Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Come on, man.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

I was promised a recession.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

White supremacy is terrorism.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The words do not have to be perfect.

He really is that stupid.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

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32Comments

  1. 1.

    RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)

    As long as the slipping doesn’t involve nude mopping, I think you’ll be all right.

  4. 4.

    Brick Oven Bill

    President Obama is way out of line:

    Honduran Constitution Article 239 Translation.- “The citizen that have performed the ownership of the Executive Power will not be able to be a President or Appointed. The one that break this disposition or propose their reform, as well as those that support the direct or indirectly, they will cease immediately in the performance of their respective charges, and they will remain disqualified by ten years for the exercise of every civil service.”

    The Honduran military exercised its Constitutionally-mandated duty in removing the Executive, and the Executive’s supporters from office, by force if necessary. These removed people are not eligible for civil service for ten years. Obama is siding against the Honduran military.

    Article 239 is apparently there to prevent the rise of another Central American despot. The ideal is to support the rule of law, not the rule of men. Go Honduran military.

  6. 6.

    Third Eye Open

    C’mon BOB, you’re not even trying today. Didn’t you run this flag up a few days ago? You’re no Birdzilla I tell ya, no-sir-ree y’aint.

    Now on to something important. Just got a great deal on an ASUS Eee 900a and this affirmed Windows guy wants to try some GUI-fun with Linux. I think SUSE looks pretty good. Anyone have any suggestions for installing or maybe other OSs that might be more friendly to an open-source neophyte?

  7. 7.

    Jennifer

    Love the SarahPAC ad in the sidebar.

    Shouldn’t it be called “QuitterPAC”, though?

  9. 9.

    Alan

    I just found out Steve McNair died yesterday in a murder/suicide. I always thought of McNair as a great multidimensional QB who seemed to be overlooked by Rush Limbaugh. I think Rush thought McNabb was the only black QB in the league.

  10. 10.

    Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist

    It may just be that CBS Sunday Morning isn’t worth paying attention to?

  11. 11.

    rachel

    @Third Eye Open: I’ve been told that SUSE isn’t the most friendly distro for new users. I don’t know; mostly I use Mandriva and KNOPPIX. Ubuntu’s supposed to have good help forums–my office mate, who jumped from Windows into Linux cold, swears by them.

    Edit–my husband says your Eee might handle a full version of SUSE, but he wouldn’t guarantee it.

  13. 13.

    RareSanity

    @Third Eye Open:

    Obligatory Ubuntu reference.

    But, seriously, I always recommend Ubuntu to newbies because any question that you may have has been answered (over and over and over…) and will probably come up as the first result from teh Google.

  15. 15.

    gbear

    There’s an entertaining clip posted at C&L: CNN decided to look into whether the news is devoting too much time to Michael Jackson coverage. Howie Kurtz and the other guests are practically screaming Yes! Yes! Yes! while the oblivious Kitty Pilgrim just keeps tallking about how it’s been good for their ratings. They even post a poll that says that 2 out of 3 people think the coverage is nuts. No effect on Pilgrim.

  16. 16.

    Third Eye Open

    From what cursory investigating I have done seems to point to Ubuntu. I think I will try that out first. The machine is great though, I am really impressed with everything but the Xandros, and I only find it annoying because everything is tabbed and pre-installed. I won’t be writing dissertations on it, but this is going to be go-to ax when I want to bike down to the coffee shop.

    Any ideas for getting my ipod loaded with Floola to show up in Linux?

  18. 18.

    Ash

    Forget the stupid Sunday shows, Roddick and Federer are going into a fifth set at Wimbledon!

  19. 19.

    john b

    you SHOULD be watching tennis. classic match on nbc right now. 10-10 in the fifth.

  22. 22.

    apistat

    Good god I absolutely can’t stand Federer. Roddick should’ve had that; the 2nd set tie break is gonna haunt him for the rest of his life.

  23. 23.

    leo

    Well, since we’re on the subject…

    In the discussion between Grassley and Shumer, did anyone find fill-in host, John Dickerson’s mention of health care “cooperatives” not once but twice a bit strange?

    I mean, neither Senator brought it up and the 2nd time Dickerson dragged it in, it was right after Shumer mentioned that a public option is backed by 70% of the American Public.

    So what interest group was Dickerson presenting? Talk about straw-horses promoted by the media…

    BTW, this description by CBS is a complete distortion of what went on its own show:

    Both senators see the option of an alternative patient-owned cooperative system as a possible point of agreement between committee members.

  25. 25.

    Ked

    Mmm. I’m a dedicated Kubuntu user, but… the latest KDE version is a real resource hog. For an EEE, I’d go with Xubuntu or just plain old Ubuntu.

    Don’t get me wrong, I like KDE 4.2, but my year-old desktop no longer gets usable performance in Wine since my upgrade, and drag-and-drop operations seem to go horribly wrong from time to time.

  26. 26.

    shelley matheis

    Just curious, what happened with all the supposed Tea Parties yesterday? CNN and MSNBC, granted, were too busy with their Michael Jackson slobber-o-thons, but even Fox wasn’t covering them. Over at Free Republic, some people were posting photos from various rallies.

    “Hundreds protest taxes (& demand Hussein’s birth certificate @ Boiling Springs Community Park Tea Party) ”

    Sigh. Wonder how many regular picnickers got inculded in that crowd count.

  27. 27.

    burnspbesq

    Since we seem to be on the subject of netbooks, and I am thinking seriously about buying one as soon as I finish the next draft of the PowerPoint deck I am working on … does anyone here have any hands-on experience with the Lenovos, and has that experience been positive?

    And BTW, as much as it concerns me to find myself agreeing with BOB, he’s right about Honduras.

  28. 28.

    SGEW

    @burnspbesq: You know, I don’t think I’ve read anyone who’s been “right” about the situation in Honduras. And that very much includes everything posted here.

  29. 29.

    burnspbesq

    @SGEW:

    I dunno, maybe there is a judicial gloss on the language of the relevant provisions of the Honduran Constitution, or a history of administrative practice, that I’m missing, but the text seems pretty straight-forward to me. The Constitution says no second term, period, full stop. If Zelaya wanted a second term, what he should have done was get the Constitution amended through the processes set forth therein, and then run for re-election under the provisions of the amendment. Instead, he tried for some sort of plebiscite for which there seems to be no provision in either the Constitution or any statute of which I am aware.

    The Constitution also seems to say that if you try to end run the term limit, you are out on your ass, right the fuck now. That’s offensive to American notions of due process, but we aren’t interpreting the U.S. Constitution, amirite? The Honduran people get to have their own notions of due process.

    As near as I can tell, the Honduran Supreme Court was within its Constitutional authority when it ordered the military to show Zelaya the door.

    Of course, I am just a U.S. tax lawyer, not a Honduran constitutional scholar, so I could be reading this all wrong. But that’s my take, and it’s also Larison’s take, from which I derive a certain amount of comfort.

  30. 30.

    SGEW

    @burnspbesq: Afaict, and ianaly, and imho, this is what I know:

    – Zelaya, the duly elected chief executive, was probably acting unconstitutionally by trying to get around the term limit.

    – The Honduran Constitution’s possible mechanisms for impeachment seem to be either so vague as to be meaningless or simply nonexistent. There really doesn’t seem to be a codified “due process” for removal of the president at all.

    – The military marched the Zelaya out of his home at gunpoint without any due process whatsoever. They didn’t even have any paperwork. Assumed, implied, or unofficial approval from other branches of government doesn’t count, nor does an ex post press release.

    – There have been several well-documented instances of the newly instituted administration repressing legitimate free speech and the press.

    – There are class conflicts involved that are an order of magnitude larger and more relevant than those at play in U.S. or European politics.

    – The history of the region makes this all look really, really bad.

    – Every single nation in the world officially disapproves of the removal of Zelaya. Literally. Not one nation recognizes the new president’s legitimacy.

    Now, I have yet to hear any one take that’s “right,” with all that considered, Larison included.

  31. 31.

    SGEW

    [blah: point 3 should read “The military marched the Zelaya out of his home . . . “]

  32. 32.

    Thomas Beck

    The Henry Hudson story was awesome, especially the beautiful reconstruction of the Half-Moon, and the amazing computer graphics about what Manhattan looked like in the early 17th century. Have to go see that exhibit!

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