Look, I know us socialists have our faults but one good thing is true: we hate those government controlled social welfare programs.
1 Like
you know my man needed help with these commas
p.s.
Consider replying to several posts at once
Rather than several replies to a topic in a row, please consider a single reply that includes quotes from previous posts or @name references.
You can edit your previous reply to add a quote by highlighting text and selecting the quote reply button that appears.
It’s easier for everyone to read topics that have fewer in-depth replies versus lots of small, individual replies.
keep crying Discourse Helper and i’ll give you something to cry about
1 Like
i’ve seen “we’re all already fubar”
xzibitweputanacronyminyouracronym.jpeg
OK, fuck it, I thought I retired posting this thing years ago, especially with him on whatever bullshit he’s been on the past few years (the few times I peeked he’s been insufferable), but this is Maher’s ethering of The Rally To Restore Sanity and it really is one of my favorite things and holy fucking shit it’s almost a decade old :
And finally, New Rule, if you’re going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you’d side with the sane and the reasonable , and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties.
Keith Olbermann is right, when he says he’s not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop.
And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance’s sake, that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism. There’s a difference between a mad man , and a madman .
Now, getting over 200,000 people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement, and gave me hope. And what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August! Although it weighed the same.
But the message of the rally, as I heard it, was that if the media would just stop giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all non-partisan, and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side, forgetting that Obama tried that, and found out there are no moderates on the other side.
When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is dominated by people on the right who believe Obama’s a socialist, and people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can’t name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama’s a socialist? All of them! McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin, all of them! It’s now official Republican dogma, like tax cuts pay for themselves, and gay men just haven’t met the right woman.
As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded, but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That’s the opinion of General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army’s investigation into Abu Ghraib.
You see, Republicans keep staking out a position that is further and further right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle, which is now not the middle anymore. That’s the reason health care reform is so watered down; it’s Bob Dole’s old plan from 1994. Same thing with cap-and-trade; it was the first President Bush’s plan to deal with carbon emissions. Now the Republican plan for climate change is to claim it’s a hoax.
But it’s not. I know that because I’ve lived in L.A. since '83, and there’s been a change in the city: I can see it now. All of us who live out here have had that experience. Oh look, there’s a mountain there! Government, led by liberal Democrats, passed laws which changed the air I breathe for the better. OK, I’m for them! And not for the party that is, as we speak, plotting to abolish the EPA . And I don’t need to pretend that both sides have a point here. And I don’t care what left or right commentators say about it; I only care what climate scientists say about it .
Two opposing sides don’t necessarily have two compelling arguments. Martin Luther King spoke on that Mall in the capitol, and he didn’t say, “Remember folks, those Southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point too!” No, he said, “I have a dream, they have a nightmare!” This isn’t Team Edward and Team Jacob. Liberals, like the ones on that field, must stand up and be counted, and not pretend that we’re as mean or greedy or short-sighted or just plain batshit as they are. And if that’s too polarizing for you, and you still want to reach across the aisle and hold hands and sing with someone on the right, try church.
lol Twilight reference
6 Likes
Slow cooked in a crockpot take: people hate on Maher because of their self-loathing over them behind the curve and him being ahead of the curve on this, holy shit it turns out, very important issue.
Here’s some other 2010 shit:
KING: I mean to win the nomination.
MAHER: I cannot wait to see the Republican debates in 2012 when you think about who is going to be on that panel. Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, John Bolton, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney.
How are they going to out-fire breath each other? I mean where this rhetoric has gone to at this point? It’s only 2010. And we’re having Newt Gingrich, as we were talking about before, calling him an anti-colonial Luo tribesman. Luo tribesman.
That’s the new Kenyan, Larry. And Kenyan, of course, was code for n----r. But that’s where they are. They can’t say it out loud. But that’s where this whole campaign is going to be.
You asked about racism. It’s all about racism. They cannot fathom this idea that there is a black president. And that’s what they are going to fight about.
Lol he was trying to warn people about about trump as a concept a decade ago and dudes were watching The Daily Show thinking everything was fine because their uncles no longer dropped n-bombs at thanksgiving dinner.
p.s.
Some shit I posted on 22:
So the grand theme is that MSNBC et al are doing a Fox News and making people on their ‘side’ hate?
Fucking good. Are you kidding me? America is where it’s at because of a lack of hate. I hope that hate hardens and gets purified to where it can cut diamonds and swallow up its opponents in the ravenous maw of its abyss.
2 Likes
Maher is a contrarian dick. It just happens that being a contrarian dick is the correct attitude to take towards Republicans.
1 Like
Can you edit a video of Blondie’s Call me with Sondlands face super imposed over debra harry’s?
1 Like
Some people knew the first gulf war was a bad idea too. Establishment dems are complicit in all of our warmongering in the Middle East in my lifetime.The only reason ill vote for them is because the GOP went completely off the rails and is now being run by a crazy conductor. But the key to that is the GOP is off the rails now regardless of trump. If you put Romney as the conductor you are still on a crazy GOP train that Romney will have little control over. Biden would be better just so we can get off the train imo.
As for as which is more likely to get us into war. Id say we would have a higher chance of going into Iran with Romney then going to war with Russia under Biden. But both are dangerous with that though.
Is the House going to be able to do anything about Pompeo ignoring them?
This is exactly what inherent contempt is made for, but whether or not they use it is a completely different matter. It’s a process that would have to be approved by a majority, and getting Dems to agree to anything is a bit like wrangling cats.
https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1180456185364975619?s=19
Anybody read her new book yet? From what I gather it’s about Russian involvement in, and now dependence on, the gas industry. She stated she thought Putin squandered the opportunity to rebuild the country and used the gas market instead to enrich himself and weaponize it globally.
GOP out there abusing every lever of power they have in service of the plutocracy. Meanwhile Democrats refuse to consider a very plainly worded, guaranteed to be effective option.
The GOP is the fan base that is both bewildered and thrilled as the opponent keeps punting on 4th and 1 from the 35.
Remember when I was talking about how dems are incapable of attacking Trump without simultaneously defending Biden? I move to enter jman’s posts as Exhibit A.
And to preempt nunnehi calling me a GOP sleeper cell, my point is that we have exactly zero Republicans here, and zero people who would vote for a republican in 2020 for Pres, and yet there’s still significant pushback about having an internal conversation that points out Biden has a horrendous record and worldview. Long term I think that’s extremely dangerous.
6 Likes
I had an angry rant about this like two days ago, but the answer no. The House Dems have full legal authority to lock people up for lying to Congress, but they have not put any thought into how that would actually happen or where they would even hold people, and none of the lawbros think that’s ever going to happen.
I’ll refer you to Preet Bharara’s podcast; the second caller asks this same question, skip ahead to ~3:30.
1 Like
I’ve never felt more defeated than when Preet gave the thought of locking them up a hearty chuckle. There isn’t even a jail, good golly what a silly idea.
2 Likes