Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

People are complicated. Love is not.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

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Friday Night Fights Open Thread: Aging White Men, Talking Smack

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darth cheney silences poppy bush

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)
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A Democrat once said “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Repubs prefer to think of defeat as a bastard child, and the Bush Crime Cartel is busily Jerry-Springer-ing its paternity.

Mr. Pierce explains:

It seems that Poppy Bush sat down with Parson Meacham to hash out Poppy’s life. And who could be a better wingman for the job than the Parson, who’s made a lucrative business out of the Great Man Theory of American history? In the course of their discussions—which, alas, have led to a book-like object—the elder Bush has some harsh words for a certain former secretary of defense of his casual acquaintance.​​

“I think he served the president badly,” Bush told Meacham, Peter Baker of the New York Times reported, quoting the book. He added: “I’ve never been that close to him anyway. … There’s a lack of humility, a lack of seeing what the other guy thinks. He’s more kick ass and take names, take numbers. I think he paid a price for that.” (Rumsfeld resigned as secretary of defense in 2006 after conditions in Iraq deteriorated. He declined comment about the biography to Fox News…

But then again…

… Poppy ripped Donald Rumsfeld unconditionally, and he said some tough things about Cheney, too, but he also made sure to point out that C-Plus Augustus ran his own shop. Jeb (!) made the same point about who was in charge, and went out of his way to say nice things about Cheney besides…

Why, a political cynic might almost suspect that Darth Cheney had squirreled away some “oppo research” in that man-sized safe he had removed from the Naval Observatory on his way out the door in 2009! Yet however could a man who’d gotten his start in national politics as a CREEPster in Richard Nixon’s administration ever stoop to such low, ungentlemanly tactics?

***********

Supplemental alternate-history weirdness:

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Open Thread: Another Unfortunate Coincidence for JEB

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From the Gawker post:

… For unfamiliar Yanks, [Jimmy] Savile was one of Great Britain’s most beloved and popular entertainers during his lifetime, covering the gamut from radio to television to charity work and everything in between. He was even knighted by the Queen in 1990. But after Savile died in 2011, what had long been sporadic and stifled allegations of sexual abuse began to blow up. And up and up and up.

By November of 2012, it was revealed that 450 alleged victims had come forward in the mere ten weeks since the police launched an investigation into Savile’s behavior. According to a BBC report from the time, of the hundreds of alleged victims, 82% were female and 80% were “children or young people.”

In 2014, a new report from the Health Secretary revealed that Savile also may have sexually abused patients at over 40 different hospitals he had visited under the auspice of “charity work.” With the Daily Mail writing that “Savile is thought to have abused patients aged from just five to 75.”

And before all that came to light, Jimmy Savile had a wildly popular children’s show called Jim’ll Fix It…

One British Gawker contributor is quoted “… The show was way before my time, but I knew about it because it was a big cultural reference point. And now it just has such horrifying connotations. Very similar to the Cosby thing.”

Queen of the Media Village Mean Girls Maureen Dowd had an uncharacteristically nasty piece about the Bushes last weekend — normally, such super-scavengers are careful only to attack dead or dying prey. “Fall of the House of Bush“:

… As much as Poppy Bush scoffs at “the D-word,” as he calls any reference to dynasty, the Bushes do consider themselves an American royal family. They have always pretty much divided the world into Bushes and the help. The patriarch once sent me a funny satire referring to himself and Barbara as the Old King and Queen, W. as King George of Crawford and Jeb as the Earl of Tallahassee.

At 91, 41 is living to see Jebbie become president. He is mystified by a world in which Trump, whom he considers a clown, could dethrone the crown prince.

Jeb said in New Hampshire that Poppy is prone to throw his shoe at the TV when Trump comes on. Fortunately, the former president always has very stylish socks…

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Long Read: “How Jeb Bush Enlisted in Florida’s War on Black Voters”

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jeb family intervention ohman

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)
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Before anyone starts feeling a little sorry for John Ellis “Fredo” Bush (that’s the worst of being a leftist, it saps your capacity for raw hatred), here’s Mother Jones on his very personal history of making sure the “wrong people” wouldn’t be able to exercise the franchise:

Shortly after midnight on September 14, 2000, James Ghent slipped out of his Miami home, climbed into his car with a suit, a toothbrush, and a change of underwear, and drove nearly 500 miles to Tallahassee to ask Jeb Bush for his rights back…

Ghent completed his final prison sentence in the early 1990s and his parole in 1995. He got clean. He remarried and raised a family. He went back to school for a degree in radiography.

