Who Do They Think You Are?
There are a lot of complaints about Google ads in the comments – especially right wing ads that are triggered by something in the text, or ads that seem creepy because they’re related to a search you did that’s completely unrelated to Balloon-Juice content. If you have a Google account and want more information about who Google thinks you are, then this link should take you to a page showing what ad categories Google thinks you want to see, as well as their estimate of your age and gender. In my case, it was pretty close, except they had me pegged as a few years younger. You can also opt-out of ads from that link, but that just means that they won’t use your demographics when they push ads your way.
Here’s an open thread.
January 27, 2012 10:18 am
Posted in: Open Thread
137 Comments
It’s difficult to judge, but I feel Obama made her do it
Obama forces yet another conservative politician to behave like an out of control lunatic, because he is a ruthless dictator:
Democrats see the chance that President Obama’s heated exchange with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona on the airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him with the Hispanic voters he came West to court this week.
The run-in, captured in a photograph of the governor wagging a finger at the president as they discussed her book, “Scorpions for Breakfast,” lit up Hispanic radio stations and blogs all over the state. While it is difficult to judge whether the moment will have any lasting impact, Hispanic leaders said that what is being dubbed by some as the “dustup in the desert” could play in the president’s favor given the unfavorable view many Hispanics have of the governor for her advocacy of tough immigration measures.
“For that incident alone,” Robert Meza, a Democratic state senator from Phoenix, said Thursday, “85 percent more Latin people will gravitate toward the president.”
I believe Meza is being sarcastic there, so don’t jump all over him. He doesn’t have any idea whether this will matter in the election but he had to say something.
Obama is still not apologizing for forcing Governor Brewer to make a fool out of herself:
In an interview with ABC News that was broadcast Thursday, Mr. Obama said the conflict was being blown out of proportion.
“I’m usually accused of not being intense enough, right?” he said, laughing. “Too relaxed.”
January 27, 2012 8:55 am
Posted in: Clown Shoes
134 Comments
It’s A Bit Too Late For That, Ruben
CNN’s Ruben Navarette is warning that the GOP might not do too well among Latino voters in 2012, which is a bit like, well, like Herman Cain warning that the GOP may not do too well with African-American voters like myself. But here’s his opening:
On behalf of all those Latino voters who have figured out that the Obama administration is the most hostile to Latino immigrants of any administration in the last half century and who are looking for an alternative, let me say this to the Republican presidential candidates: “Bienvenidos to Florida! Now, behave yourselves.”
The Obama administration is the most hostile to Latino immigrants, and Navarette’s solution is the current Republican Party? You could power suns on that level of denial and still have enough juice left over for purely recreational use of a couple Large Hadron Colliders. What does he expect, a comfortable and plush catapult that any of these jokers running for President Obama’s job would use in a heartbeat to fling people back over the border while screaming about tacos?
I mean damn, I thought the Hermanator was deep into self-hatred, but this guy is making my soul hurt.
January 27, 2012 8:00 am
Posted in: Both Sides Do It!, Flash Mob of Hate, IOKIYAR, Our Failed Media Experiment, Post-racial America, The Brown Enemy Within, WTF?
42 Comments
TRESemmé Mucho
Life as an iconic hairdo isn’t as glamorous as media depictions would have you believe. Take the sad case of the self-contained hair-pod that resides on the noggin of the third Mrs. Gingrich.
If you only knew what those titanium tresses have had to endure. Crushing ennui brought on by endless rubber-chicken circuit events. Listening to the same tired stump speech and wondering dimly who this “Saul Alinsky” person is (Emmanuel Goldstein maybe?).
Rope-line encounters with supporters sporting hideous, tightly permed follicular fortresses reeking of Walmart “Great Value” brand conditioner. Stale hotel rooms with Fox & Friends blaring in the background and cheap Conair blow-dryers affixed inconveniently to the bathroom wall. And then of course there’s…him.
Mrs. Gingrich’s hair has had quite enough, thank you, and she hopes last night’s substandard performance by the spouse of her owner will finally put an end to this absurdity so they can return to Fairfax County and the tender ministrations of Salon de Paris and Mr. Pierre’s miraculous keratin treatments.
The end. (Please consider this an open thread.)
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]
January 27, 2012 6:52 am
Posted in: Assholes, Open Thread, Politics, Republican Stupidity
41 Comments
Late Night Open Thread
Going to try to go back to sleep now that I have blurted out all the things I was thinking about when I could not sleep.
Also, too- how do cold wet dog noses always find it to the warmest part of your body? I swear to Allah, Lily shot her nose into my armpit and it was like being hit with a defibrillator.
January 27, 2012 3:49 am
Posted in: Open Thread
22 Comments
Why? Because He Can.
And, like every other American, he should have this right:
Congressman Barney Frank’s office has confirmed that the retiring 71-year-old Representative is marrying his longtime partner, Jim Ready, in a Massachusetts ceremony. A date has not been set.
It simply perplexes me how many straight people value their commitment to their significant other so little that the notion of two other people loving one and another somehow gets in the way of their relationship. Maybe it is because I am a lifelong bachelor, but I sorta only fucking worry about who is in my bed. I’ve got enough other bullshit to deal with to worry about what the rest of you dysfunctional sick bastards are up to.
January 27, 2012 3:47 am
Posted in: Gay Rights are Human Rights
15 Comments
If I Had Known It Was This Easy
Ever play those games where you state if you could only have one type of food for the rest of your life, it would be… For me, if I could only have one kid of food for the rest of my life, hands down it would be Mexican. Could eat it every single fucking day, three times a day, from huevos rancheros to cochinita pibil to carne asada, and would never miss any other type of food. Period. Apparently, I missed my meal ticket:
Two days after a Connecticut mayor delivered an errant comment about eating tacos to support East Haven Latinos, some of whom are the alleged victims of police mistreatment, Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. apparently got his wish.Some 500 tacos were delivered to his office Thursday after a Latino activist group called Junta for Progressive Action launched a text-for-tacos campaign to draw attention to the comment, which Maturo later apologized for.
In the interview Tuesday, a local reporter pointed out that there were no Latino officers on East Haven’s police force.
“And your point being?” Maturo responded.
Asked what he planned to do for the Latino community in light of the discrimination allegations, the mayor said, “I might have tacos when I go home, I’m not quite sure yet.”
That set off the activist group, a local branch of the Reform Immigration for America organization, which said that anytime someone texts the word “taco” to 69866, it will deliver a taco to the mayor on their behalf.
If you promise to send me tasty tacos and other latino cuisine, I’ll turn this blog into a hispanic bashing monopoly. I swear.
I like lots of cilantro, though, and think pico de gallo is the greatest thing ever, so please include lots of both, you worthless taco-eaters. Just call me John Cole Mencia.
January 27, 2012 3:39 am
Posted in: Assholes, Domestic Affairs, Post-racial America
30 Comments
Not Just a River In Egypt
In a 2½-hour gathering that capped three days of mourning on campus, Nike chairman and CEO Phil Knight brought the near-capacity crowd at the basketball arena to its feet when he defended the coach’s handling of child-sex allegations leveled against a former assistant. Paterno was fired two months ago by the Penn State trustees.“This much is clear to me: If there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation and not in Joe Paterno’s response,” Knight said. Paterno’s widow, Sue, was among those rising to their feet.
Later, Paterno’s son Jay received a standing ovation when he declared: “Joe Paterno left this world with a clear conscience.
Fuck you, Phil Knight. I haven’t gotten too involved in the whole Paterno thing, because it was pretty clear to me that everyone understands he looked the other way, and I’m not big on shitting all over the recently dead. But Knight crossed a line- he has no idea what was on Paterno’s conscience, and even worse, he’s attempting a pre-emptive whitewash of a Cardinal Law like reign of child rape.
Fuck you, Nike.
January 27, 2012 3:28 am
Posted in: Assholes, Sociopaths, Sports
33 Comments
Here I Come Again Now Baby, I’m Like a Dog In Heat
Via the Political Carnival, exclusive video of Obama’s vicious assault on Jan Brewer:
These people are delusional.
January 27, 2012 3:17 am
Posted in: Teabagger Stupidity
19 Comments
Open Thread
Sorry for the absence today, had real life in the way of things.
Caught some of the debate, and thought Romney ended the campaign tonight. Newt is done.
January 26, 2012 11:48 pm
Posted in: Election 2012, Open Thread
124 Comments
He is a cartoon…
One of Robert Crumb’s underground comicbook characters was The Ruff Tuff Creampuff. He was a stand-in for bully politicians who always broke down and cried like a baby whenever they are called out on their bullshit. There are lots of politicians who could be walking doppelgangers for the Ruff Tuff Creampuff, but of our current crop of wankers I think that Chris Christie should get the nod. He is a bombastic asshole who struts his stuff without a thought to the impact of his mindless dick swinging.
Take his latest action as an example. New Jersey, like many other states, is in the process of ending state sponsored discrimination when it comes to marriage. So-called Gay Marriage laws are being proposed in state after state. New Jersey is one of them and that has Christie looking for a cowards way out. He doesn’t want the Bill to pass, but he also doesn’t want his fingerprints on the delay. In an attempt to kill the legislation he is threatening a veto in the hopes that he’ll never have to actually use his pen. And to muddy the waters he is calling on a referendum to let voters decide if a minority among them should have the right to marry the person they love. Not content to delay the inevitable by a few more months or years, Christie decided that the way to sell his standing on the steps to block the Marriage Chapel doorway was to compare his call for obstruction to the 1960’s Civil Rights movement:
...he said, there’s nothing “so special about this particular issue that it must be handled by a legislature.”“The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” he said.
In his effort to avoid having to veto Marriage Equality legislation Christie calls for a referendum. Sure it’s a straight up chicken shit move, but it is also not unusual for your typical wingnut. And feeling a little over sensitive about his cowardliness, he decided that he had to go for a little swagger and dick swinging to mask his weakness with bluster. This led him to claim that if white folks in the Jim Crow South could have voted on whether or not blacks folks had Civil Rights the world would have been a better place. The stupid of his statement just burns.
When Christie is strutting his stuff and swinging his dick, he is all bluster and no thinking. And then he is shocked and hurt when folks call him out on his bullshit:
The comment outraged many African-American leaders in the state, who pointed out that such a referendum never would have passed in the south during the 60s — and that many black people were also disenfranchised at the time.“People were fighting and dying in the streets of the South for a reason,” Oliver said. “They were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It look legislative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jerseyans.”
“The governor’s comment is an insult to those who had no choice but to fight and die in the streets for equal rights,” she added.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) had a similar take. “Dear God, we should not be putting civil rights issues to a popular vote, to be subject to the sentiments, the passions of the day. No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and the sentiments of the majority. This is the fundamental bedrock of what our nation stands for.”
And all of this has given Christie a big case of the sads:
“My point is, they’re trying to say the only way to deal with a civil rights issue is through legislation, and my point is that in a state like this, the fact of the matter is their own polling belies that position.”
He is entering the weeping self-pity phase of his cycle. Chris Christie is a cartoon. He is The Ruff Tuff Creampuff and a major league asshole.
Cheers
January 26, 2012 10:35 pm
Posted in: Assholes, Post-racial America
46 Comments
Principled, centrist hipsters
WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 26, 2012 – AmericansElect.org has been selected as a 2012 Interactive Awards Finalist in the experimental category by South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin, Texas. Americans Elect is on the cutting edge of political reform – changing the way we nominate a President of the United States, and also emerging as one of the best new websites in the marketplace today.
“Americans Elect uniquely offers everyone an online way to participate, regardless of party affiliation, in political discussion and debate, and results in a balanced ticket that is on the ballot nationwide,” said Joshua S. Levine, Chief Technology Officer of Americans Elect….
January 26, 2012 10:04 pm
Posted in: Burkean bells, David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute
49 Comments
GOP Jacksonville Debate Thread
(John Deering via GoComics.com)
Not a good likeness of Romney, but Wolf ‘Windsac’ Blitzer will be moderating, so the Swollen Amphibian should be back on form.
CNN livestream here.
Richard Adams’ Guardian liveblog here.
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“A state that knows ALL ABOUT election cliffhangers”—really, Wolf? I don’t know that the sane people in Florida want to be reminded about hanging chads and butterfly ballots. Oh, wait—these are Republicans. As you were.
************
From the Guardian:
7.57pm: In an effort to win support from the Latino community, Newt Gingrich will tonight give half of his replies in Latin.
And in a bid to win support for his plan to build a huge moon colony, Newt Gingrich will give the other half of his replies in Klingon.
************
At Wolf’s frantic urging, Newt calls Willard “The most anti-immigrant person on this stage.” Willard retreats behind Marco Rubio—that’s RUBIO, folks, credit-to-his-race Marco!—who just went to the top of the ‘who will be Romney’s VP pick” sweeps.
**********
Santorum wants to drone-bomb Cuba like it was Libya, and then go back to the great American tradition of invading Latin American and Southern American to “help” them understand “the god-given joys of democracy.” Not going over as well with the audience in the hall as he’d hoped, but I’m sure it will play well with Talibangelicals tomorrow.
