Yertle the Turtle appeared on Face the Nation today, talking about gun control not being a priority because OMG DEBT!!!11.
Here’s the thing — when your party’s first bill in the 113th Congress is to repeal Obamacare (even though Obamacare will reduce the deficit), you don’t get to talk about debt being a priority.
When your stated goal was to make President Obama a one-term president — and you spent 4 years obstructing every fucking thing the man tried to get done in pursuit of your goal — and then watched as the Kenyan Usurper waltzed into his second term?
Well, you don’t get to talk about priorities anymore. Ever. It only seems fair.
[read full post at ABLC]
Comrade Jake
I suspect this image of McConnell as turtle is seared into my brain for life now.
Cliff in NH
But that’s a tortoise.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Tortoise_vs_Turtle
Paul
I wonder when the media can be bothered to ask McConnell if he cares so much about the debt, then why did he support the Iraq war funding of over 1 $trillion and bush’s tax cuts which added another 1-2 $trillion?
Just Some Fuckhead
does yertle deserve this abuse?
Xantar
Multitasking, how the fuck does it work?
Morzer
Mitch McConnell admits Republicans unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.
How much money are we paying this idiot every year to non-represent the people of Kentucky?
Culture of Truth
This post needs an addendum. He said the same thing on This Week and Meet The Press.
redshirt
Is Yertle McConnell one of them Pokemon fellers?
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Spur thighed tortoise if I’m not mistaken.
Yeah, I don’t expect the GOP’s legislative priorities to bear any relation to America’s needs any more. They’re fighting for their political lives and that trumps everything. We’re all just collateral damage in their mad scramble to not be the generation that consigned their party to permanent minority status.
JPL
With a little red dye on his grey hair and I see a puppet.
Comrade Bob
A big slow tortoise who is very greedy and does not understand priorities.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I might have the least little bit of respect for these assholes if they had said even one little word about debts and deficits while Bush was in office. They’re nothing but lying, selfish, soulless sociopaths. I can’t understand how they can get 47 votes in this country, much less 47%.
On a random note, I always kind of thought McConnell looked more like an owl, but I can see the turtle angle, too…
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Your characterization of McConnell as Yertle is just PERFECT.
Amir Khalid
The Congressional Republican party doesn’t actually have legislative priorities, does it? In the past four years its only priority — the only thing I’ve seen it care about — is to obstruct President Obama and the Democratic party just for the sake of obstruction.
The administration needs to raise the money Congress directed it to spend, they tell themselves; so let’s block that. Obama wants to strengthen gun control, which any sane person in America would also want; so let’s block that too. Then we can call him an ineffectual leader, and the media will scold him for failing to secure the cooperation we were never going to give him. It’s not working, we didn’t keep him from being reelected; but jeepers, doing it sure feels good!
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Yertle.
bleh
“Debt” is about the only tune they’ve got left.
It helps that it supports the agenda of their plutocratic overlords — reduce taxes on the rich, privatize Social Security, destroy Medicare — and the prejudices of their mouth-breather base — stop spending money on black and brown and poor and LGBT and other undesirable people.
But mostly it gives them something to say that sounds relevant, even as Obama has announced his plans to outflank them with immigration reform and gun control, and to ignore them completely on the debt ceiling.
It must suck to be a Republican these days, especially when you remember that Vulcans are closely related to Romulans.
Ruckus
I do believe that turtles and tortoises are smarter. I know they are not smarmy, which this moron surely is.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes, Yertle was a megalomaniac asshole of a turtle. Dr Seuss was as prescient with that character as he was with everything else. I adore the man — he was an absolute genius.
And in a just world, were one to exist, Mitchikins would share the fate of his newfound namesake:
Now Yertle the Turtle, that marvelous he
is king of the mud
that is all he can see
And the turtles of course, all the turtles are free
As turtles, and maybe, all creatures should be.
gogol's wife
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Right. I protest.
Tonal Crow
Republican propaganda tactic #982349823984: Pretend that it’s possible to deal with only one issue at a time, and that that issue must be the one that Republicans have selected.
Also too, I think McConnell is .
Southern Beale
Honestly. why the fuck are these people on the Sunday shows anyway? I could give a shit about Republicans right now, really. They were wrong about everything, they were rejected in the last election, and yet the media keeps having this infatuation with all things Republican. I don’t fucking get it.
