All the pundits on MSNBC are all punch drunk and redfaced and slurring their words from lack of sleep. Andrea Mitchell looks less animated than her 200 year old husband.
Christ Matthews looks like he slept in an NBC broom closet after 9 tequila fanny-bangers (woo Bloom County references- bet you all did not know I own every Bloom County comic ever written- Steve Dallas is kind of a personal hero. Or maybe it was Opus.) and just interrupted Howard Wolfson’s stream of bullshit (it never stops, it really doesn’t) to do a college tour with Hillary in WV.
As a West Virginian, god help us all.
As a side not, this has me almost physically aroused:
Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.
The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.
“There is an attitude that, ‘I better watch out for myself, because nobody else is going to do it,’” the member said. “There are all these different factions out there, everyone is sniping at each other, and we have no real plan. We have a lot of people fighting to be the captain of the lifeboat instead of everybody pulling together.”
In a piece published in Human Events, the Republicans’ onetime captain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, warned his old colleagues that they face “real disaster” on Election Day unless they move immediately to “chart a bold course of real reform” for the country.
Twenty years in the desert, you miserable failures. Maybe by then I will be ready to support a Republican again. Yeah, I am fucking bitter.
*** Update #2 ***
This may be the best comment ever:
The GOP let Alfred E. Neumann sit behind the wheel of their bus and drive it off a cliff. The fuckin’ thing is falling, Alfred’s grinning mug is turned to them asking “Hows that fellas?” and somewhere from the back of the bus a genius removes his tongue from the window and mumbles “Pssst, I think we have a message problem.”
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Uh oh, McCain is in trouble. Even Republicans know he’s a dead end.
PaulB
So much for Rove’s “permanent Republican majority.”
Paul
As well you should be. When the scales fall from your eyes and you truly see, you hate what previously deluded you. I still kick myself for the myriad things that I’ve been on the wrong side of, and only thereafter come to realize were untenable,
Arguing with signposts
40 years in the desert … that’s the correct biblical metaphor. And I can’t think of a more deserving bunch.
jake
Oh please, God. Let those useless wanks listen to Newt. Hmmm, maybe not:
Shorter NRCC:
“We must come together and -”
“Shut up you son of a bitch!”
“We’re doooooomed, dooooomed!”
I see what you mean John. I need a cigarette after that.
John Cole
I am not religious.
Just pissed.
SpotWeld
Steve Dallas before or after the alien abduction?
dslak
So it would be correct to say that you’re losing your religion?
maxbaer (not the original)
That should make campaigning with the guy running for Bush’s third term a ot of fun. And, if I wasn’t aroused after that, Rusty’s link did it.
b. hussein canuckistani
How much schadenfreude can one take in one morning?
JGabriel
John COle:
Looks like a good time for a reminder. A lot of people felt this way about the Republicans in ’74 and ’76 – especially after Agnew, Nixon, and ‘Whip Inflation Now’ (due to Republican marketing, people tend to forget that some of the worst 70’s inflation occurred under Ford).
And, of course, the Republicans were back in the White House in 1981.
In other words, that 20 – 40 years in the desert we all want for the Republican party ain’t gonna happen all by itself.
Keep that in mind.
.
cleek
i’m goatse for schadenfreude: i can take more than anyone thought possible – and it’s disgusting to watch.
cleek
holy fuck. did i really just write that?
yow.
Josh
Woo hoo herring wallbangers!
4tehlulz
WTF cleek, WTF…
Josh
Is there a live stream for MSNBC online? I can only find one for CNN and they just had Mitt Romney talking about how the presidency is not an ‘internship’ and that we need someone who’s been tested blah blah blah…
BH-Buck
Real reform? Tell me again, how long have these phucks had control?
What beats the sh*t out of me is that there are people STUPID ENOUGH to fall for that sh*t.
wasabi gasp
I think the word the Republicans might be looking for is Change.
But, they got Nothing.
Nothing you can believe in.
BH-Buck
JGabriel is absolutely right. Especially when there are people like Rush Limbaugh out there dissin democrats on an hourly basis.
cleek
the perils of posting before 9AM…
zoe from pittsburgh
This made me chuckle out loud.
