Wednesday, July 01, 2015

THE SET-UP.

Remember when King v. Burwell came down, and conservatives cried blackmail? Actually it's gotten to the point where every time Roberts rules against them, conservatives assume it's blackmail.

Well, today I saw this from the Ole Perfesser Instapundit:
JESSE WALKER: Whatever Happened To Jim Webb? The populist Democrat and his barely-visible campaign. At a guess, Hillary’s got some dirt on him.
I know the Clintons are rich, but I'd advise Hillary to start a little higher up the Enemies List if she's going start blackmailing people. Why waste perfectly good Clinton Crime Family blood money on Jim Webb?

I think I'm pretty cynical, but if I started seeing the world this way I'd have myself committed.

253 comments:

  1. Bizarro Mike4:51 PM

    The last I heard of Jim, he was going big into the whole Treason in Defense of Slavery thing... it didn't seem like a wise move. Plus, however much he may seem like a village candidate, it has become a little harder for a right-wing democrat to campaign in the primary. Judging by Clinton's strategy, she's trying to move closer to Bernie. This is actually surprisingly good campaign advice for a Clinton to get. And if she keeps any of the ideas, gets elected, and acts on them, it will be a genuinely Good Thing.

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  2. coozledad4:58 PM

    Whatever Happened To Jim Webb? The populist Democrat
    When did racism become populism?

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  3. Well, in some parts of the country...

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  4. coozledad5:01 PM

    She'll put more ovary-Americans on the Supreme court. That's more than enough reason to vote for her.


    Bernie will help keep the race focused on what matters. Like knowing where the US Embassy in Israel is located.

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  5. but if I started seeing the world this way

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  6. I have reached the conclusion that all the disappointments in my life are the result of some manner of coercion - blackmail, bribery or threats - lodged at various people around me. All of my fruitless job interviews were the result of blackmail leveraged against those business owners. Those literary agents who shot me down were likewise being blackmailed into rejecting anyone with my name. Those women who didn't want to date me? Blackmail, clearly. It's even possible that the bad service I've received at retail establishments was the result of a subtle, pernicious form of blackmail.
    That's only the half of it, though, because I believe that this campaign of systematic blackmail stems from the Clintons. "But why would they bother to target a seemingly unimportant private figure such as yourself?" Well, it's not just me. It's dozens, possibly hundreds of nobodies across this country. I believe it to be part of a decade-spanning experiment by which the Clintons plan to discover just how much power they can wield through blackmail.
    And the endgame? They will blackmail their way into global domination. Oh, not by blackmailing key political, business, religious, media and entertainment figures - no, far grander than that. They plan to blackmail every person on planet earth. Phase One should start very soon, when the Clintons will blackmail a group of political figures into obtaining blackmail for them. This will be the start of a network of people gathering blackmail on each other. Using their technical prowess, they will compromise servers and use them to gather blackmail on a global scale. By the end of Phase Two, the internet will have transformed into the blackmailnet. On the day HRC reaches the White House, she will be riding atop a group of three billion people blackmailing each other and their infant children with no clue as to the source.
    I realize that this sounds crazy, and I had no intention of ever revealing it. However, I must. Someone's blackmailing me.

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  7. susanoftexas5:08 PM

    You thought those phones were tapped to find terrorists? It was blackmail material!

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  8. "...while poking around in the White House basement looking for some old packages of taco seasoning Bill had left behind, Hillary uncovered one of Obama's Palantíri, giving her complete knowledge of her enemies' doings. Little did she know that using it would slowly bend her will toward his, causing her to scheme against friend and enemy alike...."

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  9. +1, and a white slavery/drug-dealing ring in mena, arkansas

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  10. TGuerrant5:17 PM

    Since we've long noted their propensity for accusing the Democrats of what they themselves are doing...

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  11. coozledad5:18 PM

    You're telling me. I need to visit the SPLC's blog more often. I had no idea the Klan is now headquartered in Pelham, about 16 miles from where I live. No wonder the Obama field directors down here in 2012 kept seeing pickup truckloads of guys in their sheets heading off in the twilight to some Ruritan club or picnic shelter.

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  12. susanoftexas5:19 PM

    Furiosa Clinton has dirt on them all right. And she threw it on their graves!

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  13. Just as Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed by its true believers, so, too, can Conservatism never fail but for being undermined by outsiders using nefarious methods.

    In the past, the most nefarious method of liberals was reason. The liberals followed this up with devastating ridicule. But Conservatives learned to shrug this off, so now it's down to blackmail. Wheels within wheels!

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  14. I would like to ride through the night to Minas Tirith with this comment wrapped in my cloak.

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  15. oh what a paranoid day

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  16. susanoftexas5:29 PM

    Oh what a paranoid morning,
    Oh what a paranoid day.
    I have a paranoid feeling
    Everyone's looking my way.

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  17. I've been told that if I upvote this comment, things will go bad for me.

