Archive for November, 2011
Oh, for Fuck’s Sake, Millbank
Twelve years of primary education at the hands of the Dominican sisterhood left me with a permanent tic against explicit vulgarity, but sometimes the truth can only be expressed rudely. Only an arsehole Media Village Idiot could have written “Barney the Bully“: ... The amiable [Savannah] Guthrie tried again. How does he feel about the [...]
November 30, 2011
· 
Anne Laurie · 
84 Comments
Posted in: #dickwhisperer, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment, Republican Venality
Open Thread
I feel like everything I write today is rambling and incoherent, more so than usual, so I am just going to sit back and watch the idiot box until Captain Kirk hangs out with Shawn and Guster tonight on Psych.
November 30, 2011
· John Cole · 44 Comments
Posted in: Open Thread
Hard Working White Americans Hard at Work Making Life Miserable for Minorities
I’m cursing whoever brought up that damned phrase from election 2008 (I think it was Kay), but I think it is important to remember what was so god damned offensive about the phrase- the Clinton statements were made right before the primaries through a swath of Appalachia that included places like this: A small Pike [...]
November 30, 2011
· John Cole · 57 Comments
Posted in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Post-racial America
Policing Our Discourse
DougJ, Atrios, and Glenzilla have already said a lot about the sad spectacle of our establishment media rushing for the fainting couches when someone says fuck or is rude to someone in a position of power, but not batting an eye when someone like Tom Friedman says one of the reasons we went to Iraq [...]
November 30, 2011
· John Cole · 61 Comments
Posted in: Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment
Siri and Apple: Abortion Madness
Really? can’t we all get a grip? Look, I’m all for equality, and I’m as pro-choice as a woman can be. But this kerfuffle over Siri not providing abortion locations to iPhone 4s is a serious mountain/mole-hill situation. Apparently, Apple has been catching flak from pro-choice advocates because Siri does not provide information (or fails [...]
November 30, 2011
· ABL · 100 Comments
Posted in: Science and Technology, Seriously, Vagina Outrage
Just Rope and Throw and Grab ‘Em
Soon we’ll be living high and wide: Patrick Sullivan was the kind of lawman Coloradoans loved: a straight-shooting, Republican sheriff who once crashed a Jeep through a fence to rescue two deputies from a deranged gun-toting man and pleaded with legislators to keep assault weapons off the street lest any more citizens get shot. On [...]
November 30, 2011
· John Cole · 51 Comments
Posted in: Fucked-up-edness, Shitty Cops
That long black cloud is coming down
I think that reports of Mitt’s demise may be exaggerated (I just like the song this title comes from), but he’s 30 points down in Florida, is a piss-poor interviewee, and will eventually start getting hammered for Romneycare (saying that avoiding paying insurance is “not American” can’t go over well with the Teahadists). I can’t [...]
November 30, 2011
· Angry DougJ · 70 Comments
Posted in: Election 2012
Mission Accomplished, Michelle!
Remember when this was the great hope for the teahadists: According to a tweet from NBC News’ Jamie Novogrod, Bachmann responded to the recent raiding of the British embassy in Iran, by saying that if she was President, she would close down the U.S. embassy there. There’s just one problem: The U.S. has not had [...]
November 30, 2011
· John Cole · 31 Comments
Posted in: Teabagger Stupidity
Worthless
Someone at CNN just wasted hundreds of words to state that Rick Perry called the NH primaries the NH caucuses by mistake.
November 30, 2011
· John Cole · 33 Comments
Posted in: Our Failed Media Experiment
Absence of malice
In the comments to my post on establishment motivation, Steve writes: There is a maxim that one should never ascribe to malice what can equally well be attributed to ignorance. That seems to apply here. A lot of these people just don’t have the faintest clue about Social Security. That point is central to my [...]
November 30, 2011
· Angry DougJ · 96 Comments
Posted in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute
Can animals commit suicide?
A touching story sent to me a few days ago by reader JS, in response to an ongoing Sullivan meme. Fletcher was dying, born with an enlarged heart my parents had been told. I’d driven home to my parents where he lived because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d brought Fletcher home from [...]
November 30, 2011
· Tim F. · 78 Comments
Posted in: Dog Blogging, Pet Rescue
Where is my motivation?
I know nothing about psychology, but I’m guessing this proposition is hardly novel: people’s underlying motivations are often misunderstood, even (especially?) by themselves. This is why I can’t believe in rational markets, altruistic Galtians, or impartial pundits. Even if people believe they’re being rational, altruistic, or impartial, there’s a good chance that they’re not, and, [...]
November 30, 2011
· Angry DougJ · 129 Comments
Posted in: We Are All Baader-Meinhof Now, We Are All Mayans Now
Republican Anniversary of the Week: Iran-Contra
Now that reports of Iranians storming embassies indicate that our national newspapers of record have been permitted to shake up the normal somnolence of their readers, an optimist might wonder if any aspiring journo would dare to mention the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iran-Contra scandal. Few Balloon-Juice readers are optimists, but it did surprise me [...]
November 30, 2011
· Anne Laurie · 57 Comments
Posted in: An Unexamined Scandal, Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs, Our Failed Media Experiment, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin., Republican Venality
In Which I Find Myself In Total (and Gobsmacked) Agreement With Jeffrey Goldberg
If you want to know why supporting Israel—in any meaningful sense of the term—has to be different from supporting Likud/Netanyahu, check this out from Goldberg. (If you don’t think that supporting Israel in any context is a good idea—well, we disagree, but you can still marvel at the Netanyahu administration’s truly impressive, the-wheel-is-spinning-but-the-hamster’s-dead stupidity.) Golberg’s [...]
November 30, 2011
· Tom Levenson · 109 Comments
Posted in: Foreign Affairs, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Sweet Fancy Moses!
From the ground up
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. As usual, voters are way ahead of professional national opinion leaders. To borrow a phrase used in the article, the Tea Party is now “less an abstraction” to the people who actually live in Tea Party districts, as opposed to the national narrative creators who don’t live in these districts. [...]
November 30, 2011
· Kay · 61 Comments
Posted in: Election 2010, Election 2012, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Good News For Conservatives, Grifters Gonna Grift
