Since he became the Republican nominee for governor of Florida last month, Ron DeSantis has made no secret of his racism, from his "monkey it up" crack regarding his opponent, African-American Andrew Gillum, on Fox News, to suggesting that immigrants are child molesters. In ...read more
Since the election of Donald Trump, Maxine Waters has become one of the most visible icons of the Resistance. Whether she's "shoving" TYT correspondent Michael Tracey, appearing on t-shirts with her catchphrase "reclaiming my time," or openly calling for impeachment following ...read more
Last night Democrats lost a special election. Republican Debbie Lesko beat Indian-American ER physician Hiral Tipirneni by roughly 6 points to represent Arizona's 8th district after Congressman Trent Franks resigned over charges of sexual harassment. Republicans had reason to ...read more
The Banter Long Read: Trump is an albatross wearing a pair of cement shoes tied to an anchor strapped to the deck of the Titanic and logic dictates Republicans should be heading for the lifeboats with all due haste once they get their tax cut. There's just one tiny little ...read more
The Banter Long Read: For the past eight years, a civil war has been waged for control of the Republican Party. It has been "The establishment" versus "The extremist fringe of white nationalism", and the fringe has been winning over and over and over again... (UPDATE: We have ...read more
The Banter Long Read: If there's one constant in the Trump administration, it's that the press will go to any length to normalize Trump and give cover to the Republican Party. This week's contrivance concerns Trump stabbing the GOP in the back by working with the Democrats to ...read more
A man has an idea. The idea attracts others, like-minded. The idea expands. The idea becomes an institution. What was the idea? - The Crow (1994) Several years ago, I read Sam Harris' The End of Faith and it was, for lack of a better term, a revelation... To continue reading ...read more
Soon-to-be former Senator Jeff Flake is selling his book and he would very much like for you to believe that he's not on board the Trump Train as it heads over the cliff at full speed ahead. In an interview with NPR, Flake laments his party's inability to be honest and in an ...read more
Despite controlling all three branches of the government, the Republican Party is in disarray and it's about to get infinitely worse. As hard as it may be, put aside Donny Junior's stunningly stupid admission that he met with the Russians to get information about Hillary ...read more
The hard left, in its pursuit of punishing the Democratic Party, has abandoned the concept of real world progress in favor of a nonexistent political purity. The belief is that crippling the party will force them to swing to the far left and bring about liberal utopia. It won't ...read more
Update: Here we are, four months later in July, and even though the House managed to force through an abomination on their second or third attempt, the Senate fell prey to exactly the same problem the House had: The bill was too extreme for the moderates and too moderate for the ...read more
The "Indivisible" movement is rapidly becoming a nightmare for Republicans. It's been less than a month since the Indivisible guide went live and it's already causing Republicans to flee from their own events. A week ago, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) needed the police to whisk him ...read more
One of the burning questions over the weekend was how the press was going to respond to the massive Women's March on Washington. Would they mostly ignore it or would they treat it like the Big F*cking Deal that it is? This was a bellwether test for the media, a test they failed ...read more
Gary "What is Aleppo?" Johnson is a doofus but he could mean the death of the Republican Party if he reaches that magical number tonight: 5% of the popular vote. If the Libertarian Party passes that milestone, they get a whole bunch of money from the Presidential Election ...read more
You can't make this stuff up. Jill Stein is mad at John Oliver for accurately describing her campaign promises as "fundamentally flawed." In retaliation for hurting her feelings, Stein's campaign put on its dunce cap and "debunked" Oliver by accusing him, with a straight face, ...read more
I swear to Dog, the desperate need for people on the far left to turn Hillary Clinton into the moral equivalent of Donald Trump is nauseating, not least because they consider themselves to be more "liberal" than the rest of us establishment, pragmatic "sheeple". The same day ...read more
It was just a couple of days ago that word of a "Superdelegate Hitlist," compiled by an overzealous Bernie Sanders supporter (is there any other kind at this point?) was introduced into the media bloodstream. The deal was that a Sanders fan named Spencer Thayer had gone through ...read more
Weeping orange man John Boehner has finally decided to call it quits on his tumultuous tenure as Speaker of the House. From Politico: Speaker John Boehner, who rose from bartender's son to the most powerful man in Congress, will retire at the end of October, ending a tumultuous ...read more
I was on the Thom Hartmann show last night and got into it with conservatives Kris Ullman and Shelby Emmett and took part in what can mostly be described as a shouting match over marijuana laws in Washington state and the US education system (show starts around the 4.20 mark): ...read more
Yes, responding to a State of the Union address is hard and it's nearly impossible to top the main event. But for some reason, since Obama's first joint-session address in 2009, the Republican responses have been consistently disastrous. Let's do the list. There was Gov. Bobby ...read more
John Oliver was exactly right. "Net neutrality" is really, really boring. Leave it to the left to remain satisfied with a totally lackluster name for an extremely important issue. Indeed, net neutrality might be the most difficult issue to sell since repealing "DOMA" or ...read more
Texas man Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and has been quarantined at Texas Health Presbyterian Center in Dallas since mid-September, has died. Duncan leaves behind a partner and multiple children, who have been in forced quarantine while being monitored for ...read more
Tea Party Rep. Steven Palazzo sent every one of his fellow members of Congress a Bible last week, regardless of their individual religious affiliations. Along with each was a note, which read in part: "On a daily basis, we contemplate policy decisions that impact America's ...read more
If you're the type of conservative who thinks that being called out for homophobia is a form of bigotry or censorship, dealing with the liberal crowd on Facebook might be too much for you. Until now, Republicans' main alternative has been the Tea Party Community, a writhing ...read more
One of the most admirable things about the GOP used to be their messaging ability. Even if you disagreed with their policy positions the capability to disseminate talking points was a thing of beauty. They framed the discussion, and you found yourself on defense the whole way. ...read more
