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Via Kris E. Benson at Wonkette, those soft-spoken New Left Media young folk go nutpicking at a Romney rally. Health advisory: Do not permit young children or people easily driven to despair to watch the above freakshow….
Before anyone gets too “Ha ha, Midwestern dumbphucks, there is a reason ‘Ohio’ is spelled phonetically and with only four letters” *, Esquire‘s John H. Richardson has a beautifully detailed interview with “the Great Marijuana Prohibitionists of 2012“, two individuals from the golden utopias of California and Washington State, who between them manage to efficiently shovel out every lie, myth and feverdream fantasy about the Killer Weed that I’ve been hearing for the last 50 years, all without breaking a sweat. On the other hand, these guys seem to be doing it for their personal profit (the Californian is a Republican lobbyist, and the other one heads the Seattle medical-marijuana movement’s “No on I-502” group), not just repeating tribal shibboleths in a stew of ignorance, stupidity and fear. I think greed is more venal than stupidity, but YMMV.
(* Venerable Michigander joke)
John M. Burt
First I watched the video and thought, “My only comment will be, ‘Suspicions confirmed’.” Then I read the comments at YouTube, and my only comment to them was also, “Suspicions confirmed” . . . .
JGabriel
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Anne Laurie @ Top:
Seconded.
.
Punchy
Am I the only one who hears “poll worker” and thinks “strip club”?
Karmus
Someone posted that downstairs, and I watched what I could of it, but… I get the point. I like it when I can end a flood of unpleasantness with the push of a button–even if in some cases there is no actual button.
I wish I had something witty or insightful to say about these people and their psychology–or tribalism–or mental relationship with mass media–or… something. I suppose if I studied it….
Nah. I’m going back to playing my guitar. It’s close enough to the weekend.
C. Isaac
This video inflicted physical pain on me.
There really isn’t a more appropriate time to say this:
THE STUPID, IT BURNS!!!!
WaterGirl
Anne Laurie, they seem to be making a big pitch for Elizabeth Warren:
“We’ve gotten word that Scott Brown is throwing down another $200,000 to air more desperate attack ads.”
Any chance we could get an Elizabeth Warren Bj thermometer thread sometime on Saturday?
Yutsano
Nope. Not even coming close to getting out of that boat.
amk
What a basket full of hateful, ignorant, mind boggling nut cases. The interviewer guy was awesome with his subtle needling.
WaterGirl
@Punchy: I told my sister that I have been poll watching all day every day starting last Sunday, and she thought I was literally sitting at home for 8 hours a day looking at election polls on my computer.
I’m not sure, is that better or worse than the poll dancing connection?
Ruckus
I think greed is more venal than stupidity, but YMMV.
In the case of conservatives I have never been able to separate stupidity and greed. I always think of them as being stupidly greedy.
As in they seem to be greedy for more stupidity.
Spaghetti Lee
Nope. Nope. Not gonna click. You’ll have to do better than that. If you found something like “Paul Ryan, in werewolf form, kills and eviscerates jobless person”, I might watch. But a bunch of Romney supporters muttering about soshulism and FEMA camps? That’s ten pounds of shit in a two-pound bag if there ever was.
trollhattan
Believe me, California wingers would fit right in, only they’d be more tan/leathery. Having “attended” several teabag events at the capitol, ours are no better than anybody else’s.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4042/4525188202_6ba2dd82d0_z.jpg
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Had to drive LA to nor cal this week and the RR signs along the way, mostly on farms almost makes me want to stop eating.
Spaghetti Lee
@Spaghetti Lee:
Speaking of which, am I the only one who thinks Paul Ryan has just completely vanished? When he was picked, he was supposed to be the super-hunky boy-genius secret weapon that would demoralize liberals and get conservatives pumped up. I mean, am I remembering wrong? He’s like a fucking ghost now. When was the last time he did something newsworthy?
Funny, everyone talked about how much smarter he was than Palin yet he wound up in the same position-so radioactive that his running mate has to actively hide him from scrutiny.
amk
@Spaghetti Lee: What fema camps ? They have now upgraded to dronez, baybee. Our bernie will so happy.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Life would be grand if they could just find good Republican pickers and federal-subsidy-free water.
