Pushback

Wanting everyone to have food, water, shelter, education, and an equal shot at living out their lives at some fair level of dignity doesn't make you a snowflakey socialist libtard - it makes you a decent compassionate human being.

And according to the preamble of the US Constitution, it makes you the real American.

So maybe it's not unreasonable to think it means that being a dickish libertarian MAGA-rube might actually be against the law.

A Poem

May we raise children
who love the unloved things -
the dandelion, the worms and spiderlings.
Children who sense the rose needs the thorn
and run into rainswept days
the same way they turn towards the sun

And when they're grown
and someone has to speak for those
who have no voice
may they draw upon that wilder bond,
those days of tending tender things,
and be the ones.
-- Nicolette Sowder

Today's Tweet

Sea legs.

bird balance pic.twitter.com/OLFUlWI6pe

— CAWWW (@pissed_eagle) January 28, 2019

Weekend Update (NSFW)

Colin Jost & Michael Che:

Per The Washington Examiner:

Stone went on to work for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole. But while serving on Dole’s campaign in 1996, he was hit with a controversy of his own. The National Enquirer revealed that Stone and his second wife Nydia, a former model, had placed ads for group sex partners in swingers magazines and online. Stone also frequented Capitol Couples, a former swingers club in D.C., according to the Enquirer and other publications.

“Hot former model seeks exceptional, in shape muscular … studs for threesomes with herself and body builder husband,” read one ad, which including topless photos of Stone and his wife. Another ad specified: “No smokers or fats please."

Stone initially denied the Enquirer story, claiming the ads were fabricated by political enemies, but he was forced to resign from the Dole campaign due to the controversy. He later acknowledged that the ads were indeed his.

Today's Fun Fact

A dog gets a lot more useful information by briefly sniffing a pile of shit than any rube has ever gotten from years of watching DumFux News.

Today's Tweet

Cadence - it gives your audience a better chance to keep up, and makes it more likely they'll remember what you say. Fake lord knows the rubes need all the help they can get.

When you notice that Mike Pence always. talks. like. this. 🔊 pic.twitter.com/K610milDKD

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 25, 2019

Overheard

Here's your SOTU for 2019:

The country is stuck in a shitfest hosted by a traitorous fuckin' moron, abetted by a gaggle of billionaire tycoon butlers and 30 million inbred rubes.

There - that should hold ya. Can we go for pizza now?

hat tip = @RogueSNRadvisor, et al

Today's Tweet

Buh-bye.

"Roger Stone" Thoughts and Prayers

My thoughts are that he is a Traitor
I pray that he never sees the light of day again.

— 🌴 Jeff 🌴 (@JeffHendrix88) January 25, 2019

Sssssss

That loud hissing sound we hear is either the air going out of the Daddy State balloon - finally - or it's the growing problem of snakes in the snake pit, as they escalate their attacks on each other.

And now that I stop and think about it for moment, those two things always go together.

Ronnie Reagan would not approve on either count.

WaPo:

Republican senators clashed with one another and confronted Vice President Pence inside a private luncheon on Thursday, as anger hit a boiling point over the longest government shutdown in history.

“This is your fault,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at one point, according to two Republicans who attended the lunch and witnessed the exchange.

“Are you suggesting I’m enjoying this?” McConnell snapped back, according to the people who attended the lunch.

Johnson spokesman Ben Voelkel confirmed the confrontation. He said Johnson was expressing frustration with the day’s proceedings — votes on dueling plans to reopen the government, both of which failed to advance.

The people who attended the lunch spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a closed-door session. Aides to McConnell, citing regular policy on GOP lunches, declined to comment on the gathering.

- and -

The outbursts highlighted the toll the shutdown has taken on Republican lawmakers, who are dealing with growing concerns from constituents and blame from Democrats, all while facing pressure from conservatives to stand with Trump in his demand for money to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

- and -

“Nobody was blaming the president,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), speaking about the lunch to reporters afterward. “But there was a lot of frustration expressed about the situation we find ourselves in.”

Repubs are staring their political doom in the face and they can't bring themselves to admit that they - along with the incredibly shitty hurtful policies they've been pimping - comprise their main problem.

They can't figure out how to unhitch themselves from a very unpopular president without going against a constituency they believe is vital to their staying in power. But if they continue pandering to a shrinking group of zealous gullible rubes, they're on their way out anyway.

Most of us can see that 45* has not remade the GOP in his image so much as he is a near-perfect reflection of what the GOP has been evolving into for 30 or 40 years. Congress Critters are finally beginning to acknowledge that, as it becomes clearer to more and more people just how venal and cynically ambitious these clowns are.

And guys like Wilbur Ross and Larry Kudlow and Kevin Hassett (et al) aren't helping.

BTW, that stoopid idea about hostages borrowing money to "tide them over"?  C'mon - you're going to fuck with these people - threatening their livelihoods and their credit ratings and their plans for the future - and then you're going to charge them interest when you're basically loaning them their own fucking money?

Seriously - what the fuck is wrong with you assholes that you'd be looking to profit from this mess?

Walkin' And Talkin'

If you talk like a crook and you walk like a crook, and in practically every other way you act like a crook - then you're prob'ly a fuckin' crook.

WaPo:

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump, was arrested by the FBI on Friday after being indicted in the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Stone was charged with seven counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements and one count of witness tampering, according to Mueller’s office.

With Stone’s indictment, Mueller has struck deep inside Trump’s inner circle, charging a long-standing friend of the president and one of the first people to promote Trump for the White House.

Stone, 66, who has been friends with Trump for three decades, served briefly as a formal adviser to his presidential campaign in 2015 and then remained in contact with him and top advisers through the election.

The GOP operative has been a key focus of the special counsel for months as Mueller has investigated whether anyone in Trump’s orbit conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Read the indictment
I suppose the dangling of pardons will likely come back into play now - preceded of course by more of the usual flip-floppy double-speak:

• Yes, Roger's a friend
• No, I never really knew him
• Yes, he was an integral part of the operation
• No, he did a few things for us around the edges
• blah blah fuckin' blah

And Stone will most likely stay in the mode he helped establish for GOP Rat-Fuckery: