Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

Let there be snark.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

This fight is for everything.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

This blog will pay for itself.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

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Oklahoma vs. Westboro Baptist Church

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something-something “where the wind comes sweeping down the plains”1


Sometimes what you need on a Monday is a little schadenfreude for the soul. Here’s some, for ya:

Members of a Kansas church who protest at military funerals may have found themselves in the wrong town Saturday.

Shortly after finishing their protest at the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey of McAlester, a half-dozen protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to their minivan, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed.

To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would repair their vehicle, according to police.

The minivan finally pulled over several blocks away in a shopping center parking lot, where AAA was called. A flatbed service truck eventually arrived and loaded up the minivan.

Assistant Police Chief Darrell Miller said the minivan was taken to Walmart for repairs.

Even before the protesters discovered their damaged tires, they faced off with a massive crowd of jeering and taunting counter-protesters at Third Street and Washington Avenue, two blocks from the First Baptist Church, where the soldier’s funeral was held.

Miller estimated that crowd to number nearly 1,000 people, and they not only drowned out the Westboro protesters with jeers, but with raucous chants of “USA, USA.”

Fred Phelps is an asshole. The members of the Westboro Baptist Church are assholes. They got thusly served.

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Late Night Open Thread: Schadenfreude

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Just got a press release from the self-proclaimed “pioneer [of] political direct mail”, who boasts that he “has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” (The Nation magazine), one of the “conservatives of the century” (The Washington Times), and one of 2008’s “top 25 influencers” among Republicans””:

Manassas, Virginia – “Voters have given Republicans one more chance to get it right,” Richard A. Viguerie said today. “They are on probation, and if they mess up again, they won’t get another chance.”
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“The last time the Republicans were in charge, they became the party of big spending, Big Government, and Big Business. They abandoned the philosophy of Ronald Reagan and cozied up to lobbyists and special interests. And they paid a price at the polls.
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“This year, the Democrats under President Obama and Speaker Pelosi drove millions of voters right back into the arms of the Republicans. But if Republicans return to their bad habits – if they start working for K Street instead of Main Street – they will pay a terrible price. Tea Party voters and conservatives will turn them out in the 2012 primaries.
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“People will say: Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and the Republican Party is dead,” Viguerie said.

The upcoming, ongoing battles between the common Republican careerists and the wackaloon true believers are going to make the internecine sniping between Obots and firebaggers look like a… garden fete.

I’m just a little giddy that my beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts has stayed solidly Democratic. Incumbent Governor Patrick held off Charley Baker, aka “Mitt Romney with a functioning neocortex”, and Barney Frank defeated our own version of “Joe Miller Lite”. The local newsbots are already babbling about “the end of the Scott Brown effect” — Cosmo Boy is now reduced to another quirky swamp yankee anomaly, not the much-ballyhooed John-the-Baptist foretelling a new regime of Masshole Republicanism. I wonder what the 2011 version of those Watergate-era “Don’t Blame Us, We Voted for McGovern” bumperstickers will be?

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I’d Support This

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We’ll file this under divine retribution:

Opponents of a Nevada nuclear waste dump thought they’d finally managed to kill the Yucca Mountain project. Then came Sharron Angle.

The tea party-backed Republican stands a good chance at ousting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has spent much of his career fighting the nuclear repository. And without a senior Nevada lawmaker in position to fend off Yucca’s supporters, the project could have new life.

A Yucca kick-start would be welcome news to the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear lawmakers who see the lack of a long-term repository as a roadblock for what they foresee as a U.S. nuclear renaissance.

Nuclear power has become a central tenet of congressional Republicans’ energy agenda; senators like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander say expanding the power source will help to cut dependence on foreign oil and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Democrats and the Obama administration have shown a willingness to compromise on the issue, and nuclear is posed to be a focal point of energy talks next year on Capitol Hill if Republicans make major electoral gains.

Reid often takes credit for killing the multibillion-dollar Yucca project by leading efforts to starve its funding and prodding the Obama administration to explore alternative sites. But Congress is full of powerful lawmakers eager to restart the project, and Yucca opponents fear that the rest of the Nevada delegation won’t be strong enough to fend them off if Reid loses.

I’m all in favor of rewarding Nevadans for their Sharron Angle votes. If we have to tolerate her toxic waste on the national scene, you get our radioactive waste in your back yard. Seems like a fair trade.

When Republicans sweep to power in the next 48 hours, this site is a no sympathy zone. Everyone of you jackasses who complained about how there was no difference between the two parties better find another website for your tears as the cold, cruel reality of wingnut rule becomes clear. There will be no sympathy here. Have fun, protest people. Now you really have something to protest about, and you don’t have Rahm to kick around any more.

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Open Thread: Oopsie!

