Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Everybody saw this coming.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

This really is a full service blog.

No one could have predicted…

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

There will be lawyers.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The house always wins.

Shelter in place is one thing. shelter in pants is quite another.

How does anyone do Gilligan’s Island as trump world and not cast Jared as Gilligan?

Women: they get shit done

Naturally gregarious and alpha

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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54Comments

  2. 2.

    Jim in Chicago

    Why aren’t the Democrats smart enough to play this up: A major political party being openly bankrolled by a foreigner? Might even give some of the flag-wavers second thoughts about blindly following the Republicans. Instead it’s Harry Reid and even Howard Dean (!) agonizing over the “Mosque” that isn’t a mosque. :(

  7. 7.

    Pangloss

    Every time I see Sean Hannity, I want to shove that prop pen he holds into the side of his neck.

  8. 8.

    Crashman

    According to WebUrbanist, Madeira Island, one of our honeymoon destinations, has one of the ten scariest airports in the world.

    Neither one of us really like flying, so yeah, this should be fun.

  9. 9.

    maya

    Why isn’t someone checking Rupert’s N-400 form? What score did he get in the citizenship test?

  10. 10.

    YellowJournalism

    @Zifnab: His yellow-highlighted card routine last night was The Daily Show at its best, honestly, down to the point where Stewart admitted that even he falls prey to anger and fear instead of advocating for what’s right.

    When I first looked at this cartoon, I thought that the box said, “Harpy Meals.” But, if you think about some of the people they employ (Hannity, Palin, all of Fox and Friends), then it fits, too.

  11. 11.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Meanwhile back in the birthplace of the Great Satan himself we have an election underway today. Polls open in about 7 hours and we should have a result about 12 hours later.

    Unless of course it is as close as all the pundits are predicting. The actual count should be reasonably exciting, which is more than can be said for the election campaign.

    If one word could sum up the performance of both parties it would be “stultifying”. Just a never ending droning of negativism from both sides.

    The surprising thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any objective reason for the Labor government to be in such trouble. The economy is going, if not gangbusters, then pretty damn well, unemployment is hovering around 5%, and the Global Financial Crisis has barely touched us thanks largely to a somewhat haphazardly administered stimulus package.

    But then again the dominant Murdoch press has been running an anti-Labor campaign for the past year, which ultimately cost the previous PM, Kevin Rudd, his job. This has induced a ridiculous anti-debt panic as well as producing a surprising degree of resistance against increased taxes on multinational mining corporations, currently raking in money hand over fist selling to China.

    Add an illegal immigrant scare campaign and you have the recipe for a tough election for Julia Gillard and the distinct possibility of a one term government. Something pretty much unheard of in the post war period.

    So it’s off to bed so that I can rise early and vote (it’s compulsory) for Labor and then spend the rest of the day hoping like hell that the Liberals (a misnomer if ever there was one) don’t get in.

  12. 12.

    Mark S.

    Is there a bigger tool in the universe of movie critics than Kyle Smith of the NY Post? Every review I’ve read of his is how I would expect Bill O’Reilly to feel about the movie. Here he is on The Tillman Story, where he hardly talks about the movie at all:

    The film dances around this point, but Tillman’s mother, who is still unsatisfied after being given 3,000 pages of documents from the Army investigation, is a George W. Bush hater. Like many before her (such as Cindy Sheehan, who said her soldier son “was murdered . . . to benefit Israel”), she found sorrow curdling into something more dynamic and satisfying: political rage.

  15. 15.

    Pangloss

    @Viva BrisVegas: In America, we still have the freedom to not vote…. for now. I expect the Obama brownshirts are polishing their billyclubs to take away that freedom soon.

  17. 17.

    Anoniminous

    After doing my regular morning Coffee + Internet I have come to a conclusion:

    If Informal Logical Fallacies were outlawed 99.999% of all the people working in mass media would be in prison. The blogs score better with only 95% doing time.

  18. 18.

    Bnut

    @Pangloss: My last car was a beat up old 4runner that only got 1 radio station, and it happened to be the Birmingham conservaradio one. I heard some much Savage and Hannity that I wanted to put a pen in my own neck.

  20. 20.

    Viva BrisVegas

    In America, we still have the freedom to not vote…. for now.

    You might mistake me, I wasn’t complaining about compulsory voting. In fact I consider it to be the best bulwark against voter disenfranchisement yet devised.

    If it is against the law to not vote it becomes much harder to devise laws designed to prevent particular people from voting.

    Not that I’m pointing fingers or anything, but US voter turnout is something like 40-60% of the eligible population. In Australia it’s around 95%. To me that makes for more democracy, even if at the expense of a little liberty.

  24. 24.

    cleek

    hey JC, DougJ, et al: any chance you could put together a mobile version of this site ?

    since you’re using WP, you could probably just drop in the WP Mobile Pack. no, it wouldn’t have all the bells & whistles that the full site has, but that’s kindof the point. it’s supposed to be lightweight and easy to handle on a small screen.

    just a thought…

  25. 25.

    Khârn the Betrayer

    Oh sweet Chaos Gods. Why didn’t anyone warn me that Sully was letting guest bloggers run the show? IQ points were wrenched, screeching, from my brain as soon as his front page loaded in.

    BFTBG/SFTST

  27. 27.

    Tax Analyst

    Boy, Conor Friedersdorf (guesting at Sully’s) sure has his nose up Ross Douthat’s butt this morning. He’s got a post defending Douthat’s writings over the GZ mosque thing.

    Here’s just one peachy plumb excerpt to put in your pie this morning:

    I also think that Mr. Douthat’s writing on assimilation is an invaluable addition to the debate — basically everything he writes is – even if we aren’t in agreement.

    Yeah, sure – every freaking thing Douthat writes is just wondrous and well-thought out – even if it’s actually just twisted drivel dripping off his lower lip. I know we’ve all spent many happy and memorable moments absorbing his written wisdom. Did I mention Conor is talking about Ross-my-ingrown-dick-is-sometimes-a-problem-Douthat?

  28. 28.

    The Moar You Know

    A major political party being openly bankrolled by a foreigner?

    @Jim in Chicago: He’s not. He became a citizen a while ago, showing that the GOP is right and we desperately need to do something to stem the flood of undesirables pouring in over the border.

  29. 29.

    cyntax

    @Crashman:

    My wife and I went there as part of our honeymoon; it is a dramatic view since there’s barely room for the landing strip, making it seem like you’re on approach to an aircraft carrier. But in terms of the actual landing, it was a peice of cake. I’ve had much worse landings in the US, in particular one at Cleveland during which the woman sitting next to me and her son were both throwing up.

    But congrats on getting married.

  30. 30.

    The Dangerman

    No Airport can live up to the old airport in Hong Kong (Kai Tek?). Now, THAT was a landing…

    …right after the 747 pilot came on saying “now, just prior to wheels touching, we are going to do a hard right turn” (rough translation: “try not to shit your pants”)…

    …this while flying in a canyon with skyscrapers on both sides where one could look in the windows and see the TV’s far too clearly…

    …now THAT was a place to land. I think it is completely out of service. Too bad.

  32. 32.

    The Moar You Know

    no, it wouldn’t have all the bells & whistles that the full site has

    @cleek: What, no comments running off the margins of the screen, thrice-repeated posts, non-spellchecked postings by the frontpagers, and megapixel cat and puppy pics?

    WHAT WOULD WE DO????

  34. 34.

    Martin

    @cleek:

    you could probably just drop in the WP Mobile Pack.

    I don’t think WP and ‘just drop in’ are compatible terms. If anything, B-J is a case study of how fucktastic a platform WP is. I’ve got a WP blog at work and it’s a pain in the ass even with exceedingly competent people administering it.

  36. 36.

    Svensker

    Anybody got any cures for bad fish smells in the house? I put some frozen fish in the oven last night and it turned out to be quite off (which I didn’t notice when it was frozen). Thrown the fish out and taken garbage out, cleaned counters, sink, pans, etc., boiled vinegar on the stove, fans on and windows open but the house still stinks. Me very unhappy. Any tips?

  37. 37.

    scav

    @jeffreyw: ahhhh, jeffreyw, the johnny appleseed of random foodstuffs. Or is it more a Hansel and Gretel sort of means of finding your way back through the maze?

  39. 39.

    cleek

    @Martin:
    i added the WP Mobile Pack to my site and it was as easy as: unzip into a folder, then check a checkbox. worked perfectly right out of the box. could not be easier unless it was built into WP to begin with.

    I’ve got a WP blog at work and it’s a pain in the ass even with exceedingly competent people administering it.

    i’ve never had a single problem with WP which wasn’t caused by either a bad template or a bad plugin. both of which are external to WP itself.

  40. 40.

    Hob

    Oh man, it’s extra hard to do this now that people are posting food pictures, but: I have to take an indefinite break from blogs, and I have to quit this one first because I like it the most. Just have been spending way way way way way too much time on the Internet, and as much as I value the information & the yuks & the people, at some point it becomes sort of like… trying to eat pictures of food, I guess. I mention this not to solicit hugs or medals, but just to request that if I break down & post a comment here again any time soon, someone please slap me.

  41. 41.

    cleek

    @Svensker:
    candles work well for getting rid of smells. we keep a big one in the kitchen for fish days and “oops, shouldn’t have left that chicken carcass in the garbage all night” mornings.

  44. 44.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    @The Dangerman: Yes. My favorite landing in Hong Kong (circa 1970) was during a thunderstorm. When we broke out of the clouds we were a couple hundred feet above the water … then seconds later we touched down. Being the first one I was more than happy to see all the buildings on later flights. At least you could see what was coming.

  46. 46.

    eric

    @cleek: I would think that, just like McCain, you could go to one of your other houses. Duh.
    ETA: for the record, Tom Tomorrow is the dude.

  47. 47.

    MikeJ

    @cleek: The only problems I’ve had with WP is admins who don’t understand what a high site is dropping in too many plugins that are poorly written and use eight db calls where they could get by with one.

    On low traffic sites it’s generally way more of a pig than it should be (almost always, as you say, caused by a sub optimal plugin) but most people won’t notice while hit counts are in the (evenly distributed) 10s of thousands per day.

  50. 50.

    Betsy

    @Svensker:
    Did you clean the oven yet? That might be the source.

    No idea whether this would work for fish odor specifically, but if you put some vanilla into a pan of simmering water, it can make the house smell heavenly. Baking a loaf of bread likewise.

  51. 51.

    Mark S.

    I was listening to a little Rush Limbaugh in the car and Rush spent the entire time insinuating that Obama is not a Christian. I guess that explains why 20% of the country thinks Obama is a Muslim.

  53. 53.

    Anne Laurie

    @PeakVT: Toles and Rall would be the two next on my best-of list (and I’m very grateful I don’t have to pick just one!). But Danziger is a better artist — I can identify the benchwarmers even without labels — which I think makes Danziger the best single current inheritor of Nast’s laurels.

  54. 54.

    Jim in Chicago

    @Chad N Freude:

    Thanks for the correction. I had forgotten that, thinking back to the days Mike Royko referred to his would-be boss (Royko fleed the Chicago Sun-Times when Murdoch took it over) as “the Alien.”

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