@DamonLinker Theoconservatism had many flaws, but it was the least racialized conservatism of modern times.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) March 1, 2016
It is not possible to be more wrong than Douthat is here. https://t.co/DePbBy4mNm
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) July 14, 2017
“President Pence”, he murmurs to himself, and would slip a hand down his pants if he didn’t believe that sort of thing leads to blindness and hairy palms…
may I suggest to these gents a passage from Jefferson Davis's The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government? (https://t.co/qQ43pl9M9a) pic.twitter.com/DryU1IqrHA
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 14, 2017
.
He’s not calling for an Inquisition, for pete’s sake! He just wants all the gore and dirty talk firmly removed from the public arena!
The Bible has a lot of sex and violence but it does not lovingly draw out the details of every torture or rely constantly on sexposition.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 14, 2017
The tales of Elijah and Elisha beg a word. https://t.co/GBLMhv6Fea
— Alex Hazanov (@alexhazanov) July 14, 2017
(Ref: “God had His men leading the charge for righteousness.”)
Shakespeare can be bloody but the stage directions do not allocate 15 minutes of stage time for Gloucester's eye-gouging. Etc.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 14, 2017
Actually Shakespeare's death scenes are extremely drawn out involving extended soliloquy about how they're bleeding out https://t.co/RP1bSyTHWr
— Will Caskey (@WillCaskey) July 14, 2017
If Erick Erickson is the HOA director of the GOP’s gated community, Ross Douthat is the pastor of the neighborhood’s “nondenominational” megachurch.
And if I thought they were capable of it, I’d say the suits doing the hiring at the NYTimes should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging him.
khead
I thought maybe you were quoting Douthat spoof tweets. My bad there.
We are hosting my wife’s goddaughter for the week. Jersey Shore (Wildwood) tomorrow. So glad is had (kinda) cooled off.
efgoldman
You’re funny, Anne, Next thing, you’re going to suggest that we should take them seriously because they hired the idiot climate change denier for the op ed page.
ETA: Anybody, reader, editor, or publisher who takes Douthat seriously probably ought not to be running around loose in public unsupervised.
Yarrow
President Pence? Don’t think so. Trump’s going to throw him under the bus.
sdhays
@khead: I believed the first one was real on the first pass, but the others required a triple take to believe that even Ross was that stupid.
Brachiator
There is no intellectual content in anything that Brooks or Douthat writes. None. Nada. Zip. We’re talking black hole levels of nothingness. Existential emptiness. The spirits of dead thoughts drip from his word processor.
Yarrow
I don’t think he’s got the charisma required to be the head pastor. He’s an associate pastor. it’s not enough to give him the respect he thinks he deserves. And he’s got secrets.
prostratedragon
Having thus unburdened himself, he exited, pursued by a bear.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Yarrow:
I suspect Trump has as much concern for Dense as he does yesterday’s KFC wet knaps.
? Martin
That’s possible only because the bar is almost impossibly low. But I’m not sure what the point is of mentioning it is – theoconservatives voted for Trump because he promised to keep white Christians in power at all cost. As an atheist, I have a hard time seeing a faustian bargain such as that as a moral pillar to be proud of.
hellslittlestangel
I’ll remember this the next time someone asks me what “damning with faint praise” means.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Didn’t you mean unrestrained?
Yutsano
@Brachiator:
My dear sir, this is an insult to black holes. A black hole is intensely dense matter, it does not deserve such a comparision to the vacuous writings of Doubthat.
Anyone else heard about Grandpa Walnuts being out for a week & how it’s going to affect the vote?
joel hanes
@efgoldman:
Douthat takes himself seriously. Very very seriously.
So seriously that the rest of us are relieved of the burden of taking Douthat seriously at all, or even pretending to,
since Douthat does enough of that for all of us.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
Some of you are way too polite. He is exactly that stupid.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@prostratedragon:
I had to look that up to recall it… been a long time since I read Winter’s Tale!
Yarrow
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Yep. And Pence is seriously compromised. Trump will throw everyone under the bus in attempts to save himself. Pence may have been too dumb to know that’s how Trump works when he signed up for the VP position, but he’s going to find out.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
See, now Brachiator gets it.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Yutsano:
Yertle has already declared he will table until Grampy returns all pink and surly.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Yarrow:
Pence is too dumb to work his fly without Mother’s assistance.
