Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

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

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Fight them, without becoming them!

This chaos was totally avoidable.

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

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

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Bark louder, little dog.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: In *Other* News…

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: In *Other* News…

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: In *Other* News...
Yep, looks like it’ll be nothing but backstage maneuvers and kabuki for the next week…

Mute your phone, if you can’t shut it off this afternoon…


… And check your ear protection (and your dog’s) if your neighbors are anti-vaxxers:

Reader Interactions

234Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Don’t put too much stock in the drug manufacturer thing.  They are all challenging the law in court.  They need to sign on in case they lose because the law requires them to leave Medicare if they don’t agree to negotiate.

  5. 5.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I wish I believed that the person advising others to wear a respirator in that last tweet was trolling the loons, but I fear they’re sincere.

    Yesterday was so chock full of news, it was hard to know where to look. A friend told me she clicked over to Fox to see how what they’d chosen to cover and it was something about Hunter Biden’s haircut. Since I don’t speak wingnut, I have no idea what that means.

  9. 9.

    bbleh

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I swear, I had to read them over a couple times to figure out whether they were snark or serious.  I’m leaning toward serious, but I’m still not 100% certain.

    Thing is, these people love this sort of thing.  It lets them feel victimized and slightly scared and yet savvy enough to know The Real Story.  If they were a bunch of fifth-graders, I’d say how cute, but in adults it’s positively pathological.

  10. 10.

    thruppence

    WT everloving F? I stand in stunned slackjawed amazement and horror at the obviously stupid things some grown ass people will passionately believe. As do we all, I suppose.

  12. 12.

    Soprano2

    OMG, this interview of Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO-delusional) on NPR about McCarthy and what happens now. I was almost laughing during part of it. He likes the way Republicans do things better than how Pelosi did things (hint Rep. moron, Pelosi actually got things done and didn’t get voted out by crazy people!) because “they’re transparent”. They’ll get a speaker soon, he’s sure of it

    I heard some discouraging stuff on another program this morning, where they were talking about yet another useless poll of TFG and Biden voters. One woman said something like “I don’t like any of them, they don’t get anything done for us they only fight with each other”. So discouraging to know how much Biden and the Democrats have done for people that they have no idea about. The press constantly falls down on the job about this.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Great, parody’s been dead for years, but now they’re going after even simpler forms of humor.  I am referring of course to the classic “Top Headlines” joke:

    ABC: McCarthy Out as Speaker
    MSNBC: House Republicans Eject McCarthy
    CNN: McCarthy Forced Out
    Haircut Network: McCarthy Loses Speakership
    FOX News: Hunter Biden’s Haircut

     

    Oh, and electoral-vote.com has come through with the trivia I was searching for yesterday: With 270 days in office, McCarthy’s is the third-shortest term as Speaker, after Theodore Pomeroy (1 day — an end-of-term filler) and Michael Kerr (257 days — death in office).  But McCarthy still holds the record as the first, and so far only, Speaker to be ejected.

  15. 15.

    MattF

    The 5G Zombie Vaxx Drone Apocalypse is a highway-crash pileup of a dozen things that can’t possibly be true, even one at a time.

  16. 16.

    eversor

    The House/Speaker mess is still the funniest.  I’ve seen someone blow themselves up to blow up something or someone else before and I can grock the logic in that sort of crazy.  I’ve never seen someone shoot themselves in the dick for the sake of making a point in public though.

  18. 18.

    Ramalama

    People really believe Zombies are walking on Earth? Or do they believe that this test on the phones will create Zombies and then zomg we’re done? Why do I capitalize the Z in Zombie? Could it be that I’m……………………………………………………

  22. 22.

    gene108

    I’m really curious which Republican chump(s) put themselves in contention to be Speaker.

  23. 23.

    Scout211

    So far, I don’t see the media falling for the GOP line of blaming the Democrats for the chaos of the GOP House majority.  I don’t watch the news, but read many online news sites and the blame is being placed on the GOP this time.

    A snippet of CNN analysis: (Long read, but worth a click)

    McCarthy’s short speakership underscored how the Republican Party in the age of Donald Trump has turned into one of the great forces of instability in American life, and potentially the world, with the ex-president dominating the 2024 GOP primary as he takes aim at a wrecking ball second term. A party that once defined conservatism as preserving a traditional sense of steadiness and strength has evolved over the last three decades into a haven for chaos agents, stunt politics and a perpetual ideological revolution that keeps driving it to new extremes. The party’s willingness to accept the outrageous was also on display Tuesday in New York, where Trump ranted in a corridor outside a courtroom hearing his fraud trial and was slapped with a gag order for attacking a judge’s clerk on social media.

     

    McCarthy was no moderate and did little to check the GOP’s turn away from democracy. But his defeat, at the hands of far-right rebels he complained last week want to “burn the whole place down,” is an eloquent commentary on his party. His political assassins, led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, toppled their leader with no plan for what comes next – leaving a hugely important wing of the US government paralyzed for at least a week. The self-inflicted chaos will hamper the party’s effort to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s vulnerability, and the fresh show of incompetence and extremism could hamper the GOP’s bid to retain swing seats it needs to keep its majority next year. More importantly Tuesday’s political regicide showed that the majority in the House is inoperable and that the Republican Party is unmanageable. Until that changes, America itself will be ungovernable.

  24. 24.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    @Baud:   That episode was about a race that exclusively used metaphors/mythologies/tales to communicate.  As one might have expected, the episode itself is enabling a similar thing for us in the “real” world.

  25. 25.

    E.

    “Properly grounded Farraday cage” sounds like a tell that this guy is trolling but it’s awfully good.

  26. 26.

    eversor

    @Ramalama:

    No.  People do believe that 5G is a Chinese/apple/Google/Microsoft mind control trick.  Thus creating liberal zombies.  Also it hurts your sperm count.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    During his attempt to keep McCarthy as speaker, congressman Tom McClintock of California declared that “if this motion carries, the House will be paralyzed”.

    “We can expect week after week of fruitless ballots while no other business can be conducted. The Democrats will revel in Republican dysfunction and the public will rightly be repulsed,” McClintock said.

    He went on to predict that Democrats would then “enlist a rump caucus of Republicans to join a coalition to end the impasse. This House will shift dramatically to the left and will effectively end the Republican House majority that the voters elected in 2022. And this, in turn, will neutralize the only counterweight in our elected government to the woke left control of the Senate and the White House at a time when their … policies are destroying our economy and have opened our borders to invasion.”

    Lest he hold back at all, McClintock continued ominously: “There are turning points in history whose significance is only realized by the events that they unleash. This is one of those times. We are at the precipice. There are only minutes left to come to our senses and realize the grave danger our country is in at this moment. Dear God, grant us the wisdom to see it and to save our country from it.”

    What can I say except, “Shut your fear mongering mouth. You are one of the idiots who gave us trump.”

  28. 28.

    eversor

    @Scout211:

    They just had someone on Morning Joe saying the Democrats should have bailed McCarthy out because the next speaker is going to be crazy as a shithouse rat and the Democrats fucked this up and are going to regret it.

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    Is anyone else having a schadenfreude hangover this morning?  (Not alcohol-related, here.). But oh so pleasant.

    And “Speaker Pro Tempore” Patrick Butthurt Bowtie McHenry throwing Nancy Pelosi out of her hideaway office, with one day’s notice, while she is on the other coast at the funeral for a US Senator?

    Priceless.  Lest anyone take him with anyone with a smidgeon of gravitas.  Bowtied little poser. Petty.

    LOL.  At them all.

  31. 31.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    @OzarkHillbilly:   Christ, what an asshole!

     

    You would think that with California being “blue” and all of that, the few GOP representatives we do send over to Congress would be moderate, but that is obviously not the case.

  33. 33.

    Scout211

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Ugh. McClintock has been my rep for over a decade.  He only serves as the GOP leadership’s useful idiot.  I wish my red district could vote him out, but I don’t see it happening.  ☹️

  34. 34.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    @eversor:

     

    They just had someone on Morning Joe saying the Democrats should have bailed McCarthy out because the next speaker is going to be crazy as a shithouse rat and the Democrats fucked this up and are going to regret it.

    Is this a paraphrase or an actual quote? If it is an actual quote, I would love to see the clip.

  35. 35.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle: Is anyone else having a schadenfreude hangover this morning?  (Not alcohol-related, here.). But oh so pleasant.

    yes, that would be me.   =)

    still all aglow and tingly!

  37. 37.

    dmsilev

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    He went on to predict that Democrats would then “enlist a rump caucus of Republicans to join a coalition to end the impasse. This House will shift dramatically to the left and will effectively end the Republican House majority that the voters elected in 2022. And this, in turn, will neutralize the only counterweight in our elected government to the woke left control of the Senate and the White House at a time when their … policies are destroying our economy and have opened our borders to invasion.”

    I’m not really seeing a downside here.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @gene108: They don’t really have the option of turning to a former Speaker. electoral-vote notes that four of the last five Republican Speakers left “in some version of a state of war with their own conference”.  The fifth is Dennis Hastert, and I don’t think they’re that desperate.

  39. 39.

    BellyCat

    “HOUSE leaving town now for a week. Speaker elections next Wednesday”

    The GOP paymasters obviously called a private meeting to fix this shit.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @Gin & Tonic: Shit, so I have to build a Faraday cage by 2:20 this afternoon? Better get to work.

    LOL

    My take was gonna be “excited to see ‘Faraday cage’ trend all day today!”

    We might have to make it ‘Faraday Cage Day’ every 10/4, just to remember the stupidity, but somehow I suspect we will not have trouble remembering the stupidity for the foreseeable future…

  41. 41.

    jonas

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: it was something about Hunter Biden’s haircut. Since I don’t speak wingnut, I have no idea what that means.

    Remember when Deep Throat wanted to contact Woodward and Bernstein, he would move a flower pot on his apartment balcony? Well, when Hunter wants to signal his dad that the Chinese bribe money will be transferred to their offshore account Friday, he wears his hair short and parted above the ear. If the secret transfer will be Monday, it’s a little longer in the back and parted closer to the top..

  42. 42.

    dmsilev

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Shit, so I have to build a Faraday cage by 2:20 this afternoon?

    I have one at work. Actually, I have two. Feel free to stop by and sit inside it. It’ll be kind of boring. And kind of loud, because of the other stuff inside there. And dark; we keep the lights off while running experiments.

  43. 43.

    Jeffro

    Btw this is a nice, fairly succinct reminder of all the reasons that Craven Kev deserved to get what was coming to him:

    “The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.”

    With those words, uttered in the well of the House on Tuesday afternoon, Kevin McCarthy’s reign as speaker came to an inglorious end. McCarthy is the first speaker in history to be removed by his own party; eight Republicans voted to dethrone him, along with all 208 Democrats who were present and voting. McCarthy goes down as having served the shortest speakership since the 1870s.

    McCarthy’s defeat was the result of a bitter power struggle within the GOP, and especially due to the efforts of Representative Matt Gaetz, a hard-right rebel, who forced the vote. The House is now without a speaker, and more chaos is sure to follow. The GOP still holds the House majority, but it is a deeply riven and dysfunctional party.

    I consider Matt Gaetz to be a maliciously cynical lawmaker, but I can’t say I’m sorry to see McCarthy deposed. After all, he has been one of the key figures in transforming the GOP into a monstrous political party, one whose contempt for constitutional and democratic norms poses the greatest threat to the Republic since the Civil War….

    McCarthy was one of 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results—a vote that took place just hours after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Privately, McCarthy said he would call for Trump’s resignation—“I’ve had it with this guy,” he told other Republican leaders—but once it became clear the Republican base wouldn’t break with Trump, McCarthy did an about-face. He went on bended knee to Mar-a-Lago less than two weeks after Trump incited the insurrection. McCarthy saw rehabilitating Trump as his job, and to some degree succeeded within the GOP; since that visit, he’s done everything in his power to defend the former president.

    McCarthy was careful never to get crosswise of Trump, aware of what a dominant figure Trump is within the Republican party. McCarthy has been so obeisant to Trump—a lawless, cruel and uniquely destructive figure—that Trump once referred to him as “my Kevin.”

    Among Kevin McCarthy’s legacies will be his role in reckless attacks on key American institutions, including the Department of Justice. Time and time again, he made unsubstantiated claims about the “weaponization” of the Justice Department. The reason was obvious; McCarthy needed to provide cover for a lawless man.

  46. 46.

    jonas

    Getting strong Poe’s Law vibes from some of those antivax posts, but, as always, hard to tell…

  47. 47.

    eversor

    @Baud:

    Well, to be fair to Morning Joe (and I hate that I am defending them)… I have no doubt the next speaker they put up will be crazy as a shit house rat and the hosts were having none of that arguement.

  51. 51.

    dmsilev

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: No, it’s been Scientifically Proven that tinfoil hats actually amplify reception of the mind-control rays.

    Sorry.

    Edit: and I’m not even joking. Not much, anyway. I don’t have the link handy, but some years ago a bunch of grad students at (surprise!) MIT used some fancy RF test equipment to show that tinfoil hats actually improved reception underneath them, basically acting as antennae. I’m sure their advisor was absolutely thrilled to hear that this is how they were using $100k network analyzers and similar.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    And “Speaker Pro Tempore” Patrick Butthurt Bowtie McHenry throwing Nancy Pelosi out of her hideaway office, with one day’s notice, while she is on the other coast at the funeral for a US Senator?

    He also apparently kicked Steny Hoyer* out of his hideaway office. What a petty, vengeful, vindictive little shit he is.

    *Don’t have a source to link. Saw it over at Digby.

