Petty, tinhorn dictator Kim Jong-un has been figuratively waving his penis at the United States for some time now, continuing in the footsteps of his father, Kim Jong-il. And now petty, tinhorn would-be dictator Donald Trump has decided to respond in kind, with an off the cuff ...read more

While the polls might show a tightening race after a series of negative Hillary Clinton stories, when it comes to actually voting, most analysts believe centrist Americans will come to their senses and either not vote, or go with Clinton.  There are several reasons as to why ...read more

President Obama has steadfastly refused to engage in a ground war in Syria to stop ISIS despite calls from Republicans to put "boots on the ground".  In another time, a ground invasion may have been the right strategy to pursue to remove the very real threat of ISIS, but in 2015 ...read more

If you want to understand the type of thinking progressives forces are up against in the eternal struggle for America's sanity, look no further than Sarah Palin - the country's greatest example of banal mediocrity and willful ignorance. Palin isn't completely stupid, she's just ...read more

MSNBC host Chris Matthews put on a good show Friday night as a panelist on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, as anyone on a panel that consisted of George Pataki and Mark Cuban would.  He helped Maher push back against Jeb Bush's garbage assertion that brother Dubya "kept us ...read more

Predictably, Sith Lord and former Vice President Dick Cheney opposes the Iran nuclear deal. Why? Because Dick Cheney wants to go to war with Iran as part of his unfinished masterplan to turn the Middle East into a giant strip mall for the benefit of US corporations. It went ...read more

I realize that Matt Taibbi has done enough good work on the topic of the New York Time's resident banality generator Thomas Friedman to last a lifetime, but the jet setting, 'hyper-connectivity' reporter's latest column truly is a treasure trove of utter absurdity. Picking on ...read more

Speaking at an event sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security in Davenport, Iowa, Jeb Bush was quoted by The Daily Beastsaying: "I'll tell you, taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal." We have to seriously ask whether Jeb Bush is a space ...read more

Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has continued to take criticism for not taking questions from the media, even after she took questions from the media twice last week, so naturally, former Demon Sheep employer and Republican ...read more

Let's see if you can spot the difference between these two statements that were made four days apart: I would have [authorized the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they ...read more

Former President George W. Bush made headlines this weekend when remarks he made at a closed-door meeting were made public, and appeared to violate his pledge not to criticize his successor in the White House. In a meeting with about 700 Republican donors, President Bush made ...read more

It might seem like Hillary Clinton's emails are the biggest story in the world right now, but prior to this week, there was an even greater threat to humanity than a MacGyvered-up Hotmail account, and it was called ISIS. This week, Iraqi forces have been conducting an assault on ...read more

With Republicans rallying around the man they hope will be the third American president from the Bush family, Republicans are opening up exciting new possibilities for regime change the world over. Jeb, like his brother George, is a man who goes by his gut and isn't afraid to ...read more

What happens when you invade the wrong country for the wrong reasons, fail to stop a civil war by refusing to rebuild it properly, then start bombing neighboring countries? If your answer is: "A complete and utter nightmare," you'd be right. After the US invaded Afghanistan ...read more

Misremembering. It can happen to anyone, like that time I made a Korean woman strangle a chicken, but it turned out it was a baby. Pobody's nerfect. NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams is hoping that's the attitude the public takes toward his own "bungled" recollection of his ...read more

(Image credit: FrontPage Mag) If the Middle East is a region we can neither fix nor ignore, what’s left? I’m for “containment” and “amplification.” - Tom Friedman, NYTimes Earlier this month, Tom Friedman solved the problem of the world being 'fast' through cushioning, ...read more

The United States has intervened militarily in far too many Muslim-dominated countries for far too long. Unless you're a neoconservative, this statement will hopefully resonate with you to a substantial degree. Were it not for the vast pools of oil beneath the palaces inhabited ...read more

Over the weekend, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) continued to press the case that President Obama should introduce a resolution asking for authorization of his military action against ISIS, but he also said he agrees that the President already has the authority to take ...read more

Addendum added below In case you haven’t heard, Christian conservatives pose a greater threat to the United States than Islamic radicals such as members of the Islamic State. That’s the conclusion of C.J. Werleman, who previously argued that ISIS isn't motivated by Islam -- at ...read more

After weeks of Republicans criticizing President Obama's ISIS strategy, yet failing to actually say the thing they were trying to say, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), the highest-ranking Republican in the world, finally gave a straight answer to whether there should be ...read more

The United States conducted airstrikes in Syria Monday night, along with five Arab nations. According to U.S. Central Command, conducted 14 strikes on ISIS targets, while U.S. forces alone conducted an additional eight strikes against the Khorasan Group, an Al Qaeda offshoot ...read more

For weeks, the White House has been trying to explain to the media that while ground combat troops in Iraq and Syria are not on the table, they actually are on the table, and on Thursday, someone else finally noticed. The gold star goes to ABC News Chief White House ...read more

As the U.S. ceaselessly moves towards yet another large-scale conflict in the Middle East, hawks in Congress are already screeching that the current U.S. strategy to destroy Islamic State just isn't bold enough. Instead of planes and air-to-surface missiles, they insist, Obama ...read more

In what has become an event of sickening regularity, ISIS has released a graphic video, entitled "A Message to the Allies of America",' which features the beheading of another Western hostage, this time David Cawthorne Haines, a 44 year-old British aid worker. In the video, ...read more

The new Republican position on President Obama's strategy to destroy ISIS is that without actually pushing for ground troops in Iraq and Syria, we should not be taking ground troops off the table. The media is so invested in reporting that political conflict that they've ...read more

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) released a statement, following President Obama's ISIS speech, in which he mixed backhanded praise ("finally," Obama!) with nebulous criticism (the president's plan is not an "all-out effort to destroy" ISIS) that didn't explain what he ...read more

It turns out the Republicans do in fact remember things that happened before January 20, 2009. Too bad they only remember all the wrong things. Yesterday morning, the talking monkeys on Fox & Friends suggested that President Obama seek advice from George W. Bush on how best to ...read more

Freshly-minted Meet The Press moderator Chuck Todd scored a huge exclusive for his debut, and President Obama didn't disappoint in his one-on-one with the longtime NBC News Chief White House Correspondent. The President covered a wide variety of headline-grabbing topics, but one ...read more

Download the mp3 (54 minutes, 23mb) Gates of Hell: ISIS Beheads Another Journalist; Biden’s Gates of Hell Reaction; Glenn Greenwald Jokes About US Response to Beheaded Journalists; This is the Real Greenwald; Conspiracy Theorists Insist Obama is Giving ISIS Part of New Mexico; ...read more

On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden promised that the United States would follow the murderous ISIS "to the gates of Hell," and according to the Iraqi Defense Ministry, a U.S. airstrike has delivered on part of that promise. NBC News is confirming reports that Abu Hajar ...read more

The latest atrocity by ISIS, the murder of Steven Sotloff, has many Americans losing patience with President Obama's measured approach to the group, even those who completely agree with it. While the President has called ISIS a "cancer," and said that our objective is to ...read more

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is a national joke and anyone who thinks he'd make a swell president needs to pay a little more attention to the, you know, news. Yesterday, we reported the freshman senator's latest in a bottomless cup of flip-flops in which he said, on the record, that ...read more

On Tuesday, the world was once again shocked by the sickening execution of an American journalist by the terrorist army ISIS, and in a joint press conference in Estonia early this morning, President Obama offered his first public comments on the killing of Steven Sotloff. The ...read more

As a political reporter and commentator, you get used to a certain baseline level of dumbshit, and when a foreign policy issue arises, that dumbshit spreads exponentially like it's been thrown into a jet engine. It's one of the reasons I resist writing about that stuff, because ...read more

You can always count on Tom Friedman at the New York Times to take incredibly complex events and create dangerously simple analogies out of them. Writing exclusively to the 'I work very hard and can't be bothered to read real books' audience of upper middle class white males, ...read more

Since June, a who's-who of White House correspondents has undertaken a valiant campaign to get ISIS (or ISIL, or the Islamic State, or  ) promoted from "Junior Varsity squad," beginning with Fox News' Ed Henry, then ABC News' Jon Karl. CNN's Jim Acosta, CNN's Michelle Kosinski, ...read more

Going into the last weekend of President Obama's vacation, the White House added a briefing to the schedule on Friday to give reporters an opportunity to serve the public by asking about important news events. That's why, of course, the first question asked of Principal Deputy ...read more

Everyone expected conservatives to slam President Obama for playing golf after his impassioned denunciation of ISIS on Wednesday (or for playing golf ever), but even supposedly liberal media outlets like The New York Timesand Ezra Klein's face-hole are getting in on the act. The ...read more

Outrage over the shocking murder of American journalist James Foley, broadcast on Youtube by terrorist militia ISIL, continued to build Wednesday, and found a voice in our nation's Commander-in-Chief. President Obama took to the podium at Martha's Vineyard this afternoon to ...read more

Before I write anything else, and for what it's worth, I'd like to express my condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of journalist James Foley who was brutally murdered by ISIS terrorists today. It's easy for us at The Daily Banter to sit in our comfortable offices, ...read more

Ezra Klein's formerly useful explainer site Vox.com now appears to be chiefly devoted to explaining how President Obama ruins everything. Last week, Obama was "breaking politics," and this week, he's narrowly avoiding dividing the nation by toning down his remarks on the killing ...read more

America has collectively gone nuts. Among other things, garment-rending mobs from the far-right to the far-left to all points in between appear to be blaming President Obama for almost literally everything, so given the context it's really not too shocking to see a brutally ...read more

In her latest video for SarahPalinChannel.com, the former governor and vice presidential nominee turned podcaster decided to tackle the harrowing crisis in Iraq involving ISIS and the execution of Christian civilians. And as you might suspect, her position is almost entirely ...read more

As tensions between police and residents of Ferguson, Missouri continue to roil in the wake of the police killing of unarmed teenager Mike Brown, and the police's martial response to its aftermath, President Obama delivered a statement from Martha's Vineyard Thursday afternoon ...read more

One of the big stories on cable news today is the fact that, according to anonymous sources, President Obama used the word "horseshit" to describe the horseshit criticism that if he'd only armed moderate Syrian rebels, we wouldn't be having all these problems with ISIS right ...read more

Former Secretary of State and one time Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had some choice words for President Obama in regards to his foreign policy. In aninterview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Clinton slammed her former boss, saying his slogan of "Don’t do stupid stuff" was "not ...read more

Minutes before his departure for Martha's Vineyard, President Obama held yet another surprise press conference Saturday morning, and as has been his habit recently, took questions from reporters following his remarks. The President talked about the humanitarian and military ...read more

On Friday morning, U.S. fighter jets conducted the first bombings in Iraq since the President authorized airstrikes late Thursday evening, dropping two 500 lb. bombs outside Erbil in northern Iraq. With that bombardment, and those to come, begins the predictable grinding of ...read more