Cruz to teabaggers: "If you wamt to live in a fantasy world where you'rw winning, then so will I." http://t.co/EiS1k0JiHI
— billmon (@billmon1) October 11, 2013
Either Cruz also completely delusional, or he believes living the fantasy now will set him up 2 lead the "stabbed in the back" search later.
— billmon (@billmon1) October 11, 2013
My favorite Speaker-to-Republicans, Dave Weigel, is doing his usual fine work at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit:
“Don’t be the weird one!” said Gil Mertz, the avuncular regional director of the Family Research Council. “There’s always a weird one who wants to hold an impromptu press conference.”
Mertz, the emcee of the annual Values Voter Summit of social conservatives in D.C., was at that moment speaking behind barricades. Organizers had placed metal barricades in front of the stage, mimicking the fences placed by park rangers in front of the many national monuments closed during the government shutdown. In this room, there is no WSJ/NBC poll suggesting that the GOP is blamed for a shutdown. Putting up barricades to remind people that it’s Obama’s fault is not even weird.
“He has used those barricades to defend memorials from our veterans,” said FRC president Tony Perkins. “He has used barricades to try to keep our voices down in America.”
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the Republican who might have done the most to commit the GOP to a “defund Obamacare” strategy, opened up the political speechmaking party of the day by agreeing with Perkins.
“The best argument for stopping Obamacare is the action of this president over the past 10 days,” said Lee, the day’s first political speaker. “The president is using the vast power of the American government to hurt the American people. Why? To win a political argument.”…
Much, much more — including Louie Gohmert calling John McCain “an al Qaeda supporter” — at the link. For home entertainment use only…
Knight of Nothing
Here’s a question: isn’t everyone a “values voter”?
Quaker in a Basement
Louie will be lucky if McCain doesn’t have his liver served on a golden platter.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s a cavalcade of stupid, of fail, of delusion.
trollhattan
Jesus, Those People.
Stanzfähigem Gesicht Cruz can keep the cameras aimed at himself as long as he wants. Every additional minute is another minute of winning.
Gex
@Knight of Nothing: Typical right wing frame. They use the words values, freedom, patriot, etc. in ways that imply that they are the side that is/has those things.
It’s kind of why I am not letting the “moderate” business community or Republicans off the hook and why I want to neck punch them as they continue to whine about the monster they created. They painted the other side as the enemy to all things American and good and now can’t figure out why the base won’t compromise.
A lot of people were hurt by the monster they created, so I’ve no sympathy when their monster turns on them. I can’t even enjoy listening to them whining because the price we are all paying is too great.
beltane
Sometimes we don’t get to see karma in action, but in the case of John McCain one could say he brought this upon himself by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. The Republican base has been infected with the crazy for a long time, but Palin’s the one who unlocked their cages and set them to run amok.
Mike E
Please proceed, fucktards.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Rafael E. Cruz, Supra Genius.
beltane
Question: Who isn’t “the weird one” at the Values Voters Summit? I only see weird, weirder, and weirdest.
Michael Bersin
Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r – the Chinese are spying on us through our toasters) didn’t get the memo that it’s not about Obamacare any more. Still, she’s catching grief from constituents via twitter and Facebook. Not that she’s held any open to the general public town halls of late.
Baud
@beltane:
The one who is not secretly gay.
amk
how is weigel doing ‘usual fine work’ again? He is just stenographing what these nutz say.
Knight of Nothing
@Gex: yes, all too true. The continuous abuse of language does grate on the nerves, however.
jl
The political doings have threatened my sanity enough lately. So I won’t bother to check why Gohmert said McCain supports terrorists.
Was it because McCain got on one of his maverick kicks and did some half straight talk on Fox about how awful and stupid the House GOP is, or is it some foreign policy thing? Or is one an excuse for the other?
One of those things I guess I don’t need to know.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
Yes, but by doing so, he’s exposing himself to the aura of these morans, which is a known carcinogen and a certifiable cause of drain bamage, at least 10 times more dangerous than playing line in the NFL.
Be brave, Dave!
Lurking Canadian
When will the People’s Front of Judea finally be rid of the splitters of the Judean People’s Front!
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: And Wonkette is not covering the event the way they usually do. They have failed us.
muddy
@Villago Delenda Est: The meme that delights me the most from these guys is “power mad Harry Reid”.
Roger Moore
@beltane:
Nonsense. It’s the election of a non-white President that’s really turned the crazy up to 11, and his reelection that’s pushed it to eleventy. Palin is a symptom, nothing more.