  54. 54.

    eversor

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    That was on Morning Joe as well that the Republicans will get revenge for this and Democrats deserve it.  Also Ukraine funding is now over so Democrats helped defund Ukraine.

  55. 55.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: But the mind-control rays will be emitted after the 5G signal activates the microchips in the virus, and the tinfoil could block that activation. The problem is, the microchips could be anywhere in your body, so instead of a tinfoil hat you need a full-body suit.

  56. 56.

    Yarrow

    @Scout211:

    So far, I don’t see the media falling for the GOP line of blaming the Democrats for the chaos of the GOP House majority. I don’t watch the news, but read many online news sites and the blame is being placed on the GOP this time.

    Agreed. The lead off on the Today Show this morning said “Republicans fighting amongst themselves” or something like that. Didn’t even mention the Democrats until they said they voted to remove McCarthy.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    Just ridiculous😠😠

    Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) tweeted at 6:58 PM on Tue, Oct 03, 2023:
    NEWS – As one of his first acts as the acting speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry ordered former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to vacate her Capitol hideaway office by Wednesday

    “Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed”

    w/ @DaniellaMicaela

  58. 58.

    Roger Moore

    @eversor:

    It’s the logic of hostage taking turned on themselves.  The Republican party has gotten in the habit of taking hostages to try to force the Democrats to do what they want.  It’s only logical that a subset of the party would start taking hostages to make the rest of the party do what they want.  Unfortunately, if you threaten to kill the hostages if you don’t get your way, sometimes you’ll actually have to kill them or people won’t take your threats seriously.   Too bad, so sad Squeaker McCarthy is the victim this time.

  59. 59.

    Soprano2

    @eversor: It continues to shock me that the press seems to believe only Democrats have agency. This is a fuckup totally of the Republican’s own making; they should not have to depend on Democrats to bail them out of their own fuckery. It’s crazy!

  61. 61.

    Jay C

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    And this, in turn, will neutralize the only counterweight in our elected government to the woke left control of the Senate and the White House at a time when their … policies are destroying our economy and have opened our borders to invasion.”

    So typical of GOP Congresscritters: a cogent analysis of the issue, promptly pissed in with a malodorous flow of cliche’d hackery: “Woke left control of the Senate”?? SRSLY? “Destroying our economy”? (from the latest figures, they’re doing a pretty poor job of it)… and the perennial “open borders” nonsense…

  62. 62.

    hueyplong

    McHenry is doing this petty shit because doing petty shit to harm someone is really the only thing they’re capable of accomplishing.  When your existence is defined by your status as an internet troll, your governing talents are few.

    Look for one or two more petty acts as we go forward, so their legion of internet trolls can claim ownership of libs for a FoxNews cycle or two.

  64. 64.

    Craig

    @Scout211: CNN, ‘The self-inflicted chaos will hamper the party’s effort to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s vulnerability,’. I wish CNN would point out what they believe is his vulnerability.

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    @Craig:  And what’s more:  BIDEN IS STILL AGING.

    This very moment.  He won’t stop it.

    CNN is past circling the drain, aren’t they?

  67. 67.

    Jeffro

    Btw while the headline article is “Interim Speaker Evicts Pelosi From Her Private Office”, if you were a Fox News dot com reader, you might not understand just how much trouble your party was in, much less that the Republican Civil War (as Minority Leader Jeffries puts it) is ON.

    The next nine stories:

    • crime story of some sort
    • former ESPN host trashes ‘The View’ while on Bill Maher’s show
    • trump trial update from Alina Habba
    • Pam Anderson has ditched makeup*
    • Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at someone about something
    • some social media post from Team Biden backfired in some way
    • a frustrated driver slapped an environmental protester who was blocking a road
    • House GOP floating trump’s name for Speaker
    • some guy who was ‘accidentally mummified’ 150 years ago is going to get a proper reburial

    *not sure why this wasn’t #1?

    Anyway, beyond parody.

  68. 68.

    Eyeroller

    @Craig: He’s old and has low approval ratings in most polls.  Also the press went berserk over some recent polls with Biden trailing Trump (while ignoring later polls that were the reverse, apparently).

  70. 70.

    Cameron

    @J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): I think the writers got the idea from a section of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, but it might be the other way around.  Haven’t read it in many years, but I recall that Severian encounters a tribe whose entire language is phrases from their holy book.

  71. 71.

    Mike in NC

    So Newt Gingrich wrote a column for the WaPo where he denounced Matt Gaetz for being not a nice person. I’d like to see a DNA test to prove they aren’t related.

  72. 72.

    Yarrow

    I thought I saw there was a new poll that showed Biden’s approval rating went into positive territory for the first time in ages. Did I imagine that?

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    Meanwhile John Harwood noted this classic from 11 years ago: The Republicans Are The Problem

    The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

    When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

    “Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah:  That is just so ugly and petty.

    I think Virginia and New Jersey voters are watching this dramarama and can’t mark their ballots for Democrats fast enough.  I hope so!

  77. 77.

    UncleEbeneezer

    The truth is Democrats may have a “messaging problem” but the majority of Americans have a hearing-thinking-caring problem. GOP can’t even function except for tax cuts for the rich & complaining about a trans swimmer. If millions of Americans want that, no messaging can fix it.

    This! At the end of the day our biggest problem is the willingness of tens of Millions of Americans to vote only out of spite and a desire to punish Women, Black People, Immigrants, Transgender People etc. And those voters are given outsize power by structural design of State/Fed Govts + Gerrymandering.

  78. 78.

    japa21

    @Yarrow: ​
      No. Yesterday Rasmussen (yes, Rasmussen) had him in positive territory. Today he’s back in negative territory. Not by much though.

  80. 80.

    Yarrow

    Can someone look outside and see if pigs are flying?

    To step back (up?) to 30,000 feet for a minute:

    The U.S. now has only one party—the Democratic Party—that, for all its flaws, is an actual, recognizable, grown up, capable-of-governing political party. And then there are the Republicans, at once childish and dangerous.— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 4, 2023

  82. 82.

    rikyrah

    ridiculous

     

    Haley Taylor Schlitz (@HTaylorSchlitz) tweeted at 6:34 PM on Tue, Oct 03, 2023:
    Tarrant County Republicans voted to cut $115,000 in state funds from Girls Inc. of Tarrant County because they teach girls to advocate for social change. Let’s raise the $115k taken away & send a powerful message: we won’t let anyone silence our girls.
    https://t.co/EVtvVPwQs4 https://t.co/ofEh5E7kDm
    (https://twitter.com/HTaylorSchlitz/status/1709351274171265255?s=02)

  84. 84.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    If our phones are going to turn us into zombies, I mean in a literal sense, I’d rather be among the first. I’m not fighting goddamn zombies.

  85. 85.

    Elizabelle

    @hueyplong:  But, if you’re not one of the whackos, McHenry’s action is so childish.