Rep. Curt Clawson (R-FL) should pay better attention during hearings conducted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, especially since he's a member who gets to ask questions. Yesterday during a hearing on relations with India, Clawson, a freshman congressman obviously, ...read more
(Photo: Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK)... or is it?) The Republicans only have themselves to blame for the perpetual conga line of tea party goofballs and weirdos who are attempting to unseat them in primaries. More than a few of these challengers threatened to shoot people in the ...read more
Eric Cantor has managed to do what was previously thought impossible: screw the country by losing his seat in Congress. His loss to David Brat -- a Tea Partier who until now could barely afford his own trip to the glue factory -- is going to fire up conservative districts ...read more
Scott Esk, a tea party Republican, is running for the Oklahoma state House. In addition to fancying himself a libertarian, a position that's all about preserving and exercising unfettered individual liberty, Esk also believes gay people should be stoned to death, per Leviticus ...read more
Ted Cruz has done what any God fearing American should do if they happen to have been born outside of America (and are potentially running for President in the next 18 months); renounced their country of birth. In a move that really stuck it to the socialistic land of free ...read more
While following the social media reaction to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's primary defeat Tuesday night, I couldn't help but wonder why anyone outside of the tea party was celebrating this bizarre turn of events. By any measure, David Brat's victory was really, really bad ...read more
This way the revolutionary cosplayers involved will still have the weekend, you know, to party. Yes, this Friday, a group called Operation American Spring (OAS) plans to converge on Washington, DC and to overthrow both the Democratic and Republican political leadership, ...read more
Yesterday, tax day, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted an article titled "Tea Party, Taxes and Why the Original Patriots Would’ve Revolted Against the Surveillance State," and it wouldn't surprise me if the authors were wearing tri-corner hats with hand-written ...read more
First, there was the Iowa candidate for U.S. Senate, Joni Ernst, who released an ad in which she describes her childhood work experience castrating pigs (sounds like an horrifying childhood). Then there was another Senate candidate in Iowa, Bob Quast, who threatened to "blow ...read more
We're all familiar with the caliber of insane politicians in states like Florida, South Carolina and Texas. But it appears as if Iowa is making a concerted effort to field its own array of wackaloons in addition to, of course, the token crackpottery of Rep. Steve King (R-IA). ...read more
As long as the radical, far-right tea party wing of the GOP continues to exist, the party's establishment will have no choice but to skulk around in the shadows -- the only place where they can act like adults and where they don't have to be feckless posers, pandering to ...read more
It's been five years since the official founding of the tea party movement. Weird, it seems like much, much longer, but there it is. Five years since tri-corner hats with dingle-dangle tea bags glued to the brim became the national symbol of incoherent, far-right outrage over ...read more
Obamabot, noun, - An invective used in blog comment sections to discredit the poster as an unthinking zealot who unquestioningly supports President Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America. Usually I try to put something clever the first few sentences of an ...read more
It's Friday, which if you're lucky is pretty meaningless this week. Here's some reading material for your morning regardless. 1. Party Crashers John Boehner is determined not to see a repeat of the insurgent lunacy the tea party wrought over the past year, which is why he and ...read more
There's really not much of a chance that Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), the internet troll who wastes his taxpayer-funded congressional salary by spending all day tweeting far-right zingers, will ever defeat Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the forthcoming Texas senate primary. But ...read more
This is easily the best news of the month so far. Everyone's least favorite irritant, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) has announced that he's primary-challenging Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) next year. In case you're unfamiliar with Stockman, he's the first-term congressman who basically ...read more
Fact: the only thing that's like rape is rape. But this self-evident fact seems to repeatedly escape certain doofuses who seem to believe just about everything is like rape. Rush Limbaugh thinks the Senate rule change to eliminate the use of the filibuster against judicial ...read more
While right-wingers in 2013 struggle to crow-bar President Kennedy into a conservative frame, contemporaneous evidence proves the opposite to be true. Conservatives of 1960-63 hated Kennedy and thought he was hard-left -- communist, among other things. In fact, many of the ...read more
In a review of New York Time's White House correspondent Peter Baker’s book on George W. Bush's presidency ‘Days of Fire’, David Frum concludes that on reflection, the ideology of the younger Bush is wholly preferable to the current incarnation of conservatism: From the ...read more
The schadenfreude wore off quickly. Observing the tea party suffer a political defeat, with other Republicans like Rep. Pete King (R-NY) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) piling on, was entertaining for a solid 24 hours until the grim realization set in that this rogue faction of ...read more
Remember a year-and-a-half or so ago when it looked like the Tea Party had been sufficiently cowed, driven back to their trailers and rest homes by the very melting pot electorate they so feared? Remember when it looked like we'd never have to see Sarah Palin again, that like ...read more
Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who was defeated by Cory Booker yesterday, delivered his concession speech last night and, at one point, visibly shoves his wife's arm away as she tried to console him. Timecode 1:10 in the video below: In animated ...read more
In the wake of the almost apocalyptic meltdown of the United States government, Andrew Sullivan attempts to understand the psychology behind the extremist faction of the Republican Party that held the country to ransom over extending health care to poor people: They [the Tea ...read more
In a special election in New Jersey, Cory Booker defeated tea party Republican Steve Lonegan by more than 120,000 votes and a margin of 55 percent to Lonegan's 43 percent. Booker will become the only elected African American senator in Congress, and only the ninth in history. ...read more
In case you haven't heard, a series of rallies involving truckers who are supposedly fed up with President Obama is scheduled for D.C. this weekend. The plan is supposedly for 3,000 truckers to flood the Capitol Beltway and slow down traffic, all as a show of protest against ...read more
