From “The Editors” at the Esquire Political Blog, “Winning the Future, or Losing Our Mind?“:
Well, in Tuesday night’s unprecedented three-way competition to redefine the idea of a political platitude for a new century, the president of the United States was the clear winner. The other two competitors finished very far up the track. Representative Paul Ryan needs a lot of practice with the teleprompter, and at sounding like a human being in general. Representative Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, needs to work on not looking up and to the right of the camera lens, like she’s waiting for the crew from the Nervous Hospital to bust in and drag her off. Compared to these two trainwrecks, Barack Obama’s “America! Dude, We Rock!” pep talk was measured, nuanced, and, for the most part, very clearly in English.
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You cannot truly judge Obama’s second State of the Union address without first coming to grips with what came after it. Make no mistake: Michele Bachmann is a howling loon — a woman with no compunction at all about lying through her not inconsiderable teeth about virtually everything — but Ryan, no matter what his reputation elsewhere as a “serious” economic thinker, is no less radical, if somewhat less nutty. Where Bachmann has her devotion to the Constitution written by the voices in her head, Ryan has his economic “roadmap,” a Randian fever dream he produced a while back that so alarmed his fellow Republicans that they ran away as though Ryan had proposed the Affordable Cholera Act of 2009. The roadmap didn’t come up on Tuesday evening. Instead, Ryan, heavily lacquered enough to pass for a mahogany coffee table, seemed to imply that his three small children will one day be personally responsible for paying down the entire national debt. The rest of his rebuttal was a masterpiece of Dystopia Porn. Except for that bit about the Social Security net becoming a “hammock” there at the end, which was right of a 1978 Charles Murray start set and, frankly, pretty brazen from a guy who went through high school on his dearly departed father’s Social Security money…
Click over for more poison-pen goodness. I sense the genius of the guy responsible for rechristening Dubya “The C-Plus Augustus”…
Violet
Since this is an open thread…this cracked me up: Dennis Kucinich sues over sandwich.
Apparently the olives in the sandwich weren’t pitted. He’s suing for $150,000.
Kiril
Massacre in Suez? All communication and electricity to city has been shut down.
https://twitter.com/search?q=suez
lamh32
@Violet:
I posted this elsewhere, and I’m just like seriously Dennis, seriusly.
Lee Hartmann
Please tell me this is “The Editors” of The Poorman.
btw I believe that “C+ Augustus” was coined by Charles Pierce.
MikeJ
@Kiril: I heard they used nukes. And trained otters. And otters carrying nukes.
MattR
@MikeJ: That otterly ridiulous. They can’t carry nukes. That’s why the nukes were attached to ill tempered sea bass.
Kiril
I think it’s just bullets.
Quaker in a Basement
Lee, I was just about to suggest that Esquire was holding Pierce and forcing him to snark anonymously.
MikeJ
@Kiril: Torture usually slows down a massacre. If you want an efficient massacre you have to skip it.
wonkie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8bLVFVwzDk
I don’t know how to do links but that’s the necessary code.
Or you can go to Youtube and type “Rescue Pitbull Mimi” into the search there…
and you will be able to view a video of one of the rescue dogs from the shelter where I volunteer! The video features Mimi the pitbull. I’m the narrator. It has a little snippet of Mimi pulling me on a scooter. Im very proud of this! It’s our first attempt to use Youtube to spread the word about our dogs.
wonkie
Wow. I posted a link. I have no idea how Imanaged to do that.
Quaker in a Basement
On the plus side, not one single Republican Congressmen interrupted last night’s speech with shouting, taunts, or bouts of Tourette’s.
This whole “civility” thing might amount to something!
Elisabeth
@Quaker in a Basement:
Paul Broun somehow limited himself to tweeting his insults. Maybe this civility thing will catch on.
General Stuck
Designed for fail.
What kind of idiot country would create an election commission with 3 republicans and 3 democrats? And have them vote to initiate different parts of Mccain-Feingold, hated to the core by republicans. It’s like letting Dick Cheney hold onto the only key to the front door of the Hague.
Some days I wonder why the fuck I even care about this shit anymore. We are in a head long slide into dystopian bliss, whilst Dennis Kucinich is suing over a pitted Olive, with a broken tooth valued at 150 large.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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I don’t understand why a self-graded “B+ Augustus” receives any criticism whatsoever, since that’s such a notably fierce improvement.
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Anne Laurie
@Lee Hartmann:
Yup (he verified that, for the BJ Lexicon!). Pierce has also written for the Esquire Political Blog, therefore, my comment.
freelancer
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
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If you can’t make any distinction between Bush and Obama, then you’re welcome to that kind of thinking.
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J.W. Hamner
I’m not entirely sure why I feel like embarrassing myself, but I thought I would mention my epic cooking fail from last night. I was finishing off a beef cheek daube (i.e. stew) for dinner and made a McCardle in reading ounces as pounds in the recipe. So an entire bag of chocolate chips later my stew was totally ruined. It’s possible I need to employ a kitchen fact checker.
Quote from friend when I told him about it:
Anne Laurie
@wonkie: Mimi has such soulful eyes! This is a great “ad” for her, and I hope she finds a new forever home soon.
hilts
Alvin Felzenberg from Planet Wingnut sees Michele Bachmann’s Looney Tunes response to Obama’s SOTU and raises her a couple of loons
Obama’s State of the Union Was Tantamount to Plagiarism
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/alvin-felzenberg/2011/01/26/obamas-state-of-the-union-was-tantamount-to-plagiarism
dollared
@General Stuck: Well put. I think the thing that brings us Balloon Juicers together is that we all write better when we’re pissed off.
Montana
Michele Bachmann did not say how we got here from eight years of poor leadership, two wars without end, diminsihed Civil liberties. Its like she crawl out from under a rock just to complain about our current President. We all know that Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works started the Tea Party, grasroots, please. She like Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Linda McMahon, they are just not right but funny. I especially like the clip of Bachmann saying that the founding fathers abolished slavery, wow, what a liar, not the first or last time that will happen. Does anyone with self-respect real believe her?
Anne Laurie
@Quaker in a Basement:
I mentioned last night — during Obama’s exit, one of the people looking for an autograph was a woman who said “They sat me next to Joe Wilson, and we kept him from [inaudible] — “
I flashed on the old joke about the patient who grabs her dentist’s junk and tells him, “Now, let’s hope what happens next won’t be painful to either of us… “
sb
Anne, I’m convinced that in this case that “The Editors” = Charles Pierce. In either case, thanks for the link.
Southern Beale
The money quote from the Esquire link:
Yes, that is indeed the rub.
Chad N Freude
@Quaker in a Basement:
In thy dreams.
JGabriel
@Anne Laurie: Wait. I am confused. Are Esquire’s The Editors the same The Editors that used to post at The Poor Man Institute?
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cathyx
11-year-old Pennsylvanian is youngest person in world to face life without parole
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/youngest-american-life-without-parole/
What’s with you Pennsylvania? An 11 year old isn’t even considered an adult when going to the movies or an amusement park.
Mnemosyne
So apparently Chris Christie’s response to the federal government’s demand that he return the $700 million they gave his state for a tunnel that Christie canceled is basically, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law, suckers!”
I really don’t see how Christie thinks he’s going to win this. Is the federal judiciary really that stacked that they’ll decide he can cancel a contract and keep the money anyway?
Svensker
@J.W. Hamner:
Dear friend, you need to make sure you’re reading a recipe correctly, obviously, but don’t forget to keep your brain engaged, as well. Does it make any sense to add a pound of choc chips to a beef stew even if that’s what the recipe says?
I once put some cornbread batter in the fridge and set the timer for 30 minutes. When the timer rang, I opened the fridge and said, ‘nope, cornbread’s not done yet’. About 5 minutes later a clue dawned on me. (Drugs may or may not have been involved.)
Sincerely,
Fellow Cook
mr. whipple
That’s crazy. What is the airpeed velocity of a sea bass carrying a nuke? It’s a simple matter of weight ratios.