    Underscores:  these are not adults. These are not serious people.

  91. 91.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @hueyplong: Nothing wrong with judicious use of your phone. But when you’re getting deep enough into the internet that you see layered, interlocking conspiracies everywhere, time to put it down for a few.

    @Yarrow: Sounds like a threat when you’re on the menu.

  95. 95.

    Yarrow

    Deep cut. Check the date.

    Matt Gaetz just told me at a press conference that if Republicans win the House in 2022, he will move to install Trump as House Speaker.— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) December 7, 2021

  96. 96.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @rikyrah: The first order of business that the new acting Speaker Patrick McHenry did was evict Speaker Nancy Pelosi from her Capitol office whilst she’s away in California at Senator Diane Feinstein’s funeral.

    Speaker Pelosi? It’s too early in the day for flashbacks.

  97. 97.

    rikyrah

     

    Dr. Virgo Season (@DrVirgo1981) posted at 3:59 PM on Tue, Oct 03, 2023:
    White supremacy is beating white folks a$$. They ran a whole political party into the ground.

     

    Bernie must retire in 2024 before he declines (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 4:15 PM on Tue, Oct 03, 2023:
    Once they decided to die of Covid en masse so as to somehow prove white biological supremacy, nothing they do is surprising anymore.

    Portia  McGonagal portiamcgonagal1619 on Insta (@PortiaMcGonagal) posted at 4:15 PM on Tue, Oct 03, 2023:
    They would rather die white than live in a pluralistic society.
    (https://x.com/PortiaMcGonagal/status/1709316310273028167?t=yBg_4alKEBWvrC0QPxs4jg&s=03)

  98. 98.

    Shalimar

    @eversor: A Republican operative saying something is bad for Democrats is not news.  That is what they always say.  Why Morning Joe has these assholes on, I have no clue.

  99. 99.

    Jay C

    @Jeffro:

    • some guy who was ‘accidentally mummified’ 150 years ago is going to get a proper reburial

    • before or after his name gets put up for Speaker of the House??
  100. 100.

    Soprano2

    @hueyplong: Again, they seem to have no idea how this kind of thing looks to ordinary people. They look like the petty, hateful people they are.

  102. 102.

    Shalimar

    @Yarrow: Trump was nominated for Speaker at least a couple times in those 15 rounds back in January.  Never by Gaetz.  And Trump never got more than 1 vote iirc.

  105. 105.

    Elizabelle

    @E.:  I thought yesterday’s tweet with Nordic Jesus sitting beside Trump in court was also a parody.

    I think some wags put stuff like this out in the hope the gullible will take it viral.

  106. 106.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah:  It’s not smart politics to focus too much on these petty outrages. They do these things in hopes that Democrats and the media will focus on those things and not on their dysfunction. More will be coming, so we shouldn’t be surprised. Acknowledge them and move on.

  107. 107.

    SFAW

    @Yarrow:

    If that’s not a sign of the impending Apocalypse, I don’t know what is.

    [Actually, Always-Wrong Kristol — or “AWK,” as no one calls him — seems to have modestly/partially turned away from the Partei of Fascists for some time now, at least some of the time. He hasn’t done a Full Rubin, but still, it’s something.]

  108. 108.

    catclub

    @Jeffro: We might have to make it ‘Faraday Cage Day’ every 10/4

     

    Remember, remember the fourth of Octember, Faraday,  Tesla and Gauss.

     

    Still a work in progress.

  110. 110.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @jonas: Reminds me of when I learned that my local Giant grocery store in MD had been a spy communications point during the Cold War.

    Some KGB colonel writing his memoirs explained that chalk marks on the mailbox there were used for spy signalling.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: Trump nominated for Speaker.

    Given the increase in his violent rhetoric, it wouldn’t shock me to hear that, if nominated as Speaker, trump himself points out to his deranged followers that it puts him 3rd in line for the presidency…

    …hint hint MAGA.

  112. 112.

    Shalimar

    @catclub: Joe renounced the Republican party 4 or 5 years ago, but yeah, he’s still the same very-rightwing guy he was before.  It’s not surprising the show has lots of fellow travelers.

  114. 114.

    Yarrow

    @SFAW:  I know he has but it still surprises me when I see it. This tweet of his is farther than I’ve seen him go before, although I admit I don’t see much of what he tweets or writes.

  115. 115.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Totally useless op-ed in this mornings NYT by Bob Inglis, who represented SC in the 90s and part of the 00s. He disapproves of the nutty Repubs in Congress. And admits that his own votes for impeachment of Bill Clinton, against climate change (“if Al Gore was for it, I was against it”), and all the rest of the wingnuttery in his day were wrong.

    Saw one by Newt Gingrich the other day similarly criticizing the political movement that he helped bring into existence.

    Couldn’t one of these people, just once, have their Come To Jesus moment before they do the damage?

  117. 117.

    eversor

    @Roger Moore:

    This is also why you don’t give in to hostage taking.  If you’re going to shoot the hostage fucking shoot them and we’ll shoot you right after.

     

    @Soprano2:

    The press that we see is mostly pretty well off.   While they do not like GOP social/cultural policy they love the economic policy and want the lower classes kept in their place.  Due to this, allowing a working class kid to have a competitive chance against their own kids or raising the cost they have to pay the help is a vastly more aggregious sin than any of the nuttery on the GOP side.

    It can’t be stated enough that the barely rich and just upper middle class are more panicked than anything of falling down the ladder.

  118. 118.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Yarrow:

    It’s not smart politics to focus too much on these petty outrages. They do these things in hopes that Democrats and the media will focus on those things and not on their dysfunction. More will be coming, so we shouldn’t be surprised. Acknowledge them and move on.

    You get people to focus on their dysfunction by providing examples. Doing shit like kicking Pelosi out of her office while she’s away at a funeral is an excellent example. They’re doing this one thing, then adjourning for a week, rather than advancing any policy agenda.  That’s their dysfunction in action.

  120. 120.

    New Deal democrat

    While job openings did rebound in the latest report for August, it was vs. a 2+ year low the month before, which was revised even lower.  In other words, while openings are over 35% higher than before the pandemic, the trend is still down (Vs. 70% higher 18 months ago).

    For the moment, the economic news is rosy but the *trends* in that news are generally not good. Just for example, if the trend in monthly job gains for the past 24 months continues for about another 9 months, we will actually see job losses.

  124. 124.

    Jeffro

    More like this please snooze media!

    Headline on the Post website right now: McCarthy Ouster Exposes Republican Party’s Destructive Tendencies

    ya think?

    Nine months into their reign as the majority party in the House, Republicans have brought the legislative body to a halt and themselves to an inflection point. By ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) as speaker and exposing anew the destructive tendencies of their most extreme members, Republicans now risk being returned to minority status by voters in next year’s election.