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I think it’s the name of the sub that makes this story particularly delightful:

LONDON — The Royal Navy hastened to assemble an official inquiry Friday evening to explore why Britain’s newest nuclear submarine, H.M.S. Astute, ran aground while undergoing sea trials off the coast of northwest Scotland on Friday morning and remained stuck on a bank of sand and shingle for nearly 10 hours before a tug pulled it free at nightfall. A spokesman for the Royal Navy said divers would be deployed to check concerns that the submarine’s rudder had been damaged.
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The episode was particularly embarrassing for the navy because the vessel, one of the most technologically advanced submarines in the world, is designed for maximum stealth and use in such delicate operations as delivering special forces troops secretly and eavesdropping off the coasts of hostile nations. Its design features and propulsion mechanisms are considered top secret, naval experts said, but both were on display during the grounding…
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Residents along the shore of Broadford Bay — close to the spot on the mainland where Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a k a Bonnie Prince Charlie, set sail for Skye after the collapse of his 1745 rebellion against the British monarchy — said the Astute had gone aground well inside red buoys that mark the navigation channel on the approaches to the Skye Bridge….
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Critics noted that another British submarine, H.M.S. Trafalgar, ran aground off Skye in 2002. At that time, an inquiry found that a crewman had placed opaque tracing paper over a navigation chart to protect it, leading to the submarine’s running onto well-charted rocks.

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I Guess That Clears Things Up

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I guess now we know why Lou Dobbs hates illegal immigrants so much. They were making too much noise cleaning his house:

But with his relentless diatribes against “illegals” and their employers, Dobbs is casting stones from a house—make that an estate—of glass. Based on a yearlong investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper.

What a douchebag.

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Always the Cheerleader, Never the Candidate?

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Dave Weigel at Slate reports from the Values Voters Summit straw poll, where Sarah Palin came in fifth (behind Mike Pence, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich):

… Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked [FCR president Tony Perkins] whether Palin’s weak showing in the presidential poll, and stronger showing in the VP poll, suggested that conservatives were more interested in Palin as a spokesperson than as a presidential candidate.
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“I think she is a great spokesman,” said Perkins. “I mean, I think that she challenges the status quo. She says what a lot of people think. But, you know, a lot of people sometimes realize we shouldn’t say everything we think. Maybe it is that she is more of a cheerleader and one who rallies conservatives together as opposed to being their top choice for president.… “

In a loopy-even-by-her-elastic-standards piece, Maureen Dowd spends half her column bashing Christine O’Donnell (before deciding that O’Donnell’s temporary elevation is all the fault of That Man In the White House):

Christine O’Donnell is in a fantasy world. Literally. The pretty Palin Mini-Me identifies with the women of Middle Earth…
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O’Donnell said she liked Tolkien’s outlook on gender: “On the one hand, there’s the attitude that’s normally on the conservative side — as a conservative woman, I feel I can say this — that stifles women. There’s almost the stereotypical attitude of, to be a true woman, you have to stay at home. And I’ve actually had people say to me, ‘Why do you choose a career over marriage?’ Honestly, I’ve had only a few significant relationships, and they’ve broken up with me. And one of the things I’ve been told is, ‘If you weren’t so strong, you’d be married by now.’ ”…
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Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox, Karl Rove dismissed O’Donnell as an absurd choice with a sketchy background and dubious character. He alluded to facts in The Weekly Standard that chronicled her lawsuit against her former employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative nonprofit based in Delaware.
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Although O’Donnell said in 1998 that wives should “graciously submit” to their husbands, her 2005 suit charged that she suffered “mental anguish” after being demoted and fired because the institute’s conservative philosophy deemed that women must be subordinate.
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We the People in the Ruling Class Elites do think O’Donnell comes across as alarmingly loopy. But maybe she’s smart as a fox in doing a Single-White-Female, Fox anchor makeover to look more like her queen-maker, Sarah Palin…
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She might have gone a broom too far, though, when she once told Bill Maher that she had “dabbled into witchcraft” and went on a date with a witch that included “a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”…

And Vanity Fair reprints an email from “right-wing pastor and political activist” Lou Engle to Sarah Palin: “… I believe this is an Esther moment in your life. Esther hid her identity until Mordecai challenged her to risk everything for such a time as this. Your identity is “Sarah Barracuda”… I’ve been praying for five years for an Esther, with dreams of being a Mordecai to that Esther.” But the biblical Queen Esther was not a ruler in her own right; she was a young concubine, a beauty pageant winner, whose ‘triumph’ was orchestrated by her uncle Mordecai to successfuly enrich his own political career. Even Joan of Arc waited five hundred years for full acceptance from the Church hierarchy.

The self-proclaimed conservatives who have made Palin, and now O’Donnell, symbols of Heartland American Values(tm) are not, to phrase it politely, defenders of gender neutrality. Fundamentalists and authoritarians still loudly prefer their women to be decorative, and subservient. Whatever the mooted power of the PUMAs, it’s not going to be easy for the most hardcore “traditionalists” to accept a woman in a position of real authority.

It could be argued (probably has been) that the teabaggers’ willingness to promote female politicians (Palin, Angle, Bachman, O’Donnell) is inversely related to the possibility of a ‘Tea Party’ candidate actually achieving significant political power. Women are excellent figureheads, especially for a minority rump party fueled by nothing more significant than spite and nostalgia, but professionals don’t waste serious resources on figureheads. Especially since the last time they installed a former cheerleader as a sockpuppet, events went so badly awry.

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