Southern Beale
@mr. whipple:
Fa love Pa
Pa love Ma
Ma love Fa
NonyNony
@Mnemosyne:
Oooh, ooh, ooh!! I do!
See now it goes to court. And Christie gets to be the guy who is taking on Obama’s Sociamalist Federal Government in court. So that looks good (for a definition of good that the folks likely to vote for Christie would use). And, as a bonus, by the time it’s all said and done and all of the appeals have run out and the state loses the money and all the money the state has to sink into the case to defend itself, Christie will most likely no longer be governor and the next chump who takes the office will be the one who has to pay it back out of the budget.
Bonus points if the next chump is a Democrat. Triple bonus points if the administration he has to pay it back to is a Republican one. Quadruple bonus points if Christie is in that administration when it happens.
ETA: Dammit – forgot about the sociamalist filter. I thought the upgrade might have gotten rid of that.
J.W. Hamner
@Svensker:
Yeah, no kidding. As I have transitioned from complete cooking newb to someone approaching some level of kitchen competence (not in evidence in this story obvi) in the last few years, I have had a lot of trouble not following recipes even when I should know better. Obviously following a recipe wrong makes it even worse, but when I make mistakes like this… where a mere ten seconds of critical thought would have made me double check… it makes me wonder if I can ever make The Leap to being somebody who can cook, as opposed to someone who can execute recipes (most times).
cathyx
@J.W. Hamner: How about making a recipe that’s on the left page and accidentally putting in some of the ingredients that are for the recipe on the right page. Try and correct that mistake.
Pooh
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
If you are going to try and troll, be funnier, or more original. Or put fewer unnecessary semi-bullets or something. But as of right now, you’re just wasting all of our time. Yours included. This blog has long had high bar for trolling, and the idea is to leap over, not limbo under.
The Dangerman
Anyone got a feel for if “hammock” was a dog whistle for something? It just sounded like a variant of young bucks with t-bones to me.
Joseph Nobles
@Violet: I don’t understand anyone who laughs at someone else’s real pain. Of course, I’ve bitten down on what I thought was soft food myself and cracked a tooth and dealt with all the dental problems afterward, so maybe I’m sensitive to the matter. Isn’t there plenty of other things to mock Dennis Kucinich for beside actual pain he wasn’t responsible for? I mean, damn.
Lolis
@The Dangerman:
A lot of brown people do have hammocks. And the very tall gringo I live with has a hammock in our living room.
debit
@Southern Beale: I love that movie. I wept like a baby at “Pa is not!” Go ahead and laugh.
Maude
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, it gets better, the NJ taxpayers pay for the lawyer to fight returning the money to the feds. He will lose.
Christie has sent a letter to Obama asking for snow removal money.
This guy is a total fail. I hope the people of this state catch on and make him resign. He is so incompetent that all the finger shaking in the world won’t help.
And for anyone who has any doubts about McCain, if elected prez, screwing up the entire country, have a look at NJ and see what we as a country are missing.
Dee Loralei
@Southern Beale: I love that movie, bought it about 5 years ago and made my then 15 yr old son watch it. He also loved it. I saw it when I was much younger during its theater run.
@J.W. Hamner: Honey, I feel for you. I’m a professionally trained chef, though I haven’t cooked professionally for almost twenty years, and I sometimes make boneheaded and stupid mistakes. One time I was making “cowboy” beans and added a nice heap of ground cinnamon instead of chili powder. I just grabbed the wrong damned spice jar, OY. I’ll never live that down.
One good trick is to gather and pre-measure all your ingredients before starting the cooking process, correct term is mis en place, in the south we call it messy place, maybe seeing that heaping pile of choco chips would have made you do a double-take a re-read the recipe. It’s something to think about to the future.
Seriously, keep plugging away, I promise you’ll get better and things will become more natural and second-nature. And also, never cook an entirely new recipe for guests, only things you have made before. And believe me, even that might not ensure perfection.
Best of luck!
KG
@mr. whipple: it depends, are they ill tempered sea bass? And do they have lasers attached to their heads?
Redshift
In another rescue update, I’ve heard from the Howard County shelter that if all the adoptions and placements go through this week, only 33 rabbits will be left at the shelter out of the original 78. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word!
Redshift
@The Dangerman: It’s dog-whistle for laziness, as in the age-old smear “lazy black people who don’t want to work.”
The Dangerman
@Maude:
Disconnect for me here; I thought he was practically being drafted for a 2012 as a darling of the Right.
I don’t see how NJ can even argue it should keep the money. With a straight face, at least.
Maude
@The Dangerman:
The Republicans think he is a darling.
There is a serious disconnect going on.
Christie is saying he can keep the money. He believes it, after all, he is a Republican. They have gone so far beyond crazy that I don’t have a way to describe them or what they do.
Christie is truly harmful to the state.
SFAW
European or Chilean?
SFAW
Yeah, but they’ll be back up to 78 in a nonce – at most, two nonces.
Anne Laurie
@debit:
Glad I wasn’t the only one. Re-watched Day of the Dolphin a couple months ago, and it is a hot mess, but Scott sold that Galtian Man-of-Science role, for true.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW:
Chilean sea bass are not migratory, you know…
Anya
I am still mad at the President for not making Speaker Orange cry. We was robbed, man.
Jay C
@The Dangerman:
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As we say on our side of the Hudson: Fuhgeddaboudit!
Jerseyites will basically put up with virtually any fail-full behavior from their Gov except for one thing,and one thing only: Taxes.
Chris Christie could sell the whole state to the bin Laden family and no one would care: raise people’s taxes by a nickel? They’d run him out of the state on a rail….
hamletta
@efgoldman: Nuh-uh. That’s The Editors, of The Poor Man Institute.
I can see how easy it could be to get them mixed up, since they’re both geniuses. But The Editors has an edge of rage and cynicism that Pierce doesn’t have. Pierce is more bemused than angry, at least in tone.
cckids
@Joseph Nobles: You’re right, dental pain is very real. And I have no problem with him recouping any costs he had because of this (tho his health-care probably includes dental), but $150,000? Really? Just red meat to the wingers, IMO.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anya:
I’ve been disappointed in him for two years now, when he failed to begin his inauguration address with “‘Scuse me while I whip this out…”
hamletta
@Anya: What are you talking about? I definitely saw schpilkes when Obama hit the “only in America” bit about his and Biden’s humble beginnings.
SFAW
Yes, but had he succeeded, it might have turned the SOTU into Obama’s Katrina.
debit
@Anne Laurie: It’s been years since I watched it, but I remember that scene so vividly. And Scott seemed to be able to sell most any role. I vaguely remember him tackling Mr. Rochester in a version (possibly made for tv) of Jane Eyre and making it work. Of course it helps that Rochester was never supposed to be a typical romantic hero type.
Joseph Nobles
@cckids: It’s been a recurring problem for three years, according to the article. Bills stack up.
Atrios points out on Twitter that if this was a medical issue rather than dental (which, I agree with him, is a dumb distinction), Kucinich’s insurance company would be filing suit for him.
Anya
@hamletta: I wanted a repeat of 60 Minutes. He didn’t even shed a single tear to warrant a picture in the papers. It was not satisfactory at all.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Pooh:
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Dear balloonbagger – As usual, no facts are supplied, only your snafooliest kerploppery of an opinion masquerading as a valuable conclusion. Therefore, I discount your comment to the bargain dustbin of the History of Hate Museum.
Please keep in mind that monkeys do not possess the authority or credibility to reliably evaluate either my comments or my right to comment, especially on an open thread. I believe I perform a valuable service here, in a winning manner, and that should be good enough for even the most hateful of balloonbaggers. If you disagree, then make the case with logic, evidence, and well-reasoned arguments. If you cannot make the case, then I still invite you to feel free to exercise even more of your self-anointed right to shout humans down and engage in incivil – and President Obama-disapproved – hate screech. Please note that I will try to cope with your ill manners as best I can.
