Jezebel
You know how sometimes you worry with all this Democratic infighting superdelegating Rock of Love American Idol whoresex ADD distraction etc. etc. that the American people are going to forget how evil Republicans are? Yeah, well guess what? I don't know if it is the war or the economy or the murder rate or the rising cost of like every basic need but somehow they haven't! In fact: the Republicans are so hated that the last time the Republican party tried to raise money from Republicans they got one of their donor requests sent back with an envelope full of feces; I don't know what kind. "It stinks. No other way to put it," says House Minority Leader John Boehner. Anyway I can't say that in my adult life I have ever been proud of this country but I am proud of whatever mail carrier held his or her nose so as to deliver this parcel, and it's that kind of shitshow in general for the GOP today, what with the HUD chief resigning amidst the housing crisis, Paul O'Neill crapping all over his former administration in the best interview with an ex-Bush cabinet member ever and Megan Carpentier and I see the President and we want to paint him crap, after the jump.
MOE: Yo sorry I'm late I had massive insomnia last night. What's going on? I feel like I read 759 different "think pieces" on the election last night.
MEGAN: Yeah, believe me, I tossed and turned for kind of a while last night and then woke up in the middle of the night and was up for a while. I think there are a ton of fucking think pieces out there because there's no actual news to report.
MOE: What do you mean? Obama totally went bowling! And drank Yuengling.
MEGAN: I'll guarantee that he's a better bowler than me. I once got a gutter ball in a bumper lane instead of hitting actual pins.
MOE: Okay, so I read the entire fucking Kelefa Sanneh piece on Jeremiah Wright in the New Yorker. I read the entire elegy to the Republican party in the Times Magazine. I read probably 28 pieces calling on Hillary Clinton to bow out of the campaign, about 25 of which came with the disclaimer "I know she won't but." Nora Ephron's may have been my favorite. Shit, now I can't find it.
MEGAN: I mean, I don't understand why everyone all of a sudden wants her to drop out except for the polls last week that show Democrats are all getting pissed enough at the other guy's people to vote for McCain, and thus also don't understand why the other guy's people would continue pissing off her people by calling on her to drop out.
MOE: She should drop out because, at this point, she's been beaten, and she's been beaten by a candidate who had a lot more to prove.
MEGAN: Well, but she's not quite beaten yet and she's bloodied him pretty damn well in the last couple of weeks.
MOE: She's bloodied herself worse on imaginary sniper fire
MEGAN: I mean, I just think that the calls all started because of the polls that show Nader taking votes from both of them and McCain beating either one of them, but that's a stupid reason. What she ought to do is Fire Mark Penn.
MEGAN: And then stop improving her negative rating
MEGAN: I mean, I guess I sort of wish it was over, but that's mostly because I'm fucking sick of talking and writing about it, but that's not really a good enough reason. And, also, calling for her to drop out is pissing off a lot of her supporters, which is worse than keeping going.
MOE: I dunno. I feel like a lot of her supporters are over it too. I mean, look, when was the last time we had a knockdown dragout with Sinister Rouge? Here, by the way, is the Nora Ephron piece.
She is me, and then again she's not. I used to love her and I no longer do, but unlike what usually happens when love dies, I still think about her far too much. When she tells a big lie, like her recent Bosnia episode, I can lose hours trying to figure out why. I mean, why? Was it one of those things that she'd said so often that she'd come to believe it? Was it a story that had worked in the past so she thought she'd gotten away with it? Did she honestly think that no one would rat her out? Does she not understand that if you're famous, there's almost nothing you do that someone doesn't have a picture of? I have no idea what the answer is to any of this because I'm not a liar and she is. (By the way, I don't think she was always a liar, the way some kids are born liars and never get over it. I think she was once a truthful person and her lying skills were forged in the early years of her marriage, forged in the crucible of Bill's infidelities and in her role as point person in dealing with them. This is what happens when you marry a narcissist: he spills the milk, you clean it up and your love grows. And then you end up a liar, just like him.)
MEGAN: Okay, well, I mean, can we just say that Nora's projecting a little? You're not a "liar," Nora? We're all liars. It's just a matter of degree.
MEGAN: I've already told a lie today, probably more than one and it's only 9:15
MOE: Why do you keep defending Hillary Megan she is a LYING LIAR WHO LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING. Blargh. Maybe we should move on. I'm getting flashbacks. Also, I forgot to mention the thing I read over the weekend which was the real stuff of these impassioned discourses, which is to say, crap, in the Times Mag story about how the Republicans are over. It's about Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican congressman who is in charge of fundraising.
Many conservative activists have become so dissatisfied with the party's heresies, particularly on immigration and government spending, that as Cole's staff took over, the committee's fund-raising pleas were being ignored and, on at least one occasion, returned in an envelope stuffed with feces.
MEGAN: Hahaha, poop mail.
MEGAN: Also, did you know when you get those no-postage-required return envelopes, it costs the company like $2 to pay to get that back? I send all of mine back after shredding credit card applications to try to keep the Post Office from raising the postal rate.
MEGAN: Also, the story is right on. Republican donors really think the job of the government is to keep the Messicans in Messico.
MOE: That's so funny my ex boyfriend used to do that. And the story is interesting in that it goes through and catalogs the discontent within Republican ranks that makes it seem like, you know, maybe they really are fucked and this is not all wishful thinking etc.
MOE:
"You go back to the Reagan years, and even before that, and we always had a three-legged stool: anti-Communism, anti-abortion and tax and spend," Dan Mattoon, the Republican lobbyist and former deputy chairman of Cole's committee, told me. "The first leg dropped off when the Berlin Wall fell, and after 9/11 we've tried to do the same thing with terrorism, but it's not as strong. The second leg, tax and spend, was pretty strong until George Bush. Then we had just one leg of the stool, which was social issues, and I think that you look at the makeup of the younger generation and there's more of a libertarian view on social issues." Cole says that the party's rhetoric on issues like gay marriage has cast Republicans as too reactionary for many suburban districts. "My problem on social issues is the tone — sometimes we have been too shrill, and that has alienated voters who might otherwise have joined us," he told me. The challenge, then, is finding a new generation of candidates who aren't.
MEGAN: Non-shrill, non-moralizing Republicans? Good luck with that. Reagan's grand coalition with the Christian conservatives fucked that up. Plus, um, Bush didn't increase government spending all by his lonesome. He required — and got — the Republican Congress to aid and abet and they fed together at the sweet sweet trough of porky deliciousness until Mark Foley and Jack Abaramoff and Tom Delay were caught shitting in it.
MEGAN: Not that pigs don't eat and root in shit.
MOE: Here's another fun line:
"I don't need the nominee to win; I just need him to be competitive enough that we can win behind him in the places that should be ours," Cole said. "I need him to be Gerald Ford."
MOE: Bush = Nixon!
MOE: Or actually worse.
MEGAN: He doesn't care if John McCain wins? Big surprise. This is the Republican problem. That's the only reason we can hope that Republicans stay home. If they do, it could deliver better-than-expected wins in Senate and Congressional and state races where they need the upticket help. Ha, jerks. Stay home! Drink the McCain haterade! Listen to Rush and M'Ann!!
MOE: It's just like, have you ever heard them acknowledge that Bush is worse than Nixon before? I thought they don't exist in the reality-based community!
MOE: And here's the better question, when did it finally hit them.
MEGAN: Well, it wasn't when he approval tanked or when everyone found out he lied about WMDs or when he let Scooter hang for Cheney or the budget tanked. I think it might be when even their own voters started sending them crap in the mail.
MOE:
When I asked the House minority leader John Boehner how he assessed the committee's fund-raising so far, he told me: "It stinks. No other way to put it."Ha ha ha literally!
MEGAN: Poop is always funny.