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Wolf: “Next up—the debate questions go to SPACE!—the FINAL FRONTIER!” Oh, I think the candidates have been orbiting Uranus for at least the past 20 minutes, Blitzer.
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Feels to me like Blitzer’s been in the tank for Willard all evening (probably under orders from his paymasters). He just went for “Dr. Paul, you would be the oldest president—will you release your medical records?” Yeaaah, Wolf’s got an agenda.
**********
Willard says a Moon colony would be too expensive. Santorum and Paul both say, as far as I can tell, that they’d rather spend that money on a space-based military, because otherwise the Chinese will bomb us from space. Newt assures Wolf, and us, that if we would only Get Out of the Way of Private Enterprise, Charles Lindbergh would already have flown from Paris to the Moon. And also, we wouldn’t need to give NASA any extra money, we could just “take away the waste” from “the NASA office in Washington”. In other words, we’ve moved away from science fiction and into olde-tyme fantasy.
***********
Willard: “Romney-Obama-care is approved of by Massachusans, by about three to one [more like four or five to one, IIRC], and therefore, on the day I’m inaugurated I will kill Obama-care for the rest of you suckers.” Well, he wasn’t getting many votes from his Commonwealth ex-neighbors, anyway…
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Not sure I can stand another 40 minutes of this. “Next up—explain why your wive would be the best First Lady”. Newt no doubt will assure us, The American People, that if Callista flags under the strain he’ll gladly bring in a mid-term replacement.
*********** Read the rest of this post »
January 26, 2012 7:36 pm
Posted in: Assholes, Election 2012, Republican Stupidity
324 Comments
Open Thread: Thursday Night Recipe Exchange – Spinach
(JeffreyW via Whats4dinnersolutions.com)
From TaMara, Recipe Goddess:
I thought last week went really well. Thanks for playing along. This week we delve into spinach recipes. I used to hate spinach. This is probably because I am a child of the 70′s and the only spinach I ever saw was canned or frozen, with the consistency of slime. As an adult I discovered fresh, baby spinach and I never looked back. One of my favorite spinach recipes is Spinach Lasagna.
I also make a pretty good Tomato-Spinach Soup, here’s nice recipe for Chicken and Spinach Wraps, and JeffreyW has a lovely Stuffed Manicotti that uses spinach. So now it’s your turn. What are some of your favorite uses for spinach? Hit the comments and share.
To get us started:
Spinach Lasagna
This is one of my most requested recipes. Every time I make it, someone wants the recipe. Since the prep time is so much, I usually only break it out for special occasions. It freezes well, so you can make a double batch and freeze two 8×8 pans of uncooked lasagna for two more meals. Thaw the night before (in the refrigerator) and cook until heated through, about 45 minutes to an hour. This recipe is great vegetarian, or you can add ground beef and sausage if desired.
This recipe takes about an hour to prepare and another hour to cook. It easily serves 6 – 8 Read the rest of this post »
January 26, 2012 7:31 pm
Posted in: Cooking, Open Thread
50 Comments
This is not a surprise…
The Voice of San Diego is reporting that at least one of Newt’s former Congressional colleagues has his back:
Jailed ex-Congressman Duke Cunningham wants Newt Gingrich to know he’s got the Republican presidential candidate’s back. [snip]Cunningham tells Gingrich in an electronic message he says he sent to the candidate last month that his fellow prisoners, and their families, support Gingrich:
Newt, a voice out of the past. Down but not out and still fighting. First I do not want anything from you but have been watching the debates. I have 80% of inmates that would vote for you. They might not be able to but their extended families will. [snip]First when you were Speaker of the House having a Democratic president, you passed every issue working with the house and senate Dems. It was not easy and Mit (sic) just does not have this experience. It also shows that every bone in your body is for helping this nation become great again through conservative government. [ship]
The ideas are sound and pray they can help. What ever (sic) happens we have good candidates that will take out a president that believes that socialist policy is good for America. [snip]
You gave this nation its surplus Newt. You did it.
Somehow it is not a surprise that a Convicted Congressman who used his own House letterhead to draft a bribe by bribe price list, would endorse Newt.
I wonder if The Professor will brag tonight about his former colleagues sending him encouragement and offers of support…
Cheers
January 26, 2012 6:55 pm
Posted in: An Unexamined Scandal, Assholes, Election 2012, Getting The Band Back Together, Open Thread
59 Comments