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  18. coozledad5:34 PM

    Par-ah-noia
    When the Clinton's are looking through your mail
    and they keep crosstabs
    on your fave meth labs
    and they'll put your skittish ass in jail!

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  19. Randy Gibbons5:53 PM

    I think I'm pretty cynical, but if I started seeing the world this way I'd have myself committed.



    Either that, or I'd be more careful in my thinking than Glenn Reynolds. Their world is a harsh place where a few wrong moves could cost you (or your nation) dearly! So it follows that you'd be incredibly lazy about facts?!


    This is a pattern with wingnuts. Dunno what to compare it to ... Well, re: the Clintons, they have settled on believing that any accusation is true, but that none can be proven, because they're evil masterminds, so why bother trying at all. The fact that nothing can be proven proves they're hiding evidence.


    The method seems to work for certain purposes but if I really thought I was battling evil masterminds I might want to know at least a fraction of their nefarious doings. Instapundit knows better, though.

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  20. coozledad6:10 PM

    if I started seeing the world this way I'd have myself committed.

    Well, how about this way?

    http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2015/07/extreme-marriage-sadz-meltdown.html

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  21. tsam1006:11 PM

    If Webb isn't careful, he'll be taking a dirt nap with Vince Foster.

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  22. tsam1006:16 PM

    Right--plus Bernie seems to have some energy going. Not sure if it's sustainable, but I like what's going on so far.

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  23. tsam1006:17 PM

    The Instapuke link links to Reason. That's ALL THE FURTHER DOWN THAT RABBIT HOLE I'M GOING, K?

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  24. smut clyde6:23 PM

    Take the Goofle Time-machine back to the early 2000s and you will find endless ridicule from Instapundit, directed at Hilary Clinton, for mentioning a "right-wing conspiracy" to smear the Clinton administration.

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  25. RogerAiles6:40 PM

    DMOP would have Glenn institutionalized in a Knoxville second if any of her MRA fanboys could afford to support her.

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  26. I'd happily take up Hillary's defense, except no.

    http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/01/hillarys-war/

    You can mock the right-wing mooks all you want. But TPTB are getting their agenda accomplished, whether by right-wing Dems like Obama and the Clintons, or actual Republicans.
    ~

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  27. tsam1006:45 PM

    Who, us conservatives? Whaaaaaattt???

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  28. billcinsd6:55 PM

    Paranoia gives a darkly humorous future

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  29. LookWhosInTheFreezer6:59 PM

    Everything that Conservatives hate can either be blamed on blackmail, or black males.

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  30. billcinsd7:00 PM

    What i want to know is, if Obama/Hillary/Soros blackmailed Roberts, was it 11venty dimensional chess to not have Roberts vote with the "liberal" bloc on every vote?

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  31. susanoftexas7:02 PM

    I think we will stop using oil before we will stop electing people who smash up the Middle East.
    We care about our happiness. They care about their money. Guess who ends up unhappy and broke.

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  32. Don't throw bébés at me
    Don't mock my gaffes too much
    Don't upstage my laughs too much
    People will say we're in league

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  33. sharculese7:31 PM

    To be fair to Reynolds I can see how a charter member of the Sarah Palin Fan Club wouldn't get how normally, when a politician steps down to sit around the house being a total jag, people react by not hanging on their every word and action.

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  34. John Wesley Hardin7:47 PM

    The Computer is your Friend.

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  35. Ellis_Weiner7:56 PM

    ...and if Webb announces, Putz will nod sagely and opine that Hillary's blackmailing him to do it, to scotch rumors of her blackmailing him NOT to do it. Call it what you will-- either three-dimensional chess or four-dimensional dementia--but it all ends up fucking the American people in the ass, Larry...in the Twilight Zone.

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  36. I knew there was something fishy in the Duggar compound.

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  37. If you can't move farther from them, the next best thing is that they move farther from you. Kinda the exact inverse of Mohammed and the mountain.

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  38. bargal208:18 PM

    Blackmail? Pah. Back in the good old days Bill held them down while Hillary poured the pills down their throats.They've gone soft.

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  39. You have no idea how much the whole "the absence of evidence is concrete proof" really is the conservative mindset when it comes to the Clintons. The Vince Foster case is the epitome of this: The fact that the Park Police, the Washington DC police, the FBI, three Republican-led Congressional investigations, and Special Prosecutor Ken Starr all determined that Foster killed himself proves that Foster was murdered.

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  40. tigrismus8:34 PM

    The last I heard of Jim, he was going big into the whole Treason in Defense of Slavery thing

    Yeah, it's not like that didn't get coverage. Maybe he has since gotten some good "ix-nay on the acism-ray" advice, or maybe Walker and Reynolds are unobservant nincompoops.

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  41. JennOfArk8:37 PM

    Dear lord, that reminds me...back in the day I encountered one of those Vince Foster Was Murdered! loons. His proof was that the body had obviously been moved after the murder, since they found little blood at the scene. When I pointed out that he shot himself in the head and the body was lying on a grassy incline, with the head at a higher point than the feet, and that soil would absorb the small amount of blood that would escape the wound before the heart stopped pumping and the blood in the body followed gravity.