Brachiator
@Yutsano: From various news stories
In other words, the Senate will not return to it’s task of taking health insurance away from Americans until Senator McCain has had a chance to fully benefit from having health insurance that is provided by the government.
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
My thought is that he will be out for longer than a week and turtle already said it would delay the vote. My big question is would gramps stay out longer and give other goppers the cover to walk away without having to vote? IOW is he also throwing turtle under the bus?
Yes I know it’s unlikely to very unlikely but it is possible.
Yutsano
@West of the Rockies (been a while): TBH John Sidney McCain should have retired this last election. I’m sure he’d be much happier with barecue on his tire swing getting Sunday show invites than deal with the shit show that is the Senate. But this also gives the Turtle a week to try and come up with more bribes.
Yarrow
@West of the Rockies (been a while): That’s not what some of the blind item gossip sites say about his sexcapades during GOP Governor conferences.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
That doesn’t mean he isn’t too dumb to work a zipper, at least without catching himself in it. @Yarrow:
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Huh?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Yutsano:
He and his wife are worth ten’s of millions… he must have a colossal need for fame and power to still be “working” at his age. Why the Kochs are still scrabbling after dollars at their age when they’ve got billions is a testament to human greed.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
My god, that was fucking brutal. The Post should can this clown’s ass.
I lawl’d so damn hard at this sentence
Yarrow
@Ruckus: I don’t really care about his zipper abilities. He’s shown himself to be plenty dumb in all the ways that should count for someone who is our VP.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Ruckus: He probably needs “Mother” to work his winky too
GregB
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Thank God we have recently learned that the obscenely wealthy cannot be corrupted by seeking public graft because they are already rich.
At least that was the talking point forwarded to justify Trump’s plutocratic cabinet picks.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
sdhays was seemingly giving a slight pass to Do That and next comment you nailed it.
So you got the point. Is it possible you are worse at taking compliments than I am?
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
This is of course true, I’m just in a bit of a mood and sort of riffing on other’s comments.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: From all the photos and videos I’ve seen of Pence and “Mother” it certainly looks like she keeps him in line.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Yarrow: Too bad El Presidente can’t fire him. Vicepresidente can be removed via impeachment. Doubt GOP controlled Congress will do that tho
divF
I don’t think our boy Ross has ever seen Titus Andronicus. And let’s not even talk about Webster.
One of the things his beloved theocracy would normalize is violence against the apostate and the different. But that doesn’t count for him, since he doesn’t think they would round him up. He is a Catholic, so he is mistaken on that score – the evangelicals would get round to him eventually.
FlipYrWhig
Um, isn’t all of Christian theology dependent on finding meaning in the excruciating torture of Jesus? I mean, it’s not MY religion, but I think if it was, about the last thing I’d be bragging about is how little torture there is in it.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Let’s see how it plays out. Pence is close to Manafort, who recruited him to the Trump campaign. He’s a traitor along with the rest of them. If the heat starts getting too close to Trump, I expect Trump to release dirt on Pence and then Trump will ask him to resign. Who knows what will happen, but a VP resigning has happened before.
Ruckus
@divF:
Isn’t this the main issue with all restrictive societies? They get around to all but the main group if they last long enough and then start restricting even tighter, those who don’t show enough loyalty, or pay enough taxes or have hair or don’t.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@FlipYrWhig:
Don’t forget, his tortue was meant as kind of exchange for all of humanity’s “original sin” because God set humanity up to fail in the first place with placing a tree of knowledge in the middle of a garden.
It’s like leaving an open bottle of pills in front of children and telling them not to try to colorful little pieces that look like candy. Of course they’re going to try it.
Anne Laurie
@divF:
IIRC, Doubthat went Catholic because the Episcopalian church he was raised in wasn’t harsh enough about slutty women and icky queers. If a good old-fashioned Calvinist subcult took over American politics, he’d have switched allegiances before the blood on the President-for-Life Proclamation is dry.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Ha! Yeah, sometimes I am.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Yarrow: Hope Pence has to resign. If that happens, the wheels start to come off even sooner and quicker off this sham administration
TenguPhule
Thanks a lot Anne, I just ate!
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
My bet’s on Trump using one of his own bodyguards to “silence” Pence.
It would make as much sense as anything else so far.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Things are accelerating. I’m anticipating in a week or two we’ll start to hear rumbles about resignations.
Mike G
But enough about Dick Cheney’s bedtime wank material
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Trump’s not Nucky Thompson from Boardwalk Empire. He may do business with gangsters but he’s punching above his weight and is in a world of shit for dealing with thugs like Putin
?BillinGlendaleCA
OT: Madame, myself, and the kid went to the Huntington and had a nice picnic. Most folk were on the lawn in front of the Library, I wandered off and the place was nearly empty, even saw a couple of rabbits.
scav
Has that man ever really looked at much Catholic art and all those statues in churches? Susannah and the Elders? Judith and Holofernes? San Sebastian and all those other martyrs, some holding their cut off breasts and eyeballs so you cna figure out who they are?
Yutsano
@scav: We should show him Hieronymus Bosch Clockwork Orange style.
hellslittlestangel
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Wetwork decisions don’t get made by The Orange Better One, they get made by his boss.
SgrAstar
@Anne Laurie: Yeah, that’s why Douthat hates Pope Francis, who displays a deplorable, un-Jesuslike penchant for charity toward and forgiveness of ‘sinners’. Calvin wouldn’t be having any of that, now…not at all.
NotMax
Douthat is to theology as generic brand hot dogs are to cuisine.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: I think you just unfairly slighted generic brand hot dogs.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
He did.
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
He’s the assistant pastor in charge of the youth ministry, because he’s deemed to be “safe” around the teenage girls.
Major Major Major Major
Man, I haven’t thought about Douthat since his tweets about how the fact that you libtards like game of thrones proves you’re all secretly conservative royalists, right on the heels of his article about how the fact that you libtards like Harry Potter proves you’re all secretly conservative royalists. God, what an idiot. He doesn’t even rise to college republican fishwrap standards.
mskitty
Charlie Pierce refers to him as Ross Cardinal Douthat.
Anne Laurie
@scav:
One of my teenage delights was wandering about the Cloisters, identifying the images of saints by their ‘attributes.’ Extra points, because the nuns who taught parochial school were happy to point out that many of the martyrs’ gruesome deaths led — by the miracle of bureaucracy — to a high glory as ghastly patrons: St. Agatha (breasts) is the patron saint of bellmakers, breadmakers, and more recently breast cancer; St. Lucy (eyeballs) is the patron saint of eye diseases. St. Barbara’s castle still appears on some modern artillery battalion badges because, having fled an unconsecrated marriage, she was supposed to have died under military siege.
And it wasn’t confined to female saints; St. Sebastian’s nearly-nude image, pierced by arrows, was notoriously a favorite of young seminarians who… shall we say, were not tempted to lust after women. St. Laurence, roasted alive on a gridiron, is the patron of cooks and chefs. And then there’s St. Bartholomew, whose gory attribute offended Mark Twain. (The Metropolitan also used to display a painstakingly detailed illuminated manuscript with an incongruously grinning Barthlomew… modern torture porn had nothing on the medievalists.)
sm*t cl*de
@divF:
Yep. Shakespeare helped create the conventions of what became Jacobean revenge tragedy. There’s a reason why the stereotype of Shakespearean over-acting includes “10 minute I’m-not-quite-dead-yet” death scenes.
I mean, Douthat is basically shouting “I have read two-thirds of fuck-all of Shakespeare” with this display of ignorance. He is begging for people to call him a philistine gobshite… entering serial-killer-convention “Stop me before I bloviate again” territory.
sm*t cl*de
@FlipYrWhig:
One of the things we are taught about dealing with psych patients with a tendency to self-harm is “Don’t give them access to a copy of the Bibble”.
That bit about “if thine right eye offendeth thee”, people take it seriously.
Major Major Major Major
@sm*t cl*de:
It’s even parodied by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, god I love that play.
Citizen Alan
@Yarrow:
In a perfect world, exactly 10 minutes after Mike Pence gets sworn in to replace the impeached President Shitgibbon, his secret gay lover of 20 years gives an interview to Rachel Maddow to talk about their love that dare not speak its name, leading to the First Mother walking out on him the next day. Probably not going to happen, but it’s fun to imagine.
Citizen Alan
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Well the wife is. I imagine he is quite wealthy having work for decades in a job that pay is north of $180,000 a year. But John McCain it didn’t have a pot to piss in when he abandoned his first wife to marry the beer heiress whose family Finance his first campaign. I will never get over my boss in 2004 telling me that he hated John Kerry because he thought marrying someone as rich is Teresa Heinz made carry a gigolo. I left that job not long after and I never had the chance to ask him if he felt the same about McCain.
Bruce K
@Citizen Alan: Nah. In a world as close to perfect as we can get given what’s gone down in the past eighteen months, historians argue for centuries over whether Nancy Pelosi counts as America’s first woman President because she was only “acting” President in 2019 and 2020.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
Pence is up to his eyeballs in the Flynn mess.
rikyrah
@Ruckus:
That delay will give the CBO the time it needs to score the Cruz Amendment
Kathleen
@Major Major Major Major: My favorite Shakespeare play. I’ve seen it 3-4 times.
evodevo
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, yes it is … see Passion of the Christ by that renowned moderate Catholic director …. uh, his name escapes me now …..
Joey Maloney
@Yarrow:
Not the associate pastor. He’s the youth pastor. You know, the one that resigns suddenly, amid rumors. And then the cops are seen carting off his office computer.
bystander
Was it already noted that one of Betty Cracker’s tweets was featured on Crooks and Liars?
How long before the lights of the big city are twinkling in her eyes?
bystander
@scav: You can get a full serving of Catholic torture porn at Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome. Thirty some frescoes, each devoted to a vivid depiction of various martyrs. Skin flaying, oil boiling, eye gouging, bear mauling, lion devouring….you name it, this place has it. Plus the largest rotondo church in Rome.
The place is a little ways up the Celian Hill behind the Colosseum. The love of torture, pain, gore and mayhem, always a spectator sport.
Percysowner
Nightmare scenario. Pence resigns. As he’s going out the door, Trump reveals he has enough on Ryan to force him out. Most of Trump’s Cabinet has resigned in disgrace and we end up with our first female President, Betsy DeVos.
Patricia Kayden
A great tweet summarizing how the ACA and Trump Care differ. Hope it goes viral because it captures the ways in which Trump Care screws the average American.
The good thing about the delayed vote is that it gives us more time to call our Senators to oppose this monstrosity. Thank you McCain.
J R in WV
People keep talking about John McCain’s emergency surgery as if it was eye surgery.
It was not. They removed a piece of his skull around his eyebrow, in order to remove a 2+inch blood clot from his brain. Then replaced the skull they removed, and closed things up neatly. He had Brain Surgery, and is dreaming uneasy dreams of being back in charge of the Senate in a week.
With any luck, the brain surgery will enable him to read a simple question in a committee hearing, but not to understand any answers. The man is stupid, bottom of his class at Annapolis, even though every instructor had to know that his father and grandfather were senior Admirals.
He dropped his bomb load into a lake of burning aviation fuel on board the Forrestal CV-59 in 1967. Contrary to emergency drill, standing orders, and common sense. Then after he escaped from his fighter jet, he didn’t take charge of crewmen fighting the fire, which came close to destroying the nearly new carrier, he scurried below decks and hid.
The next day, after the ship was saved by desperately fighting damage control teams, McCain bummed a ride to shore with R J Apple, NYTimes reporter who flew out to the smoking ruin in a helicopter, for some “R&R” all according to his autobiography, which accurately showed him to be unqualified for his role as a pilot, as a member of the Senate, as a husband. In his own words!
Later on he disobeyed his flight orders, flew where he was ordered not to, and got shot down because he flew into SAM range, where he was not to stray.
Removing that blood clot from his brain won’t help his cognition a bit. I just hope he remains disabled long enough to help kill the Senate Death Insurance bill. Best work of his career if so.
bystander
@J R in WV: Are you prepping for McCain’s roast at the Friars? Killer material.
A Ghost to Most
FTFNYT for employing christian fascists, plutocratic greedos, and climate change deniers.
Patricia Kayden
Trump approval rate at 36%. Still too high but it’s the worst for a modern President at the 6 month mark. We’re already sick and tired of all this winning. Stop the winning!
debbie
Yep, President Pence was very busy at the governors’ conference:
Pence’s lie appears to be based on a WSJ lie. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
RobNYNY
@scav:
Catholic scenes of violence against women:
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS738US739&biw=861&bih=419&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=saint+breasts+cut+off&oq=saint+breasts&gs_l=psy-ab.3.0.0.16920.18588.0.21542.7.7.0.0.0.0.272.665.4j1j1.6.0….0…1.1.64.psy-ab..1.6.660…0i8i30k1.dmTVWHGHghw
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS738US739&biw=861&bih=419&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=saint+eyes+gouged+out&oq=saint+eyes+gouged+out&gs_l=psy-ab.3…46166.50038.0.50893.15.15.0.0.0.0.173.1259.13j2.15.0….0…1.1.64.psy-ab..0.5.397…0j0i5i30k1j0i8i30k1j0i30k1.RigAnjMwoVc
debbie
I don’t have much use for much in the Talmud, but I heard this parable earlier this morning:
father pussbucket
@Brachiator:
Perfection.
I’m much taken by the phrase “minimally invasive craniotomy.” I think a lot of Republicans could benefit.
Yellowdog
@Brachiator: A two inch blood clot (i.e. a stroke) in the frontal lobe is pretty big. The frontal lobe involves decision making and higher order thinking skills. Remember that day Gramps seemed confused during Senate testimony? I wonder if he really was having a stroke on national TV.
Uncle Cosmo
@Yarrow: My offhand conjecture: After a few more months of this (mis)Administration discharging serious ordnance into their insteps instead of further engorging their globoligarch masters, Dence’s theocrats organize enough Cabinet votes to push Cheeto Benito aside via Amendment XXV, Section 4. Twitler responds with an I am not incapacitated! message to Congress (ghosted by Daughter-Wife or her beard Jar-Jar Kush). And then the fun begins, as the Dense One’s evil but incompetent Christianist minions discover just how difficult it is to budge a sitting President who doesn’t want to go. Fustercluck? Slapstick kabuki? “We deport, you reside”? You pays your money, you takes your choice – as the Democratic Party sits back & points while laughing its collective arse off…
A Ghost to Most
I’m not laughing, and doubt I will be then. These people have already done irreparable damage (e.g. Gorsuck).
HRA
I have not read the comments yet and want to ask a question. Isn’t it against the law to use money from a Trump 2020 election campaign to hire attorneys for Trump Jr.?
Percysowner
Apparently Trump is under the impression that Theresa May is him employee ‘Fix it for me’: Trump told Theresa May he won’t visit UK until he’s sure he’ll get a warm welcome
Iowa Old Lady
The morning pundit roundup at Kos this morning is as full of despair as I’ve ever seen it. They’re assessing things at the 6 month mark and conclude that (a) we are so screwed it will take a generation to fix it if we ever can, (b) the Republican party is full scale behind Trump, and (c) so are his voters. That’s what we live with.
Lit3Bolt
Apparently the NYT considers its op-ed columnists being whipped like the red-headed stepchildren every week in the intellectual sphere as perfectly fine and normal.
germy
@HRA: Isn’t it against the law to use money from a Trump 2020 election campaign to hire attorneys for Trump Jr.?
Yarrow
@HRA:
Why, yes. Yes it is.
Villago Delenda Est
There’s a reason for calling this smarmy little theotoadie Douchhat.
Villago Delenda Est
@Percysowner: Donnie is expecting the sort of reception he got in the absolute theocracy that is Saudi Arabia.
Matt
Douthat continued: “So that’s why you should download my fan-fiction anthology, which totally does!”
BCHS Class of 1980
@Bruce K: I thought John Tyler settled the “acting” question by essentially ignoring it.