TweetWatch: The Many Moods of Chuck Grassley

by Hebiclens / WMxdesign's from Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Only since the recent rise in popularity of our favorite 140-character messaging service do we actually get to see what some of our most influential leaders are thinking as the thoughts pop into their heads. Inside the head of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, these thoughts are brutal, banal, and generally make us glad that he doesn’t control America’s nuclear football. Below, five of our favorite Grassley tweets:

The Tweet: Ran 3miles w 5 delegate of the30th annual DsM Partnership at 515am. Barb had oatmeal for all.

The Analysis: I’m glad that a 75-year-old-man can still run 3 miles, but do I really give a crap that your wife knows how to make OATMEAL? Is this something to brag about?

The Tweet: My carbon footprint is abt 25per cent of Al Gore. I’m greener than Al Gore. Is that enuf?

The Analysis: Really, his carbon footprint is greener than a person? Strunk and White are rolling over in their grammarian graves.

The Tweet: Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us”time to deliver” on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.

The Analysis: FoxNews looked into this Tweet most carefully and Grassley stood by it 100%. I wouldn’t exactly call Obama’s trip abroad — where he marked the 65th anniversary of D-Day and visited the sites of other World War II atrocities — a sightseeing journey. And for the record, George W. Bush spent 487 days at his ranch in Texas during his presidency…

The Tweet: My office softball team beat my Chr Baucus softball team last nite.

The Analysis: This is the guy who criticized Obama for sightseeing in Paris? Get your lazy staff back to work!

The Tweet: Met with new crop of sumer intrns today 1st of 2 6 week sessions I offer in DC office If ur interested in being an intrn ck my website.

The Analysis: I could think of few people who would be more fun to work for than a man who Tweets with as much mindless vigor as Chuck Grassley.

 

[h/t to my buddy Jim Newell and others at Wonkette for first drawing attention to this Mad Tweeter’s lack of style.]

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate