Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

In my day, never was longer.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

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

This really is a full service blog.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

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

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Late Night Open Thread: We Are All Cynics Now

Late Night Open Thread: We Are All Cynics Now

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When in trouble, when in doubt… Revert to your emotional security (imaginary) Civil War…

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61Comments

  5. 5.

    steve g

    I think Peter Baker and Peggy Noonan are getting a bit too old for their jobs. Maybe they are just run down and out of gas. Maybe they could move to the Bahamas and write restaurant reviews or something.

  7. 7.

    Poe Larity

    Well, we all know what a non-conformist Peggy has always been.

    And she’s always been great at walking by. Perhaps she can imagine all those kids walking towards a torture chamber.

  8. 8.

    piratedan

    @steve g: It’s kind of funny that the NYT was down there slumming looking to interview protesters when their modus operandi is spent looking for Trump voters in Midwestern coffee shops.  Apparently they’ve lost touch with New York City :-)

  9. 9.

    Dan B

    Marshall Ervin would rather not know about Bibi preventing aid to the people of Gaza.  Famine talk should be avoided.  People like Marshall fry me.

  10. 10.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I just wanted to stop by and drop an emphatic “FUCK CANCER!”. A dear friend of ours lost her life to it at the too young age of 60. Her husband of 40 years is absolutely devastated as this was out of the blue. Diagnosis and off to hospice as it was everywhere including in her bones. She was fine one day and it all started with a backache, going quickly downhill afterward.

    Rest in peace, Michelle.

  17. 17.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Thank you all. What really hurts is that they just retired early last year after having operated a local appliance sales and repair shop for over 30 years. They had plans to travel and see the kids/grandkids and enjoy life a bit and then this. I started out handling their computers for them many years ago and we quickly became friends. Michelle was the nicest, kindest person that you can imagine, as is her husband.

    We lose good people too young while the toxic fuckers seem to live forever. Again, FUCK CANCER!

  22. 22.

    Tony Jay

    Stacking old wingnuts supporting genocide in Ukraine next to students opposing genocide in Palestine and sneering “Same thing” brings a bit of vomit to my morning throat and makes me pop the writer into the Asshole – Ignore bin. Just shameful gaslighting, and no one needs that.

    Maybe years of being encouraged to call out obvious Russian war crimes in Ukraine has made it logical for the students to apply the same lens to Israel’s war crimes in Palestine, and it’s the outraged yelps of “No! Not like that! That’s different!” which have led to them digging their heels in.

    It’s a complicated world, but ethical consistency has a role to play in it. Maybe all of the Jewish students and activists who’ve been part of the protests since the start could get asked for their opinions on that.

  25. 25.

    daveNYC

    Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think.’

    Yeah, that’s not weird and creepy at all.

    Complaining about people goysplaining what Zionism means is dumb as fuck because I’m pretty sure you would be hard pressed to get a single definition of Zionism out of a group of random Israelis.  Smotrich, Gantz, and Michaeli (the current head of Labor) probably all consider themselves Zionists, but they all will have pretty different ideas about what that means.

  26. 26.

    matt

    I don’t understand Noonan’s beef – she thinks she deserves to be treated like friendly media why?

  29. 29.

    AM in NC

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:  Very sorry to hear about your friend.

    And yes, FUCK CANCER. This will be the second Mother’s Day without my mamma, lost to random lung cancer that spread everywhere.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    @matt:

    She doesn’t. She’s just ‘proving’ that ‘student radicals’ are being ‘trained and conditioned’ to avoid uncomfortable questions from anyone associated with the National Media via her in no way invented vignette of one pretty little thing (that could be your daughter, normie reader!) wanting to stop and chat to the kindly granny (like any normal person with nothing to hide would) before being peer-pressured into silence and frogmarched away by her ‘comrades’, who are probably lesbians as well, because why not?

    The Narrative is these protests (and by extension all pro-Palestinian opinions) are illegitimate and astro-turfed by sinister outside groups, so it’s really any decent parent’s duty to keep their kids away from them for the good of their souls. Noonan’s drunk blathering is just one sputtering cap-gun fired off amidst the deafening cannonade of pro-Likud firepower.

  31. 31.

    matt

    @Tony Jay: OK – I thought maybe she would know that organized protesters coordinate on how to handle media since she’s so old.

  32. 32.

    Rusty

    I like how Noonan so casually lies to the students.  She is a longtime, professional journalist, she isn’t barely trained.  I guess it’s OK to lie to get a story, where I can guarantee Noonan would have savaged the students.  Funny how the NYT has no problem with that.

  33. 33.

    Tony Jay

    @matt:

    She’ll know, unless the vodka-martinis killed those brain cells too. The idea is to paint perfectly normal and rational defensive protocols as somehow sinister and proof of dark deeds.

  34. 34.

    TBone

    I want the LIST of who voted against this but too angry right now to search for that info

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/05/05/biden-cancer-moonshot-initiative-congress-funding/73525016007/

    Keep in mind who voted against the Moonshot Cancer initiative in the upcoming elections. Keep in mind those who continually vote against scientific progress, against funding for cancer research, against pandemic vaccines roll-outs or even against climate change, which is not just an existential crisis in the future but today exacerbates chronic health conditions such as asthma.
    Keep this in mind and vote for those who do not politicize Americans’ health. Otherwise, the country’s prognosis is bad news for all of us.

    Dr. Thomas K. Lew is an assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @TBone:

    The spending package Congress passed in March doesn’t reup Cures moonshot money that dried up at the end of last year. Lawmakers rejected Biden’s request to fund Cures this year and also cut off his moonshot’s most direct funding stream.

     

    It was part of the deal funding the government, look like. Few fingerprints.

  37. 37.

    TBone

    @TBone: Congress voted against funding for cancer research just to block a win for President Biden

    There are not enough words at my disposal to describe my utter contempt and exquisite rage.

  40. 40.

    Barney

    Context for Marshall Ervin’s “the US should not be involved in the Israel-Hamas conflict, and there should be no protesters” quote: UMiss for Palestine protest met with opposition on campus – The Daily Mississippian (thedmonline.com)

    Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on campus Thursday to give the welcome address at the Aerospace and Defence Alliance Symposium.

    Yeah, the university is holding a public meeting of the military-industrial complex, with state support. While the students are still there. I’d be appalled if there weren’t student protests.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    Reddit

    One of the Ole miss racist student was kicked out of his fraternity

     

    Earlier, the UM NAACP called on UM to expel Phi Delta Theta member JP Staples.

  42. 42.

    Sid

    More than a few of the students ‘goysplaining’ Zionism are Jews themselves. And of course a lot of the others calling attention to the ongoing daily atrocities in Gaza are people (or the descendants of people) whose experience and perspective of Zionism is not unlike the experience and perspective Native Americans had with and can give to Manifest Destiny.

  43. 43.

    Liminal Owl

    @Baud: The frat kicked him out. Doesn’t sound like the racist university is taking any action.

  44. 44.

    JWR

    This really isn’t good. From Al Jazeera’s live updates page:

    Israel’s military orders Palestinians to move out of eastern Rafah, warning it is about to use “extreme force” in southern Gaza.

    The order follows a night of intense Israeli bombardment that killed 22 people in Rafah, including eight children. Earlier on Sunday, Hamas fired rockets at the Karem Abu Salem crossing, killing three Israeli soldiers.

  45. 45.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    It’s weird that when unarmed college students camp, some in matching tents probably borrowed from the campus outdoor club, it’s viewed as threatening and backed by some sinister hidden force, but when a bunch of goobers all get together with AR 15 rifles it’s totally a non threatening grassroots protest about 2nd amendment rights.

    Like, who are these protesters even hurting? Seems like nobody and if left to sit there unmolested long enough they’d just get bored and go home. Just proof that the right wing scare machine can make it’s viewers see just about anything as threatening and the mainstream press will come along and adopt their framing.

  46. 46.

    Liminal Owl

    @Liminal Owl: I may have been mistaken; the university is at least making noises about investigating the incident. But I’m waiting to see whether any disciplinary action occurs, and how much they “both sides” the situation.

  47. 47.

    Ken

    @piratedan: Apparently [the NYT has] lost touch with New York City :-)

    They did entirely miss George Santos’s history when he was running.

    Oooh, that could have been a Biden zinger. “The NYT wants to interview me to pronounce on my fitness to hold office. Maybe they should work their way up to that by starting with local politicians, like George Santos.”

  48. 48.

    MrRoivas

    @Warblewarble: The Soviet Union used antizionism as its excuse to tear down synagogues, ban the practice and use of Hebrew, and murder a whole bunch of Jews in their kangaroo courts.

    Being Zionist is a criminal offense in many countries throughout the Middle East, including Iran. People don’t hear about it because there aren’t enough Jews left outside of Israel to be persecuted and murdered under the excuse offered by these laws.

    Your ignorance is not truth.

  49. 49.

    MrRoivas

    @Sid: When Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell explain how Democrats are the real racists, I’m sure you support them too.

  50. 50.

    Tony Jay

    So Jewish students and Holocaust survivors distancing themselves from the Likud-approved paradigm of Any Opposition To What We Say Zionism Is About = Anti-Semitism are just like Clarence Thomas?

    Let’s just slide past an increasingly pointless escalation of state-approved propaganda and mind-bendingly hypocritical attempts to play the victim straight to “Whatever, troll. Heard it many times before and it was gaslighting bullshit then, too.”

    Now while trolls do what trolls do, I’m done. Staggeringly uninterested in feeding the bridge-propping community.

  51. 51.

    Betty

    @Ken: Sorry, sir. The New York Times is a national newspaper. Local stories are beneath our attention.

  52. 52.

    Sid

    @MrRoivas:

    Your implicit criticism of Thomas and Sowell is ironic, inasmuch as their views regarding the ongoing war crimes in Gaza are likely to align with your own.

  53. 53.

    Chris

    Who in their right mind would talk to a strange reporter about this shit?  That’s just begging to have yourself misquoted, paraphrased, and narrated about until you’re The New Face Of The Antisemitic Menace On College Campuses, which would have been bad enough when I was going to college, but in this day and age, actually has a pretty good chance of getting you expelled and the doors of higher education (and by extension, the career you were hoping for) slammed in your face for good!

    Not to mention that if it isn’t a mainstream media reporter but some non-traditional outlet you’ve never heard of, you can never be sure that it isn’t one of those actual antisemites, who’s going to use your words to buoy support for their cause.  Which, despite what’s being said about Palestinian advocates, you also don’t want!

    If reporters want to know what protesters think, there’s plenty of them standing up on soapboxes and speechifying.  Just cover that honestly.  Since you’ve shown that you can’t, my advice to any student who isn’t willing to do that is stay the fuck away from the media.  They are not your friends.

  54. 54.

    Chris

    @John Revolta:

    Somebody needs to tell these people the difference between “history” and “fandom.”

    My family were mostly good respectable Yankee-WASPs (until Grandpa branched out a little and married outside the community, at least), which means the Know-Nothing movement is a part of my history.  An ugly, bloody, hate-filled, altogether disgusting part.  But you don’t see me plastering my walls with “no Irish need apply” stickers.

  55. 55.

    MrRoivas

    @Sid: So you concede that it’s possible for a movement or group to be bigoted against a demographic despite having that demographic present?

    If so, glad to hear it.

  56. 56.

    Peke Daddy

    @steve g: Of course you will twist their words, Baker, Noonan et.al. Just like you will straighten up Trump’s on orders from Sulzberger. Frame THIS.

  59. 59.

    stinger

    @Baud: She claimed she could determine the age and “beauty” level of a person wearing sunglasses, a mask, and a kaffiyeh, so yeah, she made some of it up for sure.

  60. 60.

    Chris

    @stinger:

    What I love about it is that at least based on the excerpt (I have no idea if the entire article clarifies this), Peggy doesn’t even establish that these are Gaza protesters in the first place. The keffiyeh is the strongest clue, but given how it’s turned into a fashion item in the last two decades, even that isn’t dispositive.  (Given that quite a few of the people who wear it now are military types or military cosplayers, it’s not even something you can reliably assume a person’s politics from anymore).

    Knowing the context that this is a college campus at the height of the Gaza war, I’d say that a person wearing a keffiyeh is very probably a pro-Palestine supporter signaling sympathy for that cause.  But the way this paragraph is written, this could have happened a mile from any Gaza protest to a group of students with zero political involvement whatsoever, and there’s nothing in the text to contradict it.

  61. 61.

    wonkie

    It annoys the hell out of me when protests are not designed to communicate with and convince those not present. There is literally no other reason to protest except the self-indulgence of listening to one’s own voice shouting.

    That said, there’s no reason for anyone to talk to a sleazy hack like Noonan. And unfortunate fact about our media is that many “professionals” and “pundits” know less about an issue under discussion than some lay person with a sign shouting on a street corner.

    As for the “goysplaining” most of the protests are organized and led at least in part by Jewish students.

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