an odd act to dress up like one and get carried out in a gurney as part of his farewell.

  49. 49.

    cain

    @TS: A good test is to see how many articles will be written about McConnell and he should retire.

    My bet? There will talk about McConnell and then pivot to Joe and think he’s too old and he could also humiliate himself and he should not run.

  51. 51.

    BellyCat

    Mitch has done as much irreparable harm to the US as Putin has done to Russia. Likely more. efgoldman him.

  52. 52.

    zhena gogolia

    @Alison Rose: He’s as bad as Putin in that he has worked to Putin’s benefit, and nobody forced him to do it at the point of a gun or threat of prison.

  54. 54.

    Citizen Dave

    I’d really appreciate it if Mcconnell can be buried next to Rush in St Louis so we can get a 2 for 1 pee break.

  58. 58.

    Math Guy

    @glc: This is a symptom of larger issues facing higher education in this country. I was very lucky to have a 30-yr academic career at a decent university; those jobs are getting harder to find now.

  59. 59.

    Splitting Image

    @cain:

    My bet? There will talk about McConnell and then pivot to Joe and think he’s too old and he could also humiliate himself and he should not run.

    My bet is that the New York Times will get the ball rolling with an opinion stating that McConnell’s health issues are a conclusive reason for Biden to step aside.

    Guest-written by Chuck Grassley.

  68. 68.

    Kent

    Well I guess Mitch balances out Diane Feinstein so now we have two senile oldsters glitching away who should have both retired long ago.

    As long as Feinstein is AWOL for being senile, might as well have her missing vote canceled out by Mitch being AWOL too.

    ‘

    Sigh…

  71. 71.

    Steve in the ATL

    @eclare: @frosty: I no longer spend time in the Mississippi Delta, though my family still has land there, but I do spend a lot of time on Delta Airlines flights and in Delta SkyClubs, where I am served wine that, while it won’t be mistaken for a 2000 or 2005 Bordeaux, is far more drinkable than the local fare in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky.

  74. 74.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The Turtle, like DiFi, needs to resign and get medical treatment.  This has gone on far too long.

  78. 78.

    karen marie

    @Hoppie:   It’s easy to forget Democrats have the majority in the Senate.  Media coverage leaves the impression that Republicans run the joint.

  81. 81.

    Jeffro

    @mvr: My university cancelled classes and ordered alternative instructional methods today so that they could have a record crowd for a volleyball game on campus.

    Mrs. Fro is a big fan (no real connection; just likes the team) of that team and so we had the game on here tonight.  Quite the thing, in the football stadium!

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    I’ll give McConnell credit for helping get $44 billion in military aid for Ukraine into the Omnibus spending bill that was passed right before Christmas last year.

  84. 84.

    piratedan

    McConnell’s legacy is in making the Senate and the country a meaner place.  Taking good will and traditions and turning them upside down for partisan gain and then hypocritically calling out any pushback as partisan politics.

    The battle for GOP leadership in the Senate will be fun as Scott will not go quietly, and I’m not sure if Thune or Cornym have sorted out who’s next in line (in their minds eye) and there’s plenty of abject fuckery to be had with the likes of Blackburn, Hawley, Cotton, Cruz and Tuberville in that caucus.

    I’m sure that the media will have a fine time looking up Mitch’s greatest legislative achievements, namely packing the Supreme Court and allowing Trump to exit “gracefully” to be a continual stain on our body politic.

    He’s on that same short list of political headstones I would be happy to piss on.

  85. 85.

    Dan B

    @Steve in the ATL: Ohood and Kentucky are states I’ve spent much too much time in and Indiana was mostly pass through.  Wine there, ha ha ha ha ha etc.  Seattle was like that in 1972 when I arrived but not any more.  1000 wineries!?!?  Plus Oregon.

  88. 88.

    wjca

    Time was, when there was a disaster or severe weather, part of the response was often “The schools are closed.”  But apparently no more.  Watching the news this evening, and the reporter says casually,  “The schools have gone virtual.”

    The times they are a-changing.

  89. 89.

    sdhays

    All I can say is that I hope Mitch hangs on until after the November elections so that Beshear has a freer hand to fight the law requiring him to appoint some rancid piece of pork fat the Kentucky Republican Party forces upon him.

  90. 90.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @grumbles:

    his identity entirely wrapped up in being King of the Senate, it would not surprise me if he intends to keep at it until he drops dead on the Senate dais.

    Sitting senators get far more elaborate and higher profile funerals than retired senators  So that’s probably a factor.

