Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

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

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Second rate reporter says what?

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

We will not go back.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

So many bastards, so little time.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Republicans Don’t Give Even the Slightest Fuck About Appearances Anymore

Republicans Don’t Give Even the Slightest Fuck About Appearances Anymore

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Republicans don’t appear to give even the slightest of fucks about appearances anymore.

Wisconsin: replace the official who oversees elections.

Hunter Biden is charged for crimes they don’t charge anyone else with.

Republicans plan impeachment of a President for no valid reason.

Supreme Court thumbs nose at ethics charges and channels the Bell Telephone motto from long ago: “We Don’t Care; We Don’t Have To.”

Wisconsin: impeach a newly elected justice because they know they won’t like her defense of democracy.

I’m sure we can come up with another hundred examples.

For Republicans, the concept of the rule of law is now a quaint memory of yesterday.

 

 

 

 

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    Interesting thing about the Wisconsin issue is that she is, I believe, a Republican.  They just want to de-legitimatize the whole election process.

  2. 2.

    RaflW

    Reposting from two threads ago, because it fits this thread too.

    Making the RW bullshit factory plainly obvious: I thought the Second Amendment was sacrosanct? That they’ll suspend their gun-humping for just this guy (at least among white people) shows that 2A isn’t quite as precious and inviolable as they claim.

  3. 3.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    … the Bell Telephone motto from long ago: “We Don’t Care; We Don’t Have To.”

    Please! Give credit where it is due. That was Ernestine.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Regarding impeachment of POTUS: Digby points out that for MTG and her ilk, it’s nothing more than sadistic vengeance. She really is stomach-turning (Marge, not Digby).

    Ms. Greene, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, said she told Mr. Trump that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

  5. 5.

    RaflW

    WI’s Speaker Vos also rammed through a redistricting scheme in just two days of legislative time with zero hearings or markup.

    And I saw via Recombobulation Area blogger that Vos is making mouth noises that if Dems let this new scheme stand (ie Gov. Evers doesn’t veto it and make the Senate override him) then the magnanimous speaker might, maybe, withhold the Protasiewicz impeachment.

    Thus making the (sleazy) transactional nature of the ‘charge’ nakedly obvious — as if it isn’t already. And Vos cannot be trusted one iota to not just impeach anyway.

    I hope to high heaven that Wisconsin voters are disgusted. Though if they count on the Journal Sentinel for this news, they’re not getting some key details (my BF subscribed and is furious at their dereliction on the impeachment threat).

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Neither of the Wisconsin things are going to go anywhere.  The impeachment thing is dying on the vine, and a lawsuit has already been filed in the Election Commission matter.  It doesn’t refute the point of this post.  That’s true, but this WI malarkey is “Come on, man” level stuff.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: ​
    I was just about to address that! Yet, she accurately represented the attitude of Ma Bell. Remember the scene from Fun With Dick and Jane where they rob the phone company, and the people standing in line cheer them on?

  9. 9.

    patrick II

    Breaking the law is a rite of passage for conservatives. Laws just confine libertarianism, so the unbinding from law allows the true libertarian nature of man to break free from the artificial constraints of laws and the stultifying needs of the weak and unworthy. The invisible hand, in a deux-ex-machina kind of way, allows everyone worth a damn to succeed anyway. Supposedly. And the others deserve what they get.

  10. 10.

    Alison Rose

    I don’t know if they ever really did. Maybe some of them used to be better at pretending they did. BTW speaking of Republicans and how they have always sucked, David Corn’s book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy just came out in paperback this week. I read it at the beginning of the year and it was really terrific. A great and meticulous look at how the current rot in the GOP has been festering for a century.

  15. 15.

    jonas

    Republicans don’t appear to give even the slightest of fucks about appearances anymore.

    Why should they? Who’s going to hold them accountable? Their voters? The MSM? Pffffftttwahahahahahahhaha! Oh, mercy! (*wipes tear of laughter from eye*)

  16. 16.

    Elizabelle

    I think this will bother normies, too.  Maybe this ridiculousness will help ensure a blue tsunami.

    Seriously.  If you are out in a park or public place, and see some old white guy with a big sign that says F**k Biden and an illustration of a penis: are you gonna think:  yeah, I want to vote for more of that.

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jonas: In Wisconsin, both the courts and the voters are getting ready to do it.  I wouldn’t be surprised if that is true in a lot of places.

  18. 18.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s true, but this WI malarkey is “Come on, man” level stuff.

    It’s hard for me to fathom the thinking behind this and like examples. Are they trying to move the window on acceptable behavior? Or just throwing red meat for base votes? Or what?

    Of course, it will continue until it stops working. I hope that will be soon.

    ETA with Trump, it’s just who he is. But I doubt it will work for most of them.

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: I did not recall that.  Around here, someone printed up a bunch of white bumper stickers with the classic Bell-Telephone-blue writing that said:

    We don’t care; we don’t have to.

    Then they climbed over the fence to the area where all the Bell Telephone vehicles we housed overnight, and put a bumper sticker on each of the official vehicles.

    My hero.  The one time I was wholly in support of vandalism!

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @RaflW:  Can you say more about this? I have no idea whether this is something that happened in the past, or if it happened yesterday.

    WI’s Speaker Vos also rammed through a redistricting scheme in just two days of legislative time with zero hearings or markup.

  25. 25.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: Ah, sorry, I’m following too many topics at one time these days, and running errands and getting ready for a huge trip.

    The bill is in process (substack link, may be subscriber content?)

    This surprise proposal — which includes no public hearing and schedules an Assembly vote just two days from the announcement — comes as public pressure against Vos’ ongoing threats to impeach newly-elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz has reached a fever pitch, thrusting Wisconsin into a state of political turmoil …

     So I shoulda said “trying to ram thru”.

  26. 26.

    Betsy

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: They are safe in gerrymandered seats; therefore, they answer to no one, and are free from checks on misbehavior as well as unpopular policies.  It’s really that simple.

    Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  28. 28.

    RaflW

    To @Omnes Omnibus’s point, also from that Recomboulation item:
    “Even Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu was ‘noncommittal’ about taking up the proposal, per WisPolitics, saying Senate Republicans would ‘discuss it at a later date.'”

    So, if anything, Vos succeeded in telegraphing his desperation and the tissue thinness of the impeachment farrago, only to be left hanging by his Senate counterpart. Rupubs in disarray!

  29. 29.

    Citizen Alan

    @RaflW: Nah. It suits their purposes just fine to convict Hunter just to hurt his father and then have his conviction over turned sometime after 2024 when the Psycho Six hold that it’s unconstitutional to refuse to sell someone a gun even if they’re visibly high as a kite at the time.

  30. 30.

    Yarrow

    Has there been an update from Amir? I’ve missed a lot of threads but don’t think I’ve seen him commenting for awhile. I hope he’s okay.

  36. 36.

    patrick II

    @Argiope:

    Are we sure that there is actual Republican infighting? It seems that if keeping the already gerrymandered districts is a goal, then “infighting” that stops the Commission from redrawing the map is an awfully convenient byproduct.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    The important thing to know about the GOP is, Mitt Romney has Given Us a Gift

    thus saith the Bobo, the Brooksie, the sage of the NYT op-ed page

    (the funny thing is, 98% of it is spot-on…except the unfunny thing is, the other 2% ruins it)

    Romney gave us a gift, in the form of a series of conversations with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, who has written a book on him, excerpted in the magazine.
     
    Romney puts on the record what so many of us have been hearing for years off the record — that the Republican Party has become a party of fakers, that its congressional leaders laugh at Donald Trump contemptuously behind his back while swooning over him before the cameras.

    Here’s the 2% that fucks it all up:

    Mitch McConnell is the tragic figure in Romney’s tale. He comes across as — and I believe actually is — a decent man who is trying to mitigate the worst of Trump’s effect on his party. But we see the daily corrosions that McConnell must endure to keep up this front — turning a blind eye to Trump’s crimes, turning a blind eye to the threats that were coming in the lead-up to Jan 6.