In a discussion on Morning Joe about how completely and totally screwed the Republicans are in the fall Pat Buchanan said, “well, some of us are of the mind that we sort of deserve it.”
Yes you do, fellas, yes you do. I loathe Pat Buchanan but sometimes he’s sorta accidently fabulous.
Napoleon
The differance between now and 81 is that a bunch of trends were in the Reps favor then and they were percieved as putting forth positions in line with most or many American’s beliefs. Today that doesn’t exist so it is a lot less likely that they will be able to bounce back. Think of it, even if they get wiped out this election cycle they are going to be left with a bunch of elected officials who are on record with positions like global warming denial, gay and foreigner bashing and Shivo and stuff like that. Plus the party is going to be more Southern then ever, and I suspect the days of that playing well with Northerners is done after Dubbya. Do you really think that is going to be a great basis for them to build from? They will almost have to clean out even youngsters like Adam Putman and Patrick Henrey and bring in new people before they can hope to recover.
John Cole
Once you can get past what I will charitably call Pat’s generational issues, he is a funny and perceptive pundit.
Ned R.
…for three days, before the stone was rolled away. Oh wait.
p.a.
That’s why John isn’t a Republican any more. Their motto is ‘I’m religious and pissed.’ They leave out ‘and crazy’- hurts marketing.
Napoleon
. . .and a PS, the Reps are stuck with a bunch of lunitic fringe interest groups like the Club for Growth which it will take state and local Rep parties several election cycles before they realize they have to dump them overboard if they ever want to come back. I really thing we could be looking at Obama’s second mid-term before they even start really gaining some of their seats back.
RSA
God is from West Virginia? That explains a lot. :-)
Punchy
Is this the one with the penguin? you think THIS is funny? Good lord. Somebody, quick, take Cole to a comedy club.
Catsy
Wow cleek, I think you leveled up your ability to construct netologisms.
John Cole
“Taint corn. It’s dope.”
It was, and is, funny.
jrg
Nah, they need to keep pushing their imbecilic “culture wars”. What they need are more Terri Schiavo incidents, more “America is a Christian nation” talking points, more jingoism and accusations of treason, more wars based on false pretenses, more gay bashing, more “Wars on Christmas”, more federal pork. They should also continue the push to teach “God did it” as a scientific theory in schools (because that’s how we can compete in the 21st century).
Another something that might help is insisting that teenagers remain ignorant of safe sex practices, then blame the Hollywood elites when Sally-Jane Trailerpark comes home with a bun in the oven. Oh, yeah, don’t forget the flag pins, and remember to snuggle up to president Bush, while calling the 70+ percent of Americans who cannot stand him “the radical left-wing”.
There is absolutely nothing the Republicans can do at this point to re-gain the middle without alienating their bat-shit crazy base. They had their chance to stop all this when Rove was riling up the inbreds, but they chose not to, because it seemed like a politically expedient idea at the time – now they want to convince people that reform is a matter of Republican principle, like someone else got us into the mess we are in? What a bunch of morons.
Rot in hell, GOP.
Justin
20 years in prison for some of the criminals of this administration. And for the rest, 20 years in the desert with some of those hallucinatory peppers that Homer ate, and a spirit guide fox to help them sort out the rot in their souls that makes them jump with glee at preventing all Americans (even children) from having health care. Think of it as tough love for our fellow countrymen.
We’re all human, and we must never shield ourselves from self-examination and self-criticism, because we will all err or be deceived at some point. It takes a lot of courage and honesty to go through this process where others can see and reflect on how it relates to their own experiences, and for that the country truly does owe embittered and burned former GOP’ers a debt of gratitude.
The good news is that all us ‘elitist’ liberals knew that you weren’t bad people, that you were our neighbors and family and friends who we felt were just sorely misguided. The bad news is there are just as many still under the sway of wingnut-ism. My grandmother (a Democrat) recently fretted, to my horror, about Obama ‘refusing to wear a flag lapel pin, taking an oath on the Koran, and being associated with that Jeremiah Wright.’ There’s a lot of groundwork to be done to set her and other like-minded folks straight. You have to dredge up and obliterate all kinds of assumptions and prejudices — such as why a lapel pin matters at all — as well as arm yourself with demonstrable facts and be prepared to point out how talking about such things distracts from real, non-ephemeral issues of political life that affect individual Americans and the country as a whole.
