Emily Heil: What it will take to get more women to Washington?
Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.
White House: West Wing Week.
Jon does an America apology tour.
ObamaCareWebGlitchyFail Derangement Syndrome:
- Obama: Weekly Address:
- John Oliver gets sucked up into the ObamaCare mainframe!!!
- Young Turks: ObamaCare myths busted.
- Mark Fiore: National website disaster
- Sam Seder: Ohio (finally) okay Obamacare Medicaid expansion.
- Thom: what is McCarthy 2.0 up to?
- Young Turks: The “fake” fainting during Obama’s ObamaCare speech
- Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) seriously schooled by Carol Costello over misunderstanding of HIPPA concerns
- Young Turks: Rep. Pallone speaks his mind!
- Red State Update: Podcast 49—Halloween and Obamacare are of the devil.
- Stephen tries to sign up for ObamaCare.
- Sam Seder: Dumbass Sen. Inhofe (R-(not)OK) thinks Obamacare could kill him!!!
- Ed and friends: Obamacare lies could cost lives
- A critique of the critique.
- Jon: One glitch away from taking the house.
- Sharpton (with Rep. McDermott) more scaremongering from the Teabagging Republicans.
Inquiring Minds podcast: Science of Tea Party wrath (via Mother Jones.
Maddow: North Carolina GOP having some trouble with their minority outreach program (via Crooks and Liars).
Jon analyzes CNBC’s outrage over JPMorgan Chase ‘shakedown’.
Ann Telnaes: Obama drones.
ONN: The Onion Week in Review.
Daily Show: Sexy Halloween costumes.
The Party of the Stupid
- Ann Telnaes: The Sickness of the Republican Party.
- Is Rep. Larry Pittman (R-NC) the last of the Birfers? (ummm…unlikely.)
- Jon on the contribution of the Teabaggers.
- Pap: The new G.O.P. Southern Strategy
- Stupidest politician ever? Gov. LePage (R-ME) has a 47% moment.
- Sam Seder: Crazy Gov. LaPage (R-ME) double downs on Romney’s 47% statement.
- Maddow: How racist Ken Cuccinelli is being exploited by colleagues on the right
- Former Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio): Even Superman couldn’t lead Republicans.
- Pap: The hijacking of the Republican Party
- Pap: America can’t afford the Republicans
- Lies and the lying liars….
- Sam Seder: Nutburger Tea Party leader wants to “sue homosexuality”
- Young Turks: Tea Party Pastor wants to sue gays for AIDS?!?
- The Church of Crazy: Rafael Cruz anoints son Ted Cruz…a king!
- Maddow: The Tea Party’s Confederate legacy of racism
- O’Donnell: The Republican ‘crocodile-tears’ over ObamaCare
Mental Floss: 28 sweet facts about candy.
Thom: How America could be the happiest country on earth.
Ed: Dick Cheney has the audacity to criticize Obama for “premature” announcement of bin Laden’s death:
Stephen with the word Philantrophy (via Crooks and Liars).
Ann Telnaes: One bad heart away from the presidency.
G.O.P. Voter Suppression:
- Maddow: Texas GOP Voter suppression, Part I.
- Maddow: Texas GOP Voter suppression, Part II.
- O’Donnell: How new Texas voter ID law undermines women
- Daily Show: Voting makes you gay.
- Sharpton: Trick OR Cheat—GOP pushing ‘minority-outreach’ while suppressing the minority vote!
- Young Turks: Republican admits racism, voter suppression on Daily Show
- Young Turks: Racist Daily Show interview fallout.
- O’Donnell: Texas voter caging and the G.O.P.’s War on Women Voters&trade.
Bill Maher with some New Rules (via Crooks and Liars).
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
“Superman could not lead the GOP”, sounds like an understatement. I would think that is too much of a challenge.
It isn’t God that leads the GOP.
It’s the oldest game in the book. The carnival barker with the little bottles of sugary radium water. It’s the traveling preacher with the canvas tent tellin y’all to “give to the LORD and the LORD will repay you a thousandfold!” while he’s inching his hand up your daughters dress.
It isn’t theft, if the mark volunteers.
Texas AG Greg Abbott goes to Facebook to ask for advice from people about what he should be doing if he were to become Governor.
Much hilarity ensues.