MOE: I wish watching the idiocracy dismantle this way was quite as funny as ...you know, the shit. Should we talk about the HUD secretary quitting? We should probably definitely talk about Paul O'Neill for a second. Asked if he felt any bitterness toward the Administration for freezing him out of all policy discussion, then unceremoniously firing him in a kind of Kafkaesque series of events Ron Suskind then wrote a book about, he says:
No. I'm thankful I got fired when I did, so that I didn't have to be associated with what they subsequently did.
MEGAN: Okay, I seriously laughed out loud at the O'Neill quote.
MEGAN: The HUD secretary quitting is all Katrina! Hooray, someone besides Brownie being held responsible for that colossal clusterfuck.
MOE: Hahahah this is better:
McCain recently confessed in public that his grasp of economics is limited.Yeah. That's a great place to start from, isn't it?He does not love him some Straight Talk Expressway To Your Heart.
MOE: Oh dude, also, Efraim Diveroli's dad talked to the press. "I would prefer he became a nice Jewish doctor or lawyer rather than an arms dealer."
MEGAN: OMG, Paul O'Neill may be the most hilarious cabinet secretary Bush ever fired.
MEGAN: Um, I think even if you're Jewish you still have to be smart to be a doctor or a lawyer.
MOE: Yeah he's a mensch. I actually bought his book but I didn't probably read it. Also, speaking of filial piety or something — kids? — there was some meme around about how Bob Casey has a whole army of kids who all told him to endorse Obama. And Hillary is, to say the least, kind of over this whole "My kids made me do it" excuse. Did you read that? I don't think I imagined it.
MEGAN: I love how Hillary's all done with "my kids made me do it" but she's got her daughter out campaigning for her.
MOE: Big pimping so to speak. wait also: Eliot Spitzer and the socks.
MEGAN: I cannot fuck a guy who is naked except for his socks. It's just too weird.
Comments
Bush really needs up update his slacks and lose those pleats. What would Clinton and Stacy say?
This year, it has become so easy to forget that they are still in power and doing damage. I have been so Clinton/Obama myopic that I have barely paid attention to the current administration...just like they like it. This is when they can do the most damage.
I loved the Paul O'Neill interview...he just reminded me of a bitter girl who got dumped, and knew it was for the best, but still wanted to get her potshots in.
That picture is fantastic. It's everything I wanted on a Monday morning and more.
Literally, I'm looking at that and can't stop giggling. For a second, I almost felt sorry for him because (in my mind), he looks like the awkward kid in grade school who is bad at sports and always gets picked last in gym class. He just wants to play!
And then I remembered that, in fact, he is our president and I only wish that his concerns were gym class related.
Better dead than red, y'all. Better dead than red.
That story about the Republican donor just made my morning! Awesome! Also, I'm totally worried about what Bush is doing while we're all distracted… scary considering what that man decided was okay to do when people were watching… now with no eyes on him… yikes!
@Rhody: Me too. I was only reminded of Bush when I filed my taxes and applied for that 600 cash back thing. I was like, "yay Bush!" ...and then felt terrible for thinking it.
Btw, I LOVED that Reid came out and told the Dems to just COOL IT with the divisiveness talk! Totally cracked me up - not to mention, it needed to be said.
Well, we here in DC haven't forgotten what a SHITshow this pres and his administration are:
from Cord @ Mollygood.com:
American President George W Bush yesterday threw out the first pitch for DC major league team the Washington Nationals. The POTUS was greeted loudly as an occupier, not a liberator. That is to say that many in attendance "booed the shit out of him" (to quote a friend who was there).
I'm seriously disappointed there was no actual Rock of Love discussion in that. Especially when Daisy finally named-dropped her uncle and owned up to being just another stripper supporting her loser ex-boyfriend.
But apparently Nora Ephron still needs Woody Allen to write something so she can rip it off, because she's for shit on her own. And I'll never forgive her idiotic comments about how she was upset when independent bookstore Shakespeare & Company closed, but she and her husband learned to love the Barnes & Noble that killed it. This is where her crap plot of You've Got Mail came from, because every woman should fall for the man who destroyed their dead mother's business.
Megan, you are keeping postal rates down by raising interest rates on credit cards.
MOE: She should drop out because, at this point, she's been beaten, and she's been beaten by a candidate who had a lot more to prove.
WRONG. There are 10 states left to vote dollface. If your guy keeps winning then he'll beat her. Simply because it gets repeated that he won does NOT make it true. All it does is make Clinton supporters like myself donate more money, dig in our heels and guarantee that we will sit it out. If Obama keeps winning and he's the legitimate nominee when this is done, I'll vote for him. If they think they'll succeed in bullying her out of the race, you can guarantee that I will not. So Obama supporters better keep that in mind. I will rally behind your guy, but not if he gets the nom by trying to pressure and bully Hillary into dropping out.
And his little "She's welcome to stay in," comment pissed me off. Thanks, buddy...I didn't realize she needed your permission.
I love Hillary, and I voted for her in the primaries, but I think it's becoming clear that more people will stand behind Obama in the fall election, and we have to have to have to get a democrat in office. This may be machiavellian, and I cringe thinking it, but I agree with those who say Hillary should drop out.
@marin79: I heard Howard Dean had also made similar noises. Said it last week -- they need to cool their jets, settle this thing now, and move on, before McCain becomes the beneficiary of this in-fighting. Heck, Patrick Leahy said that, and he's one of the few Senators I absolutely trust.
It takes a pretty high level of hate to send someone a box of shit. We're talking Shia/Sunni kind of hate here.
Hey, NRCC. Don't pooh pooh the whole feces thing. The dried shit will come in handy when the local utilities cut off your heat. You can burn it.
To Cole, didn't your boys shit on Gerald Ford after he crapped on the whole Iraq thing from the grave? Why yes, yes they did.
I bought the Paul O'Neill book AND read it, and he's even better than you think. When bad administrations happen to good people...
@Rhody: Listen to this week's "This American Life." It'll fill you with that good old-fashioned anti-Bush rage.
@RyanB: I am so torn on the $600. Half of me is like, this is terrible policy, it doesn't do anything measurable for the economy blah blah blah. The other half is like, Hey! $600!!
@SinisterRouge: Yeah girl!
Honestly, I know tons of Obama supporters would love to see Hillary drop out since, well, it would be easier for you. But think about it on the flip side - doesn't it say something about the his chances in November considering even at this point, Obama HASN'T BEEN ABLE TO CLOSE THE DEAL??? If he was really the clear nominee, would this be over already??? Like or not, Hillary still has a large base of supporters who are sticking with her - both in the general population & in superdelegates. There's a reason she's up in PA - tons of people still want to see her as President. And unfortunately, until Obama can prove that he deserves the nomination, I see no reason for this to end.
Plus, we'll rally around the nominee come Nov. Trying to speed this up is only going to piss people off instead of allowing people to say "okay, my candidate lost fair & square - time to fucking move on!"
@jezebellian is feeling cranky: I don't think it's a question of either "dropping out". In fact, I think if they united, and showed that the Democratic party can come together despite its differences, that might be just the push needed to fend off McCain come November.
Also, can Ralph Nader just go away... no one cares anymore.
@tellmeagain: I heard that: the part about the Candian Border anyway. While we're all concentrating on the big things, the Bush Administration has sent its perverse sense of government ethics to all corners of the U.S. Government.
@Rhody: Man I feel you. It's the dumbest policy ever, considering I'll probably use it to either a) pay off some kind of debt, or b) buy something that wasn't produced here in the U.S. Like, maybe some shoes or something. :)
@NefariousNewt: Leahy said HRC should drop out. He should STFU and get to bending over and letting Bush continue to fuck us over. I like him, but shit dude, SHUT UP. Let it continue. Primaries have gone longer than this many many times. And if Obama is such a great candidate he will continue to win. So let it happen. This only makes him look chicken and like he can't win without first having her drop out.