Villago Delenda Est
@muddy:
Harry Reid really needs to indulge these people by posing in a high backed black chair with a white Persian in his lap, stroking it gently
beltane
@muddy: Our Harry is just drunk with power.
Gex
@Knight of Nothing: Everything they do grates on the nerves. It’s who they are.
See also: Cleek’s definition of conservatism.
Feudalism Now!
Unfiltered crazy. Tyrant Obama is using the power of the government to keep veterans out? They have no ability to see cause and effect. The world is just series random calamity for Values Voters.
jl
@Roger Moore: If the consequences weren’t so serious, I’d hope for a sequence of Native American, Asian, Hispanic, gay, women, Buddhist and Antarctican presidents, in no particular order. Maybe the GOP will retrograde itself so much that a Jewish or Polish or Italian President would freak them out after that.
But, better try to reduce the number of crazies in the House in the next midterms first.
Edit: since the base’s freakouts and consequent effects on nutcases in the House GOP could get people killed. and probably have already.
Edit: forgot to mention possibiility of muslin president. Anyway, the freakouts would be awesome. But the political consequences might not be, until the House gets regulated somehow.
muddy
@Villago Delenda Est: @beltane: Commenter Randy P put this link in a previous thread: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html
Imagine Harry in the dinosaur costume.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman:
Yes, but he was the worst kind of race traitor. He treated the blahs like they were actual humans.
There is no greater crime, in the eyes of the Confederates.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Whilst rapidly traveling up and down in his car elevator. “Mwa-ha-ha-ha, you could have elected a Real Mormon but you’re stuck with ME!”
muddy
@Villago Delenda Est: He didn’t even get offended when people said, 1st black prez.
Actually I think Bill is a little jealous that no one says that to him anymore.
jl
@trollhattan: Reid could dress up in 19th century Mormon garb (if there is such a thing) and ride around through DC on a white horse announcing he was saving the country. That would be fun.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
NOT the White Horse prophecy that Joseph Smith or his successors imagined, I would think. Certainly not the one that Mittens saw.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est:
I love this gem from Pat Lang:
Baud
@raven:
Too many pronouns. Could not follow.
beltane
@Roger Moore: The GOP’s only hope of stopping Obama in 2008 was to abandon the dog whistle in favor of a bullhorn. Sarah Palin was the perfect vessel to connect with the proudly stupid, angry-at-the-world, white supremacists that make up the Republican base. Once the RW third-party groups realized they could use overt racism to control their base with little or no pushback from the media, they dialed it up to eleven and are now unable to dial it back even to ten. Had McCain picked someone like Kay Bailey Hutchison, we may still have reached the point where we’re at now, but it would have taken longer.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
I’m not sure Pat Lang really understands what is going on here. He seems to think that these clowns accept the name. He forgets that they started out as teabaggers until we on the left pointed and laughed at them. THEN they insisted they were “tea partyers”, and denied that they ever called themselves “tea baggers”.
Me, I’m wishing more and more that the 19th Century Radical Republicans got their way. Sherman was waaay too easy on those sons of bitches.
raven
Who de’s auditors the fucking IRS!!!!!!!
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I think it’s hilarious, like NOT calling them this or that will change their behavior.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
Yeah, but they didn’t try to default on the debt or question his birth certificate. The craziest stuff they talked about with the Clintons was focused on Hillary rather than Bill, which shows just how deranged they get when the wrong kind of person gets too close to the levers of power.
VOR
@efgoldman: “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” – Mark Twain.
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” – also Mark Twain.
lamh36
posted this on a previous thread, but since it had to do with the VVS I’ll re-post it here.
Man. I’ve always wanted to be in the medical field. for the longest time the dream was to become a doctor, for many reasons that didn’t happen. but back in my pre-med days I was in such awe of Dr Ben Carson. He was the biggest named African American surgeon in th country. I was in awe of his talent and work. well what a difference maturity makes along with finally becoming politically more aware, I am so disappointed in Dr Carson…SMDH. I still respect his accomplishments, but I am no longer and will probably never again be in awe of him. he may still be a great and smart surgeon, but he’s no longer such a “great icon” as he once was to me.
Ben Carson compares Obamacare to slavery
Having said all that, what makes it sad is that no surprise, them folk can’t tell one nigra from another:
A couple Value Voters Summit attendees walk in as Tim Scott speaks. “Oh good, this is Ben Carson,” one whispers to the other.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
As if they’re not already doing that? WTF?
The stupid, it BURNS!
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
To repeat, it’s always projection with these assholes. Always. I grow weary of the bullshit.