     

    Ok back to the rest:

    At one point, McConnell resorts to the rationalization we’ve heard a thousand times — that if Trump loses and the Democrats win, they will pass a hard-left agenda that will ruin America forever. McConnell has to exaggerate how radical Joe Biden is, and what the electorate will support, in order to justify supporting his own party’s lamentable leader.

    McConnell’s core problem is that you can’t negotiate with narcissism. Every time you make a concession to Trump’s selfishness, it voraciously seeks to devour another pound of your flesh.

    aka, “The dirty hippies were right”

    Anyway…many upright people to enter the Trump administration as voices of sanity. The first problem with it is that the cult of Trumpism demands absolute fealty. One moment of honest dissent and you are cast from the ranks. The second problem is that loyalty to Trump is ultimately enforced by the threat of violence. As the Coppins piece makes clear, there were Republicans who chose not to vote yes on impeachment or conviction because the outcome either way was inevitable and because they didn’t want potential assassins coming after them or their families. We have crossed beyond the bounds of normal democratic governance.

     

    Oh baby we crossed that line back in 2016 at the latest…

     

    The third problem is that if you ally yourself with a con artist, you have to become part of the con yourself. You have to become Ted Cruz, who went to Princeton and Harvard Law and is married to an employee of Goldman Sachs, ludicrously popping a brewski live on TV — an elite nerd’s attempt to appear populist.
    Over the Trump years we’ve learned how easy it is to anesthetize one’s moral circuits. John McCain kept his moral compass, and so did Romney, but they are the exceptions. Many others joined the general fakery. You start by lying about yourself and pretty soon you’re lying to yourself.
     
    The pivotal moment for Romney seems to have come on Jan. 6 — not what the insurrectionists did to get into the Capitol, but what the Republican legislators did in the chambers after the rioters had been cleared out, continuing their efforts to negate the election. This is where five years of negotiating with narcissism had brought the party.

     

    GREAT line just waiting for the nearest Dem to pick it up and run with it: “The biggest problem with the GOP – the greatest danger to our democracy – wasn’t what happened on January 6th.  It’s what’s happened since January 7th”

    (no charge, Ds!)

  45. 45.

    TheOtherHank

    Didn’t Kemp (the GA gov) win his election for governor while he was the GA Sec of State? ie, he was in charge of counting the votes for his own election.

  46. 46.

    wjca

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: It’s hard for me to fathom the thinking behind this and like examples. Are they trying to move the window on acceptable behavior? Or just throwing red meat for base votes?

    Perhaps a bit of both.  Especially the latter.

    But the overwhelming motivation is pretty simple: If we don’t do this, we lose.  Probably we lose over and over.  Like until we spend a couple of decades reinventing ourselves.  And I’d have no political career in the reinvented party.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    @Jeffro:   Here’s a 12 foot ladder (no paywall) version of The Atlantic’s article — Mitt Romney’s recollections.

    WHAT MITT ROMNEY SAW IN THE SENATE

    In an exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming biography of the senator, Romney: A Reckoning, he reveals what drove him to retire.

    writer:  McCay Coppins

    ETA:  Jeffro:  thank you for reading David Bobo Brooks so that we don’t have to.  I don’t even click on that clown for the reader comments any more. The FTF NY Times trolls us enough.

    ETA:  Damn.  Having read your excerpts, I think I might check it out.  Also the reader comments.

  48. 48.

    Other MJS

    My take is that contempt for the law is not the bottom line (at least not for the rubes); it’s the frenzied conviction that Democrats and RINOs are Satan incarnate and communist pedophiles who hate God and America, and gosh, they’re really patriots, but anything is justified to defeat these monsters.

  49. 49.

    Linda

    They are delighted with the optics of this. Their overriding message is, we can do what we want, and you can’t. It is the only consistent ethos authoritarians have.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Harry Litman @harrylitman 3h
    The 3 false statement charges against Hunter Biden are a raw deal. There appears to be nothing that happened since the plea deal unraveled (through no fault of Biden) other than Republican ignorant potshots. And it’s a freestanding charge that DOJ basically never brings.=

    By “freestanding” charge, I mean a case based only on lies on the form. DOJ rarely if ever brings unless the D uses gun to commit another crime or another compelling reason. Biden has gun 11 days, girlfriend throws it away. I doubt Wisse can come up w/ a single analogous case.

    I thought, and IANAL, that the fact that the charge is ‘basically never brought’ would be the kind of thing that could get a case thrown out by a judge? but it’s been a long time since I even watched any courtroom dramas on television

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    It looks like desperation to me. Maintaining appearances was OK when they could stay in power while looking nice, or at least they thought they had a decent chance of getting back in power if they lost it for one election. Now they’re worried they’re never going to get back in power once they lose it, so they’re doing whatever it takes to keep it, regardless of how it looks. To their minds, it doesn’t matter if it looks bad. The worst thing that will happen is they’ll lose, but that’s what they’re fighting anyway.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle: Thanks for the non-paywall link!  I mentioned this very article in one of yesterday’s threads and quoted from it pretty extensively.  SO many ways to parse it, almost all of which were just variations on “good lord these GOP clowns are craven, 2-faced scum”

    Speaking of which: hey Dems, how about y’all propose that the Feds provide security for all Members of Congress and their families, since they’re terrified of MAGA nation and it’s clearly affecting their votes?

  54. 54.

    craigie

    This seems evergreen:

    “ if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy”

    -David Frum

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    Btw I see that the WaPo has changed its headline about Hunter’s gun charge from “a setback for the president” to “a setback for the president’s family”

    Baby steps, snooze media, baby steps!  You’ll get the hang of it eventually.

  57. 57.

    MattF

    OT. Small Press Expo (SPX) has been mentioned here a few times in the past couple of weeks. It happened last weekend in North Bethesda, here are pix and commentary.

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    I think autumn may finally have arrived here in NoVA. I went out a while ago to run some errands and was greeted by 76° and low humidity (dew point 47°—“comfortable”—for my dew-point peeps). Sunny and highs around 80° predicted for the next 10 days. Yee-haw. I opened the windows and am getting some much-needed oxygen into the lair. I’m already feeling a bit lightheaded.

  62. 62.

    Jeffro

    @Baud:But they want it to be the president so bad.

    Right??

    Like, it’d be funny if it was a campaign-year SNL ski: “Carl the closet RWNJ headline writer”

    “Um, Carl, can you come in here a sec?”
    “Sure thing, Ms. Editor!  What’s up?”
    “I’m not sure President Biden ‘murdered a baby’ at lunch”
    “Well…I heard that he really devoured his salad at lunch today, which had baby carrots in it…so…”
    “Carl…we’ve talked about this…”

    …but they do it all. the. time.

  63. 63.

    Eyeroller

    @zhena gogolia: I’m very worried about Amir.  If he can’t post, he’s also likely to be unable to respond to email.  He has mentioned a sister, but I doubt she has been told she should inform a bunch of strangers half a world away that she should let us know if anything happens to him.

  64. 64.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Villago Delenda Est: As John Scalzi put it, they’re more likely to  … how’d he put it? Oh, yes:

    …turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people’s fondest desires.

    The problem is, a lot of innocent people also get hurt in the process.

  66. 66.

    Brachiator

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    That’s true, but this WI malarkey is “Come on, man” level stuff.

    Two Biden references in one sentence. Impressive.

    More seriously, thanks for your insights on the Wisconsin issues. I wondered if this stuff was being challenged.

  69. 69.

    Jay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Wonkette covers an “origionalist” case coming up to the Supremes.

    Domestic abuser shoots at women.

    So they take his guns and lay gun charges.

    The argument is that they can only take his guns if “they” would have taken his guns for the same “issue”, between the origin of the 2nd Amendment and the Civil War ending.

    Which “they” would not have.

    Based on this “origionalist” argument, Hunter had every right to buy a gun, lie on forms.

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/domestic-abuser-shot-at-woman-in

  70. 70.

    Elizabelle

    @MattF:  Thank you!  And props to Warren Bernard for mandating masks at the SPX.

    Comics and graphic arts peeps are cool.  Can’t imagine there was too much grumbling about that.

  74. 74.

    Jackie

    Apparently TIFG and Megyn Kelly have kissed and made up, and she did an interview with him. She wants to know where’s Melania this campaign?

    Sorry, it’s a RawStory link:

    https://www.rawstory.com/melania-trump-2665405899/

    My question for those who understand GQP; Which is the bigger sin? Campaigning w/o your spouse for the entire campaign thus far, or not having a spouse at all?

  75. 75.

    RaflW

    @Roger Moore: No quibble with you, but we always say “they’re doing whatever it takes to keep it”, when of course the one thing they can do do but absolutely refuse to try is, to moderate some policies and begin tacking back towards the middle.

    Would some of them get primaried from the right? Yeah, particularly in the House. But Ted Cruz would not get ejected from a fortress seat like his by dialing back his bullshit by 10%. Same for most GOP Senators.

    They could be tapping the brakes. But they’re too into getting on TV and tapdancing for the looney base.

  77. 77.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jay: As I commented over at Wonkette, “originalist” arguments are artificial horseshit trying to pass themselves off as actual horseshit.

  78. 78.

    RaflW

    @Jackie: Sen. Tim Scott looks sus for not seeming to have a dating life. Graham can get away with it because he’s not seeking higher office. Trump is every kind of sleazy horrible, but his sins are of the vanilla heterosexual sort (not saying that Scott or Graham are any orientation or another, just that their private lives are a smidge too private for the god botherers).

  79. 79.

    zhena gogolia

    @Eyeroller: I know. But what can we do? He was gone a while with health issues some time ago, and he came back, but I’m certainly worried this time. He is so sweet.

  83. 83.

    Hoodie

    @Omnes Omnibus: These guys are a lot like a ball team that plays not to lose.   They’re stuck with Trump because of their own cowardice and stupidity.  He had already served his purpose for them; they had a golden opportunity to get rid of him after Jan 6 if only a handful of GOP senators had voted to convict on the second impeachment.  He would have been disqualified from office and hamstrung.  Sure, there would have been some backlash from the Trumpers that might lead to some losses in ’22, but I doubt it would have lasted past that, and would that be worse for them that what actually happened to them in ’22?  They would have had four years to put him behind them; Americans have short memories.  Remember that Reagan was elected just a few years after Nixon left and Carter defeated Ford.  It shows their general insecurity, they realize all they have now is fear and bullshit.  Their “party of ideas” was broken by Bush.

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    @Jeffro:

    Oh, man, the commenters—more than 200 and counting—are torching Bobo for that “McConnell is a decent man” bullshit. They are bringing receipts—itemized receipts!

  85. 85.

    sab

    @Elizabelle: I think McKay Coppins is a perfect guy to write about Romney. They are both LDS not raised in the western heartland of Utah, Arizaona, Nevada, Idaho. In those states Mormonism is what you join to get ahead. Like joining the Federalist Society or Scientology. Sign up and surrender your brain and your soul.

    In the rest of the country Mormons are sort of freaks.

    I like Mormons a lot, although I am mostly appalled by their politics and always try to avoid discussing religion with them. They really work hard to be decent people.

    I have worked with Mormons in Nevada and Ohio. I wouldn’t want to live in a state they run, but I would welcome any of them to work where I work. A wonderful genius in my law school was LDS and in line to be editor of the law review. Everyone thought he would be better at the job than the runner up. But he would accept not getting the job gracefully, and the other guy would quit in a huff, so the other guy got the job and he got number two. How phucked up is that? But he took number two job and did it well. Other guy was angling for  a fancy lucrative anti-trust job, landed it, then Reagan got elected and anti-trust disappeared as an issue.

    The Mormon guy moved way out west to Utah where he could find a nice girl. He did, they married, he has had a stellar career.

  86. 86.

    2liberal

    @RaflW:  “Even Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu was ‘noncommittal’ about taking up the proposal, per WisPolitics, saying Senate Republicans would ‘discuss it at a later date.’”

