As President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, the nation’s rapidly deteriorating discourse hit yet another low.
It happened at 8:40 pm, just after the president vowed to lawmakers that his health-care reform proposals would not provide benefits to illegal immigrants. As millions of Americans watched from home, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted at the president from his fifth-row seat: "You lie!"
Murmurs of "ooh" filled the stunned chamber.
Not "ooh!" Has it gone so far? Next thing you know, some idiot prominent Washington journalist is going to make an ass of himself by making "jokes" about how the Secretary of State is a "mad bitch." As hard as that might be to believe such a thing could ever occur, it just might come to pass.
Meh. None of this should be taken to taken as defense of "Joe" Addison Jefferson Davis Boss Hogg Wilson, the "You Lie Guy" from the Great State of Paranoid Lunacy.
All I’m saying is that the problem with the "You Lie" thing is that it was crazy horseshit, not that it was impolite, even though it was impolite. Milbank is shocked, shocked at the lack of decorum at "what was supposed to be a sacred ritual of American democracy." Milbank is thus upset because an Unwritten Law of Washington Protocol was violated — far more so than he is about anything like who is lying and who isn’t about this "illegal aliens" race-baiting intentional-distraction nonsense.
"Civility" in the Village idiom means "political point scoring according to rules we usually just made up, because we can’t be bothered to know anything about anything." And, you know, fuck that shit. Because, you know, anything can be made to sound Nice! For instance. (Don’t click that link unless you’re able to handle something really, actually, genuinely nauseating and vile and gross.)
Related posts:
- Late Night: Nobble Nobble
- Late Night: Your Favorite World’s Greatest Deliberative Body Sucks, Because It’s Full of Senators
- Health Care Reform and the Art of Civil Discourse
- Late Night: Ross Douthat and Dana Milbank Star in “The Mewling Game”
- Marc Ambinder, Howard Dean, and the Intimidation of Acceptable Discourse





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Amen. But, by the by, “baboon” contains only two b’s.
It’s ThersDay!
would you like me to fix that for ya thers?
Citizen Thers:
sorry but no self-respectin’ baboon gets anywhere close to our “national discourse”…jest sayin’!
“Incivility” means Broder needs changing.
Fix what?
All fixed! Never mind.
I wonder if Mr. Wilson will enjoy President Obama campaigning against him next election?
neverminding
Believe me, right-wing cocksuckers, I have not yet begun to be uncivil.
You’d think Addison Wilson had thrown a show, for keeriste sake!
Can you imagine the fauxtrage if Nancy Pelosi had gaveled the Chamber to silence and instructed the Sgt-at-Arms to remove the rapscallion? Or if Joe Biden had gone over to John Kerry, snatched his cane and then whipped Addison Wilson with it?
Cool ideas there Teddy.
Those were the great days of Civil Discourse, indeed.
nancy wudda only done something like that while bush was prez teddy.
The last link, BTW, really is creepy.
Must… not… click…
This is a very uncivil comment. I do not usually share gossip. But that adulterer Duvall has got himself two lobbyists who used sex to lobby. The second woman is alleged to be a lobbyist for Koch industries, who are very evil.
Joe explains himself and ask for your support:From HuffPo
Thers civility somewheres about!
That’s the keystone state for ya.
Can we at least agree that his last name is Wilson? I couldn’t take another one. A Not-Joe Not-the-Wilson republican fool.
Having lived in the South and now in the Pacific Northwest, I feel sometimes like the only person around who realizes the night and day differences between here and there. It really is a different country almost quite literally. The families really stick together and have not moved around alot since the end of the Civil War, so they are ingrained with some really longstanding grievances. Think Hatfields and McCoys.
Oh, not in the way you might suppose. But it is revolting.
That’s from The Onion, right?
Or is today April 1? (Actually, that would explain a lot of things about today . . .)
What’s next, I wonder: the David Addington Institute of Governmental Openness and Transparency?
Oh but would I have loved to see that asshole forcible removed from the Chamber. That shit head violated the very basic rules that
IS supposed rule discourse in the chamber!! Throw the Bum out!!
Thereby proving his apology worthless. Just censure the bastard within an inch of his life. Just do it.