Also, I’m not interested in it. Today I turned on Melissa Harris Perry’s show on MSNBC because she was talking about how the Democratic Party is moving forward. She had Howard Dean on. It was an interesting conversation to me. you know, we just never, ever talk about Democrats on the Sunday shows, about the party, their organization. It’s always framed in terms of how it affects Republicans.
And as I’ve said already, I could give 2 fucks about Republicans. Would someone explain this phenomenon to me? Why is the media always, always, always ALWAYS talking about everything in terms of how it affects the GOP?
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: defund the TelePrompTer above all else isn’t a legislative priority in your book?
Suffern ACE
@Tonal Crow: oh, that’s a senate thing. It stated February 1, 2009, when Lieberman and McCain started complaining that things were happening too fast and needed to slow down. I think they once were in session three straight days. There are a lot of old men in the senate and they need to deliberate.
Tonal Crow
@Tonal Crow: Edit: Also too, I think McConnell is [see full story at i.wontstopblogwhoring.com].
Tonal Crow
@Southern Beale:
Really? The media are in the Republicans’ tank. Also, conflict sells, so they gin it up when they can’t get it for free.
Amir Khalid
@Suffern ACE:
No matter what the Republicans like to say about Obama and TelePrompters, they do realise that defunding his is futile: he does better without one than they do.
dmsilev
@eemom:
Have you ever seen the book ‘Dr. Seuss Goes to War’? For a good chunk of WWII, he drew editorial cartoons for a New York newspaper. Very recognizably his style, with all sorts of anti-Nazi and so forth propaganda (and some virulently racist anti-Japanese cartoons; no man is perfect).
Edit: Virulent stuff like this: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/pm/1942/20213cs.jpg
Smiling Mortician
@Tonal Crow: Not just in the tank, but in their pockets. Literally.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
1) For the last thirty or forty years, the Republican Party’s been the dominant party in Washington. The media’s used to them being on top, which is why they’re used to blowing smoke up their ass.
2) For the last… oh, say one hundred and fifty years… the Republicans have been the party of the rich white man. Which is also what the people at the top of the media tend to be, so there’s a built in bias right there.
3) Republicans are a LOT more hardcore about holding grudges than Democrats, so there’s more of an incentive to not piss off Republicans.
4) The conservatives have been screaming for decades that the media’s “liberal”… and the label’s stuck. So they have more of an incentive to lean conservative, in a (vain) attempt to look not-biased, than liberal.
I’m from the millennial generation, so I don’t know how much the media in this day and age contrasts to the way it was back in the day… wish I did. But I suspect it’s always had a conservative bias to some extent.
eemom
@dmsilev:
Yes, sigh, I have heard that before — and just as you say, no one is perfect. [insert standard BJ observation re lionization of FDR who put Japanese-Americans in internment camps]
I guess I could also say that you can’t separate the man from his time, except that in the case of Dr Seuss he was otherwise so much ahead of his.
scav
Weird combination of ideas, due to my watching the Harvard Course on Science and Cooking with a background of Repubs running from circling the wagons around one topic to the next to the next . . . (Guns! no, Isreal! no, Debt! no, Evil Wimminz having Abortions and/or Health Care under their own Control! No, Guns!, No, Taxes!). They’ve really never settled down to a solid state or defense of any of them, running from one to the other in some sort of panicked glassy state of unstructured and not perfectly fluidly reactive chaos. Wonder what their behavior will be as the pressure increases. Which would get tossed first, Israel or Guns? Could I use popularity in polls as a stand-in for temperature in my pseudo-system?
Just Some Fuckhead
fwiw, seuss didn’t have a genius level iq
some guy
full speed ahead on gun control. assault weapons, large mag ammo clips, serious mental health screenings on all purchases, ban on unregulated sales. full legislative press. full fucking steam ahead. and if some/all of it passes even better, but now is the time to knock these folks on their heels.
Just Some Fuckhead
@some guy:
might also help with the current contingent of republicans who keep wanting to blow up that which they cannot control.
Tonal Crow
@some guy: Also too, regular mental health screenings for permit holders, because mental health isn’t static.
gogol's wife
@some guy:
I’m pleased to discover that I agree with you on something.
LanceThruster
DIAF, Yertle.