     

    From the day they were all sworn in this January, their grip on power was tenuous, far more so than almost anyone was predicting a year ago when talk of a red-wave election was in vogue. They did win the majority in the 2022 midterm elections, but by the narrowest of margins in a surprising under-performance. To succeed as legislators, they needed cohesion, discipline and leadership. Instead, they produced chaos under a speaker who was so weakened after getting the job that he could not lead effectively.

     

    One other factor has brought the House Republicans to this point. That is the person and example of Donald Trump, the former president. Trump put governing by chaos on steroids (if one can call what he did governing) and in doing so produced a group of Mini-Mes, symbolized most by the politician who brought down McCarthy on Tuesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.). This is the kind of leadership the party now offers the country.

  125. 125.

    Michael Bersin

    @Soprano2:

    Mark Alford (r) is a former Kansas City media market morning television newsreader. He’s dumber than a sack of rocks.

    He held a constituent coffee in a small town in the district. A  Democrat who attended responded to him when he asked her, “What are your concerns?” She replied, “I want to know how you’re going to get the stench of Trump off you.” He walked away.

    He held an open public town hall in the district on August 31st:

    Mark Alford (r) – Town Hall – Warrensburg, Missouri – August 31, 2023 – a self-sustaining information feedback loop

     

    Plain and simple, he’s a nut.

  126. 126.

    eversor

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I used to live in Dupont Circle DC back in the day.  The Safeway there was known as the Soviet Safeway.   The shelves were always empty, it was full of Eastern Europeans for no reason, and was thought to be a spy station…. as you know Dupont is right by all the foreign installations.

  127. 127.

    Dangerman

    Hold it. KM got whacked a day before apocalypse? What more proof do you need? I mean, if Sasquatch pops out of the woods today, we’ll all be sorry.

  128. 128.

    Jeffro

    McCarthy learned no lessons from either President Biden or former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). During Biden’s first two years in office, when Democrats had a slender majority in the House and no margin for error in the Senate, the president found ways to produce bipartisan support for legislation when possible and used party-line discipline when he could not corral Republican votes.

     

    Like McCarthy, Pelosi governed with a small majority and faced internal divisions in her caucus. But she was the strongest speaker in modern times, and her ability to exercise power kept Democrats on a path forward. Biden and Pelosi suffered some setbacks, but both, with the experience gained over years in leadership positions, found ways to succeed.

    All of which is true.  But since the truth = Democrats are good at actually governing, this piece will be labeled as an attack on Republicans.

    Keep at it, snooze media!  Slowly but surely, you’re learning to just report the facts (without both-sides-ing), even if they are almost uniformly bad for the GOP.

  129. 129.

    Righteous Hazard

    @OzarkHillbilly: I am one of McClintock’s constituents here in the rural Sierra.

    The demographics here are such that  he is entirely safe from a D challenger, and is almost perfectly safe from losing his seat from a challenger the right.

    His district is a 2 weird bands of wipopo, with the lower sierra foothills being very wealthy whites, and the higher being mostly poor and lower middle class whites. His mandate is to bring home tax cut and wealth policy bacon for his wealthy constituents, and only needs to be nominally maga for the rest. Guys like McClintock are only vulnerable if they suffer a prolonged period the GOP being of being out of power.

    Yesterday was a disaster for guys like him.  Dems won’t win here without a miracle tho, so the district will possibly get an even worse shitheel if he falls.

  131. 131.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Lest he hold back at all, McClintock continued ominously: “There are turning points in history whose significance is only realized by the events that they unleash. This is one of those times. We are at the precipice.

    Lemmings.

  132. 132.

    gene108

    @Ramalama:

    People really believe Zombies are walking on Earth?

    If all cultures cremated their dead, there’d be no cause for concern about zombies.

  133. 133.

    RaflW

    “Nothing but backstage maneuvers and kabuki for the next week”

    The worst part of this is that it leaves the Beltway bros with too little else to pretend to report on, so they’ll obsess over the petty bullshit like Steny & Nancy having their pied-a-terre offices snatched.

    Press bashing being on of my faves, I will say that I’m a bit shocked that Carl Hulce has penned a column that seems to take McCarthy to task with some accuracy (free link)

    McCarthy’s Extraordinary Downfall Reflects an Ungovernable G.O.P.
    …Along the way, he also deeply alienated Democrats, even though he was forced to turn to them at key moments, both to avoid a calamitous federal default in May and a government shutdown last weekend.

    Mr. McCarthy had promised Democrats fair treatment and a role in governing, but then pushed intensely partisan legislation that they found detestable. He cavalierly launched an impeachment inquiry into the Democratic president when he found himself on shaky ground with his right-wing troops. He cut a spending deal with the White House, then reneged on it — all the while saying he was doing what he thought was right for the nation. …

    Some Democrats seemed legitimately torn over what to do about the push to remove Mr. McCarthy, worried about who would come after him and the likely damage to the institution if speakers can now be discarded so easily. And they certainly weren’t happy about aligning themselves with Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who led the effort to depose the speaker and a man most Democrats — and many Republicans — can’t stomach.

    But as they gathered in the Capitol Visitor Center to decide whether to overlook Mr. McCarthy’s political sins and back him, they instead ended up reciting a litany of his offenses, an indictment that could have been nailed to the House chamber door.

    That last paragraph is quite something. Evokes Martin Luther, even. And the headline is remarkably frank about the dissension and inability baked into the GOP.

  134. 134.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “We can expect week after week of fruitless ballots while no other business can be conducted. The Democrats will revel in Republican dysfunction and the public will rightly be repulsed,” McClintock said.

    A person capable of introspection might conclude, “maybe we as Republicans need to change, need to reevaluate our priorities and try effective bipartisanship.”

    But McClintock is a libertarian leaning idiot who has always been blinded by his ideology.

    And so his answer to “the people are rightly repulsed” is “we don’t need to change. We need to become even more repulsive, and then blame the Democrats.”

  135. 135.

    Soprano2

    @Jeffro: Item #2 about a former ESPN host trashing “The View” is hilarious. They are so fucking obsessed with liberal women, it’s pathological.

  136. 136.

    Captain C

    @rikyrah:

    Katy Tur is demanding the Dems save McCarthy “for the good of the country, getting things done”

    What things?  The current GQP could fuck up a bake sale if all the goodies were delivered to the site by an actual decent bakery.  And McQarthy has proven to be capable of nothing but acting in bad faith and simpering before TFG.  Did Katy Tur pull a Maureen Dowd with some pot brownies?

  137. 137.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    All you need to know about Kevin. Google “adam Schiff kevin McCarthy airplane”

    [Most Jackals already know the story, I’m posting just in case.]

  140. 140.

    Origuy

    If Pelosi’s title is Speaker Emerita, shouldn’t McCarthy’s be Speaker Demeritus?

    (Latin scholars are about to parachute in to correct my inflection.)

  141. 141.

    Scout211

    @Righteous Hazard: Well said, neighbor.

