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Assholes

You are here: Home / Archives for Assholes

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: These Colors Don’t Run… But *We* Do!

by Anne Laurie|  January 23, 20217:15 pm| 225 Comments

This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes

pic.twitter.com/Of1KMlH0LM

— Phos4 (@Phozz4) January 19, 2021

I read the Washington Post article MisterMix highlighted earlier, but I’m not as pessimistic about the arguments presented there:

… Federal officials estimate that roughly 800 people surged into the building, though they caution that such numbers are imprecise, and the real figure could be 100 people or more in either direction.

Among those roughly 800 people, FBI agents and prosecutors have so far seen a broad mix of behavior — from people dressed for military battle, moving in formation, to wanton vandalism, to simply going with the crowd into the building…

Not one of those dumbfvcks had any business being anywhere near the Capital that day, but insisting LOCK ‘EM ALL UP is the only correct response is no smarter than saying every ‘participant’ at a BLM street protest deserves to be punished for the few troublemakers who break windows or set fires. There’s a dangerous, festering core of true believers at the heart of the insurrection; those people need to be properly prosecuted (and hopefully stripped of any ability to cause trouble in the future). The nice-day-for-a-MAGA-rally tourists who just went along with their herd — and that will be most of them — deserve to be cited for whatever misdemeanors they committed, given a public shaming (if it were up to me, community service picking trash, or the like), and told *not* to be dumbfvcks in the future.

They’re not brave people, and they only acted out because they thought ‘everybody’ was on their side. Convince them the ratio has changed — that the Biden Administration will *not* give lawbreakers a free pass, no matter how hard the LameStream Media whines — and I’d assume at least 80% of these Brave Resistance Troupers will go back to their natural habitats at the VFW hall bars and the HOA boards.

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: <em>These Colors Don’t Run… But *We* Do!</em>Post + Comments (225)

Late Night Open Thread: Brave Enough, *After* the Event

by Anne Laurie|  January 23, 202112:41 am| 53 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes, Cosplay Socialists

Michael Tracey will always be known as the large young dude who whined about Rep. Maxine Waters shoving him, just brutally, behold the violence inherent in the system. So he’s not afraid to somersault out at the head of the Horseshoe Politics clown parade…

Pilot kept engines on for entire flight, total waste of fuel since we didn’t crash. https://t.co/1i24CAD9qN

— Human Survival Is A Political Agenda (@Ed_Baptist) January 20, 2021

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Late Night Open Thread: Brave Enough, *After* the EventPost + Comments (53)

Who Are They?

by John Cole|  January 12, 20218:50 pm| 317 Comments

This post is in: Trump Crime Cartel, Assholes

Who are the guys you saw foaming at the mouth, screaming about stolen elections and loving the constitution and calling capitol police traitors as they broke into the Capitol and defiled the place? You know them, folks. You went to school with them. While the ages range,, they mostly 30-60 years old. They’re bored. They’re unhappy with where they are in life. They were never much into book learning, but not stupid. But they feel like time has passed them by and their glory days are over. No one cares about the HS football or basketball championship, their league softball exploits bring them no glory.

They may have been in the military for a while and that gave them a sense of purpose, or maybe they were LEO’s, or firemen. Mill workers and miners. Contractors and laborers. Add in some nutjoob losers, some lawyers and brokers, etc.

And they’re angry. Life hasn’t gone the way they thought it would. Maybe they expected more out of it. Maybe they got screwed. But they are aging and feeling irrelevant, and insecure in their masculinity. It’s why they flock to shiny 80k pick-em-trucks they will never haul anything in and worship guns- it makes them feel important and in charge. They haven’t really read the constitution any more than they have read the bible, and what they have read they don’t understand or they ignore the parts they don’t like. They like the cosplay of it all, too- the tactical gear they barely fit into and in many cases don’t know how to use. It makes them look tough. It’s why the most important part of their kit is the Punisher logos and the badges letting people know what group they’re in. They think it gives them respect, and a camaraderie they are missing.

And they’re angry. For the last 40 years they’ve been lied to and they’ve been screwed in the wallet by policies of both parties. And they have also self-radicalized. They go to these online rooms, facebook groups, share bullshit memes, and refuse to actually investigate if they are true. It’s easier to just yell fake news or blame the media or people who actually know what they are talking about. And they work themselves into a froth, creating a feedback loop, where each time one of them says how they been wrong someone comes up with something worse and then all of a sudden they hate Adam Schiff or Steny Hoyer more than anything else in the world even though they couldn’t pick them out of a lineup. I mean, try to debate them. Everything they say is a soundbite and superficial, and when you definitively prove them wrong they just keep on believing what they want to believe, or engage in false equivalencies and whataboutism. “OK FINE MAYBE THAT WAS OUT OF LINE AT THE CAPITOL BUT WHATABOUT BLM PROTESTS.” Literally the ONLY information they are interested in is that which reinforces what they already believe and tells them they are right.

So you take all that, feed them toxic shit for years in the media, and then have the President urge them all on with lies, and that’s how you get the Beergut Putsch that happened the other day. And I don’t know how it stops, because for a lot of these guys it’s a game, and for the people feeding them this bullshit, it’s very profitable.

Who Are They?Post + Comments (317)

And Another Thing About These Fuckers

by John Cole|  January 9, 20216:47 pm| 409 Comments

This post is in: Trump Crime Cartel, Assholes, Sociopaths

One of the enduring lies of the last four years is that Trump speaks for the downtrodden and disfranchised. This has never been true. Sure, there are a lot of racist poor people who vote for him, but as the arrests are pouring in from the McRib Rebellion, you are seeing Trump’s true base. Middle and Upper middle class white people with means. Like this shitstain:

As insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol this week, a few figures stood out. One man, clad in a combat helmet, body armor, and other tactical gear, was among the group that made it to the inner reaches of the building. Carrying zip-tie handcuffs, he was captured in photographs and videos on the Senate floor and with a group that descended on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite. In a video shot by ITV News, he is seen standing against a wall adjacent to Pelosi’s office, his face covered by a bandana. At another point, he appears to exit the suite, face exposed, pushing his way through the crowds of demonstrators.