LanceThruster
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Saw The Three Stooges movie for the first time last night. I roared when Moe observed that just because Snooki was wearing a ‘genius’ hat (actually “Guinness”) doesn’t mean that she was one.
bjacques
Sen. McConnell can *talk* about priorities; doesn’t mean anyone has to take him seriously, let alone give him political cover. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid certainly doesn’t have to.
Which reminds me…
You look down and see a tortoise, Harry. It’s crawling toward you…
Tortoise? What’s that?
You know what a turtle is?
Of course!
Same thing.
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.
What do you mean, I’m not helping?
I mean: you’re not helping! Why is that, Harry?
Another Halocene Human
McConnell seemed very relaxed and happy when he announced the Senate vote with Reid. I don’t know but I think that Mitch is someone who has backed himself into a terrible corner and Reid and Biden organized a way out. He also let a bunch of nominations through. That doesn’t sound like someone with an undying hatred of Obama that accepts no compromise. It looks like Mitch the Bitch was told to “Submit!” and is loving it. Boehner is, of course, a miserable and incompetent clod. Snubbing Sandy relief was supposed to punish Cantor but blew up in his face, putting the bill on the public’s radar and ensuring its safe passage and further weakening of Boehner’s stature.
I think Reid and McConnell have done some serious horse-trading in the last few weeks. I’m pleasantly surprised.
Disclaimer: none of this is intended to imply that Turtleman is a good person or anything.
gbear
Did anyone posting here actually watch a sunday news show? I know I didn’t, and I don’t know anyone else who does. It seems like one or two bloggers watch it (C&L & TPM seem to live for the Sunday shows), writes about it, and then everyone else posts about what was said.
HERE THAT ADVERTISERS? NO ONE IS WATCHING THESE MORONIC SHOWS.
Problem being is that there’s so much internet chatter about what happens on these shows. Even if we call the guests and hosts morons, we’re still raising their profile by talking about them, and the villagers get to justify their self-importance by noting how much of a buzz they create, even if the buzz is the sound of thousands of watchers retching.
I wonder if it’s even possible to ignore the villagers to the point that they realize that no one is listening? Given that the only people they talking to is each other and their main goal seems to be to all say the exact same goddamned things to each other so that they know that what they’re covering is ‘important’, they can’t even be bothered by the notion that there’s a world outside the village where no one gives a shit about them.
Another Halocene Human
@bleh: It must suck to be a Republican these days, especially when you remember that Vulcans are closely related to Romulans.
Win.
Now I wonder what relevance there is to the fact that the Romulan Senate was run by a bunch of to the manor born elites who were moribund and set in their ways and refused to accept reality until their ultimate downfall?
And then there was the time the entire Senate was killed by a Romulan Kip Kinkel.
Romulans were big on the whole MIC thing. “I’m a war Praetor” and all that.
Another Halocene Human
@Southern Beale: Look at who the paymasters are.
UP and MHP are the only reasons to turn on cable on a weekend morning.
Another Halocene Human
@Suffern ACE: It stated February 1, 2009, when Lieberman and McCain started complaining that things were happening too fast and needed to slow down. I think they once were in session three straight days.
I think prune juice might help with that.
Another Halocene Human
@eemom: Seuss did do some pretty pointed political cartoons about war
profiteersindustrial employers refusing to hire Negros in defiance of the urging of the Roosevelt administration and basic human decency.But the Japanese were like the gay anchor baby Muslims of the early 1940’s. Before 9/11 there was Pearl Harbor. A few brave souls (including the USSC) challenged the vile abuses of civil liberties that occurred during the early years of the war, but they were few and far between.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
As I understand it, Seuss later repented his anti-Japanese racism. I’ve read that The Sneetches was written as an attempt to atone. It goes to show that you can’t close the book on somebody until they’re truly done.
Mike in NC
@Southern Beale: As noted here on a regular basis, the media is hard-wired for Republican rule. This can be attributed to 12 sucessive years of GOP control of the White House (Reagan/Bush #1), but especially the fact that Ronnie took a bullet and became the Teflon-coated Saint Reagan. Even the Iran-Contra scandal couldn’t change that.
LanceThruster
@gbear:
I watched C-Span;’s BookTV weekend. Saw some great stuff. I quit bothering with the Sunday political shows because it was clearly and carefully orchestrated kabuki that insults my intelligence (and that takes some doing!).