But like everyone convicted of a felony in Florida, Ghent permanently lost his right to vote, serve on a jury, and run for office. The only way to regain these rights was to petition the governor for clemency. Ghent believed voting “should always be a right,” but he was also motivated by economic concerns. He couldn’t receive a professional license to practice radiography unless the governor granted his petition. And so on that September morning, Ghent descended into the basement of the state Capitol with dozens of other petitioners for a unique Florida ritual: ex-felons entreating the governor and members of his cabinet for the restoration of their civil rights.

These hearings, held four times annually, begin promptly at 9 a.m. One by one, ex-offenders like Ghent approach a podium, where they have five minutes to make their case. A red light signals their time is up. If the governor recommends clemency, and if a majority of the cabinet members agree—and they almost always do—the ex-offender’s civil rights are restored. If the governor feels otherwise, the petitioner returns home without the full privileges of citizenship…

Bush issued his verdict as soon as Ghent concluded his pitch. “I’m going to deny the restoration of civil rights,” he said. He wanted to see Ghent remain on the straight and narrow a bit longer, to prove he had really changed his ways. “I hope you come back, and I wish you well.”

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Open Thread: This Year’s Deeply Weird GOP Entity Initiates Core Dump

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Friday, according to NYMag:

If there’s one thing Jeb Bush wants to show Republican primary voters worried that the presidential candidate isn’t quite so conservative, it’s that he really loves making spending cuts…

And now Jeb Bush is showing that he not only knows how to drastically cut costs in government, he is capable of showing off those same slashing skills with his own campaign!

The Bush campaign announced today that it plans on cutting payroll costs by 40 percent, while also trying to save on travel and other nonessential spending. The campaign’s Miami headquarters will also be downsized. Bush’s campaign is so good at slimming down that this is the second time it has done so in the past two months…

The former front-runner’s poll numbers have fallen to the single digits, and his fund-raising obviously hasn’t been impressive enough to sustain a giant campaign. On Thursday, Megyn Kelly asked Bush, “What would it take to make you get out?”…

Hamilton Nolan, at Gawker:

Despite the financial support of all of America’s rich people, amiable Republic meerkat Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign is now being run with all the shabby frugality of a thrift store that is slowly going bankrupt.

It seems that old JEB is having some donor troubles. The trouble is donors want to give money to somebody who might win. And Jeb Bush, despite being in peak physical condition, reminds voters of their elementary school principal too much for them to ever really like him. Now, the JEB campaign is slashing expenses and payroll costs by up to 40%, Bloomberg reports. So deep are the cuts that “Some senior-level staff and consultants will continue to work with the campaign on a volunteer basis.”…

Saturday, as reported in the Huffington Post:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Saturday brushed off speculation that his presidential campaign was struggling, and said that cutting staff and costs was an example of good leadership…

“That’s what leaders do,” he said as he campaigned in South Carolina, according to USA Today.

After an anonymous donor told The Washington Post that Bush’s campaign had entered a “death spiral,” the former Florida governor said that reports of his campaign’s struggling were nonsense.

“Blah, blah, blah,” he said. “That’s my answer — blah, blah, blah.”…

HELP DESK TICKET – SERVICE TEAM EN ROUTE...

Major Garrett, at CBS News:

Jeb Bush hunkers down with family to assess his candidacy
Jeb Bush will attend a finance meeting this weekend in Houston convened by former President George H. W. Bush and attended by Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, CBS News has learned.

The session, designed to assess where Bush’s candidacy stands in the face of large-scale staff cutbacks and underwhelming poll numbers, will also be attended by Bush’s mother, Barbara Bush. The governor’s campaign confirmed the meeting will be held Sunday and Monday.

