A Birthday Gift from the Gods of Farce

Earlier today I heard my wife laughing from the next room, where she was hard at work keeping Crooks & Liars amazing.

Laughing very hard.

"You'll never guess who's hosting an 'Undecided Voter' gathering in New Hampshire next week."

For the record, this is exactly the sort of question that zooms around our house at all hours every day.  And she was right.  I never would have guessed.

From here:

No Labels to Host Largest Gathering of Undeclared New Hampshire Voters in 2020 Cycle

What a perfect birthday gift!  What a wife I have!

See, the No Labels crew and I go way back.  Back to the very beginning.  They hung out their shingle and began fleecing credulous dopes back in December of 2010, and I started writing about 'em about five minutes later because we Liberals can smell the stink from a "Both Siderist"  snake-oil patent medicine wagon coming a 1000 miles away.

Dead Center

Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!

Yay!

In case you ever idled away an afternoon screwing around with your old political chemistry set/fantasy football league lineups and wondering what would happen if you took a bunch of Republican primary losers (Charlie Christ)...added in a goonbag of out-of-work and out-of-favor former Republican speechwriters and campaign button-men (David Frum/John Avlon/Mark McKinnon)...the last of the politically arteriosclerotic insider DLC goofs who aren't already drawing paychecks under the Obama Administration's "Former Clinton White House Full Employment Project" (Nancy Jacobson aka. Mrs. Mark Penn)...Republican minor teevee celebrities (Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough)...

...and David Fucking Brooks?

And then sprinkled the resulting crime against nature with an assload of money (because there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities)?
...

But nothing we did not expect, right?

I mean, ever since the Republican Base ducked out on paying the tab for a generation of being loudly and catastrophically wrong about everything by putting on funny hats, screaming about liberty and calling themselves "The Tea Party", their sleazy Centrist enablers have been seething with jealously. Quite suddenly the monster they built didn't need them anymore and the skeevy hustlers who had helped create the Racist/ Corporatist/ Dominionist Confederacy on the bones of the New Deal and the grave of the American Dream found themselves cast out and looking for their next meal ticket...

Does it get better?  Of course it does!

My wife continued reading:

In the midst of a heated presidential primary, the No Labels Problem Solver Convention is coming to Manchester, New Hampshire on Sunday, November 3, 2019.

The Problem Solver Convention?  I fucking love a Problem Solver Convention, don't you?  So many problems.  So much to solve.  And all through the magic of ... blaming the Extremes on Both Sides!

But my wife knows how to tell a story and so there was a dramatic pause and more laughter before she added:

This event will feature members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, nationally renowned pollster Frank Luntz, No Labels national chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman and several presidential candidates.

Glorioski, Zero!  The mortal remains of Holy Joe Lieberman and Frank Fucking Luntz?   Has one man's birthday haul ever been such an embarrassment of riches?  Not so far as I know.

And does it get better?

Of course it does!

"Guess who the 'several presidential candidates' are?" she teased, saucy minx that she is.  "There's four of 'em."  Still laughing a little.

I got Bill Weld right off the bat, but my brain went flying in a thousand different directions and then  got trapped in a loop trying to remember which of the interchangeable white guys had dropped out and which were still running within a 2% margin of error of zero but are still In It To Win It.

"John Delaney," she said, reminding me for the first time in weeks that John Delaney A) existed and, B) is not John Mulaney.

And Tulsi Gabbard, of course, because Tulsi Gabbard.

And does it get better?  Of course it does!  Because the fourth is Marianne Williamson -- a mindfulness CBD massage sage colon cleansing sound bath that walks on two legs and has more money that Croesus.

The article continues:

No Labels is a ground-breaking movement of Democratic, Republican, and Independents dedicated to breaking the gridlock in Washington, D.C. and bringing our leaders together to find common-sense, non-partisan solutions to our toughest challenges.

Fun Fact:  No Labels hasn't found any solution to anything and as long as the GOP remains bull goose loony from the grass roots to the tips of that orange thing that live on Trump's head, this is no prospect whatsoever of any common-sense, non-partisan solutions to anything in the near future.  But they do have a huge budget financed by exactly the sort of people you would imagine having the right combination of stupid money and poor judgement to take a flier on thimble riggery like this:

Exclusive. We’ve obtained the donor list for No Labels. It’s filled with the biggest names in private equity and hedge funds https://t.co/cyyzRBG6gA pic.twitter.com/y3bmgXzQG3

— Sam Stein (@samstein) December 3, 2018

I cannot help but pause here to note that a one-time donation of the sofa-cushion money that any of these people have pissed away on this boondoggle would allay my family's financial terrors for many years to come.  But then, the No Labels people and I are in two different entirely different lines of work: they're in the extremely lucrative business of selling happy horseshit to rich patsies, and I write about what a toxic disaster Both Siderism has been for our democracy and how the people who sell such happy horseshit to rich patsies are, in their own way, as bad as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.

Poor financial planning on my part, but I get to sleep at night with a clear conscience.

The article continues:

It inspired the creation of the first of its kind House Problem Solvers Caucus, which features 48 members, evenly divided between the parties, working to forge solutions.

Fun Fact:  The House Problem Solvers Caucus couldn't forge a butter knife out of a slightly larger butter knife if they put 1000 House Problem Solvers Caucus blacksmiths on the case for 1000 years.  But as The New Republic reported, in 2016 they did throw "a lavish banquet that cost $1 million" at which they did give "Donald Trump an award for taking its 'Problem Solver Promise.'"

For my birthday, I believe I am being thrown a lavish banquet that will involve sheet cake and Sloppy Joes, after which I am pretty sure I'll be hieing myself to the basement to keep my Problem Solver Promise by getting a load of towels and jeans started and scooping the litter boxes.  And just between us, I'll be grinning like a dope, amazed at my unbelievably good fortune that I should come to this time in my life with the family that I have, the friends that I have and readers who have stayed with me over all these strange and harrowing years.

Annual Birthday Fundraiser is Now Fully Operational!