My Grampa gave me several pieces of advice over the years before he died.
Don’t spit into the wind.
Don’t wrestle with pigs.
Don’t ever bet more than you can afford to lose.
Don’t play chess with a pigeon.
Never seek advice from a moron.
Seems to me, that that old Oklahoma wisdom never filtered its way down to Texas.
Deathfrogg – saw that Marcotte article – excellent!
The right wing, at least parts of it, are devolving into one big, mechanized con run by the God squad. It’s hilarious that Teddy Cruz daddy is both crazy and linked to Benny Hinn, grifter extraordinaire.
And the mewling by Mars Hill Church about their powerful God not getting them the property they want in Bellevue is just delicious – I’m sure a plea for more funds will follow this declaration of war against the heathen Sound Transit.
Oh, and did you see Driscoll’s new million-dollar home in Woodway? (also posted on other thread)
If you’re grifting for Jayzus, is it a sin?
Jesus loves you, but He loves your money most of all. Your money is the most important thing in the world to Jesus. If you really love him back, you must give that money to him. You must make him wealthy and provide him with Rolls Royce automobiles and yachts of unusual sizes. His house is that of the lord. Why would anyone seek to deny that house being as large and beautiful as possible? Gold is the only measure of your devotion to the house of the LORD.
Your gifts of gold will be well-received by the caretakers of his wisdom who sacrifice so much for the LORD and suffer so much for your faith. They are chosen to be the Kings that the LORD blesses with eternal knowledge and the faith that leads to the prosperity of the King.
Or something like that.
Here’s a good article on the various acts of sabotage that the Reich-wing has perpetrated on the ACA.
@ 6
Gawd, lookit the comments on the article.
The website being fritzed is their only focus. Never mind that the system is working pretty well, if a little clunkily at first. Like the folks that are claiming that their former health insurance was costing them $300 a month, but the ACA makes that go up to $800 a year.
@5….apparently Jesus drove the money changers from the temple because they weren’t paying the vig.
Y.O.U.S.’s?
@5
Oh, my – the farting preacher is too much!
I think I’ve seen that guy before, Robert Tilton, and I looked him up on Wikipedia…here’s his bibliography:
Cha-CHING!
Tipping, Kansas-Style
No, not cow tipping, waiter tipping: “Thank you for your service, it was excellent. That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God. May God have mercy on you,” a couple who had dined at the Carrabba’s in Overland Park, Kan., wrote on their receipt, according to NBC affiliate KSHB.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....style?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’ll bet they’re Republican tighwads who never tip anyway because they believe the labor of wage earners should be free.
I’m surprised they ate food touched by a “queer” person. Isn’t it tainted? Wouldn’t putting that food in their bodies enable demons to take possession? Or are they just cheapskates who don’t want to pay for service?
This being Kansas and all, I’ll bet they’re farmers who got rich from taxpayer-funded ethanol subsidies.
America’s crazy gun culture comes to JFK airport.
“A 23-year-old man was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport … after two hand guns, two defaced rifles and several ammunition magazines were found in his possession …. Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo told NBC News … one of the rifles was loaded.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....olice?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Maybe this guy isn’t up to speed on changes to airport security after 9/11/01?
Until a black driver won a national NASCAR race today, I didn’t realize 50 years have passed since the last time a black driver has won a national NASCAR race.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/26/.....?hpt=hp_t2
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I guess NASCAR is sort of a white people’s sport, or at least it looks that way, at least superficially. It’s probably not racism or anything like that. More likely it’s just a tough sport to break into, like lacrosse or beach volleyball.
11) I heard that others heard of it, and went to the restaurant to give the waiter extra tips to make up for what the customer did.
@7 “folks that are claiming that their former health insurance was costing them $300 a month, but the ACA makes that go up to $800 a year”
Is this the same bunch that demanded guvmint keep its cotton-pickin’ hands off their Medicare?
Mass Shooting Of The Day (TM)
A crazy man with a gun killed himself and four other people at a Phoenix apartment complex this morning. “Residents in the area told The Arizona Republic that the suspect and victims had previously argued over barking dogs.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....mplex?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: He shot the dogs, too.
I must confess, I paid money for a ST yesterday. I wanted to see the comics and I needed some newspaper to clean windows with anyway.
The headline: “Mars Hill eyes Sound Transit property for church.”
Now, I’m not a journalist by any means. I don’t know all the insider lingo that the news geeks use. But it seems to me, that in light of: The Brazilian riots (going on for a couple months now), the building outrage in Europe about the NSA eavesdropping on internal government communications in every country; the drone strike aimed at a single individual in Yemen a few days ago that killed 68 people, (the missile being deliberately fired into a wedding celebration) the targeted individual being a low-echelon “mid-level” commander in Al-Queida (allegedly); the 224 or so, (give or take), oil spills in South Dakota that weren’t bothered to be reported, even though they total well into the hundreds of thousands of gallons.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
I understand that the supposed “fourth estate” has its priorities, based on what they think will sell newspapers, but c’mon. That headline has got to be the phoniest, whiniest, bullshit article they could have lead with.
From now on, if I need to wash my fuckin car windows, Imma going to just pick up a few Strangers. At least the shit inside has some value.
@19 You’d think the anti’s would give Obama holy hell for murdering dozens of innocents to get one bad guy, but not a peep from them. Under their value system and religious beliefs, it’s okay to shed human blood as long as it’s foreigners or elementary school kids doing the dying.
@19 You’d think the anti’s would give Obama holy hell for murdering dozens of innocents to get one bad guy, but not a peep from them. Under their value system and religious beliefs, it’s okay to shed human blood as long as it’s foreigners or elementary school kids doing the dying.
It isn’t your imagination; more kids are dying from guns. Childhood deaths from gunshot wounds have spiked 60% over the last decade, coinciding with our runaway gun culture.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/.....8C11469222
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Of all the pestilences inflicted on society by rightwing scumsuckers, this is arguably the most odious of all.
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, a crazy person with a knife has killed a woman and four children, including an 18-month-old toddler.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....ports?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This apparently was a domestic incident; the suspect is related to the victims.
15)Wendell Scott was smiling from the Great Beyond. It took decades for him to get the trophy from the one race he won.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Scott
Amtrak showed off recently, the first of 130 mew sleepers, diners, and baggage cars for their long distance services. The diners and baggage cars are needed now, to replace cars built in the 1950s.
http://www.progressiverailroad.....8211;38182
@19
Buy Real Change when you need a newspaper, though your strategy of using the Stranger is good, too.
I read the Seattle Times article about Mars Hill, as well as the Stranger’s, and there was no comparison – waaaaay more information and context in the Stranger.
This article over at DailyKos, by the ever-fantabulous Denise Oliver-Velez, had me thinking about the puddibigot.
She is dissecting the EPIC FAIL of Teapublican efforts at ‘outreach’ to communities that are not characterized by the terms old/white/male/stupid/racist.
Several things stand out….
She, a woman of color, calls out imbeciles Alan West and E.W. Jackson, both black men, as ‘bigots’. So much for puddibigot’s ‘theory’ that emblazons his sig line.
She also says…
Yup, and yup.
She points out the gaping disconnect between their form – hiring people of color to broadcast racist and otherwise harmful to poor/black/brown/female/immigrant/maginalized constituencies – and the inescapable substance of their platforms and positions – which are manifestly harmful to anyone not white/wealthy/male.
She asks whether Republicans/Teahaddists think we’re that stupid?
They apparently do.
******
Speaking of stupidity, puddibigot comes to mind, of course.
The ongoing debate as to what makes him ‘tick’ – politics or religiosity, I have to come down again on the side of religiosity, or perhaps more accurately, tribalism.
I theorize that he finds affinity with the larger
teahaddist movement – which despises him on an essential level – via a shared set of cultural touchstones derived from Talibangelical myth belief. One of a number of strains of rabid religiosity, puddibigot’s shares a fear/loathing relationship with anything tarred as “other” – be it other religions, uppity women, teh GAYZ, anyone not sufficiently ‘American’ particularly immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants without documentation, and most especially anyone not ‘saved’ in the parlance of their Sky-Daddy worship. His belief system labels the poor ‘lazy’ and ‘on the reservation’ – essentially blaming the poor and others with unjust absences of opportunity for their own plight.
These alienations from ‘other’ – groups that are invariably on the margins – as well as those the choose not to maintain the same ritualistic relationship with the totem “Sky Daddy” or “God” – are an essential underpinning to his politics, but it is the tribal identification that allows the line to be drawn between it and ‘other’ and this is the definitive act.
