Marjorie Taylor Greene’s failed attempt to oust the Speaker shows us what is wrong with our politics. I work alongside some people who are more interested in being social influencers than lawmakers. I just spoke on @TheDailyShow about the dangers of “performative governance”. https://t.co/egOCXGVApT
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) May 8, 2024
In return for Democrats’ essential aid in pulling his nuts speakership out of the fire, Pastor Mike leads a posse to promote GOP ‘but ILLEGALS’ calumny:
Proving, yet again, that all right wing boogeymen are based on no evidence. Just vibes.
(Bonus: Makes it soooo much easier to just talk directly out of your ass.) https://t.co/BhHeB33Qq7
— Steve Singiser (@StevenSingiser) May 8, 2024
Dear reader: it is indeed “provable.”
That’s what happens in a recount and during audits and court cases.
Based on the above, it’s been proven this doesn’t happen.
— Bathsheba Dreams in Blue ?????? #?? (@Inkling61) May 8, 2024
And yet more… interesting info bobs up on RatF*cker Jr’s ‘independent’ candidacy:
NEW: RFK Jr.'s new hire who downplayed Jan. 6 appears to have been at the Capitol during the attack https://t.co/T7PWbBfu8z
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) May 8, 2024
A right-wing social media influencer hired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign who previously said Jan. 6 was “Democrat misdirection” appears to have himself been on the restricted grounds of the U.S. Capitol during the attack.
NBC News first reported that Kennedy’s campaign hired Zach Henry’s firm, Total Virality, for “influencer engagement” in March. Henry had worked as deputy communications director for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign, as well as for Blake Masters during his Senate run in Arizona…
Henry, as NBC News reported, had posted that Jan. 6 was “no MAGA insurrection Just more Democrat misdirection” and appears to have embraced conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack, including posting that “antifa” was behind it, which is false…
Your modern GOP presidential campaign is more inbred than the late-period Habsburgs, and they all love lying like a dog loves snacking out of the cat’s litterbox.
Baud
The world is intuitively flat.
JPL
@Baud: flat and boring.
bjacques
@Baud: no it’s not. It’s hollow.
Jeffro
“what is wrong with our politics” – NOPE
“what is wrong with the modern GOP“
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Johnson wouldn’t be so screwed up if he watched a some porn, every now and then
RaflW
Jeffries needs to make clear that while this time Democrats voted to save the GOP speaker, 163 aye and 32 nay, but one more fucking godawful presser like the one today and why on earth should Dems protect him.
What a flaming piece of shit.
Jeffro
also canNOT imagine having this
on my resume
Not even in jest! I’d be worried that someone would find a copy on an old hard drive somewhere, and well, there you go – blackballed from paying work for the rest of my life
Ken
@bjacques: Hollow and flat. Like a 45 RPM record.
Jeffro
@RaflW: have to agree – we/Jeffries have nothing but leverage at this point.
“one more bit of BS about 2020 election denialism and *poof *, Speaker Johnson” – HJ
geg6
@Ken:
With a scratch that makes it skip.
Chris
I’m getting old. I read “Pastor Mike” and my first thought is still Huckabee.
randy khan
Apparently, MTG said the following after the vote:
Apparently she’s assuming Democratic primary voters are as smart as Republican primary voters. I haven’t found a roll call yet, but I also suspect that people who thought they might be vulnerable if they voted to keep him in were given a hall pass, as about 30 Dems either voted to keep the motion off the table or didn’t vote at all.
Chris
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
I’m not saying for sure that he does watch porn, but if he doesn’t, he’d be the first religious fanatic who doesn’t.
I mean, the second least surprising news from the raid that killed Bin Laden was that he had a bunch of porn in that compound.
(The first being “he was in Pakistan.”)
randy khan
@RaflW:
My sense is that this was a one-time-only deal, based on the aid votes getting to the floor. He’ll need to do something else for the Dems to get another round of support.
Jeffro
@randy khan: is there a term for when some nimrod thinks they’re playing 11-dimensional chess, but in reality they’ve tied their shoes together?
If not, can we just call it a “Greene”?
Soprano2
I’m waiting for hubby to come out of the bathroom to see if he’ll go to the bar with me. If he sits down on the couch again I’m leaving. There’s only so much I can take.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
roll tide
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Sure, if you are in downstate IL or IN.
kalakal
@Baud:
Sir Bedevere disagrees
Phylllis
I have here in my hand a list of communists…
Mathguy
So the turd worked for Vivek the Magnificent* and Blake the creepy serial killer–no wonder the guy with brain worms hired him.