    The only thing this accomplished was getting him to make a new claim that none of that proved anything, since the heart could continue beating - for hours, he said - after the brain was dead. I just said "well, you would be the proof - if your heart wasn't still working, you wouldn't be sitting there typing all this mendacious BULLSHIT right now."

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  42. Without doubt, there is no evidence you could give these people that will convince them. Indeed, if poor Vince Foster rose from the grave and proclaimed on live (dead?) TV that he killed himself, the Foster Conspiracy Theory people would be out in force claiming he was being blackmailed into covering up his own murder.

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  43. Oh. My. God! The oxygen cannula just adds a certain pathetic twist to the whole thing.

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  44. coozledad8:53 PM

    I didn't pick up on that, but she does seem short of breath.


    This took me back to the days when I'd drink with Republicans. I must have been absolutely shameless in pursuit of liquor.

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  45. NonyNony8:54 PM

    Ah yes - Hillary surely has the "dirt" on Jim Webb.

    I suspect she has YouTube videos of him saying stupid stuff in public that she intends to rub in his face if he starts to rise above the 3% support mark. She can start with his recent statement defending the American Swastika (aka The Treason In Defense Of Slavery Rag) and work her way from there.

    (Alternatively - "Whatever happened to Jim Webb?" Democrats started actually listening to the words coming out of his gob. Last poll I saw him in was at 1% support. Shockingly, Democrats really aren't that interested in voting for retrogressive asshats.)

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  46. I'm a teetotaler, but had to deal with drinking Republicans at fundraisers back when I did political consulting. Drunk Republican men can be really obnoxious, but drunk Republican women can be a scream. I once had the wife of a US Attorney corner me at a fundraiser and then spend the rest of the night steering the conversation back to how much she liked to do housework in the nude.

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  47. coozledad9:04 PM

    Similarly, I spent a good part of an evening hearing a Republican woman talking up her breeder Dachsund as "one fine bitch."

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  48. Jaime Oria9:06 PM

    The legendary Arkansas Palantir (and with all credit to the Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings)

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  49. And I bet she kept her wiener on a short leash, if you know what I mean.

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  50. LittlePig9:09 PM

    "Solomon Grundy want pants too!"

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  51. LittlePig9:10 PM

    I don't know. What I've seen looks pretty doggone mammalian to me.

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  52. LittlePig9:12 PM

    "This is the voice of Colossus, the voice of Unity..."

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  53. One of my favorite movies! Thanks!

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  54. LittlePig9:15 PM

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_N-4ASXXQfUg/TKbP9fq4r5I/AAAAAAAABzU/tReO-5b5fng/s1600/colossus_logo-no-background.png

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  55. this comment was born on a monday and buried on a sunday

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  56. https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/courses/tia.png

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  57. mgmonklewis9:20 PM

    https://youtu.be/6KUEQ4nWv7Y

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  58. Look, the thing to remember is that they absolutely positively are not projecting their fears of being blackmailed for drunken weekend with the twin goats.

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  59. I'd say "Bah!," but they do keep bleating about this stuff so I'm reluctant to butt heads with them.

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  60. And this illustrates why people from Evansville, Indiana get really pissed when you confuse their hometown with Ellettsville.

    I wonder if she's any relation?

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  61. LittlePig9:33 PM

    It always comes round back to Dolchstoßlegende, er, um, blackmail.

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  62. LittlePig9:36 PM

    Dude! The three flowers are in the GREEN vase. The GREEN vase!

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  63. Relevant: https://youtu.be/hzTeLePbB08

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  64. LittlePig9:39 PM

    I've herd of that as well. So much for their nanny state!

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  65. LittlePig9:43 PM

    I can't help but hear the tympani bomp that goes with this image, then the next line 'you like Krabby Patties'.

    Yeah, I know, way too much SpongeBob. But I watched it from the original get-go, and the first few seasons (before the suits got a hold of it) have gags that no kid is going to get. I mean, a Dune reference?!

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  66. coozledad9:47 PM

    This section of NC is crawling with that hairdo. The chair of the local Republican party has it. She also has that face-biting vibe.
    I blogged some comedy about her during the last election. She cornered me at early vote and forced me to shake her hand while she griped about being the butt of a joke.


    I shed ten years off my life that day. They're vampires.

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  67. Or SpongeBob watching porn in the form of a sea anemone "dancing" on screen? (He quickly shuts off his TV and hide the remote when Patrick knocks at the front door.)

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  68. The handshake means that your soul is now part of her eternal empire.

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  69. Shockingly, Democrats really aren't that interested in voting for retrogressive asshats.

    A Mr. Andrew Cuomo would like a few words . . .

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  70. LittlePig9:53 PM

    The good ones are ridiculously good. In addition, my son does a spot-on Bill Fagerbakke, so Patrick is oft quoted in my household.

    My fave: "I think they make a cream for that now".

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  71. Brian Schlosser9:56 PM

    I still want to know why The Flash's enemy is a goddam talking gorilla

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  72. Apparently nobody likes talking gorillas: https://youtu.be/KMiDf3Q1QfI

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  73. Randy Gibbons9:59 PM

    If Hillary takes the White House (and especially if she wins a 2nd term), the conservative movement should do some house-cleaning. There's a whole bunch of people who are making careers out of kicking tyrants' asses who aren't performing. Sure, they sound good ... but they went total war on Bill and failed to impeach, or prevent a 2nd term; they went total war on Obama, same deal (yeah I know they held back whatever kinda tide he had in him); next, they're gonna help (or not prevent) Hillary 2016 & 2020.


    If the Clintons are corrupt or criminal, for Christ's sake let's see them behind bars. Plus, I don't like their politics on the economic and "defense" fronts, so there's another line of attack (one that fuckin' Rightnozzles can't fully exploit, and we can't but don't, precisely so my "far left" friends). But at this point, the last people you'd bet on to take the Clintons down are the grifters on the Right. I'm not sure they want to win that fight, and it's pretty clear they can't. What they CAN do is damaging, and any one of us could tally it up, but they can't prevent what's serially announced as the end of the Center of the Universe as we know it, so who could give two shits if they stall O-Care?


    TL;DR: with enemies like these, who needs friends?

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  74. LittlePig10:02 PM

    "Kneel before Grodd!"

    Hey, they can't all be Bruce.

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  75. Conservatives won't do any housecleaning, and why should they? They're winning. The control both houses of congress, the Supreme Court on most issues, a majority of state legislatures, a majority of governorships--hell, they even have control over a majority of town councils and school boards.

    So what if they never win the presidency? That's actually advantageous to them. They get to block whatever Hillary is trying to do while quietly tilting the entire playing field in favor of corporations and kleptocrats. They can blame the existence of Hillary for their failure to be able to ram through their lunatic social agenda, and use her to grift endless amounts of cash off the rubes.

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  76. LittlePig10:05 PM

    I've never found them to be all that more rapacious than a typical Republican. They are judged to different standards because IOKIYAR.

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  77. Randy Gibbons10:06 PM

    I forgot about some of that, to put it briefly. Good show, and good night Swede Prints.

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  78. coozledad10:11 PM

    I'm tired of pretending the Republicans have anything to add to the moral equation of this country. They're already openly anti- democracy and racist.


    If they'd have had a couple more years of media ass kissing, they'd have fully embraced the segregationist flag as their symbol.

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  79. tsam10010:14 PM

    It's a great show. My favorite was the camping trip when Squidward kept getting scuffed up by the Sea Bear

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  80. coozledad10:17 PM

    Except these:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93-IbSzXzlk

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  81. hellslittlestangel10:19 PM

    Wait, you mean it costs money to blackmail people? Fucking hell, I've been doing it completely wrong!

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  82. Whatever Happened To Jim Webb? The populist Democrat and his
    barely-visible campaign. At a guess, Hillary’s got some dirt on him.


    Yeah, it couldn't be the fact that none of the voters making up the Democratic base wants a candidate who's to the right of Hilary.

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  83. Those naked pictures don't come cheap, you know.

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  84. The MSM will totally ignore any momentum that Bernie has built up. The spice must flow, and Bernie is the sort of guy who'd interfere with that.

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  85. AGoodQuestion10:34 PM

    Tip to Glenn Reynolds and Jesse Walker: You don't really have to blackmail people when you have all the money and they have... not. It would be kind of a coals-to-Newcastle thing.

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  86. That logo is awesome, it's like it was calculated purely to freak out conspiracy theorists.

    ERMAGERD, ILLUMINATI!!!!

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  87. fry1laurie10:42 PM

    Webb is doing more than his fair share of ruining his own campaign with his endorsement of the confederate flag.

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  88. AGoodQuestion10:44 PM

    Insta's conspiracy theorizing is purely performative now. It doesn't matter whether he believes this shit. He knows he can get other people to act like they believe it. So it's no surprise he's done a 180 in the past fifteen years or so.

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  89. stepped pyramids11:01 PM

    The idea that someone running to the right of any major Democratic candidate in... well, definitely the last three elections, but honestly more than that... is going to be a serious competitor for the nomination is bananas. Webb might have made an acceptable showing in 2004, but not any time after that.

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  90. AGoodQuestion11:01 PM

    Given the steel trap certainty in some quarters that John Roberts was blackmailed into ruling for the ACA, this mindset seems to transfer to Obama as well.

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  91. bekabot11:04 PM

    "I think I'm pretty cynical, but if I started seeing the world this way I'd have myself committed."



    People like this are only cynical on some points...they're hideously gullible on others.

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  92. tsam10011:17 PM

    Fuck the fucking spice

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  93. tsam10011:20 PM

    Wonder is Billary will ask for the birth certificate.

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  94. LA Julian11:39 PM

    Hilary Clinton stole the Hugos!