Woo Constitutional Law College??
Anybody else out there wish they’d upload Rachel before Keith?
It really is a different country almost quite literally. The families really stick together and have not moved around alot since the end of the Civil War, so they are
ingrainedINBRED with some really longstanding genes.There fixed for ya!1
btw, funny tube.
So I should put my wing nutcracker away?
Darn spell checker…grrrrrr!!!
I put the last five paragraphs of the blog through the Redneck Dialectizer just to see if the words South Carolina would appear.
It’s delightful, ain’t it?
The Halliburton School of Non-violent Social Change?
Is it sad that I understood that more that the original post??
get ya every time!!
THERSDAY!!!
Hi, Pups. Whazzup, y’all?
FunnyWheelieDiva
Naah. I think I’ll just think “fuck ‘em” and hope they decide to secede again so we can say kthxbye.
Wow, this is really way too easy…that’s pretty scary.
I spent a year in Wyoming a while back. I’ve got to get in touch with some of my old friends there, and find out more about this.
They’re probably as happy about this as my SMU friends are about the new liberry that’s going in at their school.
I laugh every single time…
Yale really lost out by sending him home from New Haven, didn’t they? As if they’d ever stand for a Diablo Center
As I said last night, yelling “He lies” in a roomful of politicians, especially that roomful, seems superfluous.
GF’s relatives all live is MS. I can’t seem to get through to them, they’ve totally sucked in all the right-wing talking points.
Just how crazy does a politician have to be to do that on the same night his son was announcing his candidacy for SC Attorney General?
He can’t deny he knew. Does he hate his son? Did he think it would be ok with the folks in SC? Crazy horseshit indeed.
I think his fellow South Carolinian, Clyburn, who also happens to be the Majority Whip, may very well pursue a censure if Wilson doesn’t apologize in the well of the House, which he declined to do today.
What a country, eh?
They have to suck it in? I thought my relatives had it beamed directly to their tooth fillings or something. Seems like they wake up in the morning ready to recite them word for word.
I have some relatives of my own like that.
Indeed.
Maybe Cheney is trying to arrange somewhere for AGAG, David Addington, and the rest of the BushCo team that still can’t get a paying job to land.
What’s Scooter Libby up to these days, anyway?
Perversely enough Pat Buchanan has similar thoughts that he posted on World Nut Daily. Although in his first paragraph he mentions he has just returned from a London conference where it was debated whether or not Churchill was an asset or merely egged on Pat’s hero Adolf Hitler.
I was totally unprepared for that, Thers, even after your warning. Years of seeing patients with suppurating wounds didn’t affect me, but this…
OK, gotta crash. Night peoples.
Wilson is an amazing piece of work. At TPM they have a video clip from 2002 of him going all apoplectic at someone who points out that the US gave Saddam Hussein chemical and biological weapons. He certainly can’t be bothered with the facts and immediately starts accusing the guy (who looks perplexed and can’t figure out how to respond to said crazy person) of hating America. It’d be funny if it weren’t so —something…if we weren’t so used to that sort of behavior now 7 yrs later.
Speaking of sucking hairy baboon ass, I see that John Stossel is leaving ABC to work for (sit down!) FOX. What a totally amazing surprise!/
there is a pattern here. in many respects, the rethugs seem to be seeking to revert back to the early Republic, before the Civil War, when the US was much more decentralized and the center much weaker… when behavior like pummeling Sumner was somewhat more acceptable than it would be now. Perhaps, in both behavior and political theory, they’re just regressing?
I dunno…all’s I know is Andy Card is sayin’ how he’s gonna ax the Missus if’n he kin move to Mass-o-juices so’s he kin run fer Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat.
ROTFLMFAO!!!
FWDiva
g’nite thers
Scooter is keeping house for The Shooter. When Dick gets home at night he gives him a big, fat smooch. “I missed me some Dick today, honey.”
Don’t think about this comment too hard.
More incivilty. It is fun and funny. The second woman in question is named “Sher”. Shari McHugh? She is an insurance lobbyist. Supposedly Duvall owns an insurance agency. Heidi is the one who enjoys being spanked.
