70 Comments

Whether it’s the People’s Convoy or the “average Joes” Salena Zito loves to interview (who all turn out to be GOP operatives, strangely enough), it is SOP for most of these guys to fall into either the Fraud or Fool category. Usually when the truth comes out it’s boringly predictable.

That’s a big reason I for one am glad George Santos is on the scene because his insane brazenness makes him both unpredictable and the only Republican I can think of who has ever made me laugh. I mean, come on, “I never claimed to be Jewish, I said I was Jew-*ish*” is god-tier, George Costanza-level bullshitting.

“Yes, I lied about who I am and my entire past. Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had told me when I entered politics as a Republican that sort of thing was frowned upon…” And you know, the man makes a valid point.

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The NY Times sent some reporter to Long Island to interview some of Santos' constituents, who all said they didn't care, big fucking surprise there, right?

And while we're talking about conservatives striking Manly Poses, this "I don't care" shit fits right into the act, doesn't it? Because that's what being cool and tough means, not caring, right? Being a True Conservative means not caring about many, many things, from people being murdered by cops to your own parents dying of Covid, no strain at all to add Fabulist Congressman George Santos to the list, you got anything else I can tell you I don't care about, Mr. NY Times reporter?

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Absolutely. It's the Manly Pose "nothing ever gets to me" coupled with the Manly Defense "I am never wrong and it's impossible to bamboozle me" with a dollop of 100-proof MAGA "if this somehow makes the Libs *more* unhappy than it makes me, then it is a Positive Good."

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These are the voters who think politics is a lame reality show, so you might as well vote for the most entertaining cast member.

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In Which The Fabulous Fabulist, George Santos, Gets Voted Off The (Long) Island

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Because government never does anything useful anyway, who needs it, lets just shut it all down, amirite?

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He’s a real nowhere man.

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You see these guys wearing indoor jackets in freezing weather all over midtown.

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Impervious to cold, impervious to facts?

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“I never claimed to be Jewish, I said I was Jew-*ish*”

Shamelessly stolen from Woody Allen, who probly stole it from somebody else...

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Not that Santos would know, but I think it's what Jonathan Miller told Dick Cavett. "I'm not a JEW, actually. I'm Jew-ish."

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"Jew, actually" one of your less-popular Christmas movies.

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Big-hearted OOF!

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"Yes, I lied about who I am and my entire past. But not the financial stuff, or anything that could get me hauled off to the hoosegow. That stuff's solid."

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"CanCult Queen Bari"

Reminds me that 57% of 'culture' is 'cult'.

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Excellent! Thanks!

Bob Bolus sounds like something that could be wrong with a chicken.

-"That chicken ain't layin' no eggs. Bolus gets all bobbed up you might as well change their name to Sunday Dinner."

"Soft handed sissy fake." When Trump first got nominated for president Anthony Bourdain talked about how Trump and his ilk ( a word without negative connotations that is always used as though it has them) had the softest hands imaginable. Someone else mentioned he probably had never trimmed his own toenails. I am reminded of Lewis Blacks riff about billionaires having someone on staff to wash their balls because they could.

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Where Are They Now, the Bob Bolus Edition:

(this year's posts findable via the goog, which prompts the following recommendation when I type in 'Bob Bolus': 'Bob Bolus arrested')

Feb 23 2022: https://defector.com/there-goes-bob-bolus/

Jul 16 2022: "Jury awards Scranton businessman Bob Bolus $1 in lawsuit" ...

Aug 1 2022: "City police charge Bob Bolus with theft, trespass in" ...

all, of course, underscored by his years imprisoned for insurance fraud...

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Bob Bogus, as I call him, violated the First Commandment of Grifting: "Thou shalt have no grifts before Me."

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Jesus, that lawsuit story is really somethin'. The bank does something legit wrong, but Bob sees it as his BIG PAYDAY, so he turns down an offer to settle for $300k because he wants ONE MILLION DOLLARS (x2.5) and then the jury gives the fucking loser a dollar ("Here, go buy yourself half a cup of coffee") Oh, how I would have loved being in the courtroom for THAT verdict.

But Ol' Bob's not done yet, next he's AT WAR with his neighbor, who doesn't like Bob trespassing on his land, and Bob's all YOU BE IMPINGIN' ON MAH FREEDUM and gets himself arrested for vandalism, and yes, trespassing just like he was fucking warned he'd be. And all that was when the dude was seventy-nine years old, so just imagine nearly eighty years of never learning one fucking thing from one stupid defeat after another and you've got the life of Bob Motherfucking Bolus.

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I'm sure ol' Bob regards it as A Life Well Lived.

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The kind of guy who sees the song "My Way" as his own personal anthem.

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Also, too: I find myself closely aligned with Worriedman and his ilk.

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No reflection on anyone here using it, but I loathe the use of “ilk” in contemporary writing. I suppose it’s my pet peeve from it being used in overblown NYT comments by people who imagine themselves standing in a toga at Speakers’ Corner as the second coming of Cicero.

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"Ilk" is one of the many words Gary Gygax taught me.

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I don’t remember if that was one he taught me, but he taught me plenty. I like “ilke” in Middle English contexts, and ilk is a perfectly cromulent word. However, I’ve had my fill of pretentious people (again, this fine commentariat is not who I’m talking about) using “ilk” while writing purple prose that I can only assume is intended to be read in a plummy Oxbridge accent.

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Cosign. Ilk is a regionalism, and cromulent when deployed in its home. A commenter or -trix says it with a glimmer in the eye in these parts? Fine! An erudite wizard says it in Averoigne or Middle Earth? Naturally! A conservative pundit says it attempting to sound erudite? You're in Dorkland.

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Bloody hell. Milk that ilk for a $5 bilk!

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Oh, when that Bolus gets rotten

You can't pick very much cotton

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Reminds me of this Boots Riley jawn:

https://youtu.be/4bSH48g25AI

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That is the best song -

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I know. If I'd named my fictional head trucker Bob Bolus, everybody and his sister would say, "Too on-the-nose," and I'd have to agree.

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You know, Dick Trickle ramroded stock cars around every short track

In the upper Midwest for over 40 years. He was a legend that Dick Trickle.

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He was unstoppable, that Dick Trickle.

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And you too!

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Oh, you!

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I thought he was a baseball guy in the old West Coast League or something like that?

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Don't know about that, but on facebook (spit!) one finds this:

"Hell, Dick Trickle had a cigarette lighter installed inside the car and smoked on Caution laps."

So a tip o' the cap to Dick no matter what sporting enterprise he enlivened.

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Let us not forget the dissidents, such as Bicycle Guy, who showed the truckers and truckettes and non-binary truckin' folx for what they are – all truck and no action...I mean, if'n them truck-folk were for real, the Lone Cyclist woulda been nothing more than a stain on the tarmac.

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I thought the trucker convoy was the culmination of the red trucker MAGA hat craze that Trump dumped on America. Seeing the Donald covering his pride and joy with a red baseball cap made me laugh but conservatives see the world differently.

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The media's turning on the truck convoy crybabies was, of course, the exception to the rule of media empowering them. Just saying. And the fact that the convoy was in no small part not quite they represented themselves to be didn't help their relationship with the media.

"Can common sense and the smell test save us from conservatism? Dare to dream!"

I'd daresay the little people's failure or refusal to support the convoy he-men maybe was an indication that the electorate would only support so much GOP insanity in the then-coming election. OTOH, maybe it;'s that average person teds to be repelled by crazy people. Whichever, whatever, may all that repulsion never shrink til the nation's reasonably functional again.

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I still had a WaPo subscription at the time of the Trucky Silliness, and I don't think a day went by - in a period of at least two weeks - when the Post didn't send a reporter out to talk to these idiots. I don't recall any "turning" in their reporting, other than that they continued to accurately report as the camp descended into bickering and depression. Any protest movement needs attention, of course, but those folks would have been better off with less attention, I think.

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In the Post’s defense, it was a local issue — local roads being blocked. I think Roy touched on it back then.