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  95. bekabot11:40 PM

    Neepery awaits!

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  96. LA Julian11:40 PM

    It's the Deep Ones, I tell you.

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  97. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:41 PM

    Yeah. It'd be a waste of effort blackmailing him when half the country already knows the worst thing about him, and they saw it on the news...

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  98. Bitter Scribe11:42 PM

    "Populist Democrat" = thinks he's going to appeal to white guys who didn't vote for Obama

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  99. LA Julian11:46 PM

    The SadRabids have devolved further into incoherency, claiming that only SJWism gave Redshirts its unfair win over other, more deserving novels like (Left-anarchist, a fact left unmentioned) KSR's 2312 and (romance novel, fact left unmentioned) Captain Vorpatril's Alliance.

    It's as if a prototype automated censoring and Newspeak generating machine created by the Ministry of Truth somehow developed sentience, at this point.

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  100. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:46 PM

    No kidding?
    Sorry, sorry. I'll go now...

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  101. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:49 PM

    Puppynet!

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  102. billcinsd11:58 PM

    http://www.cc.com/video-clips/no1ry6/-midnight--hashtagwars----addgoatruinaquote

    Who you gonna call? Goat Busters!

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  103. Smarter than Your Average Bear12:03 AM

    I was skeptical about this until I read your last two sentences - I'm a true believer now as it all makes sense

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  104. Smarter than Your Average Bear12:07 AM

    Canada already has world domination through our 80% control of Maple Syrup :)

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  105. LA Julian12:10 AM

    The latest version of Skynet is reportedly a (holographic) little boy, so that works.

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  106. LA Julian12:12 AM

    This sort of attitude has led Instapundit's allies to form a conspiracy of their own to hijack a media award because they succeeded in convincing themselves that The Left had already done so.



    Say, has Instapundit weighed in on the SadRabids yet?

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  107. tsam10012:52 AM

    Or a guy who worked for Reagan and was down with the Master Plan. No thank you. Keep your Vaginian dopes.

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  108. John Wesley Hardin1:30 AM

    If "Vox Day" is involved you know it's got to contain a high proportion of batshit.

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  109. Suttree1:40 AM

    Our chief weapon is reason. Reason and devastating ridicule. Our chief weapons are reason and devastating ridicule and blackmail. Our three chief weapons are reason, devastating ridicule, and blackmail. And an almost fanatical devotion to Obama. Amongst our weapons.......

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  110. Suttree2:00 AM

    It certainly seems like they have an affinity for LSD and Robert Anton Wilson.

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  111. BadExampleMan2:05 AM

    While I like Sanders as a Senator and I like what he's doing as a campaigner, this reminds me a whole lot of the Howard Dean campaign. Tremendous momentum, tremendous enthusiasm, high youth participation...right up until people started actually voting. Then it all fell apart faster than a burrito in Chris Christie's small intestine.

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  112. BadExampleMan2:08 AM

    Someone photoshop the legend to be "Internet Traditions Awareness Office" tyvm

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  113. I'd like to call M'aud Dibs on this comment.

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  114. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Funny thing about Bernie: He's utterly despised by the natives throughout most of Vermont because he's a socialist, dontcha know. But then Bernie comes to town and talks. He explains that the real reason there's no funding for their roads is because the tax structure had been perverted, and the real reason why their schools suck is because the funding and governance have been broken, and so on. And by the end of the meeting, the locals are strolling out vowing to tell their neighbors to vote for Bernie.

    I don't think he'll ever get a platform big enough at any time in this process to be able to do things like that. But if he did . . .Ooooh, boy!

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  115. Afghanistan Bananastand

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  116. I've avoided reading the article itself for fear of becoming enraged by disappointment, but judging from the headline at the top of its website, the Boston Globe (definitely MSM) seems to have an article that allows as how Bernie has indeed built up some momentum.

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  117. Come into the garden, M'aud.

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  118. redoubtagain8:11 AM

    They should, but they won't, because they have liberals' "housecleanings" in '68--which led directly to Nixon--and '72--which led directly to Reagan--as an example.

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  119. redoubtagain8:14 AM

    (Incidentally, the Treason In Defense Of Slavery Rag is one of Scott Joplin's lesser-known works.)

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  120. redoubtagain8:20 AM

    Turkey buzzard with a layered 'do. First time for everything.

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  121. FlipYrWhig9:38 AM

    When did racism become populism?

    Racism and populism divorced in 1964, but, as these things tend to go, they still hook up now and then.

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  122. I thought PronHub was free!!?!?!?

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  123. Which is why we have an affirmative moral duty to separate them from their money. Unfortunately, I'm still not ready for the surgery that removes my morality, so I can't take advantage of this.

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  124. Halloween_Jack10:00 AM

    The Republicans are about as likely to do "house-cleaning" as the House of Windsor; the last presidential candidate that they fielded who wasn't the scion of a prominent political or military family was Bob Dole.

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  125. Halloween_Jack10:01 AM

    Yeah, you should hoof it.