Let’s just take a moment to think about those issues, which have taken a backseat to haircuts, pastors, clothing styles and lapel pins thus far into this historic election — now only six months out from the election itself. An ongoing war of imperial aggression that is bankrupting the country and shattering the already tarnished reputation of the U.S., millions of Americans being forced out of their homes (which then sit unoccupied because no one can buy them), people suffering and dying because they cannot get the medical care they need (even though we have stockpiles of medicine and the world’s most advanced medical technology), factories closing and moving to underdeveloped countries where expectations are so low people will work for what we would consider slave wages, a state of international anarchy furthered by our own government’s undermining of the United Nations, executive power grabs, torture being discussed and approved at the HIGHEST levels of government. A growing national surveillance state, a true Big Brother created by the very people who used to warn AGAINST it. A rapidly changing climate. A splintering economy. And now worldwide food shortages…
I find that article about the Republican ‘message’ hilarious:
A ‘bold course of change,’ indeed, was what Republicans offered the country. Unfortunately, it was a course that directly into the heart of wingnut insanity and now that we have gotten a good look at it, many are understandably disgusted and revolted. Their objective is to prevent fallout and preserve the status quo while they regroup, not to ‘change’ anything.
Jake
I just ventured over to TalkLeft.
They seemed resigned to the reality that HRC is done. Some of them say they won’t vote for Obama. Others are talking about how if Obama wants their vote, he damn well better tell them what kind of judges he’s going to appoint.
Inspiring stuff.
T. Scheisskopf
Twenty years? I am figuring at least one generation, with two not out of the question. It’s gonna take at least one to clean up the mess. Won’t be enough to get the smell out of the carpets.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Errr, no, John. He’s a bigoted, racist fuckwit.
Which is where your former party went wrong, my man; from the day they embraced the Southern Strategy, those fuckers were doomed.
And I can’t tell you the schadenfreude of watching brown people fuck them.
TheFountainHead
My boss walks into the office, looks down at me over his sunglasses and says, “Has she dropped the other shoe yet?”
wasabi gasp
The GOP let Alfred E. Neumann sit behind the wheel of their bus and drive it off a cliff. The fuckin’ thing is falling, Alfred’s grinning mug is turned to them asking “Hows that fellas?” and somewhere from the back of the bus a genius removes his tongue from the window and mumbles “Pssst, I think we have a message problem.”
jnfr
Joan Walsh has the transcript from that Brazile/Begala argument we were talking about last night.
Hope you get some sleep, John. Great posts tonight.
Jake
Buchanan is an interesting guy. I recall one NH primary when he was running for president and trying to dismiss claims that he was a bigot. They asked a rabbi what he thought about Buchanan’s claims that he had lots of Jewish friends. The rabbi responded: “That’s OK, I have lots of friends who are anti-semites”. Classic.
It was interesting watching Buchanan, who’s been dumping on Obama for awhile now, do a complete 180 last night and begin dumping on Hillary. Very few of these talking heads appear to have any point of reference other than which way the wind is blowing.
But I don’t mind Pat. Dobbs on the other hand, drives me nuts. Anyone catch him last night pressing one of the pundits to basically admit Obama was only getting the black vote because he’s, you know, black? Lou seemed visibly distressed that Obama seems the likely nominee. There’s the real bigot, IMO.
Napoleon
By the way, I recall having read in several places years ago (it must have been around the Bush/Clinton election) that how the economy is/things in general are around 6 months before the election is what people seem to vote on. In other words even if the economy and other things magically turns around between now and election day pretty much what peoples perceptions were 6 months before the election is what they will base their vote on. Yesterday was the 6 month mark.
Punchy
Yes, they are. Rolls and rolls of quarters, dimes, and nickels. By the millions, natch.
I dont even understand what the above means, let alone laugh at it. You WVians are an odd bunch.
Dennis - SGMM
Here are the comedy stylings of Newt Gingrich with his recommendations for a “bold course of real reform.”
See all of the bold ideas for reform? They got nothin’.
jake
20 years in the desert ain’t good enough:
“He looks guilty. He smells guilty. He IS guilty! And we recommend that he be fed to giant Iranian goat-eating cockroaches!”
b. hussein canuckistani
Thanks, cleek. I guess it is possible to have too much schadenfreude.
Bloom County, btw, is damned funny when it isn’t trying to be heartwarming. Then it sucks goatse levels of ass. Oliver was always my favourite.
D.N. Nation
Hey Pappy! We gotta get us some of that RE-form!
This is the best these clowns could whip up? A wedge issue that no one cares about, and focusing on reminding people about something?
Well done, GOP.
Lee
I read the Newt piece yesterday.
I actually liked what he had to say in the top portion of essay. Then he listed his ‘What Republicans should do’. Some of them are good, some are just a sure-fire way to lose in Nov.
Repeal the gas tax for the summer, and pay for the repeal by cutting domestic discretionary spending
Redirect the oil being put into the national petroleum reserve onto the open market
Introduce a “more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security bill” as a replacement for the Warner-Lieberman “tax and trade” bill
Establish an earmark moratorium for one year and pledge to uphold the presidential veto of bills with earmarks through the end of 2009
Overhaul the census and cut its budget radically (WTF?!?!)
Implement a space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system
Declare English the official language of government
Protect the workers’ right to a secret ballot
Remind Americans that judges matter
The only reason I can see of the census one is that he realizes how bad the Republicans are going to get screwed in the next census if they accuratly count immigrants.
BH-Buck
Remember what Pat said about garnering all those extra votes in Florida, back in 2000?
“I don’t believe all those people voted for me” (or something very close to that)
I never liked the man. Hate those hand gestures he’s constantly using. But that statement gave me a whole new respect for him. An honest republican… well I’ll be damned!
zoe from pittsburgh
Lou Dobbs needs to go– shameless xenaphobia is so Old Politics As Usual. He’s nauseating.
Jake
A couple of interesting tidbits this AM.
Drudge is reporting that HRC loaned her campaign a whopping 6.4M last month, and will continue to give loans to continue.
George Snuffaluffagus reports that the Obama campaign will be rolling out superdels in bunches, and lock up the nomination soon.
It could very well be an interesting week.
Mary
“This isn’t pleasant, so I’ll just say it: we’re dropping you from the Meadow ticket. I’m afraid it’s the ‘label’ thing. I’m sure you understand. Now what we need is an ultraconservative right wing nut for your replacement … we gotta nudge this party back toward the middle.”
eglenn
“The wind doth taste of bitter sweet
Like jasper wine and sugar
I bet it’s blown through others’ feet
Like those of…Casper Weinberger.”
In it’s prime, one of the best.
wasabi gasp
Master Ballooner flatters me. My idiocy is in peril.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
When did Newtie take up sniffing glue?
But please, republicans, listen to him, by all means!
Throwin Stones
$25 for Obama
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
Yup, we broke it so we’re the only ones who know how to fix it.
Scrutinizer
No myiq? No p.huk? What has the world come to?
Dennis - SGMM
In other news: Passengers of the sinking Titanic will hold a rally with the ship’s anchor.
Delia
More Boom County wisdom:
A bold new plan of action for the goopers: drop McCain and run a dead cat for President. See if anyone can tell the difference.
Halteclere
Reminds me of that old saying: “Choose your enemies carefully, for you will become like them.”
Haha bitches, welcome to the Democratic way of running a party!
Karmakin
#1. Bloom County is classic and hilarious. I even like it when it tries to be heartwarming, but I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.
#2. Lou Dobbs is worse than Pat Buchanan, and yes, it is “generational” issues..but for reasons for more than just racism.
#3. I’m waiting for the final shoe to drop as well.
#4. To enact real change, the GOP will have to acknowledge that the problems exist in the first place. Considering that’s basically a 160 degree change from their current message, that’ll be tough. The words you used in the last post, quite frankly apply. The GOP will have to learn good faith. I don’t think the current leadership can.
Chris
The best part of that Politico article is, as usual, the comments section. What’s the cause of Republican woes? Why, their complete captiulation on the coming “Remexification” of America, naturally!