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Seems weird to me that the oh-so-polite Canadian Truckers Convoy had a lot more starch to them & actually required police action. Of course, true to conservative form, they cried a lot about it & threw themselves onto the pitch, but hey — a RW grifter's a RW grifter no matter where they cook their poutine.

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Being Canadians maybe they tended to take it seriously while our exceptional convoy men were, in that right wing way, more performative, less serious.

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Can't be bothered to check, but did Canada have any actual Covid restrictions in place at the time? That might have also made a difference. "Trucker from Nebraska 'surrounds' U.S. Capitol to protest Carnegie Hall requiring concert-goers to wear masks" never did make a damn bit of sense.

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My recollection is that they had restrictions, if not, they were announced of being implemented.

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Canada had some reasonable-ish regs in place. The Canajuns beat US to the punch. By the time Bolus & Friends figured it out, we here had punted the whole issue. If B&F had any sense (I know, I know) they'da made like a hockey player and got the puck outta there...

Anther non-trivial aspect of the Canada-US face off was that the Canajuns had, for the most part, trucks in working order, that as operated were a menace and hazard to navigation. Many of the US trucks, by contrast, were in such debilitated condition that they effectively inoperable, and were only a hazard to the dirt track racers who had scheduled an event at the track months (years?) earlier...

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Thanks, now I've got "Antifa threw soda at me" firmly lodged in my brain, right next to "Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me"

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Evergreen

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Oh, the humanity!

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we’re gonna do it through diplomacy first. And then we’ll take the next step if things don’t work. That was my favorite line - like a sovereign country threatening to invade. The self-regard of those clowns knew no limits, at first.

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Awfully generous of them to give the United States government an opportunity to surrender.

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Thanks for this. Yeah, was gonna say something about self-appointed diplomat/how does that work...

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Love the whole thing, but "Lord Humungus" is cherce.

I'm about to give our host the highest praise I can. I follow, via Twitter, Marina Hyde, a brilliant and hilarious columnist for The Guardian. I read anything I find by her, even though most of the time I don't know who the fuck she's talking about, since it's about British politics. I routinely says to myself, I says, "Why don't we have a writer like that?"

I just realized that we do. It's our own dear Roy, folks. (Catch up with Hyde if you can. She's tops.)

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She's great!

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I'm not just saying this so you won't think I'm biting her style but I don't know her. Will look her up, thanks!

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"one of the jobs that British people no longer seem minded to do, like fruit picking or being Nigel Farage’s wife" ha ha ok

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Yeah, that one. Helps much to know what ol' Nige looks like.

The Guardian is kind of like an "Upper Class Twit of the Year" appreciation society pretty much every day now.

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This is what happens when they leave the comfort of a Trump rally and wander somewhere populated with mostly normal people.

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Stay in the Safe Space!

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"the comfort of a Trump rally"

still can't wrap my head around this...

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Comfort for them, hell for us.

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It's the comfort a white guy feels when he looks around the room and sees only other white men, and decides it's OK to let loose with ALL the misogynist and racist shit rattlin' around in his skull. More than once in these situations I've had to explain that yes, I'm an ally, but I'm not YOUR ally, asshole.

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This Xmas season, I’m grateful for Roy. Whatever would I do without his prose? $7 is a bargain

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I feel like we’re ripping him off. I read alicublog and his old VV columns for years.

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I was in DC when the “truckers” were allegedly there. Caught a glimpse of a few of their acolytes proselytizing on the Mall but other than that ... nada.

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"Truck-Led Convoy to Circle Capital Beltway Twice" TWICE! Not once, like some pussy.

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The Revolutionary War drag the T.P.ers loved reminded me so much of Abbie Hoffman that it fixed in my mind that a lot of the Right had _serious_ 'Sixties Envy, if only because (like Norbert the Nark) they couldn't stop thinking of (pardon the expression) 'those big-tittied hippie chicks'.

I've heard the unsubstantiated claim (from some vaguely credible source) that there was an awful lot of strong pot going-around, around the Capitol 'round 2021-01-06….

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