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  126. A funny thing happened on the way to the present. Liberals are always under extreme pressure to "clean house," which generally means Democrats must publically reject something that is both a core Democratic value and is wildly popular. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, it was the anti-war movement, which left an awful lot of young folk who would have supported Democrats wondering why they'd want to do so (especially after Chicago). Result: Two Nixon wins.

    By the 1980s, Democrats had to denounce pushing for human rights (a Carter signature initiative) and the idea that taxes can pay for programs that benefit society instead of just channeling money to industry. Result: Two Reagan wins followed by George H.W. Bush.

    Clinton rode into office on massive voter fatigue with Republicans and major disappointment with Bush pere. But even Clinton had to have his Sistah Souljah moment and he had to "reform" welfare.

    So I'm mighty tired of liberals "cleaning house"--especially when that means dragging the party further and further away from what it stands for.

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  127. Halloween_Jack10:03 AM

    Andy is DINO enough to get votes from Republican upstaters, but he's been getting quite a bit of pushback from Bill de Blasio.

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  128. I'm still waiting for Andy to actually do something a Democrat might do as governor of NYS. Instead, all I hear from this asshole is how we simply must break the unions and we simply must lower taxes on business and the wealthy.

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  129. Halloween_Jack10:10 AM

    Sounds like she was trying to talk you into some sort of bipartisan joint effort, IYKWIM.

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  130. Halloween_Jack10:10 AM

    Can't get past the fact that she's a Rommel.

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  131. Halloween_Jack10:12 AM

    the heart could continue beating - for hours, he said - after the brain was dead.


    That's the sort of person that can really help you hone your chart-a-clear-path-to-the-nearest-exit sense.

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  132. Halloween_Jack10:22 AM

    One of the first fonts that came with the Macintosh (introduced in 1984!!!) looked like a ransom note. Now Apple is the most valuable corporation in the world. Coincidence? WAKE UP iSHEEPLE

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  133. Halloween_Jack10:27 AM

    This gives me an excuse to post one of the most awesome movie stills ever: Kyle MacLachlan knife-fighting Sting while Patrick Stewart referees.

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  134. tsam10010:31 AM

    When did the word populist turn into reactionary butthole? Jim Hightower is a populist. Amy Goodman, Bernie Sanders....these media types using words incorrectly to sell villager favorites is getting way the hell up on my nerves.

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  135. "If I started seeing the world this way I'd have myself committed."


    That's exactly what THEY want you to think, don't buy into it Roy.

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  136. Since she did everything up to and including showing me that she had no tan lines . . .

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  137. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjWhDLbr3MA

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  138. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:45 AM

    OT, but hey, it's beer, Trump, and the F-Word (in Spanish).

    Fuck your hair!



    Funniest thing to pop out the Klown Kar's sunroof so far...

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  139. I like this shot because the crowd of extras in the background of this scene is about as excited as the audience in the theater was about this scene.

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  140. Bedside table, on the kangaroo.

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  141. "Populist" and "popular" have no become epithets in politics. Something being "populist" (like, for example, Elizabeth Warren's policies to reign in Wall Street and the banks) means it can be dismissed out of hand without any need to even consider what it is. Indeed, Chuck Schumer dismissed Warren's calls for improved bank regulation as "being a populist thing" that nobody need take seriously.

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  142. tsam10011:25 AM

    Well I DON'T LIKE IT

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  143. Magatha11:29 AM

    Is anyone talking about a Clinton/Sanders ticket, or am I just experiencing a brief but pleasant hallucinatory episode?

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  144. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:32 AM

    My god, that was awful...

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  145. Fizzy_Shellfish11:46 AM

    Conservatives believe that Roberts is closeted gay.

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  146. Are you happy? If you are not happy, you may be used as reactor shielding.

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  147. Dean didn't make it to the "right up until people started voting" stage. Our famously liberal media saw to that.

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  148. Can you link to a good one? I'm too old and my kids seem to have missed it entirely.

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  149. DN Nation12:20 PM

    It's never ever ever ever ever ever ever gonna sit with them that the vast majority of Democrats don't give a runny shit about which candidate could best win Kentucky and West Virginia, is it.

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  150. Yes, Justice Roberts was obviously blackmailed in King v. Burwell.


    What other reason could there be for the most business-friendly SCOTUS in US history finding in support of a business-friendly health insurance/wealth extraction bill?

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  151. I'll come in again

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  152. J Neo Marvin12:31 PM

    I'm a bit amazed at this, considering he owes his first election to his opponent being outed as a racist blowhard. Remember "macaca"?

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  153. Randy Gibbons12:54 PM

    I don't think they'll clean house, by which I meant stop listening to and paying people who ineffectually fight the Left (as the Right sees it).


    You're right about the operatives and beneficiaries of the current state of affairs on the Right. The base, however, wants results, including the White House. The authoritarian fraction (whole?) wants a leader, someone fresher than Zombie Reagan. George W. was supposed to be at least modestly iconic going forward, not an embarrassment consigned to RINO status; even vigorous rehab won't make him into much.