Next to Fox News, ABC is merely the infinitesimally lesser of evils. Even Rupert’s demon spawn isn’t airing a reality dance contest featuring Tom DeLay as a contestant.
About those young kids that were bused into Iowa last year that screamed in the faces of Hillary caucus goer’s..and discourse…
I know, I was there as a co-captain for Edwards..I saw that discourse with my own shocked and dismayed eyes. The kind of discourse I had never seen in my 39 years of voting and poll watching for the dem party..nor had any of the little old ladies who ran out of the school caucus for fear for their lives or safety.
Scooter: “Me so horny, me love you LONG time!”
Fortunately for Scooter, Dick not too beaucoup.
faux’s big story of the day concerns Acorn’s imminent coup d’état. Somehow the coup plot involves prostitutes as operatives, African-Americans and the president. I glanced at the headline but it all seemed way too complicated to dive into.
And most amazing is that TeeVee is still a far distance from hitting bottom. It is getting beyond pathetic, but they will easily find a lower low than low.
Heidi successfully completed an ethics course?
Well, as Dubya noted the trouble with the French is that they have no word for “coup d’état.” Probably worth mentioning that he was referring to a type of Cadillac at the time.
I love you, ratfood. I really do.
That is just disgusting, but thanks for the warning.
Aw shucks… (blushing)
Did all the trolls get canned?
I thought was no word for menage a 3.
cause you are really funny and really smart.
I thought it was entrepreneur.
Maybe just bored?
FWDiva
*flossing teeth*
trolls are mighty crunchy
Ah so…you’re using your steak knives after all!
FWDiva
Variations on a theme.
Hi Suzanne, I hope they don’t have bugs.
LOL. I think Roger Ailes must keep a stash of these political slasher stories in inventory just for those special days like this one when the rethugs really need a good diversion from their own self-inflicted misery.
Hi Suz! Like I said last night; “crunchy.”
If’n ya eat more than one, have some Pepto around. ;]
Our national discourse sucks serious hairy baboon ass.
So do the trolls we’ve had drop by lately.
Thanks for the compliment, although I’d settle for occasionally funny and the second part is probably a matter of dispute…
Poor Dubya wandering around in a constant state of confusion
The neighborhood is so much more pleasant after your dinner, Suzanne. Thanks!
is why ya gotta floss
like ferris asked that freshman: ever see alien?
More likely the insurance industry is too cheap to pay their salaries when their services aren’t urgently required. They get furloughed until days before the next major benchmark event in the healthcare debate. If they employed them for too many days out of the year they’d probably have to give them health insurance benefits. ;-)
Now that Suzanne has had her way with them, they gonna have some recission for sure.
Fox News tried branching into legitimate entertainment at one time, and it was a miserable failure. Leave the cheap knock-offs of British reality shows to the professionals, I say.
My money says Addington’s still working for cheney. He’s the guy with the institutional memory – indispensable.
Since I love irony, I have to point out that the music in the accompanying video, at about 0:52 is Mozart’s Dies Irae.
You know, “Day of Wrath.”
So how lovely and delicious is the irony that Wilson’s outburst screws up Village decorum. As if it existed. Te Villagers “non tollit peccata mundi.” Ever.
!!!!!!
Yer too much!
trolls are easy to spot -
they are looking for attention
they are looking to hijack the thread
they present faux ‘liberal’ creditials
no links to back up their assertions
if ya respond back, you are giving them the attention they crave – and you reinforce their behavior.
ignoring them frustrates them and they either cross the line into not being welcome here or they go elsewhere without such an fearsome modsquad
His teleprompter sprouted a robotic arm for the sole purpose of smacking it’s (robotic) forehead.
Thers,
BEST TITLE FOR AN ARTICLE… EVER!
Oh the irony. Oh the hyprocrisy. Oh the hilarity. Mike Duvall oversees, or did over see, ethics. And he fights against that sexual harassment, by those other horny guys in the California legislature.
In an earlier thread, I mentioned two other times that Wilson said something batshit crazy that he had to apologize for, and Blub then named two more. But I bet they send him back again. By now the guy can’t be a secret to anyone back home.
