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Send in the Drones

By December 11th, 2011

Anyone even remotely surprised by this needs to have their head examined:

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

How long until we are dropping freedom bombs on our own population. Oh, wait. Been there done that.

One of the largest disappointments for me with this administration has been their unchecked use of drones pretty much anywhere they want in the world.

*** Update ***

Ohfercrissakes- I’m not making a connection between this admin and this use of a drone. The final sentence was just an aside about something that really bothers me, which is this administration’s reliance on drones all over the world. I should have known that the reflexive Obama defenders would think I was conflating the two.

As to those of you poo-pooing this and saying “how is this any different than a helicopter,” in five to ten years when unmanned drones are flying all over your neighborhood surveilling and storing info at random, you can think back to mocking us privacy hysterics. I’m sure very similar arguments were made in years past about police needing armored vehicles and .50 cals and every locale needing a SWAT team armed to the teeth. But hey, it’s much more fashionable to be too cool for school and just say “no big deal, shut up hippie.”

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I celebrate the man’s entire catalog

By December 7th, 2011

I hate to link to Halperin but this is sweet:

Gingrich to Republican Jewish Coalition crowd: “I will ask John Bolton to be the Secretary of State.”

I can’t top that, so I’ll shut up.

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We’re all sensitive people with so much to give

By December 2nd, 2011

I’ve had a lot of interesting email from readers the last couple days. A reader who is a psychologist wrote in to tell me that I was wrong to say that establishment media’s desire to fuck the middle class over was un-malignant tough love, that it was more likely pure assholery and that I shouldn’t sugarcoat it. I found her arguments pretty convincing.

Another reader wrote in to describe TNC and Sully’s break-up-to-make-up (which I’ve seen people talking about in the comments) as “white man tell black man to stfu”. I’m not sure there is a such a racially loaded angle there, it seems more “Very Serious Person tells second second-tier opinionator to respect his authoritah” (serious question, though: are there are any black Very Serious People and, if not, is their non-existence axiomatic or just empirical).

But there’s not doubt that all this “while I may not 100% agree that I am genetically inferior/we should nuke Iran/the middle-class needs to starve for a while, I still feel that my esteemed colleague is a wise, decent, brilliant person and he makes many wonderful points about why perhaps I am genetically inferior/we should nuke Iran/the middle-class needs to starve for a while” stuff is toxic. It alienates almost everyone, except the tote-bag types who feel privileged to listen to such erudite, civilized discourse, and, more importantly, it will never address the desires of people outside the Atlantic/TNR/PBS bubble.

Establishment media would have us all believe that reasonable people can disagree, that we should all channel our inner Tip O’Neil/Ronald Reagan and vote for Bloomberg/Bayh. That’s just not how things work. The greatest achievement in American politics of the last 50 years was, by any measure, the Civil Rights Act. A war-mongering, womanizing political genius pushed it through, a lot of good people got murdered fighting to get it through, and it created at least 40+ years of southern support for the party that opposed it.

That’s nothing like Gail Collins and David Brooks gushing about each other’s wits or TNC and Sully winning each other’s grudging admiration. People are often assholes and they should treat each accordingly.

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Open Thread

By December 1st, 2011

And WVU wins a very stressful game. If I am on your dead pool for 2011, your Spidey sense should have been tingling somewhere around the 2nd turnover in the 2nd half, when I thought fer sure I was going to coming to meet Elizabeth. But they won, I live, and life goes on. For now.

Consider this an open thread.

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I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.

By November 22nd, 2011

Test, test, test…1,2,3, umm, is this thing on?  I know you’re out there, I saw you post in the last thread.

When I was fifteen, my parents were at a movie and the keys to the truck were right there by the door. I hope this endeavor ends better than that one did.  I feel a little like Chief O’Brien, come to think of it.

Well, I won’t be a regular clockwork poster.  Firstly because there’s a stable of great writers here already whose work I respect, even as I’ve disagreed with almost all of them at one point or another.  Secondly because I have work.  And while I do from time to time comment from work, I can’t maintain discussion threads while running around doing service calls.  For those of you who don’t know, most of you are my employers because I work for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs as an IT technician.  It’s a great job, and I thank you all deeply for paying me to do something I’m fairly good at for people who do important work.  You might see some more of my posting vice commenting on the weekends.  I’ll likely post about military and veteran issues, computer hardware, some types of computer games, politics (of course), very very occasionally union issues, and whatever else strikes my fancy while trying to stay out of the way of the smarter ones—which is to say all the other front pagers.  And now for the obligatory disclaimer—nothing I post should ever be construed as the official position or opinion of the US Government, the Departments of Defense or Veterans’ Affairs, the American Federation of Government Employees, or pretty much anybody else, and sure as hell not John Cole or any of the other Front Pagers.

