Today in Pathetic

Ann Althouse is screaming that she was “assaulted” by people protesting — well, mostly singing — outside the Wisconsin state capitol building. If you actually watch the videos she has posted as evidence you can’t see much, but my best guess is that she shoved a camera in a man’s face while he was talking and he shoved the camera away. See also SEK at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Michele Bachmann has been telling audiences that S&P downgraded America’s credit rating because the credit ceiling was raised, not because it almost wasn’t. And she would never vote to raise that debt ceiling; nosireebob. S&P has released a statement saying that the real reason for the downgrade is that too many lawmakers in Washington are bleeping idiots who don’t understand the consequences of default. Greg Sargent explains this in a post titled “Standard and Poors punctures Michele Bachmann’s blissful fantasy.” However, I doubt any ray of reality ever punctures Bachmann’s blissful fantasy life, so I expect her to stick to her position. But Bachmann is so pathetic that even Joe Scarborough calls her pathetic. That’s really pathetic.

Economists call Republican economic policies pathetic. But you know that.

What pathetic things have you witnessed lately?

23 thoughts on “Today in Pathetic

  1. Why can’t these right wing extremists understand how an economy works? I mean, let’s face it, people aren’t buying because they have very little expendable cash. Without consumer demand, businesses have no need to hire to meet demand. Tax breaks, tax cuts, keeping loopholes and subsidies doesn’t put money into the hands of the consumer and considering consumerism is what drives our economy, the only ones who benefit are corporations and corporations don’t buy toasters.

    Do these extremists really think corporations, whose only purpose to exist is for profit, will hire people just to put money into the hands of the consumer? Will they risk profits to do so? I’d like a right-winger to point out the companies that are willing to do this.

    This is why the government must create jobs because they don’t exist for profits. But right-wingers cannot get out of the mindset that government must be run like a business, among many other failed policies they cling to.

  2. Ann Althouse is definitely pathetic – and stupid.

    Michele Bachmann is pathetic – and stupid and viciously ignorant.

    But, as much as I support him, President Obama is at times pathetic, too.

    Steve Benen, while complimenting much of Obama’s Saturday address, had this to say:
    “He didn’t use the word “Republican,” but I suspect most who saw/heard the remarks got the point.”

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!

    DON’T SUSPECT! TELL!!!!!!

    Too many Americans are either lazy, disinterested, uninterested, incurious, stupid, ignorant, ill-informed, or mis-informed – or some combination thereof, if not ‘all of the above.’

    Jesus H. Christ on a unicycle, Barack, it’s NOT Congress – it’s the Republicans IN Congress!!!

    I know you’re trying to all adulty, and bipartisany, and hopey-changey politicsey in DCey, but how are you helping Democrats who are going to be running down-ticket?

    If you can’t or won’t tell them, President Obama, at least give them a clue:
    “Vanna, are there any “R’s?
    Yes!
    At the beginning?
    Hmmm… Then it can’t be Democ”R”ats. Can I buy a vowel? How about “U?
    Yes!
    A “U.”
    OK, Vanna, I’ll let the Amecican public solve this now. It’s a political party, beginning with an “R,” and has a “U” in it. America?”

    And even then, I don’t think most Americans can solve it.

    Just say it, President Obama: REPUBLICANS!
    There, I knew that you could…

  3. How about what non-pathetic things have you witnessed lately – that would require days, perhaps years of research.

    I’ve been struck by an oddity. Republicans rail incessantly against the ‘government.’ First off, the word ‘government’ is an abstract noun. On the other hand, railing at government workers, perceptible entities, could legitimately be the objects of their vitriol. So why are Republicans embracing, adoring, falling all over themselves in support of Republican candidates running for president – the majority of them being government workers or having been government workers?

    Maybe that’s my pathetic.

  4. Pathetic, you ask? Well, after having breached the walls of sanity in the States, the barbarians are also successfully taking over Canada.

    Google Rob Ford and Toronto and smile wanly. The Tea Party now has its own bastion of idiocy at City Hall in Toronto.

  5. but my best guess is that she shoved a camera in a man’s face while he was talking and he shoved the camera away.

    Then you’d see the shover-away in the video, which you do not see.

    • Then you’d see the shover-away in the video.

      Only if the camera was focused on him at the time, which it wasn’t. Shoving the camera away seems to be what’s going on the video taken by Althouse herself, although in that case the focus was so tight you can’t really see what happened, either. Neither video showed an assault. You just hear Althouse shrieking off camera that she’d been assaulted.

  6. A Candadian Reader,
    What is going on up there?
    What makes some people up there look at the US and say, “I want me some o’ dat!”?

