YOU GUYS Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker’s not running for president! This is huge news or something!
“I have no plans to pursue that. I’m very challenged with my current role as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. It’s involved me in things beyond what I ever anticipated… I haven’t thought of it by the way, in months and months and months, as I saw the field shaping up in a good way.”
SIRENS AND CRAP.
Also open thread.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Who is this person? Never heard of him.
Amir Khalid
Bob who?
ETA: Pouts at CONGRATULATIONS!
Botsplainer
That’s going to throw the GOP into disarray!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I plan to form a committee to prepare an announcement that I am not running for president. We will meet at lunch and I will issue a press release when I’m done with my cheeseburger.
monkeyfister
I am so happy my place of forced domicile will not play a prominent role in embarrassing the nation. At least in this one thing.
I’m so old, I remember when uber-Fascist Bob Corker took office. He’s considered a moderate by today’s GOP standards. But, he’s still a monster.
The best thing out of Tennessee?
I-65 North.
NotMax
Translation: “Veep? Ooh, pick me! Pick me!”
Botsplainer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Where do you want me to donate?
KG
this is really important, he’s the only republican (like, in the entirely country) that isn’t running for president… he’s the deciding vote in the primaries!
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Well, thanks, Mr. Corker, you have now ruined my day.
Botsplainer
@NotMax:
The Rand Paul/Bob Corker ticket is going to inspire great excitement all around.
patrick II
I’m not running for the GOP nomination for president either. Where do I announce? Do I have to provide refreshments?
GregB
I think we at Balloon Juice should start a ‘Draft Gohmert’ movement.
gf120581
Eagerly awaiting the next non-announcement.
burnspbesq
Brace yourselves for a wingnut ragegasm today, likely led by Sen. Graham.
BBC is reporting that among the dead in a UAV strike in Helmand Province is one Mullah Abdul Rauf, who recently switched allegiance from the Taliban to the Islamic State. Rauf was formerly detained at Guantanamo.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31290147
Big ole hound
@GregB: I think that is a great idea. If we can get Louie to run then we would have the biggest stupid in the puddle.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: Well, one could speculate that his detention at Gitmo convinced Rauf that the destruction of The Great Satan was a righteous cause.
Thanks again to Al Qaeda’s top recruitment officers, the deserting coward and the Dark Lord.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@burnspbesq: So much for closing Gitmo. The GOP will flog this for the next 30 years.
Botsplainer
I dropped this in the now dead thread underneath. Too funny not to propagate, and it is about that thar homersekshul marrige in Allabammy.
Yeeeeeeeeeee-haw!!!!
JPL
@burnspbesq: So was Obama’s plan to kill him all along? Graham can huff and puff all he wants, but the former prisoner is of no danger to us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That damn Obama. That release was around the same time he tanked the economy, wasn’t it?
And I’m pretty sure Senators Waylon Smithers and C Montgomery Burns were advocating closing Gitmo for a couple of years after that, before That One stole their presidency and the reevaluated their deeply held convictions.
Botsplainer
Clearly, this was Barry O’Commie Muhammad X Obummer’s fault….
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
I await their explanation for how Bush releasing him from Gitmo is all Obama’s fault.
greennotGreen
@monkeyfister: Yes, we’ll have to content ourselves with our legislature continually embarrassing the state. Luckily for me, I live in the blue island in a sea of red, Nashville, where we love tourists (they spend money!) immigrants (they spend money!) gay people (they spend money and gentrify neighborhoods!) and country music (we can make money!) If we could just keep the legislature out of our business (no, they will not allow a city to be less bigoted than the state,) we could probably make even more money.
japa21
It is because of people like Rauf that Corker is so challenged by his job as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Well, not really. He’s challenged by it because he thought Foreign Relations were the type of thing Mark Sanford was involved with and he wanted to get in on the action.
kbuttle
Guys, geez, I’m sorry it took me this long, but I should clarify my position as well: I also will not seek nomination for the Presidency.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So Bush let an actual terrorist get away, and Obama killed him. That story seems familiar somehow….
Botsplainer
And can I say this?
A huge gripe of the American Revolution was the English practice of gathering Americans on charges and shipping them to England for trial.
Personally, I have a gripe with calling a local resistance fighter a terrorist and shipping him around the world for trial while pretending he’s History’s Greatest Monster and worthy of lifetime imprisonment.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
Are you forgetting about the Keenyan Mooslim Usurper’s time-travel and mind-control abilities? He obviously traveled back in time, used a stolen Romulan cloaking device to sneak into the White House, and used his telekinetic abilities to force President Bush’s hand to involuntarily sign the release order.
srv
Obama loses ANOTHER country
SatanicPanic
What’s the creepiest presidential nickname? I used to think “Tricky Dick” but now I’m leaning towards” Old Rough and Ready”. Eyew
piratedan
well Corker is one of those dudes that makes the geisha play of being a “reasonable and principled” Republican and then turns around and votes with the rabid loonies anyways. Fuck him, he’s a coward who knows what’s right and refuses to step up and do the right thing.
Sibelius
Anyone out there use a pre-paid or monthly plan from page plus cellular? Spending money now for phones we hardly use and wife’s phone is dying. If we “upgrade” phones on our current VZN plan we have to get data service that will cost much more and be hardly used. We need the VZN network and page plus piggy backs on it. Tried Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile and we had no coverage at work for her. I’m not really a Luddite, just don’t have a large circle of contacts that I talk to so I don’t need thousands of minutes and data that cost a fortune and aren’t used.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Well, it happened during Obama’s pre term, so it’s of course his fault. Just as the invasion of Iraq took place during Clinton’s third term.
George W. Bush? Who is that?
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer: One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Just ask Peter King.
jurassicpork
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Top 12 Assclowns of the GOP 2016 Presidential Field.
Villago Delenda Est
@japa21: WIN!
japa21
@SatanicPanic: Just looked up a list. There are some weird ones;
Monroe was called “The Last Cocked Hat”
Cleveland was “Uncle Jumbo”
Taft was “Big Lub”
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
“History’s Greatest Monster”.
srv
South Park comes to South Dakota
Botsplainer
@jurassicpork:
I won’t click it. Do you close it by begging for donations? Again?
Bobby B.
Bob Corker: can you be on “Meet the Press” on Sunday? The pundits are awhirl. “Twirling, twirling, ever twirling toward freedom!”
Roger Moore
@japa21:
I kind of like “The Dude President” for Chester Arthur and the well deserved “Silent Cal” for Coolidge.
SatanicPanic
@japa21: Big Lub would be a great rap name
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
A leopard doesn’t change its spots.
Botsplainer
@Roger Moore:
It’s the 10th of the month. The rent is probably late and the penalty kicked in today. He’ll do an ETA mentioning that he’s light and asking for a couple of bucks to tide him over.
Belafon
@Botsplainer: Shouldn’t his name be GodAndStateFirst?
jeffreyw
This announcement reveals an unCorked gap in the GOP hopefuls lineup.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
I think it’s closer to “GrandOldPartyFirst”.
jeffreyw
@Sibelius: Verizon offers “feature” phones that don’t need a data plan, don’t they? We went with Tracphone for a couple of years with pretty good luck, they used the Verizon network.
Calouste
@Roger Moore: Or “MeFirstScrewEveryoneElse”.
Mike in NC
This is excellent news for Lindsey Graham! Or is that Donald Trump?
Belafon
@srv: That seems to be the newest meme for Republicans regarding transgender people. Erick Erickson was tweeting about how Liberals won’t admit that the transgender teen that killed herself is actually named whatever the birth name was (I can’t get on twitter so I can’t put the actual quote). We just won’t follow God’s choices when the person was born.
Sibelius
@jeffreyw: Hey, you’re right, I just checked and they do have something without data. Last time I went through this I didn’t see that option. Thanks.
catclub
@japa21: TMBG say James K Polk was the Napoleon of the Stump.
piratedan
@catclub: it’s an awesome tune as well….. especially like the part when they play the saw during the bridge…
Botsplainer
@Belafon:
Oh, sure. Lots of whackiness there.
What I always find interesting is the near worship of the demigod in the guise of the pot-bellied, swaggering, slackjawed, head-busting, nigger-hating, spic-beating, tobacco-chawing sheriff among FReepers. Never afraid to swagger around and physically enforce the will of the salt-of-the-earth local bigots, local judges, librul judges, them damn fedrel burocrats, them rogue agents of the FBI and jackbooted ATF thugs all need to fear the sheriff’s local supreme authority and his jail.
It’s all gold-fringed flag stuff, of course. Back when I was a semi-wingnut, I’d troll them into passionate arguments about what the local sheriff could and could not do regarding federal authorities coming into their locality. The nuts had a network of sites built up (usually geocities) where they quoted and reinforced one another on ugly sites with bad graphics and a lot of capital letters, and misattributed, out of context and made up quotes.
beth
@Belafon: Hey if he has to live with the name given to him at birth, everyone else should too.
The Ancient Randonneur
I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my … well, only if they absolutely insist.
neoconstantine
@jurassicpork: The new official Jindal portrait looks like Alfred E Newman.
Mr. Longform
Well, I was going to announce my candidacy for the presidency and await matching funds, and then I got them, and since I still couldn’t afford the coffee I bought while waiting for my supporters to show up, I am now announcing that I will not be seeking the office of POTUS after all. So, I am now ready to begin my Fox News career. Contract? Just tell me what you want me to say about whomever, and I’m ready to go. Roger? Anybody? Hello!?
Mr. Longform
@Sibelius: I use Virgin Mobile – can get a cheap phone and pay $30 a month, no contract. It’s on the Sprint network, so coverage isn’t bad overall, but sounds like not good for your situation.
Sibelius
@Mr. Longform: Yeah, we had Sprint before and coverage was abysmal here. We’ve found that Verizon is the only network that works where my wife does in freakin’ Palo Alto for crying out loud, the “heart of Silicon Valley” and we can’t get reliable service in her building any other way! Looks like VZN does have other options for us, they are just buried under mountains of expensive smart phone options.
brantl
That’s what his parents told him, but they didn’t tell him what it really meant. They’ve been using that for a code-phrase since he was a kid…..
jafd
The latest ads that have appeared for my perusal, when I’ve surfed to Balloon Juice the past couple of days, have been for:
clothes for zaftig ladies
clothes for pregnant ladies
clothes for little girl dancers
mail-order razor blades
travel to Taiwan
I might be interested in the last, but it’s hardly within my budget in the forseeable future. The rest make me wonder what strange cookies and warped algorithms have gotten attached to me.
ThresherK
@Sibelius: Virgin Mobile also works for us. We live in the Northeast Corridor. We don’t use a lot of minutes, so the “unlimitedness” of other carriers is not a draw.
pseudonymous in nc
No shit, Sherlock.
Shantanu Saha
@Big ole hound: But if we drafted Ted Yoho, we’d have much more fun saying his name.
Cervantes
In the course of an interview, he was asked a question, which he answered. Criticizing him for this is passing silly.