  91. 91.

    mvr

    @Jeffro: Given that it is women’s volleyball I don’t resent them. But they should just have done it on a weekend. It just says that the University values sports and PR over actual education. Which is true, but still not what a University should be broadcasting.

  93. 93.

    Jackie

    @zhena gogolia: Physically and mentally McTurtle is at least a decade older than Biden.

    Who exercises daily and and watches what he eats? Not McTurtle. Diet and exercise isn’t an absolute guarantee to prolonged life, but I’m putting my money on Biden.

  100. 100.

    Hoppie

    @Dan B: Grew up in southwest Ohio and lived 30 years around Lexington. I met Ms Hoppie through Kentucky wine, but it is a very long story….  Thankfully blessed to be able to afford San Diego now….

  101. 101.

    wjca

    In the original post, there is a Tweet from SpiceGirl(?) which reads in part:

    “He [McConnell] was the director of this mess.”

    Which overlooks the critical detail that he was also the Executive Director**

    ** For those not in the business, the Executive Director is the guy who gets the funding to allow the movie to be made.  McConnell’s fundraising and funding of the creeps in his caucus were critical to making the mess.

  103. 103.

    Jeffro

    @mvr: totally agree

    they almost certainly could have had the same (or close to it) crowd just by telling the students/faculty/staff what they were trying to do and offering free pizza.   =)

    (on a weekend)

  104. 104.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Steeplejack:

    More like a irql_not_less_or_equal lockup in Windows, which is usually caused by memory issues.

    I like that he is being silenced. I find that a fitting end for him.

  105. 105.

    RevRick

    While Joe Biden has always been at the dead center of the Democratic Party throughout his career, Mitch McConnell perfectly exemplifies the moral decay of the Republican Party. It’s hard to believe he entered the Senate as a moderate Republican. But then it’s hard to believe that there were ever Republicans like Jacob Javits or Clifford Case or Mark Hatfield. And it’s jarring to recall that the irascible Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, rounded up Republican votes to overcome Southern Democrats’ filibuster in order to pass the Civil Rights Act.
    That act of legislation determined the ultimate arc of the two parties. For Democrats it meant jettisoning their Southern white racists for the votes of newly enfranchised black citizens and becoming a party of inclusion. For Republicans it meant that they gained all those Southern white voters, a solid electoral base and, over time, a slew of new members of Congress. In the short run, for Republicans, it made Northern conservatives the masters of the party, but now the party has become thoroughly Dixiefied. (And it’s important to note that Jim Crow was the original modern fascism). Trump as where they have landed sixty years later.

    From a detached historical perspective, it’s fascinating to see how the two parties have evolved since 1854, what principles they have kept, and what they have swapped. At its origin the Republican Party was the progressive party of its day, an amalgam of the Conscience Whigs, Free Soilers, and Northern Democrats who were appalled at the party’s direction of the  1850s. It was the party of Greater New England. Its ideology was free labor and improvement, the latter encompassing everything from moral self-improvement, to mass education, to support for voluntary organizations to promoting economic growth. In the seventy two years stretch from 1860 to 1932, except for Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, the Republicans held the Presidency. It’s hard for us to believe that the Republicans were the ones who gave us the Civil Rights Amendments and the vote for women.

  109. 109.

    Old School

    @glc: While DougJ is on the case, that particular PitchBot tweet is from Mitch’s first public glitch a month ago.

  110. 110.

    Dan B

    @Hoppie:  Mine was ten miles west of Akron until 17 then 2 years in Cincy, a few months in San Francisco and Tacoma, seven months in Louisville.  Got lucky to be in Seattle.  Bought and sold at the right time.

  111. 111.

    RevRick

    @Alison Rose: Thank you for these words. You know the ancient rabbis decided that the one impermissible prayer was to wish harm on another, and would go so far as to say that if you saw an ambulance heading down your street, it would be wrong to pray, “I hope it’s no one at my house,” because means pushing Ill-fortune on another.

  113. 113.

    Geminid

    @RevRick: You left out an important part of the early Republican coalition: the Nativist members of the American “Know Nothing” Party, which was a significant force in 1850s politics. The American Party dissolved itself in 1860 and its Northern members backed the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln. Afterwards, they remained an important strain of the party.

    Their political descendents were the Taft Republicans of the 1950s. The Southern Party realignment of the 1970s brought these reactionaries powerful allies, and now this alliance dominates the Republican Party.

  114. 114.

    RaflW

    @Hungry Joe: Of course Mitch and Elaine can have whatever arrangement they want for their private life, I do not care (as long as there’s consent).

    But do they ever go out and do things as a couple? I don’t seek out much info aobut Mitch other than his terrible deeds as GOP Leader. But unlike, say, Ron Reagan or (believe me, these are rather different examples!) Pete Buttigieg, one only seems to know they’re married because it’s mentioned in the press (and I harped on the potential for untraceable comms to be passing via those two when she was a Cabinet member).

    If he’s glitching out and on his way to eternal stasis, wouldn’t he and his beloved want to savor that couple time? Retire, Mitch!

  116. 116.

    Hoppie

    @Timill: Alas, Ms Hoppie is not a bourbon fan – I know, sacrilege. It had to do with bourbon interests squashing developing KY wineries in the seventies so the job position she took there was opened up.  A very mundane story, ahem.

  117. 117.

    John S.

    @Dan B:

    I feel the same way. Bought here in WA, sold in FL at exactly the right time. I couldn’t even afford my house today with interest rates where they are.

  119. 119.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @zhena gogolia: I learned both Ancient Greek and Latin in college. Got a couple of degrees in Classics. Ended up with a 35 year career in finance. Skills do translate.

    Even in 1973 I was an outlier as not pre anything. I had no plan or predestination. Just knew I was stupid like a common Socrates.

  120. 120.

    RevRick

    @Geminid: The Whigs always had a nativist strain, whereas the Democrats always supported mass immigration from the Jackson administration days. And when it comes to matters of sex and gender issues, that was the quirky outcome of the Peggy Eaton affair, or as one wag put it, “when the soft hand of Martin Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton’s knocker.”

  121. 121.

    Geminid

    @RevRick: That’s why when the Whigs broke up at the end of the 1840s a lot of their members went over to the Know Nothings

    Ulysses Grant said he was a Know Nothing for a brief period. That might have been a reaction to losing an election for county engineer to a German immigrant. Grant would have been in charge of roads in a St. Louis area county. Grant reverted to a Democrat, and said he would have voted for Douglas in 1860 but had just moved to Galena and he evidently was not yet qualified to vote there.

  123. 123.

    Other MJS

    @Alison Rose:

    Because if there exists someone so awful that their death is good news, that is what gives me tsuris. Finding relief or even joy in someone’s death means that their existence was a net negative for the world, and I wish it weren’t thus.

    Eloquent. I pity McConnell because it’s horrifying to imagine being him.

  124. 124.

    Onan Soumy

    I know we’re supposed to set aside our petty differences and pity the man, but I’ve been actively wishing for McConnell’s demise for over a dozen years, so why stop now?

  126. 126.

    sab

    Mitch McConnell has been who he is for his whole public life. Dancing gleefully when those he disagreed with died.

    He isn’t dead. But I won’t be sad or pretend to be sad when it happens. Nor will I be respectful.

    But meanwhile he ain’t dead yet.

  127. 127.

    Ruckus

    @Alison Rose:

    I get what you are saying and really I’d like to agree, it is after the humanitarian position.

    However.

    I’ve met some in my decades whose demise would really, really, really, and I do mean REALLY beautify the planet, hell maybe the entire solar system. Not all that many of course but some. Now of course I have to consider that there might be someone who thinks the same as me, but my choices would be those who think their shit doesn’t stink, while we can smell it a thousand miles away. I give you one d. trump. Tell me the world won’t be a better place when he stops breathing from natural causes. There have been examples for longer than people have known how to write. I could likely make a list that many could agree with, vlad comes to mind for example. Hitler could have coughed up a lung or two 10-15 yrs earlier and the world would have been a tad bit brighter.

    I’m not sure it’s that we wish them cold and useless but that we wish they would have maybe just a bit of that thing called humanity, the ability not believe they were placed here to rule over, kill, rob and steal life and things from the rest of us. And if they can’t conceive of the concept of humanity maybe they could, instead of doing so much damage to the rest of us they could at least do themselves in.

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    @Jackie:

    We all age differently. There is a woman in the old farts complex that I live in who is 97 yrs old. Still rides around on her electric, still remembers growing up and living in this area from before I was born and she was able to vote before I was born. There are a number of folks in their 90s. And I knew people who never got to retire.

  130. 130.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Alison Rose:

    I wish no one suffering or death, but I can think of no one who has done more damage to America and needs to be removed from causing harm to others more than Mitch McConnell.  Even Trump is a creation of McConnell’s evil.

  133. 133.

    way2blue

    Any medical types here that might shed light on what’s going on with Mitch McConnell?  Is he having mini strokes?  Senior moments?  Some form of aphasia?  Curious…

  134. 134.

    glc

    @Old School: Makes sense. I probably could have worked that out from Google as well, with a slightly closer look.

    I don’t think these things show up on Mastodon currently.

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