Does anyone have the notion that Wilson’s white, pointed hood simply slipped off?
Well, it sounds kinda like it, but it’s sure not the Dies Irae from the Mozart Requiem. Not sure he set that text at any other time.
Sorry, dood! I’ve performed it many times, so I know.
FWDiva
I am fond of Mozart’s “Demum, Veniunt Porci.”
well. they did have one truly entertaining headline earlier today:
“Rep Wilson leads Dems to Remove Shocking Loophole from
Health Bill”
Rob Miller is closing in on $700K now. In just the last hour the total has increased about $20K. I guess the Iraq veterans are just warming up.
is what i was thinking word and i don’t think we are the only two
Do you suppose they make Ku Klux Kondoms?
Hmmm, not familiar with that one!
FWDiva
The sad fact is, Wilson will likely win his next campaign by a landslide. I imagine his constituents back in S.C. are gettin’ all liquored up and worshiping his name.
and the shout out by ko about it had to help big time
Ouch!
the right is enjoying their claim that van jones’ resignation is a win in their column
i’d like to see that ‘win’ wiped out by the loss caused when congresscritter wilson is forced to resign his seat.
Does everyone here know margaretandhelen?
Here’s a sample, though the post on bad hair and hoods was about the best evah.
“Someone needs to remind Representative Wilson that he and his family currently have a public option for their health insurance. And while you’re reminding him of that, be sure he understands that the next time his doctor has a finger up his butt all of us taxpayers footed the bill. Come to think of it, maybe instead of paying the bill we can skip the finger and just introduce his ass to my foot. I mean it. Really.”
Hmmm, don’t expec’ they’d be very effective, what with the eye-holes cut out!
FWDiva
You guys are freakin killin me. ROFLFAO
Oh, good!
They’ve been offline for, like, a month!
Yay…that
MargaretHelen cracks my shit up!FWDiva
hahahaha love margaret and helen
You’re RIGHT! It’s the first one I pegged to, but it’s really somebody elses something with an “Agnus Dei” in it.
[madly searching….]
I guess safety really isn’t their bag, is it?
Heading out. Magnificent evenings to all.
Oh geez, I just about spewed my tea when I read the headline. That is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.
g’nite ratfood
Well, Margaret and Helen have been on fire the last few weeks. Seriously, the post about the bad hair has got to be a classic.
Verdi, maybe?
FWDiva
“Bad hair and hoods?” Where can I find this “margaretandhelen” you speak of. Sounds hilarious.
Nope! Not him, just checked – madly looking through B’s Missa Solemnis.
here they are
The link thing does not work for me, but they are margaretandhelen dot wordpress dot com
Here ya go!
Where’s that old SNL skit with the Baboon Ass Transplant recipient?
passing the creme de menthe bottle to suz
*chugging from the bottle and passing it back*
must be on hulu – nbc gets snl stuff deleted from utube
I’m going to try and find it.
Absolute comic genius!
They keep Molly Ivens’ spirit rocking in the free world!
It was Kevin Nealon. That was a weird google search. Lot’s of Baboon Ass stuff but not video.
Ugh. I am an alumna of UDub. (B.Mus 1979) Glad I left that godforsaken part of the world.
lol, I’m having the same problems. Really.Wierd.Stuff.
Stop googleing babbon ass.
these ladies are south carolinians I assume? well.. I’m glad to hear that both Sanford and Wilson rate below plankton. What did the teen pageant queen do to earn the state’s ire?
Hey, that could be the latest Healthcare rumor. Obama didn’t deny not having baboon ass tranplants covered by his Healthcare plan. /snark
Babbonass-o-matic.
Sorry, my humor is kind of autistic.
Have a fun night everyone! Peace out.
alien baboon ass transplants
Margaret and Helen hail from the great state of TX-ass.
g’nite bgrothus
@FWD; Oh well – just can’t find that damn music now, so I’ll just move on.
And I’ll Join: Stop Googling Baboon Ass!
I fear that if Wilson is not forced to leave office, his behavior will be accepted as O.K. and we will see a further escalation of the rights hate. He’s already turning up the dial. On the one hand, you don’t want to give him too much attention, but on the other hand, we are dealing with people who follow their leaders straight off cliffs and a message needs to be sent.
It should help bring the title of this blog up on Googlels ranking list if you do.
She’s the one who gave the incoherent answer to a question on politics or education or something…
‘nite, Suzanne. Thanks again for crunching those thread-wasters.
I wasn’t googling baboon ass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
Miss S.C. Hilarious!
teh google miesters are gonna be scratching their heads over the high number of searches for baboon ass
gay alien baboon ass transplants.
Fixed it for ya!
FWDiva
I bet Colbert and Leibowitz are going to have to do hour long special all next week.
Not “baboon ass”, but “baboon ass transplant”.
Its so sad everybody’s on vacation. John Steward would have a field day.
Doh! Good point. I’ll google it some more!
lou dobbs will report on the growing numbers of gay alien baboon ass transplants on the federal dole in an hour long special tomorrow nite
Margaret and Helen, thanks so MUCH bgrothus! What a hoot!
OK – out. Family arriving again from airport (more). See ya all later.
True enough, but I’m smiling. Even Nice Polite Republican News is now talking about the money rolling in.
g’nite kelly
Nite, Kelly
Night, Kelly!
FWDiva
LOL. I completely missed that when it happened..poor girl.
lou dobbs will report on the growing numbers of gay alien baboon ass transplant with bad credit on the federal dole who happen to be from the left coast and voted for Obama in an hour long special tomorrow nite.
What was the character’s name? Phelps?
Sarah Palin’s new Tweet…
Obama wants to give everybody who goes to the doctor a Big Red Baboon Ass before they are presented to the death panel… just to humiliate the sick and suffering like my baby with Downs Syndrome.
Evening all firepups!!!
Or, err, morning all firepups???
Whatever.
Didn’t read the comments, but read the post. As usual, Thers hits the nail on the head. Press gives big time coverage of the fact he yelled, he apologized, the President accepted his apology, but the fact that what he said was a fucking lie……*crickets*
Goddammit.
Brain Fart… but she has a good since of humor about it now.
Good evening, OFG,
Hey Keith got it! It was a lie!
I can’t remember the character’s name. I’m thinking it might not be SNL though. Look at this. It says it might have been “She-TV’ or ‘The Edge’?? and He was guest starring.
dammit
Well you know, technically if they show up in the ER they will be treated so the president really is lying…. I know it’s hard to wrap your mind around their pretzel logic but there it is.
Oh, and I know of a guy from another forum (baseball forum, I’m a baseball nut), who has a gf with the State Department. She was assigned to Sweden. So he moves to Sweden with his gf.
He posts the other day about how they have been able to save $$$ because he could cancel his health insurance, and get it free there. Even though he’s not even paying taxes in Sweden.
Don’t know if that’s true, but damn, can you just imagine Glenn Beck’s head spinning until it exploded if anyone introduced something like that here?
When is the USA gonna catch up with the civilized world? I used to think we were on our way, but then it seems we decided (not me) to go backwards.
Dammit.
LLN with Suz is upstairs…! ;-)
Hello OFG… So how do we get Wilson ejected from the game?
Hey, old guy!
You’re back!
Late-Late Nite is upstairs!
FWDiva
GF lived in Nederlands for a few months with a surrogate family and got sick. The doctors make house visits there and it’s all paid for.
fuck the deficit!
Gay alien baboon ass transplants for all!
when we stop electing people like Joe Wilson to high office, would be my guess. Unfortunately, we have roughly forty of him in the lower house alone.
yep. they had that in Singapore too when I was there. Gotta love that they can get this by paying a third what we pay for healthcare per person. This is what the cumulative effects of 50 years of market failure compounded by political corruption looks like.
Wow.
Do you suppose some politicians over there run on a platform of “Let’s stop paying the healthcare cost of furiners?”
Obviously works wonders for pols here, probably not so much there. Shows that even though we can blame the pols all we want, most of our problems are the fault of the folks doing the voting, not the votes receiving the votes.
EDIT: Or maybe the fault of the machines counting the votes. Forgot about that possibility. But given the intelligence level of folks I’ve seen this summer in the health care debate, I’d say even if the machines played a role, it’s a small one.