Thus defined, the tribe maintains its integrity by a constant attention to drawing the distinction between it and other, saved and damned, us and them, righteous and sinner, Conservative and ‘Libtard”/Socialist/Leftist, free-thinking and “on the reservation”, hard-working/responsible versus lazy/hand-out/shiftless. The distinctions both stroke a linked sense of self-esteem and victimhood on the one hand, and simultaneously deny the value and humanity of ‘other’.
It’s this denial of the humanity of ‘other’ that allows, for example, puddibigot to cackle with glee over the notion that a child, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, would be tortured, one of the sickest and most reprehensible things I’ve ever read, here or elsewhere.
This fear and loathing underpins the entirety of his world-view, or at least what he shows us with his comments on this blog. It’s hard to know which came first, an essential fear and loneliness that led to finding a like-minded tribe, or a tribe that for whatever internal dynamics led to its needing such fear to maintain its integrity (perhaps the latter, as there are many religiously-defined tribes full of generous, loving people doing good in the world) – but it’s hard to know.
The linkage between this sort of noxious tribalism and Republican/Teahaddist politics is another matter. The institutionization of such tribalism is intimately linked to an age-old form of hucksterism or grift or con-man action by the leader(s) or preachermen, as I call them. A direct line between carnival barkers and snake-oil salesmen, and revival tents, and suburban prosperity gospel megachurches is undeniable. In terms of politics, right-wing paranoia, fear, greed, and simultaneous sense of privilege and victimhood link smoothly with the world-view of the tribe. It’s a self-reinforcing and co-dependent relationship, in which the tribe gains identity with a larger and powerful group, the preacherman gets more marks to grift, and the party gets even more marks to use as foot-soldiers and cash-machines in its war against progress.
What we get out of this pulsing mass of fear and loathing are marginally educated, hate-spewing, gleefully ignorant yet self-assured foot soldiers like the puddybigot. The enemies, of course, are minorities, universal education, programs to elevate women and the poor and the marginalized, science, pluralism, an even-playing field, robust shared infrastructure and prosperity, and societal limits on massive wealth/power accumulation….it’s a march toward Neo-Feudal plutocracy, and the stupid are on the front lines of the wrong side.
Whoa, look at these numbers. A vast and growing majority think that Congressional Republicans are NOT INTERESTED in the welfare of the entire country.
Devastating.
@27. Interesting Post. Reminds me of that study of the values of the Republican party, of moderates, of tea partiers and evangelicals. The tea baggers are terrified as they see their position of privilege and ease, eroding away.
Keystone XL supporters have made various spurious claims — that it’ll create tens of thousands of jobs, make America energy independent, etc. Today, industry experts laid another Keystone shibboleth to rest: It won’t lower gas prices in the U.S.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101144616
Of course, this is a no-brainer, because Keystone isn’t intended to move Canada tar sands oil to the U.S., but through the U.S. — for export to other countries.
I dunno about you folks, but to me, this looks like straight-up Nazi propaganda.
The Fascists are so terrified of their own goddamn shadows, that they have to make up shit to justify their “fear” to everyone around them.It’s all bullshit of course. They manufacture that appearance of fear, knowing that for the small-minded, it is contagious. Instilling panic in a large group of people is easy.
All you need do, is convince them they’re being attacked.
I guess it’s perfectly acceptable to be a drug dealer, money launderer, thief and stolen property fence, so long as you love Jesus and cut the GOP a chunk.
Hell, the Ragan Administration was smuggling cocaine by the ton into California and Texas, and using the cash to finance serial killers and pad their own campaign coffers with all sorts of untraceable cash.
One of the larger scandals of the Reagan/Bush administration was the fact that nobody seemed to give a shit about Ollie North being a major campaign financier for the GOP all through the 80’s. He was allowed to testify about the lesser aspects of the Iran/Contra affair, in exchange for making sure the worst parts of that whole debacle were kept a secret.
Hell, theres a well-known car thief and arsonist sitting in Congress right now, one of the biggest GOP heroes in our modern times, and he’s considered a possible candidate for the White House in a few years.
Remember. IDCIYAAR “It doesn’t count if you are a Republican.”