CBS News has also learned George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser for Jeb Bush in Georgetown (Washington, DC) on Oct. 29. The fundraising email, which went out earlier this week, was sent by George W. Bush’s two former chiefs of staff, Andy Card and Josh Bolten. Jeb Bush will not attend the fund-raiser…

Earlier this month, asked whether his brother would play a bigger role in his campaign, whether he’d come to the rescue, Bush told CBS News, “No, he doesn’t have to rescue me….I’m on the path. I’m totally confident about where we are. This is a long haul.”

Over that long haul, though, those who are funding his campaign may disagree. A GOP source who interacts regularly with the Bush campaign said there is a “donor revolt in progress,” as early Bush backers have grown dismayed over the reversal of their candidate’s fortunes.

Complaints are more frequent about the Bush inner circle and Bush’s message, schedule and intensity…

“There are head winds,” said one GOP operative familiar with party fund-raising and influential donors. “It’s a really hard climate for Jeb. But his field operations in all the early states are really good. He is going to be in this for a while.”

While that is true, Bush must also concede his campaign remains mired in single digits in Iowa and New Hampshire and that most donors and bundlers of campaign contributions once aligned with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have either gravitated to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or remained neutral. Either way, Bush has not inherited much of the available donor or bundler resources Walker left behind when he quit the race…

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This is Genius

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I’m crying:

brilliant

On Friday, Donald Trump generated substantial controversy when he asserted that George W. Bush was president at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” Trump said. “He was president, O.K.?”

Jeb Bush immediately pushed back, calling Trump’s comments “pathetic” and insisting “my brother kept us safe.”

The media jumped on to the burgeoning controversy. According to The New York Times the idea that Bush was president on 9/11 and failed to stop the attack is a “break from the GOP.”

Was George W. Bush president on September 11, 2001? It’s time to settle this once and for all.

It’s true that, in the presidential election held on November 7, 2000, George W. Bush received fewer votes than Al Gore.

But according to the Associated Press, this is a photo of George W. Bush being sworn in as president on January 20, 2001.

Well played.

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Open Thread: JEB!, Ripe to Rot

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Universally beloved commentor Amir Khalid flags a Daily Beast article by (former Daily Caller star) Will Rahn, “Jeb Bush Should Face Facts: It’s Time to Drop Out“…

… After all that money spent, you’re still sagging nationally and in fourth place in New Hampshire, a state you need to win. You’ve had nearly a year to make your case. It isn’t working. You should pack it in.

The conventional wisdom a few months ago was that your brother’s catastrophic presidency would be your bid’s biggest hurdle. Now, in a fit of desperation, it looks like you’re about to draft him to stump for you. Putting aside that George W. is still despised by a not-insignificant swath of the Republican electorate, how is that going to play in the general should you somehow win the nomination? You’re making the Democrats’ job easy, Jeb. They’ll be more than happy to attach you to his legacy, and you’re doing that for them.

Speaking of the Democrats, we know what will happen if you drag this out through next spring. The going thinking right now is that the guys really low in the polls—your Rand Pauls and George Patakis—should be next to drop out. But what damage do they do to the GOP by staying in? You Bushes, meanwhile, for all your patrician aloofness, are some of the dirtiest campaigners out there, and every jab you get in at your fellow establishmentarians like Marco Rubio is going to be used against them by the left. It’s one thing to toughen up a nominee in a primary fight—it’s another to make them damaged goods, unready to lead. If you’ve got some golden piece of oppo that will take Rubio or John Kasich out of consideration, by all means use it now. Otherwise, time to step aside…

Yeah, like Bar Bush would ever permit John Ellis to jump off this train before it jumps the tracks. He’ll never be her favorite son, but he does seem to be the one who inherited the most from her — all the stolid, cruel, uncaring “patrician” contempt for everyone in the world that is not of the Bush clan.

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Open Thread: His-story, Repeating

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Old-school WASPs like the Bushes would never throw away a perfectly sound catchphrase just because it’s gotten a little threadbare, a tiny bit battered, a tad worn around the edges…

(CNN context on Rumsfeld’s quote here; TPM‘s transcript of JEB’s full remarks here.)

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