Completely not safe for work:
Tell me that anything Gilbert Gottfried said was more obscene than this.
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Republican Venality, Assholes, Sociopaths
Completely not safe for work:
Tell me that anything Gilbert Gottfried said was more obscene than this.
by Betty Cracker| 167 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016, Glibertarianism, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, The Party of Fiscal Responsibility, Assholes, Schadenfreude
I’m not sure tribble-topped presidential aspirant Rand Paul recovers from this:
In a variety of campaign appearances that were captured on video, Paul repeatedly compared Reagan unfavorably to Carter on one of Paul’s top policy priorities: government spending. When Paul was a surrogate speaker for his father, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), during the elder Paul’s 2008 presidential quest, his sales pitch included dumping on Reagan for failing to rein in federal budget deficits. Standing on the back of a truck and addressing the crowd at the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers picnic in July 2007, Rand Paul complained about Reagan and praised his father for having opposed Reagan’s budget…”
David Corn’s Mother Jones article linked above includes six video clips of Baby Doc slagging on Reagan as a spendthrift as the younger Paul campaigned for his daddy. What Paul says about Reagan exploding the debt is all true, of course.
And it’s not wise to underestimate the Republican base’s capacity to ignore facts and focus on shiny objects: That’s how they came to deify the folksy, addled, debt-exploding Z-grade actor as an exemplar of fiscal rectitude in the first place.
But imagine the field day Paul’s primary opponents will have parading this heresy before the cameras at every debate. The message that Reagan actually was a profligate spendthrift won’t sink in, but the fact that Paul unfavorably compared Baby Jeebus Reagan to Satan’s Valet Carter sure will.
This post is in: Lies, Damned Lies, and Sarah Palin, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes
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Silly Season must’ve come early this year. Gawker [warning: NSFW gif at top of comments] goes for the scare headline: “Sweet Jesus, Sarah Palin May Be Running for Senate This Year“:
… Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll noted yesterday that a possible Sarah Palin candidacy for senator is getting a boost from Dan Backer, the high-powered Tea Party attorney who just struck a blow for unlimited campaign donations in the Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon v. FEC ruling…
Kroll points out that the email—which asks readers for an immediate donation to the PAC—could just be a cynical use of Palin’s name to generate funds for other uses. But he adds that Palin did show interest in the seat on Sean Hannity’s show last year, and with the Democrats’ thin Senate majority depending on races like this one, it’s thought her star power could give Republicans a needed win—in Alaska, and in the war to mobilize a nationwide voting base…
Ya think? Sarah Palin is no more running for President Senate than I am, and for exactly the same reason — neither of us wants to work that hard. I would hope “high-powered Tea Party attorney” Backer offers Sarah a kickback on whatever funds her name helps separate from the rubes, or at least some media face-time, but on the other hand, every public hissy-fit between rightwing grifters is a gift to the Alaskan Democrat:
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Jumping the SharknadoPost + Comments (21)
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes, Schadenfreude
Jason Grant, at the NJ Star-Ledger:
David Wildstein, the former Port Authority official at the center of the George Washington Bridge lane-closings scandal, spent several days meeting with federal prosecutors in Newark last week, according to a report posted online by a Washington-based publication that says it covers “insider news” about the U.S. Department of Justice…
On Friday, The Star-Ledger and other news organizations reported that Fishman’s office is now hearing testimony from witnesses in front of a federal grand jury in Newark, a significant step that shows the growing seriousness and depth of the investigation. Michael Drewniak, the chief spokesman for Christie, testified in front of the grand jury on Friday, his lawyer confirmed…
The hearing of grand-jury testimony in the bridge scandal is considered a major development. What began as a preliminary inquiry when U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman announced in January that he would try to determine whether any federal laws have been “implicated” has now morphed into a deepening criminal probe to decide whether federal laws have been broken…
John Cassidy, at the New Yorker:
… Thanks to the Bridgegate scandal, and the torrent of e-mails, internal documents, and unvarnished interviews it unleashed, we have been able to see the real Christie, and it isn’t an edifying sight. It’s so ugly, in fact, that Christie will almost certainly not survive its public display. “I really don’t know about the Presidency,” Joy Behar, the former co-host of “The View,” said to Christie at a recent political roast in Newark, which Ryan recounts in his piece. “Let me put it to you this way, in a way that you’d appreciate: You’re toast.” Behar may have been joking: she is a comedienne. But, with a federal grand jury busy hauling in Christie’s aides to explain what they know about the Bridgegate scandal, there can’t be many people who disagree with her analysis…
On Friday, one of Christie’s longtime aides, Michael Drewniak, gave testimony to the grand jury. (He is not a target, his attorney told ABC News.) According to some reports, the criminal investigation could take up to eighteen months. With all this hanging over the Governor, it seems almost inconceivable that he would plunge into a Presidential campaign. If he did, he would be inviting attacks not just from Democrats but from some Republicans as well, and particularly from Thomas Kean, Sr., the former Republican Governor of the state, who for many years served as Christie’s mentor and close adviser.
Last year, for reasons that remain murky, Christie turned against Kean’s son, Thomas Kean, Jr., who was running for reëlection as the minority leader in the New Jersey state senate. Despite the Governor’s opposition, Kean, Jr., won the vote, but he and his father did not forgive and forget. In January, after Christie, in a two-hour press conference, denied knowing anything about the lane closures, the senior Kean went on MSNBC and said that, while he believed Christie, “I think there are still unanswered questions” about why his appointees did what they did. In an interview with Ryan, Kean went further, asking whether Christie had “created an atmosphere in which some of those people thought they were doing his will because they were getting back at people.” He added, “If you cross Christie, he’ll come back at you, even years later. So his people might have picked up that kind of thing.”
This, remember, is Christie’s former friend and sponsor—a man who has known him since he was a teen-ager, who gave him his start in politics, and who wrote to President George W. Bush to support his 2002 appointment as the United States Attorney for New Jersey, the post he used as a springboard to the governorship. If Christie can’t get Kean and others who know him well to vouch for him, how is he going to get the support of his fellow Republicans, let alone independents and Democrats?…
Given the GOP penchant for vindictive venality, one can never say never about any Repub’s chances of ‘redemption’. But right now, I suspect there are a few former Romney oppo-research aides congratulating each other on having avoided at least one bullet.
Chris Christie: What Is the Sound of One Heel Charring?Post + Comments (43)
This post is in: Republican Venality, Assholes, Decline and Fall, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
There are people, even Democrats, who will forgive George Herbert Walker Bush for stealing the election from Mike Dukakis. (I am not among those people; proof of Jefferson’s electoral diddling turned up after 200 years, but I’m thinking it will take rather less than that for evidence of Lee Atwater fiddling the 1988 Ohio results to burble to the surface of the swamp.) There are people willing to forgive his tenure (official or otherwise) in the CIA. There are even people who are willing to forgive GHWB sandbagging the Iran-Contra investigation, staging the first Gulf War for his paymasters in Saudi Arabia, “spearheading” NAFTA, and nuturing The C-Plus Augustus.
Those people are idiots, criminals, or both:
The elder George Bush will not give a speech. He is done with all that, he tells friends. But he will mingle and reminisce and bask in the admiration of graying men and women who helped him govern at a time when, some thought, they had reached the end of history.
As it happens, history is not done with Mr. Bush, at least not if his advocates have anything to say about it. More than 800 supporters, allies, aides and even former opponents of Mr. Bush, the 41st president, will gather in College Station, Tex., on Friday for a three-day reunion to mark the 25th anniversary of the first Bush administration and try to burnish its legacy along the way…
Frail from a form of Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Bush, 89, has benefited from a wave of historical revisionism that has transformed him from the biggest incumbent loser since William Howard Taft to, by at least one measure, the most popular former president of the past half century….
Even for anyone stupid, or venal, enough to forgive George Herbert Walker Bush his many other crimes, one name will forever remain as a stain against him and his Presidential tenure:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Late Night Open Thread: Me, I’m Praying for A MeteorPost + Comments (131)
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Excellent Links, Republican Venality, War, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin., Sociopaths
Calum Marsh, from Esquire‘s Political Blog:
… In his more than thirty-five years as a documentarian, Errol Morris has profiled a lot of delusional people: Holocaust deniers, unpunished murderers, serial killer obsessives. None are as oblivious to their own mistakes as Donald Rumsfeld proves to be in this film. The Unknown Known has been criticized in some quarters for going too easy on its subject, but the truth is that Morris simply takes a more subtle approach. He doesn’t ridicule or undermine Rumsfeld; he doesn’t resort to rhetorical shortcuts or attempt to trick him into the corner of a lie. He doesn’t need to. It’s an axiom of literary criticism that the most damning evidence is always direct quotation. Morris does just that: He hangs Rumsfeld with his own words.
We had the chance to catch up with Morris in the lead-up to The Unknown Known’s release this week to talk politics, language, and why some critics have misunderstood the film…
Esquire: One of the things I find fascinating about the film is that it’s neither a portrait of a master manipulator nor an exposé of somebody who is lying, but rather a profile of a person so impressed by his own aphorisms and slogans that they’re enough for him. He’s not hiding the truth, because he doesn’t have anything to hide.
EMorris: More or less, yes. There’s that smile, throughout the movie—to me it’s that look of supreme self-satisfaction. Look what I just said. I’m the cat who’s just swallowed the canary. I’m so smart, I’m so clever. And yet when you look at these principles—at times I call them Chinese fortune cookie philosophies—they quickly devolve into nonsense talk….
ESQ: When he’s being vague or evasive, is he deliberately trying to hide something, or is that kind of nonsense sincerely all he can give?
EMorris: Again you’ve gone to the heart of the movie. I don’t know whether it’s ever possible to pin him down in that regard. My own thought is that there’s nothing there—that in the end all you’re left with is the smile…
I went to Google to try and track down some of the 2003/4 conservative semi-erotica written about Rumsfeld (“No doubt about it, Don Rumsfeld is a stud muffin”), and got distracted by the NYTimes review (with video!) of Morris’ film:
…Clips from press briefings during the Iraq war illustrate his penchant for using semantics as a weapon, one he wields with undiminished glee against Mr. Morris. When the filmmaker presses him on the “torture memos” authorizing harsh treatment of suspected terrorists, Mr. Rumsfeld rephrases the question in such a way as to minimize any moral stigma and also any hint of his own responsibility. “Little different cast I just put on it than the one you did,” he says, breaking into a smile and raising a finger of triumph. “I’ll chalk that one up.”…
Once again, the Bush Regency motto: “We create our own reality.”
When I was a teenager, I was fascinated by the McKinley-era explanations of why America “needed” to annex the Philippines — for the “little brown brothers”‘s own good, as a bulwark against those other empires, because Manifest Destiny required that “we” take up our rightful place as The One True Christian Nation. But those Mark-I robber barons at least believed they were called upon to make a serious argument (even if they didn’t believe what they were arguing). The Cheney Crime Syndicate didn’t even bother with the argument part — just a blizzard of ‘snowflake’ Rumsfeld memos and a steady pipeline of Rove-to-Fox-News bullshit.
This post is in: Republican Venality, Assholes
So the NYTimes published an article examining the scholarly theory that “Spite Is Good. Spite Works“:
… Although groups of excessively spiteful or selfish players quickly collapsed, and rigidly fair-minded societies were readily destabilized by influxes of selfish exploiters, the flexible sharers not only proved able to coexist with the spiteful types, but the presence of spitefuls had the salubrious effect of enhancing the rate of fair exchanges among the genials. By the looks of it, Dr. Smead said, “fairness is acting as a defense against spite.” …
… and right on cue, here’s the Washington Post interviewing Would-Be President Rick Santorum:
… It’s like “The Passion of the Christ” meets Bruce Springsteen meets “Election.”
History says that Rick Santorum should be the next Republican nominee for president. Republicans are wont to nominate the guy who came in second the last time around (see: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney). Having won 11 states in 2012, Santorum should be the front-runner.
The problem for him is that no one believes this will be the case…
The first question, of course, is whether he will run. Who would want to put their nine-person family through the wringer once again, all for the chance of going up against an expanded list of conservative candidates? If he were to do so, and then lose Iowa, that would almost certainly be the nail in his political coffin…
“I’m in Iowa,” he says. “I’m traveling around the country giving speeches. I’m writing a book. I’m doing everything that’s necessary to be in position to make a decision.”
But he’s also put himself in the position to make a bunch more money. Coming in second in 2012 meant he could give speeches for an average of about $40,000 to $50,000 per gig. Matt Beynon, who has worked for Santorum in various capacities for years, says that before 2012 he was “making just a small fraction of that.”
By being a potential contender, he gets to keep his speaking fees high and can bring attention to his EchoLight Studios, which makes faith-based movies.
“Everybody has a script, everybody has an idea, everybody wants to make a movie,” Santorum humblebrags about the business like a seasoned Hollywood pro (his company is actually based in Dallas). “I’ve never felt so popular.”…
Much as I hate to admit it, Mark Ames wasn’t wrong about a significant chunk of the American (Republican, middle-to-working class, non-coastal mostly-white mostly-male, Christian-identifying) electorate — the Spite Voters:
… If the left wants to understand American voters, it needs to once and for all stop sentimentalizing them as inherently decent, well-meaning people being duped by a tiny cabal of evil oligarchs—because the awful truth is that they’re mean, spiteful jerks being duped by a tiny cabal of evil oligarchs. The left’s naïve, sentimental, middle-class view of “the people” blinds them to all of the malice and spite that is a major premise of Middle American life….
This is America, not Denmark. In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness. They are attracted to viciousness for a lot of reasons…
…[W]hat if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated…