Sunday, October 20, 2013

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...closing out our shutdown coverage with the rightbloggers' post-mortem. Among the painful lessons learned: It most certainly wasn't anything they did.

Didn't have room to include the resurrection of an oldie but goodie from Investors Business Daily:
Obama Following Alinsky Script In Shutdown Showdown
Among the President's Alinskyisms, per IDB, was ridicule, which in the conservative script is never merited by ridiculous behavior, nor found funny because it is funny, but only employed by leftists as a communistic technique and approved by fellow travelers:
During a Maryland speech last month, Obama cited New Hampshire state Rep. Bill O'Brien's remark that ObamaCare is "a law as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850." 
"Think about that. Affordable health care is worse than a law that lets slave owners get their runaway slaves back," Obama quipped. "I mean, these are quotes. I'm not making this stuff up." 
That calculated stink bomb was met by a chorus of gasps and boos from the largely black audience.
Those people even laugh at "quips" differently than whites/conservatives!  Clearly the answer is more tricorners and knee-breeches.

102 comments:

  1. Atticus Dogsbody7:34 PM

    Bloody Kenyan Marxist Muslim! Where does he get off quoting the comments of real Americans? It's unconstitutional! Impeach the blah dictator! Aargle blaargh!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mary Ellen Sandahl7:47 PM

    One tiny inconsequentiality: the hat style of our 18th C. founders and all other European-type males of that period is called a tricorne, silent final "e". You achieve it by taking a simple round-crowned hat with a wide, even brim and folding the brim up against the crown thrice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.7:48 PM

    Ben Carson has an op-ed in the Moonietimes (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/15/carson-pursued-by-pc-police-nice-try-but-no-cigar/) where he complains that he is persecuted by the "PC Police" the about his Values Voter Summit remarks equating Obamacare with slavery. But then he didn't equate the two. He merely stated "that Obamacare was the worst thing in our country since slavery." You can't make this stuff up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. M. Krebs8:39 PM

    Some libertarian crackpot at a local fishwrap suggested that Obama-devil and his minions were responsible for outages at Twitter and other sites. Anyone else hear this craziness?

    ReplyDelete
  5. "calculated stink bomb"?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fats Durston9:08 PM

    "conjured the specter of Cromwell storming Parliament and thundering
    out its dissolution ('in the name of God go!'). Perhaps it will come to
    something like that."

    Ah, yes, the Praisegod Blockheads Congress.

    ReplyDelete
  7. hellslittlestangel9:41 PM

    I wonder how long it will take for them to figure out the real reason they lost: Ted Cruz isn't a true conservative.

    ReplyDelete
  8. XeckyGilchrist10:01 PM

    Band name!

    ReplyDelete
  9. J Neo Marvin10:02 PM

    I was just arguing with some doofus on Facebook who claimed that Ted Cruz had nothing to do with the government shutdown. I told him he'd better let him know that since he doesn't seem to be aware of it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. XeckyGilchrist10:04 PM

    Looks like the marching orders haven't gone out about how exactly to handle the revisionism.

    ReplyDelete
  11. AGoodQuestion10:14 PM

    "They think we are rubes who can be fooled by waving meaningless votes in our faces and saying 'I tried'... Our first challenge is uniting our own house and there is no way that unity happens absent a wholesale purge of the GOP."


    So now I guess the Tea is laced with ipecac. Some Guy wants to purge the GOP of all its accused RINOs, thus making it smaller and better. "Better at what?" is a question with no clear answer.

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  12. "Many rightbloggers took comfort from the continuing clusterfuck that was federal website access to the exchanges; this, they told the world, meant Obamacare would never work, and was in fact already, as Kyle Becker
    put it, an "epic disaster... train wreck... fire tornado" etc., over
    which "most of the country was doing a collective facedesk."

    Yeah... and thank God the Eisenhower Administration shut down that money sucking boondoggle of a space program after the first Vanguard missile blew up back in '57! We KNEW that train wreck would never... wait... what? Oh... never mind...

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  13. The really hilarious thing is the whingers sudden concern that EBT cards weren't working.

    ReplyDelete
  14. PersonaAuGratin10:45 PM

    He didn't equate the two, he just came close and rounded up.

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  15. FMguru10:58 PM

    So a week later they called again and told me the filibuster had failed and said I had to see Obama. Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Obama. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Obama. Even Biden was frightened of Obama. He used...sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and...satire. He was vicious.

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  16. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.11:02 PM

    We're the Liberal Inquisition. Our chief weapon is snark. And accusations of racism. Wait that's two weapons. Let me try again...

    ReplyDelete
  17. A Card-carrying Communist! What exactly does a Communist Card get you? Is it like the KISS Army? (Kids in Stalin's Service)

    "if I was a liberal I'd be embarrassed by [so many black people on SNAP]."

    You got me, asshole. I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed that 70 bucks a month for food is a shitty response to hundreds of years of institutional racism. I'm embarrassed that people in the inner city have to buy their groceries at the fucking gas station.

    I'm embarrassed that feeding starving children is a political issue.

    I'm embarrassed that even though giving people money for food is 6 times more effective as far as stimulating the economy than cutting corporate taxes [1], anybody who argues for it on economic terms is looked at like a crazy person. I'm embarrassed that doing arithmetic is now a partisan activity.

    I'm embarrassed how fucking obvious it is that giving money to people who are going to spend it today on American-made products in American stores in their local communities is going to do more good than letting giant corporations stick more US currency in overseas tax shelters.

    I'm embarrassed that following the word of Jesus gets you labeled a communist.

    I'm embarrassed that Clinton gutted SNAP, Dubya restored it, and Congressional Democrats were happy to gut it again in 2011.

    I'm embarrassed that 15% of my country has to be on food
    assistance and that number is not coming down to pre-2008 levels, probably ever.

    [1] http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/Small%20Business_7_24_08.pdf

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  18. montag211:14 PM

    Wouldn't that make it The Big Bulemia Tent Party?

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  19. Haystack11:45 PM

    Making your party smaller is a crackerjack election strategy.

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  20. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume11:46 PM

    in less than 8 hours of the shutdown, 'miraculously', professionally printed 3X4 foot signs appeared all over the country in the tens of thousand.

    Yeah right, we all know that government could never do anything so efficiently, unless they were planning it all along.

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  21. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume12:09 AM

    Some guy called Jonah just sat around biting the heads off cheetos.

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  22. IncongruousAmoeba12:14 AM

    "there may be some Republicans willing to support an expansion of Medicaid to cover the truly poor -- not those making a whopping 133% above the poverty line."

    Because the poverty line is so high already... ? Let's see, for 1 person it's $11,490 [1], so 33% of that is a "whopping" $3791.70 per year! That's... $316 a month! Really rolling in the dough there, huh? How about a family with two kids? That's 33% of $23,550 which is... $7771.50 or $648 per month! Don't bother with the jewelry, they're bound to have a Rolls Royce or two laying around!


    Schmuck.

    [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/01/24/2013-01422/annual-update-of-the-hhs-poverty-guidelines

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  23. L Bob Rife12:14 AM

    DINSDALE

    ReplyDelete
  24. DocAmazing12:33 AM

    IDB nails it again: verbatim quotes and accurate reporting are libelous. That's why they avoid both.

    ReplyDelete
  25. montag212:37 AM

    One thing for sure--empathy had no part to play in that. However, ooga-booga politics certainly did.

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  26. IncongruousAmoeba12:45 AM

    I'm embarrassed that some white people (racists) use "integrated" to mean that non-white people also shop someplace.


    I could almost understand if it was a school, but since when are stores "integrated"?

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  27. BigHank531:20 AM

    1900 Kinko's locations in the US. 1100 Office Depots. 1900 Staples stores. How, how on earth could government agencies email a file to somebody with a big ol' printer and get a professionally printed sign in mere hours? How? My god, is there no end to deviousness of the devoted Alinskyite?


    I'd say the right is almost kind of cute when it plays dumb, except they're not doing it for laughs. They're doing it so they can feel extra-persecuted.

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  28. BigHank531:23 AM

    Woolworth's lunch counters were whites-only before 1960.

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  29. Spaghetti Lee2:02 AM

    some of the brethren were crestfallen; some saw the ruins as an
    excellent foundation for future victories; and some retreated into
    madness.



    I'm assuming the ratio there was something like 1:1:20?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Spaghetti Lee2:09 AM

    "If Obamacare is really going to do poorly, it is better if we build up high or least modest expectations for it..."



    Man, Tyler Cowen (one of the smart ones!) comes so close to The Point, here, but then inexplicably wanders away. You see, morons, given that you've spent the last years telling people that Obamacare is the new slavery, that the sick and elderly will be ripped from their families and euthanized by cackling bureaucrats, that anyone who doesn't comply will be jailed or murdered, that the foundations of Western society itself hinge on defeating this unspeakable abomination...people are going to notice when none of that comes true. If you're reduced to "The website's all glitchy, hur hur" and your brilliant regrouping plan is to create your own low-cost insurance program (with blackjack! and hookers!) because, yeah, the base would totally go for that, given that you've spent the last 5 years telling them that federal health insurance is spawned directly from the gunk under Satan's balls)...you've lost. Sorry. Better luck next time.

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  31. Spaghetti Lee2:18 AM

    The sudden, shrieking change of heart when it came to the status of national parks and monuments continues to amuse me, in the darkest of ways. You could hear, in their creaky little heads, thoughts like "Wait, we thought...a government shut down just meant that poor welfare moochers would suffer and starve! That's all the government does, right? That's all we wanted! We clearly stated that we only wanted stuff we already hate to get shut down!" What the fuck did you think "government shutdown" meant, you stupid fucking ass-pimples?! Did you think that Yellowstone Park was owned by fucking Walmart or something? That the guards outside the WWII memorial worked for Disney? You were begging-begging-for a shutdown, because in your black little hearts you thought that was the only way to live your dream of snatching away health insurance from people who were so close to getting it. Well, guess what, you worthless fucking barn animals, you failed-AGAIN-on that front, so all you're left to do is add "Spite House", "Barrycades" and "Shiraz" to your stupid fucking in-group phrasebook that no one who isn't already mentally ill cares about. There's your prize, dipshits. You don't even get a copy of our home game. Go fuck yourselves.

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  32. horatius3:00 AM

    About 2 seconds after.


    Ted Cruz loses the Prez Election.

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  33. Snarll3:17 AM

    I think you're just compounding the Confusion of the Wingnuts here. 133% of the federal poverty line is $15,281 for an individual, and is the cutoff between "expanded" Medicaid and ACA subsidies. If you make less than that you're not eligible for subsidies, and if you live in a shithole state that refused to expand Medicaid (e.g., mine) you can't get Medicaid unless you're near-about dead, as some guy put it in the NYT last week.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Snarll3:33 AM

    How many times can I legally upvote this comment?

    ReplyDelete
  35. IncongruousAmoeba5:03 AM

    I know that private businesses were segregated too, I just wasn't familiar with using the term "integrated" to refer to anything but schools -- either way, non-ironically saying "integrated" sounds horribly racist.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Smut Clyde6:21 AM

    a wholesale purge of the GOP.
    A veritable Night of the Long... wait, those aren't knives.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Smut Clyde6:25 AM

    I would like to be bussed from precinct to precinct, taking advantage of the absence of ID requirements and voting reform to up-vote this comment repeatedly and illegally.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Night Of The Long Whine.

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  39. montag26:40 AM

    There are so many ways in which "delusional" is just not up to the task of describing the reaction of the fringe right. One asks, why would they embrace the notion of a government shutdown at all when so many of their ardent admirers are dependent upon SS and Medicare? Did they really think they could foist off responsibility on Obama? The answer is, of course they did.


    Just as they believe that, somehow, the military exists in an economic vacuum and does not require taxes to function (even though 80% of the discretionary budget goes to war, the military, national security state programs and military debt interest), that all their taxes go to welfare queens and that the extra part that doesn't goes to foreign aid to ungrateful countries. When it comes to wanting to believe, Fox Mulder has nothing on them.


    Not only do these people not care, not understand, not grasp, that the government is an integral part of the economy, like it or not, but that it exists primarily for business. 60% of the court cases today are occupied not with "frivolous" suits by Whiplash Willies, but with corporations suing other corporations. The BLS provides continuous information on employment nationwide, freely available to all businesses. The Bureau of Economic Analysis does line item-by-line item audits of every annual budget and publishes that work. The Commerce Dept. exists not so much to regulate commerce, but to promote it. The government provides billions in subsidies to some of the most profitable industries in the country. The military itself is a subsidy to an ever-expanding constellation of businesses to prop up a dwindling manufacturing sector that private investment has seen fit to neglect in favor of hucksterism in the FIRE sector. Health and Human Services has subsidized a health care delivery industry through Medicare and Medicaid that has very nearly destroyed itself by its business model of unbridled greed and fraudulent theft of services. The Department of Interior has become a cash cow for the extractive industries, just as the USDA has become for big agribusiness. And there's not nearly enough paper in the universe to adequately describe the ways in which the Treasury Dept. and the Fed have subsidized and protected the most rapacious businesses on the planet--banks.



    And yet, the GOP generally and the Tea Partiers specifically continually assail Obama for being black being anti-business and Communist for presuming to offer a small benefit, however half-hearted and business-friendly it is, to ordinary people--including themselves.


    This is stupid-to-the-bone and crazy. It's way, way past delusional. It's well into knife-wielding sado-masochism. It's a game of "Fuck You, Buddy" where not only everybody loses, everybody gets killed.

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  40. The wingnuts should just stop wasting energy with what the rest of us call "communication." I mean, is it some bizarre attempt to appear human; a pitiful camouflage?

    Why do they bother with the pretense of language? Seems like a waste of time and energy. They obviously don't care that words have common definitions, and their fellow tribalists miraculously always seem to understand what they mean despite the sounds coming out of their mouths.

    What they should do is drop the masquerade and just get to the noises that have true meaning in the core of the smooth little brain-stems of conservatoids.

    Wingnut Authority goes "ARGLE BARGE MUMBLE PIE!!!", which mainlines straight to the wingnut id as pure anger/fear/ecstasy--whatever impulse is needed to get the heap of flesh moving in the direction Wingnut Authority needs it to. No need to confuse things with words, which are anyway an invention of Fascist LieBruhls who want icky liberal things like Human progress and Civilization.

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  41. Too complicated--use Occam's Razor, dude.




    Maybe they ARE space aliens here to colonize the planet. Hmmmm?

    ReplyDelete
  42. pillsy7:49 AM

    Next up: forming the New Moron Army!

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  43. Tracy7:53 AM

    Night of the Long Sporks.

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  44. mortimer20007:55 AM

    Our first challenge is uniting our own house and there is no way that unity happens absent a wholesale purge of the GOP.

    The purpose of "a wholesale purge" is ideological purity and the consolidation of dogma and authority -- just ask Stalin. The great purges of Communist party members didn't unite their house so much as scare the crap out of anyone left living in it. When speaking of a wholesale purge of the GOP, a more realistic analogy would be bowels full of shit and an enema.

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  45. Derelict7:55 AM

    Just as they believe that, somehow, . . .


    As my brother-in-law so often explains it to me, fully half of the federal budget goes to paying black people to sit at home and have children, another half goes to foreign aid to ungrateful countries, and 80% of the federal budget goes to paying for the IRS to collect more taxes while another 60% gets sucked up by unions. Everything else the government does happens via magic--probably elves in the night or something.

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  46. BigHank537:55 AM

    Have you been watching Sarah Palin attempt to communicate again?

    ReplyDelete
  47. "How dare he mock us when we say stupid things! How dare he question our patriotism! We have never subjected him to such boorish behavior! Where's the civility? Where's the maturity? Where's my waaaambulance?"

    ReplyDelete
  48. BigHank538:04 AM

    There's no "sounds" about it. Telling the world that you keep a running count of all the coloreds you encounter in your grocery store says more about the tea-party member than the store or society.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Haystack8:12 AM

    Geez, Spags. Your comment made blisters on my display.

    ReplyDelete
  50. satch8:13 AM

    Smaller, but BETTER!!! Did the Spartans need more than 300 to beat the Persians at Gettysburg? Hell, no!!! Why, they... wait... what? They didn't? Oh... never mind...

    ReplyDelete
  51. coozledad8:17 AM

    there is no way that unity happens absent a wholesale purge of the GOP

    Do you know how long it took me to teach that monkey how to suck my dick?

    ReplyDelete
  52. Adrian8:30 AM

    Someone please set up one of those clocks to keep track of how many days, minutes, seconds, go by without Sarah Palin visiting the WWII memorial since reopening.

    ReplyDelete
  53. coozledad8:31 AM

    In a correction issued yesterday, Ben Carson said Obamacare was the worst thing since E.W. Jackson's foster parents made him eat a mayonnaise sandwich.

    ReplyDelete
  54. satch8:36 AM

    Like and a half!

    ReplyDelete
  55. JennOfArk8:37 AM

    Think you meant "if you make more than that you're not eligible..."


    I may be wrong about this but...I think the subsidies are for up to 300% or 400% poverty level. They get smaller as the income gets larger, but there are still subsidies for over 133% of poverty level. You have to fall below that line to qualify for Medicaid, but not to qualify for a subsidy to help cover the cost of insurance.

    ReplyDelete
  56. He began to operate what he called 'The Campaign'... He would
    select a victim and then threaten to beat him up if he voted for Obama. Four months later he started another operation which he called 'The Other Campaign'. In this racket he selected another victim and
    threatened not to beat him up if he didn't vote for Obama. One month later he hit
    upon 'Hope and Change'. In this the victim was threatened that if he
    didn't vote for Obama, Obama would beat him up. This for Obama was the
    turning point.

    ReplyDelete
  57. redoubt8:45 AM

    Some Guy doesn't know the difference between being inside the tent puking out and outside the tent puking in.

    ReplyDelete
  58. M. Krebs8:49 AM

    Or a belly full of Cheetos and a finger down the throat.

    ReplyDelete
  59. redoubt8:54 AM

    Telling the world that you keep a running count of all the coloreds you encounter in your grocery store says more about the tea-party member than the store or society.
    So very much this. (Have you ever been followed around a grocery store? I have.)

    ReplyDelete
  60. Snarll8:57 AM

    No, you're right, but that's what I said. If you make less than 133% of the poverty level you're not eligible for ACA subsidies, only for Medicaid. Which is no help at all in some states.

    ReplyDelete
  61. JennOfArk8:59 AM

    Ah, got it. Pardon the misreading.

    ReplyDelete
  62. coozledad9:08 AM

    And weren't Stalin's purges directed at the ideological purists? I thought there was some joke from that period about Stalin rooting out the communists.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Halloween_Jack9:35 AM

    Did you think that Yellowstone Park was owned by fucking Walmart or something?


    The phrase "more in hope than in anger" applies to them here, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Making your party smaller is a crackerjack election strategy.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Halloween_Jack9:38 AM

    Is it like the KISS Army? (Kids in Stalin's Service)


    I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day with this comment.

    ReplyDelete
  66. tigrismus9:41 AM

    Maybe we should read "uniting" as "reducing to one?"

    ReplyDelete
  67. Halloween_Jack9:46 AM

    Greenfield didn't explain why it was so little doubt of this, but did add, "So Valerie Jarrett is the real terrorist. And with an Iranian background, she certainly would know all about hostage taking,

    Her father ran a hospital for children in Shiraz; this, ladles and germs, is what we call the long game.

    ReplyDelete
  68. Yes, just imagine the economic efficiencies we could achieve by returning to the the days when the original robber barons placed chains across every navigable waterway and extorted outrageous tolls. It was the beginning of the end when big government intervened and stomped on their sacred riparian property rights.

    ReplyDelete
  69. My upvote on your comment is actually an upvote on Spags's comment. Does that work?

    ReplyDelete
  70. LookWhosInTheFreezer9:57 AM

    What the Founding Fathers ™ really meant when they said "E Pluribus Unim"

    ReplyDelete
  71. tigrismus10:10 AM

    Well, it's nutty enough, but there'll be no surprise.

    ReplyDelete
  72. montag210:10 AM

    For what it's worth, this sounds like a variant of the "I was invited to dinner with liberals" routine. These are people who wouldn't go near a grocery store where minorities shopped without strapping on firepower.

    ReplyDelete
  73. DocAmazing10:19 AM

    I work at a hospital for children and drink Shiraz. I'm probably a terrorist, too.

    ReplyDelete
  74. Mr. Wonderful11:04 AM

    I want to give this comment a year's supply of quality Kleenex products, a room of wall to wall carpeting from the Looms of Mohawk, and, to take it all home in, a new Rambler.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Mr. Wonderful11:06 AM

    And so on. It's up-votes, and turtles, all the way down.

    ReplyDelete
  76. BigHank5311:11 AM

    Fuck Tyler Cowen. He is one of the smart ones, and you know what he's done with his smarts? His new book, Average Is Over, is a sober explanation that the middle class is toast, game over, goodbye, without a single fuckin' acknowledgement that one teeny-tiny bit of it might be due to deregulation, union-busting, exportation/automation of manufacturing jobs, etc. It's all presented as a natural outcome: of course the Walton family are all billionaires! Of course the FIRE sector of the economy is much bigger, despite its production of nothing except debt and excuses!


    You don't believe he's decided to turn himself into a complete tool for the .01%? Check out the pull quotes used on his book: he's being compared to Thomas Friedman and his "just-so" comforting of the comfortable. Tyler Cowen his own motherfuckin' self linked to a review of his book in which he was compared to that innumerate racist dingleberry Charles Murray! CHARLES FUCKING BELL-CURVE MURRAY! What thinking person....oh, fuck it.



    Tyler Cowen has seen the future, and it's sucking billionaire cock. He just thinks he can get away with doing it with words.

    ReplyDelete
  77. My friend Erik was born in Iran too... his dad was working on a shopping center for the Shah. These right wingers are so freaking dumb it hurts.

    ReplyDelete
  78. I declare this another upvote for Spags.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Obama and Biden now formed a gang, which the
    called 'The Gang' and used terror to take over GM, AIG, the military and halftime of the Super Bowl. When they tried to take over healthcare they were for the only time in their lives, slit up a treat

    ReplyDelete
  80. mgmonklewis12:55 PM

    Among the Republican Tea Party idiots who shut down the government, we have
    a very special idiot representing Our Fair State. Kristi Noem (R-SD) was in
    Rapid City to meet with ranchers and city officials affected by the awful
    early-season blizzard. When they asked when they could expect government help
    to deal with the storm's aftermath, she replied that she couldn't get anybody at
    the government agencies to call her back.


    Ahem.


    You shut down the government. There's nobody there to return your
    call, you fking empty-headed, gum-snapping hairdo!

    ReplyDelete
  81. Gromet12:56 PM

    Obviously a "largely white" audience wouldn't have booed the Fugitive Slave Act, because we're still all for it? "Hey, it was the law of the land and it kept the Union together through the 1850s, so don't you dare knock it, you Commie"? Is that how good Americans woulda reacted? "It's thanks to calculated jokers like you and your unruly boo-gasp mobs that Fillmore lost the Presidency"? What the hell is IBD saying??

    ReplyDelete
  82. fraser12:59 PM

    Next Obama will be using satire and bathos,the fiend.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Gromet1:02 PM

    Oh, if you can name more than two kinds of wine (e.g., "red" and "white"), you might as well be skipping the class where they teach plane-landing lessons.

    ReplyDelete
  84. mgmonklewis1:03 PM

    Once again, I am foiled by the lack of a Preview function. Or is it something more sinister—like kerning?! [drama sting]

    ReplyDelete
  85. Gromet1:21 PM

    I flipped on the conservatoid talk radio for just one block this morning and whoever was hosting (a Brit?) committed to this exact idea. Facebook crashing on the same day the president gives a speech defending his website? No way that's a coincidence, folks!

    ReplyDelete
  86. Gromet1:23 PM

    Professor Hats, over here.