I like to eat as much as the next guy, but “family” corporate farmers whinging at me usually spoil the appetite. “They value a bait fish over hoooomans.”
Mark S.
I got thru about 30 seconds of it earlier tonight. I am really ready for this fucking election to be over. They really need to condense the fuck out of this process.
How about those Lakers?
RK
I’ve got to start packaging and promoting my Buddhist repellent.
Mark S.
@Spaghetti Lee:
I was wondering what happened to Ryan in an earlier thread. Did they send him to campaign in Wyoming?
trollhattan
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yeah, he’s like the tweezers in my Swiss Army Knife. Seems like a good idea, but they’re not very good tweezers and tend to be missing when I need tweezers.
Said the day Ryan got the nom, Willard had surrendered. Willard could never appeal to the general population and the base at the same time, and the Ryan pick was solely aimed at getting the base out of their double-wides on Tuesday, because he knew he couldn’t do it. Obama hatred wears a guy out.
Ruckus
@RK:
Are they the one’s who ride bikes in pairs and bring pamphlets and bullshit to your door, but wear robes instead of cheap black suits?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mark S.:
He’s still doing events for the faithful. What he’s not doing is interviews where the Romney campaign can’t control the narrative.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Obama hatred wears a guy out.
Not fucking fast enough. Plus it doesn’t rob them of the will to live, which would be nice.
Hal
@Spaghetti Lee:
Huh, now that you mention it. It’s odd that he doesn’t have a higher profile. I wonder if Romney was worried he would end up being Sarah Palin and take all the attention away.
GregB
Oh I am getting so tired of the white and uptight fuming rants on FaceBook by cement headed Romney supporters.
One shitheel is a prop comedy act who’s big closing bit is a vagina and ass cannon that shoots ping pong balls out of the nether regions of retro-fitted mannequins.
I am about a day away from telling him that the folks at Summer’s Eve called and they want their shtick back.
amk
@Hal: Didn’t the bot pathetically try to get a crowd of wingnutz somewhere to include his name in the ‘ryan 2012’ chant and failed miserably at that?
Spaghetti Lee
@GregB:
I was wondering what Glenn Beck was doing these days.
CW in LA
@WaterGirl: I check the poll thingie on Talking Points Memo about every hour or so. As long as it has the prez above 270, I can breathe.
joeyess
That’s exactly what they’re doing….. It’s just another conservative long con.
JGabriel
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amk:
Yep. That was the impetus for the semi-famous Scarborough Facepalm.
.
GregB
@Spaghetti Lee:
LOL. I can now go to bed.
joeyess
I have no idea why my last comment is in moderator hell, but there it is.
Yutsano
@Ruckus: They know full well Willard won’t stop their subsidies. He might make a lot of noise about it so his rich buddies can score a tax break but farm pork is way too strong a constituency in Congress. Better that the poors and blahs suffer. Farmers are real Merikans anyway.
catdevotee
Sorry to say, we have a lot of similar idiots here on the Oregon coast. I see Art Robinson signs all over the place in my small town, and I’m just grateful that our Congressional district includes Eugene and other very blue areas. We will re-elect Peter DeFazio but no thanks to people in my town.
I still can’t understand all the retired folks who are continuing to vote for Republicans. There are lots of them here, and when asked about their votes, they generally blather about the deficit – never a problem at all under Bush. They don’t seem to have any concept of the proposal to turn Medicare into vouchers.
Geoduck
Adding the the chorus, Washington state has its share of Tea Partiers as well, especially east of the Cascades. The folks over there periodically make noises about succeeding and forming their own little GOP utopia, but they’ll never do it, because they’d lose all that sweet Seattle-based tax money that keeps their county infrastructures running.
Dream On
That’s creepy, but not as creepy as this 2008 Iowa radio interview where Romney shows just how personally abusive and verbally aggressive he can be. I’d never seen this before, and I’m actually stunned that he can be such a duplicitous jerk talking about his “faith” in the Mormon church.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxMD02zU9SE&feature=player_embedded
Maybe his followers are drawn to his bully vibe.
Susan K of the tech support
Brilliant interviewing. And scary echoing of the fox/wing nut talking points about Obama. Truly frightening.
A few years back, I read a book called Losing My Religion by William Loebdell, who worked as the L.A. Times religion reporter. He was a Christian, and worked himself into the job of covering religion for the paper.
He did stories on the good stuff going on in churches. At the same time, though, he also got into areas where there were wrongs and abuses…. One example— The Christian Broadcasting Network and their treatment of donation money (personal enrichment! Luxuries!). Whereas he first thought that shining a light on the wrongs of the operation would bring about change, he was surprised (at first) at the way the donors/followers/believers supported their crooked, abusive guy(s) through and through.
He covered the unfolding story of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (while he was, personally, preparing to becoming a confirmed Catholic). He witnessed the “faithful” close ranks around their child-fucking priests, while the faithful looked at him and asked, “why is that reporter from the LA.Times here?”
The book is a harrowing portrait that is consistent with this movie— thought and perception are tribal. Once you are INSIDE the tribe, the tribe owns your brain (brainnnnns!!!). “Let’s think this through logically” is the road hardly ever taken. Instead, people support their corrupt and evil priests, pastors, televangelists, leaders. Enthusiastically. Dogmatically. No matter what.
Same thing here. Same thing here.
YellowJournalism
@WaterGirl: I think worst interpretation of “poll watching” would be someone thinking you’ve spent the day watching and re-watching Magic Mike: Full Frontal Version.
FlipYrWhig
@catdevotee: That’s because when wingnutty types say “the deficit,” they don’t really mean the deficit. If they cared about the deficit they’d want to bring in additional money into government coffers too. But they don’t care about the deficit, they care about “the deficit,” which is a dogwhistle or a euphemism they use to mean the concept of spending money on the undeserving and the lazy, you know, Those People. It’s ALWAYS resentment about “handouts” and “welfare.” Everything else leads back to that, every time.
Yutsano
@Geoduck: There are only two constant supplies of money east of the mountains: agriculture and the Hanford nuclear reservation. Both are highly dependent upon the federal government to survive over there. Irony is a forbidden concept, especially since the eastside Congresscritters are the biggest pork suckers imaginable. But there are browns over there too stealing jerbs and sucking off welfare. So vote for the teafolk.
Ezra
Jim Steinman used to always tell Meatloaf, “Don’t talk on stage, like some singers do. Just sing. If you talk, it will destroy your mystique. Because if you open your mouth on stage without the accompaniment of the guitars and drums and the general rock star ambiance, the audience is going to see that you’re just a short little fat man.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dream On: That is seriously spooky shit.
James E. Powell
@Ruckus:
In the case of conservatives I have never been able to separate stupidity and greed.
I have often thought that their greed was a cover for their stupidity, like a “so what?” to respond to anyone or anything that might reveal the dull emptiness of their lives. Then I feel bad for hating people.
I know people like this and the one quality they all share is that they are afraid of more things than they can name.
NotMax
Just a reminder (noticed some people asking earlier) that Florida traditionally (barring SNAFUs) gets called after Virginia and Ohio, as a part of the Florida panhandle is in the Central time zone. VA and OH are fully in Eastern time zone.
Every 4 years, the election night anchors seem shocked to re-learn that part of Florida in in another time zone.
Karmus
@NotMax:
This is true, and something I’ve never forgotten, having spent nearly all my life in the segment of Florida that be livin’ on Central time.
My favorite name for this place is L.A. (Lower Alabama).
danah gaz
@trollhattan: Wow. That sign, in that context, read pretty much like a sexual neologism to me. All it needed was a down facing arrow.
/reaches for brain-bleach
Dream On
@Just Some Fuckhead:
This is creepy enough as well. It is from 2008 – but sometimes things don’t change. Try wiki and Marion G. Romney, for example.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/221780/romneys-radical-roots/mark-hemingway
Dream On
@Dream On: Or I could get my link right.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/221780/romneys-radical-roots/mark-hemingway
amk
The fucking liars till the last minute
Death Panel Truck
@Geoduck: I live in eastern Washington. The wingnuts here want to divide the state into two states. They want to call the new state “Franklin.” After Benjamin, of course; certainly not Delano Roosevelt.
Karmus
I don’t know why I did it to myself, but I went back and watched the whole thing. Haters spewing hate, and accusing Obama of hate. The whole thing reeks of evil, and cognitive dissonance.
And stick a fork in Meatloaf; I believe he is done.
Elias
Got back from band practice a bit ago. As we were driving the drummer back to his house a fire engine passed us. They stopped two doors from his house. A ladder truck was already there. As we slowly rolled past you could see the firefighters pulling a hose to the front door and breaking the door open. Then the room flashed (aka, it got hot enough that everything including the smoke ignited). The heavy smoke that had been billowing out the front window turned into flames that leapt into the night sky. Here’s to hoping that the girls who lived there made it out the back door or a window.
Our city has been hit hard in the recession. Two engines have been shut down permanently and for a few months the city even shut down a station. The closest fire engine to this house hasn’t been staffed in 3 years. But without Obama’s strong support for firefighters things would be even worse. Our city has relied on federal SAFER grants to avoid even deeper cuts to the fire department. If Republicans weren’t obstructing the American Jobs Act our city would probably staff up the engine nearest to the house that was on fire tonight.
This stuff matters. Mitt Romney says we don’t need more firefighters, police officers, or teachers. Mitt Romney is wrong. Basic public services have been hit hard during this recession but Obama has fought hard for people like your local firefighters and he’s had quite a bit of success. There’s a reason firefighters are so vocally supporting Obama. He’s been there for them.
Disclosure: I am a young hose dragger for a large fire department (not the one mentioned here).
hep kitty
WOWEE. Thanks Ohioan Romney supporters for making us SC’ians look like Rhodes scholars.
No, the stupid is not only restricted to the south. However, I do not find it comforting.
Does it sound too simple and too trite now to blame Fox for brainwashing it’s audience? Well, take a listen to those answers. Sound familiar?
hep kitty
@Karmus: I think the Meatloaf performance completely exemplifies the audience and what the republican party has become. A staggering,putrid mess of ugly.
And Mitt had no idea what to do. For once, I felt his pain. He wanted to recoil but had to stand there and laugh nervously, trying to keep his arm around the sweaty guy who just lost his shit all over the stage.
What a pathetic, hilarously insane spectacle.
YOU.CANNOT.MAKE.THIS.SHIT.UP
Allen
“go nutpicking at a Romney rally.”
That doesn’t seem like it would be any harder than nutpicking at a nut farm.
Lojasmo
“What’s Romney’s plan?”
“Umm.”
Sickening.
wuzzat
@Death Panel Truck:
Ben Franklin? Scientist, founder of public libraries and post offices, Deist who held Jesus and Socrates in the same regard, Ben Franklin? What kind of wingnuts are you growing up there, anyway?
El Cid
A coworker asked me last week, “So, is Benghazi going to be Obama’s downfall?”
I laughed and said, “No, no, of course not, that’s ridiculous.”
He was not happy.
My conservative Southern white coworkers are looking and sounding more and more grim this week.
SFAW
@El Cid:
“No, but Hurricane Katrina will.”
Followed by a few seconds of silence, quizzical looks, and then:
“But that was during Bush!”
“Yes, but you dumb mofos need SOME bullshit reason to use as an excuse to justify your hatred of him and why you’re going to vote against him, so why not make it REALLY bad?”
jenn
@Elias: Holy toledo. I hope your neighbors are ok. Update us when you find out, alright? Thanks for sharing the fire funding info, too!
Trakker
A video of sad, scared, insecure white people who are being left behind and they don’t know how to stop it. They are being preyed on by the wealthy who use their insecurity to frighten them into voting for their own demise. I grew up in a town of people just like them. All they have left is their skin color and their schizophrenic God, neither of which can save them.
Woodrowfan
@NotMax:
What comedienne jokes about goldfish having a 3 second memory span? “Oh, look, a castle! (pause) Oh look, a castle! (pause) etc. etc”
patrick II
The Buddhists are coming! The Buddhists are coming!
Ohio Mom
Are Republicans stupid? I don’t know, the Romney supporters I know are all smart enough. They’ve all been to college and they all have middle-class, professional jobs. Some of them are pretty accomplished. Some of them are my co-religionists, that is, they are Jewish.
What they have in common is that they are complete and utter bigots. They all know it’s bad manners to voice their prejudices but their biases always come out in little ways. Mainly comments that could be interpreted more than one way but after hearing comment after comment on different topics you start to notice there is a pattern and it is fear and hatred of anyone who isn’t white like they are.
YellowJournalism
@Woodrowfan: I believe that would be Ellen, which she used nicely in Finding Nemo, as well.
ExurbanMom
I’m an Ohioan, born and raised and living here currently. And I’ve been around the country enough to know that this level of stupid can be found anywhere you look hard enough.
We have it, but so does Indiana and Florida and Texas and everywhere else. Is the stupid stronger here? I doubt it.
The Tea Party is very strong in parts of Ohio, and that contributes to the levels of visible stupidity.
My most fervent hope for this election is that the teahadists will get beaten down hard enough that many of them lose hope and give up on that movement. Killing the tea party movement will be perhaps the most significant result of this election; then the Republicans can find their principles again, and we can have productive discussions about what exactly we should be doing about our problems.
dance around in your bones
That’s the most stupid and ignorant fail parade I have ever seen. So fucking sad.
lefthanded compliment
(* Venerable Michigander joke)
My mother grew up in Michigan. Once, when I was young, I asked if that made her a Michigoose. Sad to say, some of my Michigan cousins are Romney supporters. I’d hoped that their fundamentalist upbringing might keep them from voting for a Mormon, but no. Racism trumps religion, I suppose.
Elly
@Geoduck: Indeed. We lived in the Tri-Cities area for 4 years, while the hubby did some consulting work for the Hanford clean up. Hanford is a mainstay of that area’s economy – which is to say, it’s heavily dependent on the government.
A good chunk of the stimulus money came there, too – created jobs and financed various construction projects.
Yet, politically speaking, the Tri-Cities area is overwhelmingly Republican. Go figure.
Constance
OH MY GAWD! It’s scarier than I would ever have believed. Now I understand why I never talk politics in Douglas County, Nevada unless I have known the person a long time and know how they vote. Hayseuss freaking christo.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ExurbanMom:
As near as I can tell, he ain’t looking hard for it. He’s just standing outside of a Romney rally where apparently “this level of stupid” freely congregates.
Yutsano
@Elly: My parents live there now (Dad is a higher-up at Hanford) and it’s two things: evangelicals and hating teh browns. There is a large Latino population there that gets very heavily resented because quite a few of them are middle class small business owners. It’s a lot of fear of a brown planet driving that force. That and Doc Hastings is one of the biggest pork harvesters in Congress.
Mnemosyne
@Death Panel Truck:
There was some talk about that in California, until the guys who were spouting off about secession were reminded that their areas actually receive more money from the state than they pay in taxes, and that subsidy would immediately stop if they formed their own state.
They still chatter about it occasionally, but it seems to have started to dawn on them that it will actually cost money out of their own pockets for them to do it, and the cheap bastards don’t feel that strongly about it.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: I personally find it greatly amusing that one of the main income generators should the East go its own way would be the IRS office in Fresno. That place is fecking HUGE.
Abijah L.
I’m a recently retired general internist whose last job was in the old, blue collar part of Orange County, CA. They may have been interviewing my former patients. I’m so glad that I’m not working during silly season this year. My poor, elderly former patients watch that TV station all day long and would then come in to my office all upset about the forthcoming soshulism or worried that there Medicare is going to be cut — never mind that a quarter or more of them were on Medicaid, too. I always used to tell them not to worry, the Republicans had been trying to eliminate SS for 75 years and trying to eliminate Medicare for 45 years and that it hadn’t happened yet. I always enjoyed that little dig. It’s hard though when someone you’ve known for a long time and like says something disgusting and racist.
daverave
@Susan K of the tech support:
You can bet that these are the sort of people that would have happily offered up their youngest virgin daughter for an Incan sacrifice.