Now, in addition to the inevitable hair pulling, teeth gnashing, and loud pompous pronouncements that “Balloon-Juice has jumped the shark”—all of which I did the moment John offered me this gig—this is an open thread.

 

ETA—for those who missed it, here is TPM’s “Debate in 100 Seconds: It’s a Scary World Out There

 

Just to let you all know—I was waiting for John to give you all a heads-up/fair warning kind of announcement, but he’s no doubt busy with the second most wonderful dog in the world (after my dog, of course), as he should be.  Being me, I got too impatient to wait after he gave me the keys this morning.  Since I have family business to attend tomorrow and I understand there’s some kind of feasting event on Thursday, I just hit ‘publish’ at the opportune time.

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Mister Mojo rising

By November 4th, 2011

Rising, rising, got to keep on rising:

The poll was conducted Oct. 31 through Nov. 3, starting the evening after Politico first reported the harassment allegations. Support for Cain was basically steady over the four nights of interviewing, even as new charges against him surfaced.

Nearly a quarter of all Republicans and GOP-leaning independents now back Cain as the party’s nominee, his best showing in Post-ABC polls this year, and up significantly from early October. At 23 percent nationally, Cain is neck-and-neck with Romney (24 percent) atop the GOP field.


Republicans should vote for whoever they want and I am sympathetic to conservatives who feel that the establishment is trying to shove Romney down their throats. At the same time, I can’t imagine allegations like this not hurting a Democratic candidate badly, among Democratic primary voters. (Before anyone goes there, this is nothing like Clinton’s impeachment, since this was not preceded by a multi-year federally-funded witch-hunt against Cain.)

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Alarmed by the seduction

By November 3rd, 2011

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to hear a lot about Herman Cain’s history of inappropriate and awkward sexual advances, and none of it is going to be pleasant. I suggest that, as much as possible, we ignore it. I know, however, that I will not be able to, not with Season 5 of “Mad Men” months away.

I have only one question: does this have real mythological staying power? Will Luke Nocera and Meghan Halperin some day agree that all the unpleasantness of 2036 politics dates back to ACORN’s and Rahm Emmanuel’s dastardly attempts to destroy Herman Cain?

I think it may have more staying power than people think because Cain’s polls numbers have not been affected much yet, so we could have as much as a few months of blaming the lamestream media for this story, etc. before Cain—who never had a chance anyway—completely implodes. That’s plenty of time to cook up myths about how Journolist was responsible for the whole thing.

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He just keeps trolling along

By November 1st, 2011

Remember when this blogger was our reside PUMA troll?

Any bets on how long before someone claims he (Cain) was dogwhistling to the white racists that “he knows his place” by singing an old negro spiritual?

Seriously though, he was dogwhistling – to black Americans. He was reminding the black community that he is one of them. If he can win over a big chunk of their votes he’s not just electable, he’s unbeatable. No other Republican candidate can do that.

I wonder how many hymns Barack Obama knows by heart?

So hard to tell if this is spoof or not. It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid.

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Yes, we Cain

By October 31st, 2011

I have no interest in this Cain sexual harassment story. Do any of you have any interest in it?

There’s only one part that amuses me, and that’s the conservative claim that the librul media did this. I agree with those who say that Rove dropped a dime here. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s all in the game.

Also too, I am hoping that Juan Williams and Richard Cohen weigh in on this.

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Over the Fucking Line, Donny

By September 1st, 2011

I’m treating tonight like Friday as this is a four day week-end, so if you expect something substantive from me, move on. I do want to pass on this little tale:

A repeat public indecency offender has been arrested for allegedly engaging in “sexual activity” with a pink inflatable swimming pool raft, according to Hamilton police.

Edwin Charles Tobergta, 32, was arrested at his Harmon Avenue home early Sunday after he was spotted in the act in an alley in the 1800 block of Howell Avenue behind a residence, a police report shows.

A male witness, who owns the raft and lives in the home near the alley, told Hamilton Police Officer William Thacker he shouted at the suspect to stop.

Tobergta took the raft and fled, the report states.

When police caught up with him, he admitted to the crime and begged for help, according to police.

Putting aside the sadness factor of him begging for help, I’m not sure what is my favorite part of the story. That he was having sex with a raft, that it wasn’t his raft, or that when he was caught, before running, he made sure to take the raft with him. But wait, it gets better:

According to court records, he has four other public indecency charges in Hamilton Municipal Court and another in Butler County.

In one public indecency case in 2002, he was caught having sex with an inflatable pumpkin that was part of a Halloween display.

What happened in the eight years that made him go from a pumpkin to a raft?

And if all you are going to do is tell me I am horrible person and should not be snickering at this, I completely agree. I’m a horrible person.

(via)

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Starburst Memories

By August 10th, 2011

This is what August needed:

After a more than two-month hiatus, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is planning to crash the presidential party once again with a heartland-themed re-launch of her “One Nation” bus tour this week in Iowa, according to a Palin fundraising email obtained by CNN.

Palin is bringing her Constitution-draped bus to the Iowa State Fair, just 30 miles south of where the Republican presidential field will take the stage on Thursday for a presidential debate in Ames.

I doubt she makes it to Des Moines. Ceder Rapids is out of the question.

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We are all Winklevi now

By July 21st, 2011

I’m tired of talking about the debt ceiling.

Reader F sent me a link to an interesting profile of the Daily Caller, which says pretty much what I already thought: that the Caller sucks but not as badly as most similar right-wing outlets, and that it’s losing money but not as much as you might think. Mostly, though, I was struck by this picture of Tuck Tuck.

It put me in mind of Larry Summers’ quote about the Winklevoss brothers (the ones who are constantly suing Facebook, even after getting $67 million).

“One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole.”

No matter what he does, Tucker Carlson will always be an asshole undergraduate to me.

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Bailin’ Palin (or Why Sarah Palin’s bus tour was cancelled)

By June 30th, 2011

Those of you who have been reading my little posts for a while will know that I do everything I can to avoid coming into direct contact with Sarah Palin ever since I was a judge on the Miss Alaska pageant all those years ago.

After that experience, and our little plane trip together, I trust Sarah about as much as I’d trust Roman Polanski around a particularly attractive twelve year old. However, I do like to keep tabs on her and, after reading about her little bus tour, I was determined to get someone on the inside.

My dear friend and fellow Shady Pines resident Sandra Frazer volunteered. In the end it only took one phone call. Sandra crapped on about how unfair the people at Wikipedia are and how she and Marge Albrechtson are both devoted followers of Sarah and, above all, both very rich and slightly senile, and before you could say “You’re so much prettier than that Bachmann woman”, they’d been issued a personal invitation to visit Sarah in New Hampshire.

Sandra and Marge were waiting outside the Yankee Fisherman’s Cooperative in Seabrook. Marge has been skipping her meds and, while she wasn’t in a violent mood, she did keep slapping at her herself to quieten down the squirrels she’d stashed in her knickers that morning before she left Shady Pines. There was a lot of squeaking and complaining going on, although I understand most of it was coming from the pack of journalists who were also waiting there.

They’re such filthy hairy little things, always pissing themselves and biting people for no reason – by which I mean the journalists of course, not Marge’s squirrels who are generally quite well behaved.

Sarah arrived first in her SUV, followed by Todd and Piper and the rest of the entourage in the Palinbus. Sarah was very polite, especially after she spotted that big ol’ diamond ring that Sandra was wearing – the one that Jimmy Carter gave her after he broke off their affair back in 1983. Sandra said it was like one of those cartoons where Daffy Duck’s eyeballs turn into dollar signs, and Todd even had to rush in to wipe the drool off Sarah’s bottom lip. Sarah wasn’t even fazed by the two pairs of beady rodent eyes peering at her from out of Marge’s purse.

Sandra told me that Sarah was looking quite good, although she appeared to be wearing something from Donatella Versace’s Piggly Wiggly collection. Even Todd had made an effort and had worn his best Megadeth t-shirt – the one without any obvious holes.

After Sandra managed, with some difficulty, to get her hand back from Sarah, Sarah fetched Trig out of his storage box at the front of the bus where they keep him when he’s not in use, and then wandered off with him to have some photographs taken next to some dead fish.

Marge and little Piper set about making friends. The only squirrels Piper had even seen were either roadkill or food (and possibly both) and so she was quite impressed when Marge started producing them from her clothes like some slightly confused musician from Hamelin. Soon they were yammering away to each other and they both went off to talk to some lobsters in a tank out the back.

Sandra was left alone with Todd.

Now, Sandra may be 72, but she’s still a well preserved and handsome woman – the result of decades of facials made from pituitary glands untimely ripped from impoverished Cambodian orphans and a large amount of whalebone under the kind of stress that makes diamonds out of coal. She also likes her men big and dumb. Show her a Carhartt baseball cap, a farmer’s tan and an expression of amiable stupidity (cf. Jimmy Carter) and her ovaries start fizzing like Kathryn Jean Lopez in a seminary.

Todd was doing his usual thing of staring off into the distance and mumbling the lyrics of Whitesnake songs, so he didn’t notice Sandra’s quite obvious interest until she grabbed him by the front of his sweatpants, dragged him behind some convenient bushes and pounced on him like Oprah Winfrey on a baked ham.

Fifteen minutes of impassioned kissing later, Sarah arrived back at the bus with half a dozen lobsters under one arm and Trig under the other. Todd’s hair was a little askew and he was holding a clip-board carefully in front of the Little Dude, who pointedly refused to go down, but there was otherwise no sign of what had happened so far.

It was time to head off to the clambake, which was being held at the summer residence of Jeff and Elizabeth Davis, two of Sarah’s staffers, although it took a while to locate Piper, who had been playing hide and seek with Marge. She’d hidden herself in a pile of cod and no one could find her until one keen-eyed fisherman noticed that one of the cod seemed to have a bow in its hair.

Sarah and Piper and Trig and Marge all got into the SUV. They offered to give Sandra a ride too, but she begged off, saying that Todd had very kindly offered to show her his collection of velvet paintings of dogs playing poker, and so she was happy to ride with him in the bus.

Sarah was in her element, chatting to the press when she arrived at the clambake, schmoozing with such luminaries as John Sununu, and watching Piper and Marge playing Hide-the-Rodent with Trig. All was going well until halfway through the evening when Sarah realised that she hadn’t seen Todd since they left the co-op, and wandered off to find him, carrying a plate of food.

Sandra told me, with what I must say was only the merest hint of embarrassment, that when Sarah threw open the door of the bus, releasing a cloud of amyl nitrate and marijuana smoke that must have made Andrew Sullivan’s nose twitch six states away, Sandra was on top of Todd, stark naked, mid-orgasm and shouting “Ride me like Paul Revere!” at the top of her voice.

The words “wild, screaming, hair-tearing hissy fit” apparently do not begin to do justice to what then ensued.

Sarah lobbed clamshells at Todd, followed by the plate, and Sandra heard each of them hit his forehead with a pronounced thud. Sandra extracted Little Todd from her nether parts and made a break for the door, leaving behind her red Dior suit and some very new Jimmy Choos. She says that the last thing she saw before she managed to escape was Sarah advancing towards Todd brandishing a plastic spork and screaming that she was going to cut off his “fucking Levi Johnston”.

I won’t bore you with the sordid tale of how Sandra managed to convince John Sununu to lend her his limousine to get to the airport, or how in Sarah’s absence Marge cornered several journalists and started raving about squirrels and how they want to take over the country – You can expect that to be taken up as part of the Tea Party platform any day now.

In finishing, however, I will just note three things. First, that the news reports, while noting that Sarah and Todd’s motorcade managed to break several road rules after leaving that clambake, just before the Sarah Palin bus tour was “postponed” indefinitely, entirely failed to mention Todd’s amazing ability to drive a bus with one hand clamped to his crotch to staunch the bleeding.

Second – the last time I saw Sarah Palin on the television she seemed to be wearing a very nice red Dior suit and some quite adorable Jimmy Choo slingbacks, which goes to show that beggars can’t be choosers.

Finally, that Sandra came home from her last appointment with the gynecologist – menopause having been staved off for years because of all those Cambodian hormones – with a little surprise. It won’t be easy raising a baby in a retirement home, but we’ll do our best.

We’re thinking of calling it Clam.

[H/t for the image to the gorgeous Rumproasters.]

[Cross posted at Sarah Proud and Tall.]

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How About You Give Us the Silent Treatment?

By June 14th, 2011

In case you didn’t check DougJ’s link earlier, the Brooks piece is even worse than I imagined:

I’ll be writing a lot about the presidential election over the next 16 months, but at the outset I would just like to remark that I’m opining on this whole campaign under protest. I’m registering a protest because for someone of my Hamiltonian/National Greatness perspective, the two parties contesting this election are unusually pathetic. Their programs are unusually unimaginative. Their policies are unusually incommensurate to the problem at hand.

You could always find another line of work, asshole. Look for something that contributes to society, maybe. Although with your limited skill set, you might find “Would you like fries with that” a little unfulfilling.

Love the “both parties” stuff. They just can’t help themselves, can they?

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Rules of the game

By June 8th, 2011

No more Weiner for the rest of the day, but this is a good point, from Atrios:

One thing I think Glenn misses is that the “not even a thin justification necessary” rules for journalistic voyeurism will be selectively applied. When a Villager In Good Standing has a tabloidish “scandal,” we’ll hear endless handwringing about those awful bloggers are prying into somebody’s personal business.

Crotch tweets from George Will or Lindsey Graham would be treated quite differently, not that I have any sympathy for Weiner.

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