Baud
@raven:
Awesome. The GOP shuts down the government and risks our economy to give the IRS more authority.
schrodinger's cat
@lamh36: Carson is probably just jealous. I had no idea who he was till the right wing media started promoted him.
OT: BTW I am in the process of watching Parade’s End on DVD and both Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall rock. So different from his Sherlock role. Have you watched it?
Roger Moore
@jl:
I’ll be thrilled if our next two Presidents were a gay athiest and a Hispanic Jewish woman, if only because:
A) those people are overwhelmingly likely to come from the sane party rather than the crazy party, and
B) it would mean that we continue to have regular Presidential elections
Suffern ACE
@raven: for six weeks? And the shutdown doesn’t end Dems adopt the Ryan budget?
raven
@Suffern ACE: From WAPO:
trollhattan
@lamh36:
I’m thinking:
a. Dropped on head
b. Past his expiration date
c. Shrooms, lots of shrooms
Some combination of the above. Can we at least agree to never point a camera at him again?
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
You put that Hispanic Jewish woman in a gay wheelchair RIGHT NOW, mister!
RobertDSC-PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25
The GOP terrorists made their first foray into the default sweepstakes but Clinton and his people snuffed that out right quick. They didn’t mince words in telling Newt and his gang of thugs not to try it.
lamh36
@schrodinger’s cat: well his accomplishment were/are BIG deals in African American households. especially back in the day. I contend every one of us knew his name or could recognize his name (heck there was even a movie about him where he was played by Cuba Gooding Jr).
So he WAS/IS a big deal. That’s what makes his whole RWNJ spin so disappointing
gbear
@jl: If a Native American ran for president, they’d say s/he wasn’t an American because s/he was born on a reservation.
schrodinger's cat
@lamh36: OK that makes more sense to me now.
lamh36
LeftCoastTom
@Roger Moore: Well, there were the GOP claims that the Klinons [sic] had murdered the entire population of Mena, Arkansas. A claim that even a mildly curious person could have investigated by merely driving through the place.
MikeJ
@raven:
And then, when it takes an extra week to get approved, they get to complain about government red tape and bureaucrats slowing everything down.
Mike in NC
The very definition of Peak Wingnut, right there my friends.
muddy
@gbear: Yeah, they know it’s foreign because they illegally order cigs from there on the internet.
Actually that may not be current. The last libertarian “intelligence” I gathered was that they get them from Israel now instead. Would not have been my first guess.
lamh36
@schrodinger’s cat: have not watched that Cumberbatch pic. I’ll add it to my long list of queued movies…I have alot…lol.
Speaking of Cumberbatch, he was a guest on the Graham Norton Show’s new season along with Harrison Ford and another guy. Here’s a clip of a bit of the show:
LeftCoastTom
@Mike in NC: That sounds like you’re issuing a challenge…my belief is they’re up to it.
the Conster
@MikeJ:
Thank the FSM that there will be playoff baseball to distract us from this madness. Blessed Be the Red Sox.
Honus
@Feudalism Now!: Not random calamity: calamity imposed by the government. The Park Service is allowing some national parks to temporarily reopen with state funds. This is the reaction of one Utah store owner:
“It’s going to be awesome,” said Jenna Milligan of Zion Outfitters, an outdoor gear rental shop. “A lot of businesses have suffered severely because of the government. I just hope it does stay open through autumn.”
See, its the government that’s hurting these people by not being there to do what it’s been doing to facilitate them making a living. It’s the government’s fault it’s shut down.
amk
@Mike in NC: Nope, the peak wingnut was achieved when these nutters claimed putin as their messiah.
lamh36
Anybody watching the Alec Baldwin show on MSNBC?
What do we think?
BTW, I like this DeBlasio dude. He seems like a good dude.
dogwood
@lamh36:
You know, I’m a middle class/middle-aged white woman. I don’t pretend to know what it is like to be poor and white let alone poor and black/Hispanic/native American etc. But I do have the requisite imagination and empathy needed to understand it’s a pretty crappy lot in life. Since my ethos is pretty middle- class, I often think how tedious and insulting all this shit must be to African Americans who are middle class like me. I mean they can’t really stop middle class and upper class blacks from voting with these draconian voter I’d laws, so they just keep insulting you for the perverted fun of it.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@lamh36: I’m recording, but not currently watching it. What’s it like?