I wonder if anyone ever considered telling these people that with latino-americans being one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in America, calling John McCain “Juan McCain” like “Juan” is some kind of perjorative might not help their chances much.
Svensker
It’s senses.
POTD.
MNPundit
Homestate Paper Tackles the “Maverick McCain” Myth
zoe from pittsburgh
Does anyone else think that McCain is going to drop out and Mitt is going to be the one we’re running against? McCain still hasn’t released his medical records and Mitt said he was “suspending” his campaign, not ending it.
If I were the GOP I wouldn’t want to watch my old war hero get bloodied by a bunch of pansy-ass liberals. Without Hillary to galvanize the party McCain is hard, burnt toast. McCain has already proven that talking is not his strength and Obama will make him look feebly, old and out of touch.
You don’t run an old horse on its last legs against the Magical Unity Pony. It’s time for them to change horses– although I certainly hope that they don’t!
zzyzx
So no one ever sleeps at Jazz Fest of course; if there’s not music going on, there’s always the option of playing in the quarter. So then my flight home is delayed so I didn’t get any sleep on Monday night. I figured I could catch up last night, but I wanted to see the moment when Obama took the lead if it happened. Tonight. I will catch up on my sleep tonight. Please let that be so.
Tim Fuller
The Republican game was never ultimately to win or hold power by consensus alone. It’s rumored they kill hookers and start wars to maintain their status quo. Kudos to the Mad Magazine reference, but it’s not just Republican asshats on that bus folks. It’s all of America on that bus, a vast majority of which wanted to get off at the last rest stop.
Whatever else you think, Alfred is STILL DRIVING. He appears to be wrecklessly endangering himself and others. Where are the blue lights in the mirror when you need them?
Self admitted war criminals should be in custody, not still out driving the roads.
Enjoy.
gypsy howell
You go, Newt! That’ll get the base riled up and voting for republicans!
(Seriously, WFT? The Census Bureau ?)
lilysmom
So Chimpy just got through meeting with the Repubs from Congress and the shorter version of his speech to the press is basically “If we could get the damned do-nothing Democrats in Congress out of our way, we could fix all these messes”.
Who are these people? They created the mess. How stupid are they to even be standing there with him? Jeeeezuss
I do have to admit though that he did look shell-shocked. Someone has finally made him understand that his entire party is going over the cliff and his administration just might have something to do with that fact.
Rove the boy genius architect, indeed.
rob!
Clinton supporter George McGovern publicly calls for Hillary to drop out.
drip…drip…drip…SPLASH!
4tehlulz
>>Seriously, WFT? The Census Bureau?
10bux sez that he wants to count less minorities, poor, cities, etc., so the guvmint don’t have to spend money on them.
Jen
I’m kind of surprised it’s 11 a.m. and there aren’t any superdelegate announcements yet, that I’ve seen. I’m going to call the first one as coming in before 2 p.m.
zzyzx
They might be giving her the chance to have her meetings first.
4tehlulz
So P.luk was saying that Obama was McGovern x2 and it turns out that McGovern backed Hillary until today.
Fucking lol.
Llelldorin
Yeah, that makes sense. It would be a bit tacky to interrupt Clinton to make a cell phone call endorsing Obama.
forked tongue
I love that! The Census Bureau! Feel the electoral magic!
But somehow it’s the “space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system” that just gives me a special tingle. Let the bridges collapse and the highway system fall into disrepair. Starve public transportation and let gas hit $10 a gallon–but at least our traffic will be directed from space!
AnneLaurie
Bloom County adoration seems to be a generational thing, too. But then, I can remember my dad telling me that Doonesbury (“That’s guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” or “It’s a baby woman, Ms. Joanie!” would never be as brave or as funny as Pogo. So what daily strip replaced Bloom County in the political-plus must-read category?
(And if the answer turns out to be Mallard Fillmore… America is truly doomed.)
jake
The Census Bureau provides information that determines a butt load of things including where schools will be built, roads laid, how many electoral votes a state gets.
protected static
Nah. It’s a technology thing.
I’m the last person to defend Newt, but IIRC he wants the Census Bureau to be able to use statistical modeling instead of the headcount. He doesn’t see why having an 18th century mandate to conduct the census means it has to be done using 18th century methods, ie. door-to-door.
The Grand Panjandrum
That comment is worthy of immortality. Can we get Danziger or Oliphant to turn that into a cartoon? That picture is staying in my head for a long time. Thanks, wasabi gasp!
MBunge
“I’m the last person to defend Newt, but IIRC he wants the Census Bureau to be able to use statistical modeling instead of the headcount. He doesn’t see why having an 18th century mandate to conduct the census means it has to be done using 18th century methods, ie. door-to-door.”
Because when you actually count people, then you can have meaningful arguments over who did or did not get counted. But how the hell do you determine that statistical model X is superior to statistcal model Y? Or to put it another way, rigging the census is impossible when real counting is involved. Some people do get missed, but you can’t manipulate the results. But it would be incredibly easy to come up with a statistical model that benefits one side over the other.
Mike
Tom in Texas
The Boondocks is probably the biggest one today.
I’m actually enjoying daily comics these days in a way I haven’t for years. There’s quite a few that cater to differing political/adult taste nowadays. The Houston Chronicle has one of the best comics pages in the country at 4 pages, so I get quite a dose if I want one.
libarbarian
News Flash John: So is God :)
I’m not religious in the slightest, but that shit pumps me up.
Zifnab
Key Words: “cut its budget radically”
Translation: “Stop counting new people in our country.”
Immigrants vote Democrat. Solution? Stop counting immigrants. Remember, its not the votes that count but who counts the votes.
Barbara
Someone once told me that it takes 20 years for the reputation of a university to actually catch up with its worth. What’s happening, pretty clearly, is that the Republican Party embedded itself in the South with its culturally conservative message and it took 20 years for Republicans in the North (and probably the Mountain and Pacific Northwest) to realize that while there might be room in the tent for their dollars and their votes, there was no room for their views. That gave the Republican Party approximately 15-20 years (depending on which branch and office) to appear like it had a durable, national coalition. How long before it turns back? I don’t know, but I think the South will become more D before the North goes back to being R.
Pug
Flying just under the radar is the forthcoming brutal right-wing assault on . . . Michelle Obama.
In the last few days, Hitchens, Malkin, Powerline and Hewitt have had hatchet jobs on her. She’s the bitter, anti-American one in the family now.
Napoleon
Plus I am pretty sure the Constitution explicitly says the amount of represents a state has will be based “on an actual enumeration” or words to that effect. Before Newt opens his pie hole perhaps he should check to see if his proposals are, you know, legal.
r€nato
shorter Newt: We need some new bullshit, the old bullshit isn’t fooling the rubes any longer.
r€nato
This might be a good idea if politicians were not involved. But, they are and so it is inevitable that each party is gong to push the model that favors their party and we will get bogged down in excessively nerdy arguments about statistics which will inevitably lead to misinformed decisions because 98% of folks won’t have the head for numbers nor education to make heads or tails of the arguments involved.
fecapult
Thank you, Senator Bedfellow!
crw
Heh. Good luck, Newt. The bottom line is Judis and Teixeira were right. The demographic winds are howling, and they say the GOP is dead in national politics for a while. Between the Echo Boomers (a cohort nearly as large as the Baby Boomers) swinging overwhelmingly Democratic, and areas of the country going minority-majority, the GOP is screwed. Especially because they fixated on purity on gay and immigrant bashing. Stick a fork in her. She’s done.
Josh
In other words, use 21st century technology to count 3/5 of the black people.
Nikki
Damn. I know exactly where this came from in the Bloom County universe. Yeah, I am a huge fan, too.
demimondian
Hardly. The whole point of making a pointless, divisive, and unconstitutional proposal which is anti-brown people is so that his party can simultaneously play the “victim card” while being protected from the folly of its own successes by the “activist judiciary” — which it can can simultaneously shriek about.
Win-win-win, bay-bee!
Kevin
Bill + Opus: this time, why not the worst?
yet another jeff
Damn, they’re STILL pissed about the air traffic controllers strike?