*in his own mind
Chris
@randy khan:
… has she MET Democratic voters? A quarter of them would rush to vote for these candidates just to reward them for their great act of Aaron Sorkinian bipartisanship in placing Country above Party. Another quarter wouldn’t, but only because they swooned so hard they passed out. Yet another quarter would grumble but approve because they understand that sometimes in politics you have to give something to get something. That leaves maybe a quarter who’ll hold it against them in primaries. I’ll take those odds.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Not if you point a telescope in the sky.
gwangung
What a load of horseshit from Johnson.
bjacques
@Chris: I think Pastor Of Muppets.
Omnes Omnibus
“We all know, intuitively, that Mike Johnson has a freezer full of human heads in his basement. But it’s not been something that’s easily provable.”
dmsilev
@randy khan: Aren’t most of the primary votes already over and done with? Also, for anyone who cares, ‘I voted to shut up that braying jackass and to put the Speaker’s balls in a vice’ would be an acceptable and true response.
Baud
Via Reddit
Ksmiami
@RaflW: yep. I really don’t think we can do anything to help Republicans except to destroy that crime syndicate posing as a political organization.
Chris
@gwangung:
Yeah, Johnson’s a dick.
Doc Sardonic
@bjacques: and I have touched the sky
Mr. Bemused Senior
NotMax
@bjacques
“… and I have touched the sky.”
;)
NotMax
@https://balloon-juice.com/2024/05/08/wednesday-evening-open-thread-swatting-down-the-sock-puppets/#comment-9188044
Beat me to it while I was searching for the clip.
:)
NotMax
Fix.
@Doc Sardonic
Beat me to it while I was searching for the clip.
:)
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
They already did this. Fifty years ago.
Scouting/USA
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
We’re erasing Reagan’s legacy one thing at a time.
different-church-lady
Joe has told Bibi no more toys if you invade another city, and nobody’s talking about it.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: They’re sure talking about it in Israel.
sdhays
@Baud: Now if only we could rename National Airport.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@different-church-lady: I’m catching up from doing other meat space stuff, and am seeing the headlines.
This seems like another Big Biden Deal! Whar discussion on BJ?
Steve in the ATL
@different-church-lady: shows up at the top of my Apple News feed. It somehow displaced all the met gala stories I’ve been getting for days.
if you want to know why Timotée Chalamet skipped it, DM me!
JaySinWA
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: PBS Newshour is covering the delay tonight.
JWR
PBS News Hour has a segment on Cannon sweeping Trump’s legal woes under the table? This is good, depending on how it’s done. But the more people learn about this judicial hack, the better. (I haven’t seen it yet, but it was in their opening features segment.)
NotMax
@sdhays
House Rs have something else in mind.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@bjacques: “Pastor of Muppets”
Oooooh that’s gooooood!
Gloria DryGarden
@Jeffro: call it an Empty knot.
Greens my favorite color, and I don’t want to insult the plants
Taken4Granite
@sdhays: I’d be fine with its former name, George Washington National Airport.
And while we’re at it, let’s revert the name of Houston’s primary airport to Intercontinental. That was the perfect name for that airport: everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas, so of course that state’s largest city can’t have a mere international airport.
Craig
@sdhays: everyone I know just calls it DCA, or National.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud: Yeah, the Reich Whingers are losing their shit about it. Because of course it’s somehow trans people’s fault.
Geminid
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: There is a whole lot going over there right now, with this denial and half a dozen other things. I’m waiting to see how it all works out over the next 36 hours.
It’s a big story in Israel. If you mess with Ywitter, Barak Ravid and Noga Tarnopolsky arre good avenues into Israeli twitter. Ravid is now a hotshot Axios journalist; Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns seem to have him on speed dial. He broke this developing story a few days ago.
Tarnopolsky is firmly in the anti-Netanyahu camp and retweets a lot of like-minded people. One of them reposted a Likud MK expressing her outrage at the US with the comment: “reminds of my grandchildren when I tell them ‘No more ice cream today’ and they threaten to stop eating altogether if they can’t have ice cream now.”
Laura Rozen is a good general source who, besides linking to her own Substack articles, retweets Arab journalists as well as Israeli reporters like Ravid and Tarnopolsky. I found Rozen through Cheryl Rofer. She’s on BlueSky as well as Twitter.
Rozen has a Substack article out that covers this story; I’ll try to rustle up a link.
Suzanne
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Pastor of Muppets is a font available for download.
Perfect for resumes and CVs, church bulletins, sticker charts for your potty-training toddler, and so much more.
Another Scott
@different-church-lady:
Reuters.com (from an hour ago):
+1
Cheers,
Scott.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Steve in the ATL: That’s odd, my feed has been nothing but stories on the Tom Brady roast. Real news for real America, not that New York junk.
Another Scott
Speaking of sock puppets… Reuters.com:
Whaaa??? You mean MotUs cannot say whatever they want to customers and investors??!!
I mean, Tesla said a Cybertruck can pull “near infinite mass”. How could anyone think that such a statement was misleading to buyers or investors???!!!ONE
FAFO…
Cheers,
Scott.
JWR
Okay, I just saw the PBS segment on judge Cannon, and it was just a five minute bit with Mary McCord. But she brought up all the things I’ve learned from the legal eagles here in comments, namely, that Cannon has yet to make a ruling that Jack Smith could use to make an airtight appeal to the 11th circuit, which she attributed to her inexperience, and not to blind TFG loyalty. So I’d say it was good, but not something I’d write home about. I’d much rather see a Frontline segment on TFG’s legal troubles.
Quaker in a Basement
We “intuitively know” that Pastor Mike has secret kinks. We don’t have or need evidence.
HumboldtBlue
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
The LA Sparks have already moved their two Indiana games to the Staples Center, and you’ll see other teams do similar when the those women come to town.
I’ll be watching, I’m fascinated, Clark is gonna set this league on fire.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Laura Rozen’s Substack article titled, “US paused bomb shipment to Israel, reviewing others as [it] presses for ceasefire”:
https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/us-paused-bomb-shipment-to-israel?r=3tv9g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
HumboldtBlue
Ginger Billy ponders the dilemma: when you purchase the skip loader but failed to tell your wife.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
That’s pretty much a textbook illustration of Colbert’s word “truthfulness.” It’s not true but it should be.
Geminid
@Geminid: The story I’ve been following most intently has been the ceasefire talks now being held in Cairo. Still no go.
gwangung
@Geminid: Good. Let’s see more pressure.
Barbara
@different-church-lady: I got an email from AIPAC about it. I didn’t know how I got on their mailing list.
Geminid
@gwangung: This is a weapons pause, not a cutoff.
And it’s tied in to this whole ceasefire process. At this point, the kind of pressure I want to see is some Egyptian intelligence agents walking into Hamas leader Sinwar’s bunker and shooting him, and then typing “we accept your latest proposal” on his phone. That guy is ready to fight to the last Palestinian.
Ken
Could be worse, could be murder charges.
Remember, PG&E decided to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter resulting from the Paradise fire.
Lyrebird
Does harassing people count as meeting them?
But seriously, I like your breakdown. She must have zero comprehension of an Andy Kim or a Lauren Underwood or… even that former Lt Governor of her own state!!!
Geminid
@Geminid: The Washington Post has a good article on the weapons pause. I expect many other media sites do as well.
Haaretz’s coverage ought to be especially good. They are on the more liberal side of the Israeli political spectrum, and they are also very much tied into that nation’s security establishment.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@bjacques: Shouldn’t that be “muppets” with a lowercase “m”? That’s the insult, of which the world has too many, as opposed to the capital-M variety, of which the world doesn’t have enough.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Wasn’t the Colbert word “truthiness”? For something that isn’t true but feels to wing nuts like it should be true?
Geminid
@Lyrebird: I noticed that Greene changed her rationale. She originally said that this vote was gonna make Johnson look really bad to Republicans because he’d be saved by the votes of Democrats. Now she’s pitching this as a means of sowing strife among Democrats. Like she’s playing 3-dimensional Tic-tac-toe.
JAFD
Meanwhile, the Special General Election to fill Rep Payne’s seat, here in New Jersey’s 10th CD, is scheduled for Sept 18th, which, if my calendar can be believed, is a Wednesday. I suppose there is some reason in the election laws for this, the minimum time between primary (Tuesday, July 16) and general elections, or something … Anyway, the winner is likely to be a Democrat (unless Hell starts exporting ice cubes) and should be arriving in DC on the 19th for swearing in.
Another Scott
@Barbara: I started getting emails from them a month or so ago, maybe? Never opened them, except for one, to find the link to unsubscribe.
Grr…,
Scott.
JAFD
Dear Rep. Johnson,
Ferry Avenue runs east from Newark Penn Station thru the Ironbound, has often been called ‘the main street of Lusophone North America’, a neighborhood full of immigrants from Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Goa, Macao and all the other places Vasco de Gama landed.
For five years, I worked for the Board of Elections, at a polling place a hundred feet south of Ferry Avenue (paced it off, ‘electioneering’ has to stay that far away from polling places in NJ). I never saw nor heard about any non-citizen attempting to vote.
If you’ve sacrificed, uprooted yourself from the land of your ancestors’ graves, finally made it to ‘the land of the big PX’ – is there any inducement that the boss of the East Ward could give that would cause you to risk throwing your dreams away ?
These people want to live quietly, not have anything happen that would draw INS attention. If you told me to spend an hour outdoors between 1 & 2 AM, I’d feel safer walking down Ferry Avenue than almost anywhere else in the USA.
Another Scott
@JAFD: Well said.
Thank you.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
“International Traitor Airport” – sounds good to me!
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
International Asshole Degenerate. It would match Dulles’s IAD airport code.
mrmoshpotato
LOL! I’m sure the TTP (Trump Trash Party) knows that full well.