Mike in NC
@schrodinger’s cat:
Coma-inducingly bad, IMHO…
fleeting expletive
I’m watching Alec Baldwin. I think it’s good, maybe gonna be great. I love the set and the long-form interview. He’s blowing Bill Maher out of the water for sure. Maher’s got a real freak show going on tonight. It’s intolerable to my mind.
schrodinger's cat
@lamh36: Its an HBO miniseries in five one hour episodes, based on Ford Maddox Ford’s tetralogy covers the same period as Downton Abbey, so far I am impressed.
amk
@Honus:
woof, their logic will kill even einstein.
schrodinger's cat
@Mike in NC: I liked the first episode, but then I am a fan of British literature, E M Forester, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Wodehouse, George Eliot, etc. etc Added bonus : Cumberbatch!
srv
Can we start an Act Blue for Canadian Republicans?
More the merrier.
amk
sam wang asks
g
Nutcases. God help us, get them out of our government.
the Conster
@lamh36:
I’m watching it. I like it a lot – watching Alec without a shtick is refreshing, because he’s asking things I would ask. BTW, the ad they just showed for Captain Phillips – that movie is going to actually make nutjob heads explode like that cracker in The Black White Supremacist. It was the first thing Obama did to kill America’s enemy, and it’s about hostage taking and negotiation, and how Obama called the shots. I’m not sure how we’re going to know they’ve gone full metal wingnut horizon crazy.
lamh36
@The prophet Nostradumbass: @fleeting expletive:
I caught a bit of the interview with DeBlasio.
I think it has great potential. Alec’s demeanor and delivery and interview style is good one-on-one style.
DeBlasio was a kinda easy first choice for guest (especially since Baldwin is an NYC resident and a Dem).
The restaurant setting is different and had a nice ambiance to it.
It def has potential. At the very least, it does have a built-in draw for big named guest to come on show solely on Baldwn’s big celeb appeal. At least enough for MSNBC to let it marinate and mature…hopefully. And I know people here like Chris Hayes, but if MSNBC is willing to let Hayes continue on with so-so ratings, then Baldwin’s show def has good chances.
I can’t wait for Tina Fey, cause you know Alec will have to have Tina on the show!
TheMightyTrowel
OT: I am not very impressed with LAX AA/Qantas lounge. The booze costs money (tho qantas club get drink vouchers!), the TVs are locked on CNBC and NFL and the only savoury food available for free is a big tray of carrots and a pile of ham sandwiches. it struck me that this is the first airline lounge I’ve ever been in where no alternative to pork was on offer. Nobody expects the
SpanishAngelino Inquisition!NotMax
@lamh36
Was out running necessary errands, but will catch the rebroadcast.
So glad they aren’t running the prison dreck.
lamh36
@the Conster: naw they’ll just see it as the “white man giving it to them dark summ-a-ma-bitches”…
I do love Tom Hanks though, but I’m not one for big dramas at the movies. I tend to use theatres as escape from dramas, real-life and otherwise :-)
Paddy
I would have never made it thru if we had this back when-
Video- The Formidable Beer Pong Table
lamh36
@NotMax: oh, I think they will still be showing the prison break shhh on the weekends
mdblanche
@Villago Delenda Est: “Me, I’m wishing more and more that the 19th Century Radical Republicans got their way. Sherman was waaay too easy on those sons of bitches.”
I doubt that ever could have happened. Ulysses Grant almost singlehandedly kept Reconstruction from ending even earlier, but when he died half his pallbearers were former Union generals and half were former Confederate generals. This wasn’t some symbolic gesture of reconciliation, they really were Grant’s closest friends in life. One of the ex-Confederates had been Grant’s best man back before the recent unpleasantness. There were always enough social connections between the two sides that reconciling on the backs of a despised minority was probably the most likely endgame for Reconstruction all along. It has always been thus, and the two sides are still conjoined today. I live in one of the bluest areas in the country, but you’d never know it at one of my family reunions.
TAPX486
I was watching Anderson Cooper till I threw the tire iron thru the TV. He had two talking parrots on. Ralph Reed and a blond GOP mouthpiece. He pretty much let them run thru the talking points. Oh how evil of Obama not to negotiate and how we keep borrowing all the money from the poor starving Chinese children. Absolutely nothing that they were so upset about bothered them when shrub was president.
I’m not particularly religious but do try to treat my fellow man the way I learned in Sunday school. However after reading a story, with photos, of the soldiers who have died in these wars and of their families I’m not sure there is any disease that is painful enough and long and lingering enough for these people. We can start with Bush and work our way down to Steve King, Bachmann, Palin and the rest of the pond scum
Hill Dweller
@TAPX486: The Village willingly enables Republican extremism.
Yatsuno
@TheMightyTrowel: That seems odd, considering the diverse religious populations of LA. I’m not even sure I can blame the shit show that is LAX for that.