@jezebellian is feeling cranky: Yeah, but there are plenty of people still supporting her & that's why she hasn't dropped out. If those people abandon her & she loses PA, then yeah, she should drop out. But I see no reason for her to do it now - esp since she's way up in PA. This fight needs to end naturally for people to rally together in Nov. I think all the calls for her to drop out by Obama henchmen do far more harm than good.
I've got to say, I've seen a dozen Obama commercials on TV in the last couple weeks, heard radio ads, and suchlike, but I haven't seen anything from Hillary Clinton.
It seems like she already has dropped out of the race.
Unless she and Penn have just written Philadelphia off as "Too Black to Bother Courting."
@RyanB: My plan is to stimulate the Chinese economy and pay my car insurance.
@NefariousNewt: I would love if they united, but I think there's too much ego involved
@Rhody: I am super excited about my $600
I don't know that I agree that Hilary should bow out, but it'd be nice to be able to focus my attention on one Democratic candidate--I find myself distracted from the issues. (I'm only one person, though, and I guess lots of people enjoy the drama.)
@marin79: Seriously. All it serves to do is making HRC supporters angry. And the idea that we'll just fall in line and vote for him if he forces her out is dead wrong. I will NOT vote for him if they bully her into dropping out---something which knowing and LOVING it about her she won't. Let your guy win (and he probably still will) when everyone is done voting. People in Indiana and NC and Oregon and PA are excited that they get to have a say! And 60% of Dems want it to continue. It's only hard core Obama supporters that keep saying this over and over again. And it WILL backfire.
@RyanB: Mr Rhody and I are using it to pay for our Cape Cod rental this summer. We are good Americans for investing the money in our home state.
So that we can spend a week getting drunk on the beach and eating seafood. Ah...Cape Cod....
@braak: Being that the mayor of Philly endorsed her and campaigns for her I seriously doubt it.
@SinisterRouge: Whoa, I missed that one - did Obama really say "she's welcome to stay in..." WTF!
@braak: Any Black area doesn't count, remember? Neither do caucus states, affluent areas, people who enjoy basketball...
Didn't know you were from Philly, btw :)
@braak: She just came out with a new commercial that they were playing - and thankfully, it was a positive one so we don't have to hear kids who sold stock footage when they were 6yrs old weighing in again!
@SinisterRouge: I wish that all these people telling HRC to drop out showed the same conviction when it came to impeaching Bush/Cheney.
@SinisterRouge: I feel you. I felt the same way when Clinton tossed off the "there's nothing to base [Obama being Muslim] on. [Wait for it...] As far as I know."
Thanks chick. Didn't think you'd imply that, but you're welcome to, I guess.
Heh. Yeah. Do love SinRoo's knockdowndragouts.
The disillusioned Repubs I know? Still voting for McCain.
I see November, and it is not pretty.
@marin79: The problem all along has been easy to identify: when the Democratic field was a mixed bag and Hillary and Barack had to fight harder to be noticed and to distance themselves from the "old guard", we coulod sit by and watch the show. But now, it's down to just these two, and either way you slice it, some history is going to be made. Now the fight is over just who's going to make the history. If it were Clinton vs. Edwards, or Obama vs. Edwards, we wouldn't be seeing this same level of discourse, because then it would be us vs. them. So now you have two camps, both with long histories of suffering under the rule of "old white men" looking to break out, and they are forced by circumstance to fight each other, weakening them both in the process.
Mark my words -- if they do not find an amicable way out of this pickle, then you can pencil in John McCain as our next President. If either HRC or BO wants to be seen as a true leader, they will do what it takes to turn down the rhetoric of their supporters, run a strong campaign on actual ideas, and work toward unity.
@amoureuse is here because of Ashley!: Case and point! Most of this money will cause foreign... stimulation.
@Rhody: Love the Cape! Family has a house in Orleans - spent every summer there since I was born (granted not more than a week or so these days though ever since I had to grow up & get a job!) Jezebel drinks this summer?! :)
@Rhody: Wow, you guys must sport American flag pins on your lapels as well! :)
No but seriously, I should find some American way to use the money. Maybe buy $600 worth of Big Macs or something