     

    they have no need to have a trial. once the house votes to impeach, the justice is removed from all votes until the senate votes,  and there is no timeframe

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    @Jeffro:

    Romney puts on the record what so many of us have been hearing for years off the record — that the Republican Party has become a party of fakers, that its congressional leaders laugh at Donald Trump contemptuously behind his back while swooning over him before the cameras.

    Brooks is blind to his own bullshit. The problem with this claim is that the Republicans who claim to despise Trump fall all over themselves to give him what he wants. And although they had the power to stop him, they refused to use it.

    The Republicans claim that they fear pushback from angry Trump supporters, but this is a weak excuse used to evade responsibility for unleashing a monster on the country.

  91. 91.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Steeplejack: ​

    I think autumn may finally have arrived here in NoVA. I went out a while ago to run some errands and was greeted by 76° and low humidity (dew point 47°—“comfortable”—for my dew-point peeps). Sunny and highs around 80° predicted for the next 10 days. Yee-haw. I opened the windows and am getting some much-needed oxygen into the lair. I’m already feeling a bit lightheaded.

    It’s been glorious all afternoon over here near the shores of the Chesapeake. Mild temperatures, low humidity, dazzling sunshine. And if those forecasts hold, a couple of good weekends for bike riding coming up. Fall at last!

  92. 92.

    WaterGirl

    @Yarrow: I wrote to Amir on 8/23, no response.

    Amir scared the hell out of me once before, and then showed back up.  Hopefully that will be the case this time.

    I haven’t kept up on all the threads lately, so someone else will have to let us know whether he has popped in or not.

  101. 101.

    trollhattan

    @lowtechcyclist:

    What a difference a year makes.

    Here in California’s usually sweltering Central Valley our high September temp so far at the house is 94. That might sound hot to some but contrast it with ’22, which we hit 114 on the 6th.

    Whee!

  103. 103.

    Jackie

    @Dan B: He did, which reminds me during his last hospitalization, he lost his cat at that time. 😢 He adopted his current kitty fairly recently. Now I’m worried about them both!

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    @Hoodie

    Disqualification from running for office does not automatically accompany a conviction following impeachment. It requires a separate vote than the one to convict.

  107. 107.

    Roger Moore

    @Steeplejack:

    Autumn seems to have arrived early here in Southern California.  Normally September is pretty hot.  Wikipedia says the average daily high in Pasadena in September is right about 90°F, but we’re getting low 80s instead, and the forecast says it will stay there for the rest of the month.  That’s more like what I’d expect in October.  I’m not complaining, and my AC bill won’t be, either.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    @craigie:

    “ if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy”

    -David Frum

    Yep. This aptly sums up the Republicans. They would destroy democracy in order to save it from liberals.

  110. 110.

    mrmoshpotato

    Republicans don’t appear to give even the slightest of fucks about appearances anymore.

    Well look at the fat, orange, fascist, woman-hating, his-own-daughter-fucking (allegedly), porn-“star”-fucking, twice-divorced, mobster(allegedly), brokeass “billionaire” who sucks Kremlin asshole (allegedly) pile of shit they nominated and elected in 2016!  And then renominated and voted for in 2020!

    Oh, you just meant them not caring about totally looking like the fucking fascists that they are!

    Silly me!  My mistake!

    And just for frosty, Dump is a Soviet shitpile mobster conman who’s been sucking Kremlin cock since at least 1987.  Deep Throat’s got nothing on the fat, orange, fascist pile of shit.

  111. 111.

    Mallard Filmore

    @patrick II: 

    The invisible hand, in a deux-ex-machina kind of way, allows everyone worth a damn to succeed anyway.

    Except the hand is not so invisible. Corporations and rich depend on the state for the corporate veil, corporate bankruptcy, subsidies, franchises, protections, tax breaks, and all the other laws that let them duck their “personal responsibility”.

  112. 112.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro: ​
     

    don’t forget, this is Virginia, there are 12 seasons here…we’re actually just starting ‘false fall’

    I have a simple definition of summer: it’s the time of year when I get up in the morning and pull on cutoffs and a t-shirt without giving it a thought. And that just ended in these parts.

    To observe the occasion, My Sweet Summer Is Gone for your listening pleasure.

  114. 114.

    karen marie

    @sab:

    They really work hard to be decent people.

     

    Not in my experience. I live amongst them (in Arizona). They’re lying, deceitful, self-righteous assholes

    PS I also knew Mormons when I lived in Massachusetts.  They too were lying, deceitful, self-righteous assholes.

  115. 115.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Yet, she accurately represented the attitude of Ma Bell.

    To be fair, it’s still the attitude of Verizon. And AT&T.

    And Comcast/Spectrum (even though they’re not Bell descendants).

    And…

    And…

    And….

  117. 117.

    Roger Moore

    @Hoodie:

    He had already served his purpose for them; they had a golden opportunity to get rid of him after Jan 6 if only a handful of GOP senators had voted to convict on the second impeachment.

    Apparently Romney had some stuff to say about that in his book, and some of the Republican senators were afraid of violence from Trump supporters if they voted to convict.  I still think they should have done it- the people making those threats are mostly a bunch of armchair commandos- but I can understand their reasoning.

  118. 118.

    sab

    @karen marie: Don’t want to pry. Do you live in the Southwest or elsewhere? Don’ t want to disagree. Just different experience elsewhere. But I do think they could be very awful elsewhere. Still Mormon. Just following wrong people.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    @lowtechcyclist: my definition (especially since moving to the sauna that is central VA): summer is late March-early October, with the occasional very lucky day or two.

    Just remember, folks: this past summer was the coolest one we’ll have for the next 20 years, minimum.

    If you need me, I’ll be half-submerged in Lake Michigan from about 2026 onwards.

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack

    Possibly touchy subject, but . . . I suggest that people who consider themselves part of the BJ “community”—certainly those who are “regular commenters”—might consider creating some mechanism by which we will be informed should the unthinkable happen. It is disconcerting when people disappear without a trace. Everyone is worried about Amir (again!), and most recently there was regular commenter Debbie who disappeared, and there were others before that. I still wonder occasionally about a semi-regular commenter (PurpleGirl?) who seemed to be going through some things and abruptly disappeared some years back. We were informed about efgoldman, Mary G and General Stuck (and others), so there was closure there.

    Anyway, just throwing this out there. I have a close friend in real life who is also a commenter here, so I guess I’m covered if I get hit by a meteor. I just need to make sure they get notified in the first place, which, hmm, is a related issue.

  122. 122.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Yeah, right. 😹

    Actually—I just thought of this—my brother, the squire of Sighthound Hall, knows about Balloon Juice and lurks here, so he would probably be an informant too.

  123. 123.

    Yarrow

    @Steeplejack:  I don’t know who counts as a regular. I’ve disappeared for long stretches due to life events and pretty much no one notices or cares. How does one know if they’re in the “in group?”

  131. 131.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow: Dude, even when you weren’t around “Tick tock, motherfuckers” was here.  And it caused people to ask where you were.

    Plus, the few rugby fans here need to stick together.

  133. 133.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus:  I’m still behind. Watching Wales v Fiji tonight. I hear it’s good. This past week has been just insanely busy for me. I can’t keep up with everything.

    Also, I’ll say, no it doesn’t. Even if I can’t post I may lurk and I do know pretty much no one noticed I wasn’t commenting. It is what it is.

  137. 137.

    frosty

    @Jeffro: Here on theMason-Dixon Line I can vouch for

    Hell’s Front Porch

    False Fall

    Second Summer

    Actual Fall

    I don’t think we have quite that many Winters. Once it gets dark and cold we just grit our teeth until Actual Spring.

  140. 140.

    BruceFromOhio

    Republicans Don’t Give Even the Slightest Fuck About Appearances Anymore

    And their constituents and donors LOVE it, and will vote and donate repeatedly to get more of it.

  141. 141.

    taumaturgo

    Nothing surprising about MAGA’s disdain for democracy and the rule of law. To any observer, there always being a set of rules for R’s and another for the timid D’s. The only surprising behavior is the endurance and adherence to bipartisanship by the Democratic Party leadership.

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