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Anya
@Villago Delenda Est: Is it too much to expect from him that he’ll say, “where my niggas at,” just once. He’s such a big disappointment. I am joining the firebaggers.
Mark S.
Oh goody, some jackass has written a Most Over/Underrated NBA players:
OVERRATED
LeBron: One crappy playoff series makes you a LOSER.
Dwight Howard: The two-time defensive player of the year isn’t all that according to this guy: “Dwight Howard is a good defensive helper, but only when a savvy offense hasn’t sucked him out of position. At the same time, he’s unable to adequately defend opposing big men who can turn-face-and-go.” I’m curious who all these big men are who are schooling Howard every night.
UNDERRATED
Dwayne Wade: Even though most people would put Wade in their top five, he’s on this list so jackass can get another dig on LeBron.
Lamar Odom: Yeah, it’s hard to get any attention when you play for the Lakers.
mey
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
I guess “firebagger” really chaps your hide.
Yutsano
@J.W. Hamner: Oh dude. Any cook worth their kosher salt has at least a thousand stories about the recipe they screwed up or the dish they’ve made a million times before that just didn’t work. One mistake doesn’t make you a bad cook, not by a long shot. Making the same mistake ten times might be cause for introspection.
So did it taste like hot chocolate with beef marshmallows? :)
jbrandonloberg
i’m convinced that people like Bachmann don’t know what they believe in; they’re simply trying to capitalise on conservatives’ righteous indignation after the 2008 election.
i don’t remember who said it first, but it’s a case of being sore losers, as opposed to having a legitimate grievance pertaining to any one issue. As i’ve said many times in the past, conservative Republicans are chagrined because they had such high hopes for Bush, and when he couldn’t deliver, the inevitable consequence was Obama, and the Democrats’ takeover of Congress. That’s what happens in a two-party system. Love him or despise him, Obama’s election in 2008 was far more an eventuality than it was a victory. The GOP ran McCain–and especially Palin–as a crapshoot; they knew it was doubtful they would win, but they wanted to see what would happen. Today’s teabaggers, and pols like Michelle Bachmann, are merely manifestations of conservative hand-wringing; recalcitrant children whining about their decline in power. However, just as entertainers (take Marilyn Manson, for example) are blamed for the sometimes overzealousness of their fans, the outlandish rhetoric and apocalyptic tone employed by people like Bachmann, and does make an impression upon those with compromised intellects. Consider the so-called ‘Hutaree’: it’s impossible for any rationally thinking person to take a group like this seriously, and my guess is even the FBI didn’t seriously give shrift to the notion that they posed any legitimate threat to the government, however, if a few far-right nutjobs decided they could catalyse a revolution by gunning down government employees or blowing up a post office, that’s more than enough reason to intervene. Bachman, Palin, Beck, etc. should consider the volatility of their audiences’ mental health, and avoid feeding the animals.
nathkatun7
The University that awarded Congresswoman Bachmann a law degree should be ashamed (Please don’t tell me it was Oral Roberts University). If the founding fathers (I suppose she included the Southern founding fathers who owned slaves) worked tirelessly to abolish slavery how come the country fought a civil war over slavery? Did the law school that granted Bachmann a law degree fail to teach, or even mention, the 1857 Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision? If everyone who came to America was welcomed as equal, regardless of race, then why was it necessary to pass three Constitutional Amendments: the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth? Did Rep. Bachmann learn any thing about the Jim Crow period that ushered in legal segregation of the races in the Southern States? Is it possible that the college and the law school she attended omitted any mention of the Supreme Court’s “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision? I have a sneaking suspicion that, Rep. Bachmann, a college educated and a lawyer, is not that ignorant. Rather, she seems determined to re-write history to conform with teabaggers’ claims that their mission is to restore the ideals of the pure and blameless founding fathers.
Who is dumber?; Michelle for saying the Founding Fathers eliminated slavery, or Sarah for saying that the Soviet Union collapsed because of Sputnik. What do you think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qideaIA_NpI