Not even Michelle Bachmann could draw a crowd in South Carolina. I’d say the Tea Party movement doesn’t even qualify as astroturf any more. It’s a media fiction at this point.
Other stuff —
What’s really driving the debt? A chart to clip & save.
Nate Silver thinks Texas Gov. Rick Perry would have a good shot at the Republican nomination if he chooses to run. Bring him on, I say.
Update: This review of Newt’s week is very much worth reading. It not only underscores the point that Newt is a colossal A-hole, it also makes clear that the attacks on Newt were coming entirely from the Republican establishment. The “lame-stream media” didn’t realize Newt had said anything controversial until Republicans turned it into a controversy.
Also, don’t miss this comic strip version of The Press Statement of the Century. The panel showing the sheep unloading their entire clip is priceless.
Too bad that couple’s not in a pair of bathtubs watching Nikki Haley.
It would look like a Teabagger Cialis ad.
“Honey, let’s scoot out on Nikki, she won’t miss us. That quicker pecker-upper I took finally worked.”
“You mean “IT” finally works for the first time since Reagan was talking about Welfare Queens and young bucks with T-bones? Speaking of T-bones….” She reaches for him down there, “Well, maybe I should say that it’s a lower case “t” on that bone. Should you take another pill, maybe?”
Right now, the Kochs, and other Conservative puppet-masters want to distance themselves from the Teabaggers until they come up with some more viable candidates than they have now.
But, you can be sure once they’ve picked their man/woman, they’ll put their money into the astroturf, they’ll get the signs ready, and the busses gassed and ready to go, so the lemmings can feel useful and powerful.
As for Perry, it makes perfect sense for a man to run for President of the country he as Governor wanted to secede from.
This would be a new take on Groucho’s great line, ‘”I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member” – UNLESS I’M PRESIDENT OF THAT CLUB.’
Oh, and Rick, have you taken a good look at your state’s budget mess recently? The only ‘Texas Miracle’ you can hope for now is that your entire state is raptured at 6pm today.
They didn’t get the 2,000 to 3,000 the organizers expected but that picture of two people sitting in chairs is from behind them and doesn’t show the actual 30 or so that were there. If you Google the rally there are other pictures that show more people. While I like the idea of a very small crowd, that picture as presented is disingenuous.
I’d much rather make fun of the unraptured followers of Harold Camping. Even though he said it would happen at 6 p.m. (local times) we’ve had no reports of people vanishing in New Zealand.
Um, 30 or so people is a very small crowd, especially when the rally had (apparently) been publicized and some nationally known people did show up to speak, even if the main attraction canceled. And if all but two of the 30 were hanging that far back while Bachmann was speaking, that’s significant also.
What, no Rapture?
DAMN!!!
I had put off shopping for my spring/summer wardrobe to see what I could get for nothing later on today.
Miserable sancitmonious Christians. Even when you want them to go, they stick around.
Probably out of spite.
PS: I had a great idea this morning. Go to a Salvation Army or Goodwill and buy a bunch of used clothes cheap, and then overnight leave them in front of an Evangelical Church near you so that when they come for services tomorrow they’ll be jealous of those that got raptured, and wonder why the weren’t one of the chosen?
Stick around with a camera and document their disappointment.
Miserable sancitmonious Christians. Even when you want them to go, they stick around.
LOL…:)
Newt is going to be a blessing for the 2012 election.. He’s got no chance of electability, and he’s been rightly tagged as being caustic to the GOP. It won’t be long before the ten foot pole marks start showing up on Newt.
Reading that article about Newt the one thing that jumps out at me as the most offensive is the praise some women heaps on him for being some sort of history guru who has achieved a profound understanding of history..Newt cultivated that image, but there is no substance to that illusion..He’s an absolute fraud whose only true claim could amount to being a weaseling slime ball who has mastered the art of deceit. I guess I could also commend him for his skill in charming Callista’s knickers off, but I can’t be sure they weren’t already dropping freely all over capitol hill before Newt notched his belt with her pelt.
And in truth he’s a third-rate intellect with a shockingly shallow understanding of history. Truly, over the years I’ve worked with a lot of Ph.D.s and some of them were downright dense. Lots of people slog through graduate school and fulfill the degree requirements who are nowhere near brilliant.
Re: The press statement of the century: Ignore it and Newt will go away. Guess what’s going to happen: Faux Newz will show the Colbert clip (it is pretty damn good), and guess what happens next: “See? The media really IS liberally biased and liberals are MEAN!!!”
And in truth he’s a third-rate intellect with a shockingly shallow understanding of history.
I concur!
Newt is a well known quantity by now (kind of a Donald Trump but with more of a brain and no money), but I was struck more by the conservative establishment’s reaction to his proposals. It’s a perfectly reasonable, even-handed-sounding thing for someone to say that they don’t favor right wing or left wing social engineering, but the reaction to this statement is as though Newt made the fatal mistake of speaking out against conservative orthodoxy.
Back in 1994, when the sun was still rising on conservativism, a novel approach like this was more openly received; but fast forward a couple decades and things have gotten a lot more ossified on the right. Newt would never fit into the rigid orthodoxy like the right has today. His moment has clearly passed.
Same for the Tea Party – it will die a slow death, I’ve read reports months ago that attendance at their rallies is way down, and probably its big money backers have pulled out. As far as these backers are concerned it was a rousing success – look at all the neanderthals that got elected in 2010, with more to come. I think you’re going to hear the phrase “Tea Party Republican” more and more in its place.
Nate I live in Texas, and believe me, you, or the rest of Amrica don’t want Rick Perry as president. When G.W. got elected, I said whoa, the American people have no idea what they’ve done. Had I away then to communicate with the public, like I do now, thanks to the internet, I would have got down on my knees and begged every one not to vote for that little crook. I didn’t get in to blogging untill I caught Maha on the Brian Lamb show C-span. Then my mind was made up, I would also get into blogging, so I could learn more about what was actually going on in my world. Its common knowledge in Texas that he’s crazy.
Rats. No Triple Crown this year. Good race, though. And, it looks like we will be around to see the Belmont Stakes.
Maha, re: the chart you recommended: Jason Linkins at HuffPo has been running a similar chart for weeks now during his liveblogs of the Sunday morning news/ interview/panel shows. I have come to expect to see it pop up whenever some guest or panelist makes a “not intended to be factual” remark on finances.
OT: Went to a Pre-Rapture yard sale this morning. I was looking for a potato ricer for blending potatoes into flour for a new bread recipe. I expect to have time to let the bread rise, even if it takes 18 hours.
I understand the next Rapture/Apocalypse is scheduled for December 21, 2012, at exactly 11:11 AM. It’s got something to do with the Mayan calendar, and Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto (though personally, I think the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Reefer Madness should be taken into account when predicting these things). Anyway, it’s good to know that we will have time for one more presidential election – an Apocalypse just wouldn’t be the same without one. After all, it’s only during US presidential elections that good and evil get to face off against each other on prime-time TV.
Given this momentous event, I think the Tea Partiers should just go ahead and shoot their wad, and run Jesus as their candidate. Of course, his birth certificate might be an issue, but if you google “Bethlehem” you’ll see that it’s a city in Pennsylvania, so I think this problem is overblown. Stay tuned to Glenn Beck for more details.
“Why do we still have apes if we came from them?”
– Florida state Sen. Stephen Wise, who believes in creationism
But which time zone? In case I want to schedule something?
Did you hear about the young student who challenged Michelle Bachmann to a debate on the U.S. Constitution. Apparently, she is getting death threats now. I think I read about it at ThinkProgress. If only the Rapture had taken all the rightwingers. Sigh.
Bonnie ….The drones are genetically programed to protect the queen when the hive comes under attack, or the queen is threatened . So I’m not surprised that Bachmann’s mindless drones would issue death threats to a little 16 year old girl.
Did anybody get a sense of similarity in theme between Newt’s press statement of the century and the Star Spangled Banner..Something to the effect that when the attacks in each situation subsided, both Newt and Old Glory were still there. Gee, I get so charged up just witnessing Newt’s devoted patriotism that I want to go out and commit adultery.
“But which time zone? In case I want to schedule something?”
I think it is supposed to be like a rolling black out, but who knows. It is, afterall, magic.
I’d like to know who is promoting all this doom and gloom.
Pity the true believers still stuck in this terrible hell hole.
If I had run up my debt, spent all my money and gave everything away getting ready for the rapture before yesterday at 6, late last night I’d have taken off, leaving nothing but one pair of clothes and shoes, and a note saying “Jesus told me it was just me, to prepare me for my solo trip. So, so long los…”