    It’s frustrating because the district borders changed during redistricting and of course, he moved to the district that encompasses the majority of his old district, so we are stuck with him again.

    Part of the CD swings into the western edge of San Joaquin County. The Democrat who ran against him last year was from Manteca, which unfortunately, was a strike against him. You know full well what everyone calls people who are from the Valley: f*cking flatlanders.  Yeah, he had no chance.

  142. 142.

    RaflW

    @Brachiator: They might conclude that, but then a guy like Jim Jordan announces he’s running for Speaker and you realize the chaos is one of the central features of the party.

    Not sure how we do it, but we have to find ways to tar the GOP senators with this chaos. We need to repulse the baked-in advantages this next Senate cycle has and keep the majority.

  144. 144.

    jimmiraybob

    I don’t see any discussion on probably the greatest threat to humanity. Are MAGA/Trumpian/Q brains susceptible to zombification and will the zombies eat MAGA/Trumpian/Q brains? This has considerable evolutionary consequences.

  145. 145.

    Soprano2

    @New Deal democrat: I can tell you from personal experience that it’s getting easier for us to hire people at the pub. My new managers said they got 40 applications when they posted server/bartender jobs. A year ago we were lucky to get 5.

  146. 146.

    RaflW

    @lowtechcyclist: The point, and I think the Speaker Emerita’s staff made it well this morning, is to be magnanimous in accepting that the idiot majority can do what it wants, but bluntly point out how crass, petty, and useless their performance of this is (they also made it clear she’s in mourning and out giving comfort to DiFi’s kin and friends, making the GOP look all the more ugly).

  148. 148.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @jimmiraybob: Are MAGA/Trumpian/Q brains susceptible to zombification and will the zombies eat MAGA/Trumpian/Q brains?

    They’re what we refer to as “the already infected.”

    Not very poetic, I know.

  150. 150.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Righteous Hazard: I’ve got Luetkemeyer. The only way he loses his seat is by death. I’m still gonna send him a nice note congratulating him on the GOP’s inevitable return to minority status.

  152. 152.

    Alison Rose

    Go home, FIFA, you’re drunk. It’s one thing for 2026 to be held in the US, Canada, and Mexico. At least we’re neighbors. This is just weird:

    Morocco, Spain and Portugal will host the 2030 World Cup — but the opening three matches of the tournament will be played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay.

    A South American bid had been put forward to host the entire tournament to mark the centenary of the very first World Cup and FIFA said on Wednesday that the decision to award Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay the opening games was part of the tournament’s 100th anniversary.

    All six countries will qualify automatically for the tournament and it will be the first World Cup to be held across three continents.

    It doesn’t say how many teams will qualify, but they’re doing 48 for 2026, so I presume the same here, especially since six countries will automatically get in. This is just stupid.

  156. 156.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Scout211: Jordan has a well-established history of covering up malfeasance. That’s what counts for necessary job experience in Republican circles. He may be a contender.

  158. 158.

    Scout211

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: He may be a contender.

    Oh, I definitely think he is a contender, if not a front-runner.  I read a fawning article somewhere yesterday that claimed he was becoming a “favorite” to his House caucus colleagues.  🤮

  161. 161.

    BC in Illinois

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Shit, so I have to build a Faraday cage by 2:20 this afternoon? Better get to work.

    How about a Faraday Hat? [from quora]

    Will aluminum foil act as a Faraday cage?
    Yes, aluminum foil can be used as a Faraday cage to block electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves, electromagnetic fields, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

    Other suggestions include getting a metal trash can with a metal lid. Seems too small for me.

  162. 162.

    Jeffro

    @The Thin Black Duke: nope, Sage Steele.

    (covid vaccine mandate opponent and Obama-insulter).

    So, from Fox’s perspective, a three-fer: a Black woman slagging ‘The View’.  Lib shows are losing everyone with their nonsense!

    (hey, whatever helps the cult stay convinced they’re right, right?)

  163. 163.

    Central Planning

    TIL:

    1. There’s really something called the Marburg Virus,
    2. It’s in the hemorrhagic fever family (like the Ebola virus), and
    3. Some people think it can be activated by 5G drones

    What a wonderful timeline to live in!

  164. 164.

    MomSense

    LMAO about the emergency alert activating a 5G/drone/vaccine implanted Marburg Virus.

    Holy hell, the stupid is strong.

  165. 165.

    Chris T.

    @Origuy: My Latin is terrible, but looking it up, it’s in the O-declension and is just automatically masculine, so Pelosi is “emeritus” (masculine) despite being female. Note that the gender of a word attached to someone is not related to the sex of the someone.

    Anyway, none of that matters since the point is the pun. Consider yourself appropriately pun-ished. 😀

  168. 168.

    Righteous Hazard

    • @Scout211: You know it, bruh. The main problem is the deathgrip the GOP holds on poor and middle class whites. People who see California as a liberal monolith are not in a position to understand: above about 2000 feet elevation, the sierra foothills are basically a leftcoast white Appalachia. The population density is low but the area is huge, so it is a lotta poor wipipo in total with no real industry to support them.

    Add in the fact that McClintock is a very professional politician who does a good job of constituent service, and he is almost completely unbeatable.

    The only threat to him is the wheels coming off of the GOP caucus.

  172. 172.

    Elizabelle

    Re the Marburg Virus:

    Got to put in a plug for an excellent book, The Hot Zone (wiki link), about medical science racing to deal with Marburg, Ebola, and other deadly infectious viruses.  From 1994, expanded from an article in The New Yorker.  Past time to read it again.  Phenomenally interesting.

    Author is Richard Preston.  Trivia fact:  he is the brother of Douglas Preston, of the Preston and Child bookwriting team.  (The Relic, all the Agent Pendergast novels.)

  174. 174.

    Ruckus

    @bbleh:

    and yet savvy enough to know The Real Story

    I’m not sure that a lot of them actually do know. They listen to a very narrow part of the world because many/most of them “think” that the world is going to hell. In a handbasket. There has always been and likely always will be a part of the population that believes this direction of progress for everything, even if they enjoy the new parts of progress. These are people who do not understand new, as in, what’s wrong with the way we did things before. There are more people so there are more in this group. Also you have an entire right side info for idiots concept, which thinks that change is most often bad. Because yes, sometimes it isn’t all that good. But this group has to have nothing change because any change is, to them, an increased risk. I believe that this is one reason, a minor one, that change often takes as long as it does. They don’t see the value in change. How many people do not want/refuse the Covid vaccine, because it’s all a hoax? They have always been a part of humanity but weren’t born when smallpox was the only vaccine we all got and we suffered from and sometimes died from diseases which we now rarely see, and now that the population of the world has grown (how does that happen?)  the spread of any new disease is far easier. And you have an entire segment of mass communication that feeds them. I give you faux news, which is no longer alone in this concept and SFB, a deranged old fart who has finally found his people.

  177. 177.

    piratedan

    I do have to admit that Morning Joe does get the blood pressure boiling…. ad infinitum, only the Dems have agency….

    so… according to some, the 11th dimensional chess that is US Politics boils down to the usual kobiyashi maru reasoning in regards to McCarthy…

    The Dems were supposed to “save him”  because the alternative would be worse and it would be for the good of the nation appear to be the arguments floated… which would mean that the Dems would support a guy who manufactured this crisis, blamed the Dems for it and this would be after he reneged on the written deal he had with the WH, allowed impeachment proceedings to get launched without a floor vote, censure of another member simply because they didn’t like him (Schiff) all while allowing Santos to remain in place and have no repercussions for other members threatening revolt and murder…. and to top it off, the day before making the rounds to denigrate the Dems on the Sunday shows.

    The always could be worse isn’t an idle threat they claim (as evidenced by the Speaker Pro Tempore’s first acts), they could kick off Dems from all committees, no longer include them in the travel junkets and deny them the representation that is called for by the house rules by essentially removing them from all of the features of the government, call it the Jim Jordan government where any notion of good faith dies a thousand deaths.

    Sure, that might be fun for the media and the GOP propaganda networks and it would be a gruesome amount of time to endure until the next election for every damn one of us.  I can almost imagine GOP purges taking place to remove Dems from office for nonsensical charges (or attempts to do so).

    Does anyone think SCOTUS would stand up for this?

    Still, I get really tired of watching the media spin this as being the Dems fault thru whatever machinations of “you made me do it” get applied.

  178. 178.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @rikyrah: Katy Tur is Andrea Mitchell in waiting. On the rare (and getting rarer) occasions I turn on MSNBC while having lunch, it is usually an inane Katy Tur take that prompts me to turn it off.

  179. 179.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: “Couldn’t one of these people, just once, have their Come To Jesus moment before they do the damage?”

    Thanks! That perfectly expresses something I often feel. I guess it’s good that such people finally see the light, but boy is it aggravating. And the idea that they get praise (or space in the NYT) for it—words fail me.

  180. 180.

    scav

    Ok, I’m jumping in after 179, but how many of us have agreed to staggering out at the proper time moaning “Brains! Brains! Brains!” !??!

  183. 183.

    Righteous Hazard

    ffs, I see that mtg, bannon, et al are calling for trump to be the speaker.

    First those motherfuckers killed irony, now they coming for the zombie apocalypse genre

  184. 184.

    Shana

    @Yarrow: so Mr. Kristol, who are you voting for in 2024?  If you tell me you’re writing someone in rather than voting for Biden then you’re still not serious.

  186. 186.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: I had not heard that story. (I found it at:

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/12/2057714/-Adam-Schiff-When-it-comes-to-lying-Donald-Trump-and-Kevin-McCarthy-were-made-for-each-other)

    It’s truly amazing. Making stuff up without inhibition is clearly how he operates in the world. Now it’s clearer to me why the Democrats had no interest in making a deal with him, which on the surface might have sounded like a good idea.

  187. 187.

    AlaskaReader

    @Jeffro: The writer should never refer to Republicans as ‘reaching an inflection point’,

    …for as Republicans, reaching a point of change is an impossibility, their curve is an unending spiral, they are simply incapable of ever redeeming themselves.

  188. 188.

    jonas

    @Yarrow: I don’t know that this is so surprising. Kristol’s been a full-throated Never Trumper since 2016 and several of his fellow travelers like David Frum, Tom Nichols, and Stuart Stevens have expressed similar sentiments: until Republicans break their fever and permanently repudiate Trump and (more importantly) Trumpism, voting Democratic is the only responsible option.

  189. 189.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Yup, the functionally insane are out in force on the Twitter/X (idiotic rebrand) machine.

  190. 190.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Brit in Chicago: my work here is done. 😁

    BJ had a book club reading Midnight in Washington and later a Zoom with Adam Schiff (!).  The story is in there too.

  193. 193.

    Baud

    My rule: If you’re not committed to urging voters to vote Blue, you don’t get to urge Dems to protect you from Republicans.

  194. 194.

    Brachiator

    @jimmiraybob:

    I don’t see any discussion on probably the greatest threat to humanity. Are MAGA/Trumpian/Q brains susceptible to zombification and will the zombies eat MAGA/Trumpian/Q brains? This has considerable evolutionary consequences.

    Damn! Maybe MAGA/Trumpians don’t have brains, at least not working brains. This might have evolved in order to resist Zombies.

  200. 200.

    Steeplejack

    @Captain C:

    Don’t get me wrong, I think Katy Tur is the nadir of the MSNBC day, but I have to say the @Jeffdc5 tweet linked above is pretty thin stuff. No link or citation, just some guy spouting off and apparently paraphrasing. Not saying he’s wrong, but . . . it’s thin.

  201. 201.

    MisterDancer

    @piratedan: call it the Jim Jordan government where any notion of good faith dies a thousand deaths.

    Yep. As much as we needed to vote McCarthy out, Jordan as Speaker would be a horrorshow. Hell, this McHenry asshole is already showing he’s nothing but a bowtie and blowhard, and there’s a Daily Kos article that underlines his long history of screwing anyone he can.

    As some point, we — the Democratic Party, and the House Democrats esp. — had to show that we can’t just be expected to eat yet another plate of feces, just to keep lights on. And yesterday was that time.

    Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t have a firm grasp of how Authoritarianism takes over, in my opinion.

  202. 202.

    lowtechcyclist

    @rikyrah:

    Bad Faith  (@Jeffdc5) posted at 2:50 PM on Tue, Oct 03, 2023:
    Katy Tur is demanding the Dems save McCarthy “for the good of the country, getting things done” lol

    Fuck no, Katy Tur needs to demand that McCarthy find four Rethugs to join with him and vote for Jeffries for Speaker, so that the House can function. “For the good of the country, getting things done.”

    If the Dems are the party with agency, why should they use it to just prop up the party that people like Tur treat as if it has none? Why keep a party like that in a position where they can routinely screw things up?

    Fuck the damn Village, they have their heads as far up their collective asses as the Rethugs themselves do.

  204. 204.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Exactly right. It is inconceivable to the media that a Republican actually make the effort to reach across the aisle to reduce the power of the bomb throwers.

  205. 205.

    hueyplong

    @MisterDancer: Totally agree.  If we’re obliged to vote in favor of someone from the opposing party after he has broken the only promise made to our party and then blamed our party for his own party’s meltdown, seems like we’re already supine and it’s simply hopeless.

    The purported Tur quote can be translated as “GOPers are never subject to consequences no matter what and if Dems don’t fix Republican FUBARs at their own cost, the beatings will continue.”

  206. 206.

    jimmiraybob

    @Righteous Hazard: “ffs, I see that mtg, bannon, et al are calling for trump to be the speaker.”