    The base may be addicted to outrage and certainly has no more taste for the details of policy and governance than do the people they're electing. I just wonder if it strikes them as weird that the total war approach and its rhetoric are not matched by results you'd want if you believed all the dire stuff they circulate about Clintons, Obama, the decline of Western Civ., etc. Their narrative is mismatched with wins that short-change the social agenda while fully satisfying only grifters, operatives, and corporatists.


    But hell, I'm just running down the clock here as usual.

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  154. Jay B.1:19 PM

    Jim Webb's natural constituency is Mudcat Saunders and maybe some voters in an isolated hollow somewhere in the Blue Ridge mountains who still have a picture of FDR next to their stars and bars.

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  155. Jay B.1:22 PM

    Nah, if it's Hillary, it'll be either Hillary/Irish Guy or Hillary/Latino Guy

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  156. Jay B.1:32 PM

    David Beckwith, who runs in Rovian circles, was a political consultant to Qualye and used to be a lefty radical in the 60s, is a political ally of a cousin of mine. I hung out with him in Dallas on election night 1994, I was a reporter and he was involved, and the night was crushing for me (objectivity my ass) and successful for him as we watched the Republican wave crest from that soulless hellhole in north central Texas. I knew I was with the actual devil. But he was funny. And didn't show me his tan lines.

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  157. Certainly from any rational perspective, you'd expect the kulturekampfers to be demanding results or calling for replacements. But the righties have learned one major lesson from the Left: Fuck the base--where are they gonna go?

    So conservatives continuously lavish tongue baths on all the right people and all the right causes, and then fail utterly to do anything about those causes. Abortion is the big one. Republicans had control of both houses of Congress and the White House AND a functioning majority on the Supreme Court when Bush was president. There was no more opportune time for them to push through all kinds of anti-choice nonsense. And yet, they didn't. What they did do was roll back the Estate Tax, roll back Capital Gains taxes, roll back the carry-interest tax, roll back environmental, drug, real-estate, securities trading, and development regulations, and so on. In other words, they serviced their corporate and wealthy masters while giving lip service to their base because it's not like the kulturekampfers will EVER under any circumstances vote Democrat.

    Democrats similarly figure on the base voting Democrat no matter what. The big difference is that Democratic politicians also feel compelled to scold the party's base and tell us (literally) to shut up.

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  158. slavdude2:11 PM

    IYKWIMAITYD.

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  159. slavdude2:16 PM

    Or is it Goatse Busters?

    No. Nonononononononono.

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  160. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person2:16 PM

    Bern, baby, Bern!

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  161. ColBatGuano2:17 PM

    Or the sort you might be able to interest in some cheap land in Florida.

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  162. Buffalo Rude2:22 PM

    I c wut U did thar.

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  163. It was the "Dean Scream" after his win in Iowa. Dean was celebrating with his crew and basically let out a "Yeeeeee-haaaaaaw!" as he exhorted them to go win New Hampshire. Fox News grabbed that, barbered it so that all that remained was the "eeeeeeeee-haaaa" and launched with the narrative that Dean was mentally unstable. Within 24 hours, all the other media outlets picked it up, playing the doctored clip repeatedly and asking with deeply serious voices whether Dean was mentally up to being president.

    I knew then that the election was completely fucked: That there would be no accusation against a Democrat that the media would deem too ludicrous not to front-page.

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  164. Hell, if she's going to be Empress Of The Universe she better start assassinating people whose names don't produce blank stares on the faces of 90% of humans.

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  165. ...aaaand do they even bother mentioning WHY Redshirts could possibly be considered SJW material, or has it degenerated into "Shut up, that's why!"?

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  166. We always have to divest ourselves of our radical fringe, while the GOP coddles theirs and feeds them Hi-Test Fringe Chow.

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  167. Last poll I saw him in was at 1% support.

    Damn, that's where you're looking at "impacted wisdom teeth" as exceeding your candidate in popularity.

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  168. Well, likes like Jim Webb is running for president.

    This race was really missing someone who could gently explain to all of us Democrats how we needed to get behind tax cuts, the Second Amendment, and the Confederate Flag if we ever hope to win the White House again in our lifetimes.

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  169. Oh, they've give the base quite a bit on abortion, just not the big prize they want.

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  170. billcinsd3:02 PM

    Dean finished an unexpected 3rd in Iowa behind Kerry and edwards

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  171. Because John Scalzi.

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  172. Because John Scalzi.

    So, basically, "shut up, that's why".

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  173. Marion in Savannah3:27 PM

    Well, our "radical fringe" (see Dean, Howard) is always, ALWAYS portrayed in the "liberal" media and all weird and fringey, but their wackaloons have "fresh, new ideas."

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  174. Marion in Savannah3:30 PM

    In our local newspaper, the "Savannah Daily Disappointment," there's a thing called "Vox Populi" where you can call in and record your thoughts on anything that the snakes in your brain hiss at you. It's MOST entertaining...