    Where will I run (or, more aptly, wheelchair myself) to in the future if you guys go as banana’s as us?

  7. To have a tea party idiot in Toronto’s beautiful city hall building is a bit like the barbarians wondering what the urinals were for in the Roman amphitheatre. The exterior photos of this Finnish masterpiece don’t do it justice.

    The constant and astounding lying of the right has always amazed me. I can’t wait for someone to finally call Michele Bachmann on it. I expect Matt Taibbai or someone of his caliber to write an expose of how she got so far in life with such a gifted facility for lying – to herself and to others. It speaks volumes about how far this country has fallen that someone like her even gets out of her home state to be a US Senator.

    Obama’s patheticness reminds me of Neville Chamberlin’s unwillingness to effectively deal with evil.

  8. Well, today in pathetic, Rick Perry got into the race. According to TPM, in his speech he said “There is no taxpayer money that was not first earned by the sweat and toil of one our citizens,” which sounds good, except when you realize there are lots of agri-business owners making their money on the sweat and toil of people who aren’t citizens, and there are a lot of corporate CEOs making their money on the sweat and toil of various low wage Asians.

    In fact, things would be looking pretty good if we had more of OUR citizens working, so they could be paying taxes, but that wasn’t Perry’s point, sadly.

    One thing that Perry may be unintentionally right about is that Agri-business and multi-national CEOs currently have a lot of tax loopholes, so it is technically correct to say that none of their profits is “taxpayer money”.

  9. The Teaparty in Canada. They must be taking their history lessons from Bachmann. Or Palin. Or….. (fill in with random republican here).

  10. Non pathetic counterpoint, John Sherffius cartoon about the crumbling Eurozone and the tea party Twilight Zone we find ourselves in.

    Newspapers are dying, and along with them the traditional comics section, but the gocomics site is a way to custom select the comics you like (and dump the couple dozen or so that you never cared for on the typical comics page) and see them for free, via the internet. I get to see Sherffius and a few select others, daily, that no paper comics section would has ever culled together in one place.

    Now, if you could only do the same with cable television – dump the hundreds of channels you never watch, and only pay for the few that you care about. That day is coming, I believe, given the way people are dumping cable.

    • Ms. Althouse said herself the assault wasn’t caught on camera.

      There was a second, maybe a second and a half, of jostling around on the video Althouse made that might have been shoving. Not much of an assault.

  11. c u n d gulag: There is no place left to run to.

    The right is a past master at lying, lying some more and then adding further lies to the mix and it works. In fact, it’s absolutely miraculous what simplistic lies, repeated over and over again, can do.

    It seems much more effective to lie than to tell the truth, because usually the truth is much harder to swallow. Since the right is ideology based, it doesn’t have to tell the truth and the lies are repeated so often that finally everyone takes them for the truth.

    What I want to know is why is NO ONE standing up to the lies, either here or in your country??? I agree: Obama is the new Neville Chamberlain–a nice guy, but no match for those who would destroy all that lies in their path.

    • It seems much more effective to lie than to tell the truth, because usually the truth is much harder to swallow.

      To me, it’s not so much that it’s harder to swallow. It’s that you have to be willing to learn. You don’t even have to work that much at learning, because many of our problems, such as why job growth is so slow, are not really that complicated. But people have to be willing to shut up, and stop blaming, and put aside all the crap they’re being told by demagogues — much of which really doesn’t make any sense, if you think about it — and just learn something. Empty their cup, as we zennies say.

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  13. A while back there was an incident where a liberal reporter (or protester) from Moveon.org (I think) was assaulted and had her head stomped on by a couple of right wing goons. Even though, that was on camera, the rightwingers claimed it never happened. I wonder where Ann Althouse stood regarding that incident. It seems more equivalent to what she is claiming.

  14. This was a protester at one of Rand Paul’s rallies in Kentucky. As Jill Lepore and Michael Lind have noted, the Tea Partiers have taken concepts of Christian fundamentalism and are misapplying them in the secular sphere to politics and economics. The results are tragic.

  15. Ok, what I don’t understand is, who gets hit or shoved and yells, “he assaulted me!”?
    Don’t you naturally yell, “He HIT me” or “He pushed me!”?
    The fact that she used such a charged word makes me feel like she practiced beforehand.
    Just sayin’
    That’s pathetic.

  16. Google…Kentucky Stomper! Half a million hits in less than a second..And while you’re at it Google – Santorum

  17. Ok, she doesn’t even really flinch. She tells them “that was a crime.” I get it. Go where you are unwelcome and then be surprised someone touches you. I stand by my first post. That’s just sad

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