PS: the lady in this commercial is my friend’s mother.
TheMightyTrowel
@Yatsuno: So weird. Also disappointing. Most qantas lounges provide multiple sweet and savouries hot and cold and as much booze as you can swallow for free
Yatsuno
@TheMightyTrowel: I’d complain, especially if you fly Qantas a lot. There should be some sort of alternative available. My kingdom for a Cornish pasty!
TheMightyTrowel
@Yatsuno: Or even some hummus! How can they have carrot sticks without hummus??!!?? isn’t that illegal these days?
Yatsuno
@TheMightyTrowel: I think that gets you kicked out of most Mediterranean countries these days. Oi.
TheMightyTrowel
@Yatsuno: How is life under the shut down btw? I’ve been totally off the web – at a wedding in LA then chilling (ha ha ha) with my mom in SF (my mom is constitutionally unable to ‘chill’).
The only news I’ve seen in 10 days was a piece on the local SF news last night about how miffed the local (?CBS) affiliate was that Air Canada (I think) wouldn’t give them an interview about a dog which escaped while being shipped from SF to Calgary. They got an email from the AC press office that was accidentally sent to this affiliate instead of the spokesperson and which said something like ‘it’s just a local lost dog news story. don’t comment further. their whole government is shut down, you’d think they’d have better things to report.’ The affiliate, I fear you’ll be unsurprised to hear, was furious that any random PR person at an airline would tell them that the govt shutdown was more worthy of coverage than a LOST DOG.
I laughed until I cried.
janut
@efgoldman: Yes, and the same with Carter.
burnspbesq
The rhetoric on display on the right is starting to sound disturbingly like the 1860 campaign.
Viva BrisVegas
@TAPX486:
You do realise that he is a Vanderbilt, of the Vanderbilts that owned America before the Rockefellers.
If his blood was any bluer, they could use it to dye his mother’s jeans.
evil is evil
Brendan F. Behan – “All publicity is good publicity except your own obituary.”
Wally Ballou
NLCS watch: Dodgers and Cards tied 2-2 in the 10th.
Condolences to Cole and his fellow Yinzers, but this looks like it’s going to be a great series .
billgerat
@TheMightyTrowel: I can tell you how life is under the shutdown – IT SUCKS. The last federal pay checks went out, and they are for 10 days worth for exempted from furlough employees, and six days for furloughed employees. I was designated furloughed initially, but on that first day, I received an exemption and have been working through. But because of that initial furlough status, I only got 6 days. Thank God I kept hold of the $4 grand I had saved up for the sequester furloughs earlier this year that I got exempted from. Most of my coworkers are living from check to check, so they are the ones who will really be hurting if the shutdown lasts much longer.
Knight of Nothing
@Gex: I imagine that encountering Cleek’s Law for the first time is akin to discovering Newton’s Laws of Motion – suddenly it all makes sense.
Yatsuno
@TheMightyTrowel: @billgerat: I just put in my unemployment application. I shouldn’t be getting a paycheck on Monday, so the money I have is what’s in the bank and my wallet right now. Car payment is getting deferred and my hair is going beautifully into Jewfro mode. Fun, this ain’t. The only thing really keeping my sanity is my folks told me to camp out at their place with the dogs so I’ve had my face licked off by two border collies and two Dachshunds.
fuckwit
@efgoldman: They didn’t like him because he was an outsider. Of course, we elected him precisely because he was an outsider. But not only didn’t the R’s like him but the D establishment had a shiv in for him right from the get go as well.
Ahh says fywp
@lamh36: ya thats what I got from the trailer so I’m giving it a miss. Actually, never thought I would feel sympathy for Somali pirates but now I’m wondering what happened in their lives to try something so futile and dangerous.
JR in WV
@TheMightyTrowel:
But, but, carrots aren’t pork! or are they?
Jebediah, RBG
@Ahh says fywp:
If I recall correctly, they got tired of their coastal waters being destroyed by international assholes illegally dumping toxic waste, ruining the fishing they used to be able to do. “International boats ruined our livelihood, international boats will provide our new livelihood” doesn’t seem too irrational if one is desperate.
g
@lamh36: I found Carson’s comparison of Obamacare to slavery offensive but pretty much the norm among tea-baggers – Obamacare’s been compared to the Holoccaust and Pol Pot and everything else. The offensiveness resonates more when it’s said by a black man, but we’ve heard this kind of hyperbole before.
What I found offensive in Carson’s speech was his notion that women need to be “re-educated” to become anti-abortion. There’s so much wrong there I can’t put it into words.