Forty years in the desert…AGAIN. Remember Newt crowing in 1994 about how it’d been 40 years since the GOP controlled the Senate and the House? Now, what do you think might have been happening in 1952-54 to cause THAT exile? They didn’t learn from the last time, obviously…so no more power soup for you!
Exile from the reins of power, bitches!
Uncle Omar
As to Pat Buchanan, I remember his greatest moment on CNN. Pat, the Catholic, swatted a book on the desk and said “The King James Bible. The Truth for 2000 years!!” Too much irony.
SamFromUtah
shorter Newt: We need some new bullshit, the old bullshit isn’t fooling the rubes any longer.
I dunno, the “bold new course of reform” bleating sounds an awful lot like his 1994 bullshit.
Fledermaus
Buchanan would be a interesting guys to chat with over drinks. A while back a ran across something that he had written a few days after 9/11 that read like a Chomsky essay, basically saying that we can’t go around fucking with other countries, corrupting their governments and selling off their land to our corporate masters and not expect some blowback. I don’t think he is racist, well except the whole Mexican thing, but he does rely on offensive stereotypes when discussing race.
ThymeZone
Buchanan’s best line, for me, last night was … to the suggestion that HRC would soldier on until June 3 …
“Why? To what effect?”
His point was that every day she stays in now is just another day that Obama has to focus on her instead of on McCain.
Buchanan is a character, but he does have some occasional political smarts in his fat head.
ThymeZone
Just thought it needed to be told …
Yahoo right now is reporting that its most-watched news video is “Mother duck leads her ducklings down a set of steps.”
I imagine that the Superdelegates are watching this intently.
protected static
Re: statistical modeling vs. enumeration
There are good arguments for modeling that address the ‘enumeration’ wording of the Constitution. Also, lots of ‘brown people’ (and others) are already missed by traditional methods, and the people I’ve known who work for Census are too enamored of numbers and statistics to be partisan about it. After all, these are geeks, y’all.
That said, this administration has done everything in its power to put partisan gatekeepers in management positions that have traditionally been reserved for non-partisan (apartisan?) career civil servants. Above and beyond the fact that there are much bigger problems to deal with, their presence in the system definitely means that now is not the time to be discussing how to conduct the census…
binzinerator
Funny, the people who fucked up government enough so their own propaganda — “Government is the problem” — became fact are now facing their own Katrina moment.
Time and time again, in trauma and catastrophe, Americans desperately needed a functioning government, needed leadership, needed truth, needed a message other than “I’ve got mine, fuck you.”
Instead we got 8 years of Bushism. So we learned — especially the returning veterans, the Katrina survivors, and the sick kids — we all learned the hard way we had to watch out for ourselves because the goopers made damn sure nobody else was going to do it.
I say to that republican house member: No ones gonna come to rescue you, you gooper son of a bitch. This is your own catastrophe, this is your very own drowning. Your party’s corrupted rotting corpse is gonna float face-down in the floodwaters.
Schadenfreude. No, b. hussein, it’s never possible to have too much with these cretinous criminals.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The GOP comeback will be led by Huckabee or someone like him running on an economic populist agenda. Class warfare was (in part) what FDR used to break the Democratic party out of the regional Southern ghetto it found itself in at the end of the 19th cen., and the GOP will follow the same path, especially after a few years of majority Democratic rule lead many of the multinational corp’s. and Wall St. firms to turn even bluer than they already are.
As soon as Obama is elected, and especially if he has coat-tails in the Congressional races, there will be a horde of new (and old) lobbyists, etc., looking for a happy home with the Democrats. Keeping the new money changers out of the temple is going to be a real battle – it is going to take a sort of reverse-K St. project to even have chance of stemming the tide.
A Different JC
And 9 herring wallbangers!
D-Chance.
So the same liberals who were all “statistical modeling over head count” leading into the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses (because the poor and minorities avoid census head-counters due to a natural and understandable distrust)… are against it now because Newt Gingrich has come around to the idea?
Newt finally admits “the left was right on this one” and the liberals are screaming, “NO, WE WEREN’T!”.
Heh…
skippy
take out the word “punch” and end the sentence after “words,” and you’d be correct, at least in the case of timmeh and tweety.