A day after the riots, John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, notified the F.B.I. that he suspected the man was retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., a Texas-based Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran. Scott-Railton had been trying to identify various people involved in the attack. “I used a number of techniques to hone in on his identity, including facial recognition and image enhancement, as well as seeking contextual clues from his military paraphernalia,” Scott-Railton told me. Brock was wearing several patches on his combat helmet and body armor, including one bearing a yellow fleur de lis, the insignia of the 706th Fighter Squadron. He also wore several symbols suggesting that he lived in Texas, including a vinyl tag of the Texas flag overlaid on the skull logo of the Punisher, the Marvel comic-book character. The Punisher has been adopted by police and Army groups and, more recently, by white supremacists and followers of QAnon. Scott-Railton also found a recently deleted Twitter account associated with Brock, with a Crusader as its avatar. “All those things together, it’s like looking at a person’s C.V.,” Scott-Railton said.

Or this fuckknob:

A Texas-based lawyer is among those who have been terminated from their job after being identified as a participant in Wednesday’s riot on Capitol Hill.

“Paul Davis, Associate General Counsel, is no longer employed by Goosehead,” Goosehead Insurance, located in Westlake, Texas, tweeted Thursday.

That’s why the Trump boat flotillas were popular- his base is predominantly crazy white people of means. The poors don’t have 200k boats. Boats are fucking expensive to own and maintain. You weren’t seeing blue collar boys in their weekend bass boats at those things. These were expensive toys.

On top of that, truly poor people can not afford to fly or drive across country, dress up in expensive tactical gear, and riot. They don’t have the means or the money to fly across country on a private jet like this dumpsterfire of a person:

One Dallas-area woman flew by private jet to participate in the initial protest at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday that turned violent as the mob breached the building.

Realtor and radio host Jenna Ryan took a private jet with three others to Washington D.C. to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.

These people have never been disfranchised, they just don’t accept it when their candidate loses and they don’t accept minority voters as their equals. What has happened is the mainstreaming of the Birchers. Add in all the unstable nutjobs who follow conspiracy theories, opportunists and grifters, fascist groups like the Proud Boys and Three Percenters and militias, the Jesus freaks, and your friends on facebook who want their tax cuts and don’t give a fuck about anything else, and there you have the Trump base.

But it isn’t the poor and downtrodden who just want their voices heard.

And Another Thing About These FuckersPost + Comments (409)

Alienated

by John Cole|  December 22, 20207:39 pm| 147 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Assholes

I’d like to add one thing to Mistermix’s piece below, and that’s that I don’t have the fucking energy to engage with these trump-humping choads around me. Every day, I drive around, and still see Trump 2020 signs up. There is literally no point in arguing with them. It’s not about issues or what is best for them, it’s about cultural identity. It’s as pointless as telling them that their Friends of Coal bumper sticker or Confederate flag are stupid and counter-productive. You might as well tell them their NFL team sucks, too.

So fuck them. I’m surrounded by them, and it’s depressing. It’s the new Cult of the Lost Cause. And I’m tired of centrist Dems telling me we need to reach out to them and progressive Dems tell me that the right economic policies will turn the tide. The only thing that will get their votes is if you say the right racist things and hate the same people they do and pretend to LURV the baby Jeebus.

AlienatedPost + Comments (147)

Saturday Horrorshow Open Thread: Nice Day for A MAGAt March, Apparently

by Anne Laurie|  December 12, 20209:46 pm| 194 Comments

This post is in: Election 2020, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Repubs in Disarray!, Trumpery, Assholes, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

it’s the greatest I-mean-it-ironically self dunk of all time https://t.co/wrJ2MrPZd1

— kilgore trout, tiny desk carpenter (@KT_So_It_Goes) December 12, 2020

Looking to be a scary night, though. The ‘True Trump Majority’ is whittling itself down to the hardcore cultists and nihilists, and that’s when things go from risible to ugly fast. From the Washington Post, “Tensions flare in Washington as thousands gather for pro-Trump demonstrations”:

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Saturday Horrorshow Open Thread: Nice Day for A MAGAt March, ApparentlyPost + Comments (194)

It’s All a Big Game When It Isn’t a Grift

by John Cole|  December 2, 202011:43 am| 63 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Assholes

I really hate these people:

The TL;DR of the call was this: Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be “political suicide” to oppose Trump. I find this unconscionable.

Meanwhile:

Scooplet: Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) has been telling colleagues and allies that he plans to challenge the Electoral College votes when Congress officially certifies Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, as long as a Senate Republican joins him in the long-shot effort, sources tell your Huddle host.

Brooks confirmed his plans in a phone interview, adding that he is still considering objecting to the vote-counting process even if no one joins him — though he acknowledged that would be more of a symbolic protest. Brooks, echoing President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud without providing evidence, argued that the election was “badly flawed” and that most mail-in voting is “unconstitutional.”

“In my judgment, if only lawful votes by eligible American citizens were cast, Donald Trump won the Electoral College by a significant margin, and Congress’s certification should reflect that,” Brooks said. “This election was stolen by the socialists engaging in extraordinary voter fraud and election theft measures.”

These people are scum.

It’s All a Big Game When It Isn’t a GriftPost + Comments (63)

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