    ReplyDelete
  87. J Neo Marvin3:39 PM

    Never fails to blow my mind that the (famously African-American before gentrification) Fillmore District in San Francisco was named for the street that was named for THAT guy.

    ReplyDelete
  88. glennisw3:51 PM

    These are the same geniuses that proclaim cell phones owned by poor people as "luxuries," because apparently they haven't the ability to understand the pricing structures and costs of land lines vs. cell phones - even though they most likely get that information in the mail they actually receive for their own accounts.

    ReplyDelete
  89. glennisw4:33 PM

    "It takes planning to purchase a large volume of anything in a large bureaucracy," and "Did anyone besides me wonder how they got all those signs printed and distributed far and wide, including to all the national parks and cemeteries overseas only eight to ten hours after the government shut down?"

    Seriously, are they really so stupid they can't figure out how a departmental open purchase order at Staples works? Maybe they are all old and retired, having last dealt with purchasing office supplies several decades ago? Or are they all so inexperienced at managing complex operations that they really have no idea that you don't have to hire a signwriter these days?

    ReplyDelete
  90. Mooser5:03 PM

    I refuse to make fun of conservatives any longer. Some people just don't absorb lead well, although how that leads to an irony deficiency I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
  91. merl16:31 PM

    Since the majority of recipients are white, does that embarrass him?

    ReplyDelete
  92. "I beseech thee, gentlemen, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible ye may be mistaken fuckheads."

    ReplyDelete
  93. merl16:34 PM

    And no year's supply of Rice-a-Roni either.

    ReplyDelete
  94. bliekker7:49 PM

    That was Mark Steyn sitting in for Rush Limbaugh. When I want to check in on the right wing noise machine, I can handle listening to Rush's lame bits and Mark Levine's tizzy fits, but for some reason every time I hear Steyn I want to kick his teeth in...and I'm a pretty mellow guy most of the time.

    ReplyDelete
  95. M. Krebs8:12 PM

    I can't handle that shit. You guys had better keep your blood pressure monitored as you get older.

    ReplyDelete
  96. IncongruousAmoeba11:14 PM

    If I understand correctly, people making between 100% and 400% of the poverty line are eligible for tax credits [1], and expanded Medicaid is supposed to cover people up to 138% of the poverty line, but Medicaid in some states doesn't cover a large number of people who make less than the federal poverty line, which is the problem at issue, right?


    My point that 133% (or 138%) of a small number is still a small number stands, though.


    [1] http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

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  97. IncongruousAmoeba11:37 PM

    Charles Murray is another one of those who libertarians seem to love, because they're also used to saying unpopular things (like "the Civil War wasn't worth it" etc) and being criticized for it.


    Also calling people "dingleberries" (heh) isn't the done thing in "intellectual" circles, so people tolerate or even praise Murray for being anti-PC, rather than thrusting a cross at him and shouting "away foul demon!"

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  98. Snarll11:39 PM

    I agree it's a miserly amount, but the design was meant to handle almost everyone seamlessly, from Medicaid into the subsidized private plans. But thanks to John Roberts and a bunch of asshole Republican governors & legislatures, it's not working out that way.

    I checked into Medicaid in Missouri for a friend a couple of years ago, and basically unless you're blind, disabled, elderly, or have dependent children, you needn't even apply. I'm sure Mississippi and a lot of other shitty states are the same.

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  99. because they're also used to saying unpopular things (like "the Civil War wasn't worth it" etc) and being criticized for it


    Or, because they agree that blacks are intellectually inferior and he gives them support in this view.

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  100. IncongruousAmoeba7:56 PM

    Yes, well, in the right context I wouldn't hesitate to label not calling Murray an asshole in itself a racist act, regardless of the person's opinions on race.


    I wouldn't go so far as to call Tyler Cowen racist -- yet -- but I have been picking up warning signs.

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  101. newworlds6:00 AM

    a week later they called again and told me the filibuster had failed and
    said I had to see Obama. Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified
    of Obama. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see
    Obama. Even Biden was frightened of Obama need cavitacion y presoterapia for do a happy.

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