    I don’t want to pat myself on the back too hard but I did reveal this prophesy  in an earlier thread before today’s revelations.*

    They’ve been telegraphing this for a couple of years.

    * if you can’t tell, I’m auditioning to get a chapter in the New Trump Testament.

  207. 207.

    Ruckus

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    There always has been a segment of humanity that likes/needs simplicity and stability. And there always will be. The problem is that the world moves a hell of a lot faster than it did 50 yrs ago and 100 yrs before that and so on. Communication – like we are doing now is very new in the overall scheme of humanity. And that moving faster means that there is less time to come to grips with humanity’s changes/growth. And there is and always will be a segment that does not have the capacity to move forward faster. We call them conservatives. They like stability, a lack of change. They want to conserve what they know and are unwilling/unable to accept change at the rate it is changing. An example is the large pile of shit that is trump. A relic of the past, the guy that is able to be rich, just because. The fact that his story is basically 1000000% bull and shit is of no interest to them. He’s a fuckup deluxe and he’s still rich. He’s their one, their guy.

    It’s like the news business. It is almost no different, in a time that is wildly different, than the back fence rumor mills that use to be how we all communicated – one on one or writing a letter and a postage stamp. And even that took time to communicate. It slowed things down, gave time to those that needed time to accept change. Now change is, in relative terms, instantaneous. There is a reason they are called conservatives. They are not trying to overthrow the government, they are trying to overthrow change. The things that are and always will be with us, growth and change. Their idea of the future is the present. They want to conserve that, the present. But the speed of change is no longer done over a lifetime or three, it can be done far faster, and is.

  208. 208.

    Bill Arnold

    @jonas:

    Getting strong Poe’s Law vibes from some of those antivax posts, but, as always, hard to tell…

    Most of the better ones are parody, but they are mocking True Believers who really do fall for serial failed prophecies.

  209. 209.

    eversor

    @lowtechcyclist:

    They keep the media peoples taxes low and make sure the media peoples kids never have to compete with the lower classes.

    That’s all it’s about.  And the thought of losing that is far more radical than anything else.

  210. 210.

    Ruckus

    @Yarrow:

    If that is the BK that it used to be then yes, pigs are flying. Not sure what they are using for wings or if their flying is falling off of high places and landing but pigs are flying.

  211. 211.

    Eyeroller

    @Chris T.: Yes, your Latin is terrible :-)  It’s an adjective (strictly speaking, a past participle of a verb) that takes masculine, feminine, or neuter endings depending on what it modifies.  Similar to bonus, bona, bonum

    Also its literal meaning was “worn out” but that turned into “veteran” or now “retired.”

    Reference: The New College Latin and English Dictionary.  Old, but Latin isn’t changing :-)

  213. 213.

    Ruckus

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Couldn’t one of these people, just once, have their Come To Jesus moment before they do the damage?

    It wouldn’t be their come to jesus moment if they saw it from all the visible evidence, it has to hit them upside the head first for them to see it.

  216. 216.

    Chris T.

    @Eyeroller:

    Yes, your Latin is terrible :-)  It’s an adjective (strictly speaking, a past participle of a verb) that takes masculine, feminine, or neuter endings depending on what it modifies.  Similar to bonus, bona, bonum

    Also its literal meaning was “worn out” but that turned into “veteran” or now “retired.”

    Well, I did just use Google, which is so well known for finding the One Correct Answer. 🤪 The entry I found listed only the veteran/retired definition.

  219. 219.

    Ruckus

    @Brit in Chicago:

    No.

    They have to see their failure before they will believe what they want can only lead to failure. It’s a very vicious circle. One has to be shit before they can smell shit and at that time they can’t smell anything else because shit now smells normal to them.

  221. 221.

    Ruckus

    @Brit in Chicago:

    There is another theory.

    They both know nothing, both have zero ability to learn anything past nothing, so they will always know nothing, unless they have a come to reality moment. Which at their ages seems unlikely.

  222. 222.

    unctuous

    @Gin & Tonic: Lay out a whole roll’s worth of aluminum foil on the floor. Then undress completely, lie down on in the middle of it and roll yourself up in it just by turning over a couple of times. The foil will naturally stick to skin. Don’t forget to make a little hole for breathing (optional).

    Done. You’re good to go.

  223. 223.

    Righteous Hazard

    @OzarkHillbilly: I just gave McClintocks office a call. They know me by now, but I went ahead and listed my wipipo bona fides anyways; Christian, little league board member, etc. Put on my best community leader voice, upstanding, rock-ribbed, conservative sounding.

    Then told them that their caucus disgraced themselves and their country, and that if they can’t govern themselves. they had no place governing America, politely thanked guy who answered the phone and laid a God Bless America on him before ending the call.

    Felt good

  226. 226.

    Manyakitty

    @sab: lol. Wanna try for another meetup? Message me on Instagram — there should be several waiting for you 😜

  228. 228.

    Kosh III

    OMG  It’s true! vaxx Zombie apocalypse

    I just heard it and now I must

    Exterminate!
    Exterminate!
    Exterminate!

  231. 231.

    unctuous

    @Soprano2: I think the bigger underlying issue is they really don’t understand or value agency. Except their own, and only when it can benefit them. It’s merely a tool for them to employ selectively to avoid or excuse their own responsibility. Others then have agency. Otherwise, no. It’s one way only. Look at what you made me do.

    If consent is as I see it as an exercise of agency, then it is unsurprising this attitude mirrors their demonstrated lack of understanding of consent, which we have often seen by their frequent inability or refusal to recognize or respect consent — most especially, the refusal to grant or withdrawal of by other persons especially women. Literally, grabbing ‘em by the pussy. Power for the exercise of power’s sake. They understand that, and that is probably all they truly understand.

    They don’t just not get consent, or agency, they reject it, dismiss or denigrate it.

    It is a party with the ethos of dictators, despots, abusers rapists and pedophiles.

  232. 232.

    Hob

    @Elizabelle: The Hot Zone is an entertainingly written book, but it shouldn’t be used as a source of information about ebola. See: How The Hot Zone Created the Worst Myths About Ebola

    The only acknowledgment I’ve seen by Preston that his science was shoddy was in this interview, where 1. he only mentioned a single relatively trivial error, and 2. he went on to say that the really terrifying thing about ebola is that it’s “invisible … a monster without a face”, a hilariously meaningless statement that made it sound like he was unclear on the concept of infectious disease in general.

  233. 233.

    Betsy

    @Soprano2: I heard that too. Was shaking my head at his gullibility (not the right word) — his having been left behind by decades, maybe that’s it — he talked about wanting to get things done and govern for the people — delusional!

  234. 234.

    sab

    @Manyakitty: Yes I do. Also too Watergirl has my e-mail which I am bad about checking unless I am warned. I found an OhioMom message months after she sent it. You sent me yours on instagram, but your message evaporated before I got a chance to respond. ( My understamding now is that is a feature not a bug in instagram?)

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