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  175. My mind boggles at the festering heap that column must produce every day.

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  176. It's that latter point that the sane people don't understand and refuse to understand. It worries me no end.

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  177. Guess I only WISHED he'd won!

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  178. Robert William Alexander Jr.4:20 PM

    And, Jim Webb just announced a run for President..

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  179. Actual liberal idea: Maybe if we give grandma a slight increase in her Social Security benefit, she wouldn't have to eat cat food and maybe she'd help boost the economy by spending that money.
    Liberal media reaction: Oh, those tax-n-spend Democrats, always wanting to give somebody else's hard-earned money to undeserving layabouts. They're just ultra-extreme socialists! HAHAHAHAH!

    Actual conservative idea: Ya know, boat repairs are expensive, so we should give people a tax break for getting their boat repaired. But only if the repairs cost more than $60,000! (Yes, this is an actual tax law passed in Florida.)
    Liberal media reaction: This is the kind of forward-thinking policy that helps to make our economy flourish! We need more just like this.

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  180. I assume he has many banana peels on which the Flash could slip.

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  181. Yeah, I caught that earlier. As I noted, we really need someone running for president to scold all of us about how we're being too hard on the Confederate flag, and how we really need to wait a few centuries before we rush into dealing with global warming.

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  182. And by the end of the meeting, the locals are strolling out vowing to tell their neighbors to vote for Bernie.Yeah, he's a master of retail politics. But it's a lot easier to pull off in Vermont than nationwide. Those skills might actually help him early on, in Iowa and New Hampshire, but it gets trickier after that. I will say I'm slightly encouraged by the fact that he's actually being taken seriously in some quarters of the MSM. Hell, Claire McCaskill even got challenged on her smears about Bernie being a crazed out-of-step ultra-leftist. If Martin O'Malley and a Clinton surrogate are already starting the trash talk, he must be onto something.

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  183. Apparently, you can tell he's a Democrat by the fact that he only wants us to wait a few centuries.

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  184. Dammit, that was such a stupid moment in our politics (number 642551). One silly gaffe with no content and suddenly the media decided it was a game-changer.

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  185. I wish someone had gently suggested to Sting and/or David Lynch that a master knife fighter like Feyd Rautha probably wouldn't have turned his back on his opponent in order to shout at the onlookers. Because that was the only thing wrong with that film.

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  186. Bernie's been onto something for decades. I look at all the "veteran" political reporters when they encounter Bernie, and they're all completely flummoxed. They can't believe what he's saying right at this moment, and then they're even more discombobulated when they realize he's been saying this stuff since 1972.

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  187. Most of them are Fremen, and I suspect Fremen are opposed to vuvuzelas on principle.

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  188. Because that was the only thing wrong with that film.

    Besides, of course, the rest of the film. When I saw the trailers for this, I wanted to puke. I waited until it made it to cable before I watched it. And I wanted to puke all over again.

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  189. Yeah, the subject matter deserved a little more dignity. For instance, get Larry Blamire of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra to direct.

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  190. I tad the announcement. He is proposing to whup china's ass.

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  191. LittlePig5:35 PM

    Season 2, Ep. 20. A complete episode, with Squidward on Strike (a Nosferatu reference) and Sandy, Spongebob and the Worm (the Dune reference, plus several Jaws gags).

    Help Wanted Episode 1a, featuring a magnificent Tiny Tim solo. (common line at my house:"I want my mommie Mr. Squidward!")

    Tea at the Treedome Episode 1c, a classic intro to Sandy Cheeks.

    can't find a good version of 'Just One Bite', from the screencap above.

    crappy link of 'Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost', source of both "I think they make a cream for that now" as well as a Toulouse-Lautrec joke, and a good one.

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  192. Great! Here I've been worrying since 1992 that I wouldn't live long enough to see global nuclear war in my lifetime!

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  193. whetstone5:43 PM

    Can you blackmail an entire country into forgetting a person exists? Look, I know they killed Vince Foster, but that just seems totally implausible.

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  194. LittlePig5:48 PM

    The first Halloween episode (Season 1, Ep. 13):

    Scaredy Pants. Introducing Bryan Doyle Murray as the Flying Dutchman (who was to become a recurring character).

    and

    I Was A Teen-Age Gary. In which Spongebob accidentally gets a dose of 'snail plasma' (Gary is Spongebob's pet snail), and observers some un us u al e f f e c t s...

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  195. Randy Gibbons5:49 PM

    On a couple occasions (not on the Web, in person) I've gotten dismissive reactions re: the conservatives' movement against contraception, but by now if people don't see that it's happening they're not paying attention.

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  196. LittlePig5:52 PM

    In short, everything in season 1 and 2 are pretty darn good. Look also for 'Rock Bottom' and 'Opposite Day'.

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  197. sigyn5:56 PM

    "...if people don't see that it's happening they're not paying attention."



    Isn't that always the way?

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