Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Republicans don’t trust women.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

I really should read my own blog.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

A norm that restrains only one side really isn’t a norm – it’s a trap.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

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Reader Interactions

146Comments

  1. 1.

    Third Eye Open

    Miami vs. Georgia Tech. Miami is up 14 with about 9 left in the 3rd. I really hope that Donna Shalala has the spine to let Randy Shannon build his team. A 11-1 season would do wonders for all the griping that happens in Miami over sports.

  3. 3.

    Laura W

    Little Bitsy is at 1002!
    I was all set to beg for someone to push her over 1,000 for the first time in the three weeks that we’ve been involved (“we” meaning BJ regulars, lurkers, readers, and all around fabulous, generous, animal loving, kind-hearted persons!)

    Thanks for voting every day. This is her best week yet. I honestly did not think she would gain momentum as we went on, but I believe it was Comrade Darkness who first mentioned this as a probability, and he was right. Of course, all her competitors are probably experiencing the same thing, but we can’t worry about them. Eye on the prize, Bitsy!

    Know Hope!
    Vote early, vote often?
    Si se puede?
    Er….
    Thanks?

  5. 5.

    jibeaux

    I went back on twitter for the first time in a hundred years just so I could use the michellemalkinmath hashtag. My little contribution to society?

    wondering when the new vaccine for the H100,000N100,000 virus is going to come out. #michellemalkinmath

  7. 7.

    Laura W

    You need to enlarge that kitty photo to get the full effect. I did not even notice the second guy in the shot. The cute needs to be bigger to be fully appreciated.
    The ginger clinging to his person’s (I presume) clothing kills me. Very, very sweet.

  13. 13.

    Mark S.

    Since the last thread brought up classic bad movies, what is your favorite? I might have to go with Bloodsport, in which a young Jean-Claude Van Damme taught us how to love again.

    I’m also pretty partial to Fantastic Four, which I thought got unfairly maligned. It was better than Spider-Man 3, for Pete’s sake!

  14. 14.

    jibeaux

    @Betsy:

    Awww, you’re sweet. Although I did think it was good.
    Voted for Bitsy again, still like Brevard, and the ads are cracking me up.

  16. 16.

    Anne Laurie

    @Laura W:

    The ginger clinging to his person’s (I presume) clothing kills me.

    Also, notice: Ginger cat posed on white clothing, mostly-white cat posed on blue-grey lining. Cats have a natural instinct for such aesthetics. Not to mention the demonic talent behind the old folk saying, “No outfit is complete without cat hair!”

  19. 19.

    Annie

    Too, too cute. I love it. Thanks. Our purring monkeys do this everytime my husband packs to go on a business trip. We get two in the suitcase…The question is do they want to go, or do they want him to stay?????

  20. 20.

    WereBear

    This is why there are so many cats who are Tuxedo: black and white, for maximum coverage!

    Ginger kitties earn their highly disproportionate presence in movies; mellow yellows, they are. Vis: Rhubarb, the Hammer Movie Kitty.

  22. 22.

    steve s

    Maybe Eddie Izzard can run for president next. When he puts on those pumps, all my Kentucky relatives’ heads will explode, and we can have a decent country.

  23. 23.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Morbo:

    Oops, he slipped and spilled the beans on what they do with the bonus Murdoch gives them!

    That is f’ing funny!

  25. 25.

    arguingwithsignposts

    My random question for the evening. As a child, I recall that TV seasons started around the first of Sept., if not earlier. Why are all the shows waiting until nearly October to come back with new episodes (spec. House and Lie To Me)?

  30. 30.

    Kirk Spencer

    hey, I see cooking, I can do a short cooking hijack (grin).

    You can cook rice successfully in the microwave. 1 cup rice (not brown), 2 cups water, 1 quart glass casserole WITHOUT the lid, 11 minutes (adjust time after you’ve tried to get the best fit for your altitude and humidity and microwave).

    It is not perfect rice. It is, however, consistently good rice – as consistent and as good as I have gotten from several specialized rice cookers.

    Using a lid causes boilover. That means water that should be in the rice is flowing out of your microwave.

  31. 31.

    Incertus

    @Mark S.: I’m also pretty partial to Fantastic Four, which I thought got unfairly maligned. It was better than Spider-Man 3, for Pete’s sake!

    Better than Spiderman 3 is a pretty low bar to clear. It’s a bar that neither Daredevil nor Elektra managed to get over, though.

  36. 36.

    debit

    @arguingwithsignposts: But I think they decided it’s better to wait with the new episodes until the playoffs are over. People got pissed when, say, X-Files finally came back after a summer cliffhanger and then went away again for a couple of months.

  39. 39.

    WereBear

    I have a rice story.

    SO loves rice. So we get a microwave with a RICE button. He goes low carb, then backslides after several months. So Your Humble Servant starts making rice in the microwave again. Only it’s Rice on a Stick. You could tile a roof with this stuff.

    After a few bad attempts, SO exclaims, “It’s so simple. ONE cup of rice, TWO cups of water…”

    And yours truly says, “Ohhhhhhh!”

    And starts making rice, right.

    Ya know, I never said I was domestic….

  41. 41.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Why do the media give so much space to Kent Conrad who represents one of the smallest populations in the country? (I’m looking at you MSNBC) Him and Max Baucus should have no credibility left after the bullshit they’ve pulled over the last six months.

  46. 46.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Incertus:

    Ask the Senate Dems why they give Baucus and Conrad such plum committee assignments

    photos, perhaps? combined with seniority. Damn, I wish we had a senate majority leader with balls like LBJ. All this decorum from Dems makes me sick.

  49. 49.

    Calming Influence

    Great ad idea by ¡El Gato Negro! over at Whiskey Fire:

    Fade-in on a scene of a politician’s office, currently empty. The camera zooms in on the abandoned store-front and the tune “Happy Days Are Here Again” rises in the background.

    [-Voice Over: “Hey Democrats, the 2010 elections are coming up.”]

    The scene switches to the receptionists office, also empty. A phone is heard ringing in the distant background. The music continues, although we notice that it seems to be slowing, as if the song were playing on an old record player that’s winding down.

    [-Voice Over: “We hope that, during the campaign season, you’ll remember way back in 2009 when you gave away any chance of real healthcare reform to your buddies in the insurance industry, and stuck America with a mandate to buy inadequate health insurance coverage at inflated rates.”]

    The scene shifts again, to a campaign phone bank, the camera pans across the rows of empty chairs and unmanned phones. Then shifts to another scene of the empty campaign headquarters. If possible I’d like to use a photo or film of thousands of campaign flyers and doorhangers, sitting around unused, or even thrown in the trash.

    [-Voice Over: “We hope that you remember when you made backroom deals with Blue Cross, Aetna and the drug manufacturers that ensured more Americans would be forced into bankruptcy because of illness, or even die, because some insurance company bureaucrat would rather make his bonus for the year, than pay for their claims.”]

    Then we move on to election night, the camera pans across a mostly empty banquet hall, and a mostly empty campaign rally. A politician is speaking, but his voice is almost inaudible in the echoing reverb of the unattended event, and seems very far away. Nearer by you hear a broom sweeping, and a garbage truck, driving off into the night.(Fade out)

    [-Voice Over: “We hope that you’ll remember, because we sure will.”]

    (Maybe show a quick poll result here, highlighting the continual favorable results for the public option, or even single payer)

    CHYRON: Progressives agree with 72% of America. We need a public option.

  50. 50.

    freelancer

    If someone is more conversant with this story, please help me unpack this, cause I need help getting the whole thing.

    I heard Breitbart on Levin talking about the Acorn videos, and when I went to watch the videos, I was dumbfounded. Hot white girl posing as a prostitute and skinny white kid playing a pimp like he just looked it up on Conservapedia getting advice on how to scam the gov’t. Like these people would ever believe these dumbasses with a video camera.

    It reminded me of the scene in Office Space where they’re sitting around Peter’s apartment going “What kind of criminals are we, we’re looking up ‘money laundering’ in the dictionary”.

    The wingnuts are serious about this?

  52. 52.

    Linkmeister

    I wish to register a food distribution complaint.

    About a year ago Frito-Lay stopped distributing Doritos in their Toasted Corn variety out here. We get the Nacho, the Cool Ranch and others, but we no longer get the plain unflavored Toasted Corn.

    This means my taco salads are now made with Tostitos white corn chips, and they don’t taste the same.

    I have asked local Safeway store and the response is “I dunno. We just don’ t get ’em anymore.”

    So, a complaint.

  54. 54.

    Tim

    I’ve made an observation…

    One minute FOX News is tripping all over themselves screaming about Obama’s czars and the next minute their slobbing the knob of an “ambassador” (Bolton) that was appointed by an invocation of executive power in order to circumvent the congressional vetting process.

    The hypocrisy is astounding.

  55. 55.

    ellaesther

    @JK: Yes they are! Somehow, I was expecting them to be vaguely similar, and they’re so not!

    Re: understanding cats, WereBear, I admit that I finally gave up with mine, and then, after 17 years of pleasant confusion (and very loud meowing), she shuffled off her mortal coil, off to confuse her Maker. And good luck to Him!

    And Incertus, I believe that, in particular, I will adopt the phrase “One of us. One of us.” whenever I speak of the POTUS from now on. (Also, possibly, “There’s gay in your soda”).

    Ooh, ooh, check out my blog, too! Check out mine!

  57. 57.

    Anne Laurie

    Is it just me, or does the Piggy-goes-weewee troll/spoof only show up when the House Troll, aka BoB, is on time-out?

  58. 58.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    I buried one of my ginger cats, the old one, Tuesday. He was almost 16 years old and lived a good long life. He prolly had many more years left but my wife accidentally ran over him with the car. She was his most favorite person in the world and he ran to greet her when she pulled in the driveway same as every day and this time it ended in tragedy.

    I really hated that fucking cat so it’s not all bad news.

  59. 59.

    Ash Can

    @Linkmeister: Are there any corn tortilla chips in the Mexican foods section? Or how about just getting a package of tostadas and breaking them up into large pieces?

  64. 64.

    jl

    @Linkmeister: I didn’t know Cole had those kind of connections needed to fix up our food complaints. Here is my first batch. Be back with more latter.

    OK. I want more Sconza’s coconut toffee peanuts in stock around Northern California. They disappear for months at a time outside SF Bay Area and I am getting pissed.

    Also, need more Cuban Mojo sauce in the stores. It’s too hard to find.

    Stores don’t seem to carry brine cured green olives much anymore. Need to fix that.

    How long does it take for Balloon-Juice to get on this stuff, anyway?

  66. 66.

    Jay in Oregon

    Checking in tonight. All of my arms, legs, and vital organs are here.

    I need to eat something soon, because I have some labs to be run tomorrow and I have to fast for 12 hours. My appetite is sucky enough, I can’t skip dinner.

    I have an appointment with my therapist tomorrow as well. I should probably crack open that copy of “Feel Good” but I find I like listening to self-help books as an audiobook. Maybe it’s time to comb Audible.

    My musical pick for the day?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i4fK4Fc7Ms

  67. 67.

    JK

    @freelancer:

    If I listened to Andrew Breitbart talking to Mark Levin, I’d have to take a 2 hour shower to wipe the slime off of me.

    How long did your shower take?

    Seriously, Breitbart and Levin are pure, unadulterated toxic sludge. Listening to or reading either one of them for too long will give you cancer of the soul.

  68. 68.

    freelancer

    @JK:

    I tuned in, and didn’t know it was breitbart til the end of the segment.

    I really want someone to nutshell the whole thing for me. Point by point. What happened, how the left reacted, how it got into the media, and wtf he was talking about when he said more “scoops” were going to come out of bighollywood in the next few weeks.

    Okay the last point is a lost cause. However, please consider me a low-info voter on this issue. You can start at, “I know ACORN is a community organizing institution”.

    Go.

  69. 69.

    stibbert

    the stibbert’s vote for ‘worst movie evah’ goes to King Vidor’s 1949 “The Fountainhead”, starring Gary Cooper & Patricia Neal, w/ screenplay by Mafia Winsome herself. Watching this film will cause your eyes & ears to bleed. IIRC, it was described in The New Yorker‘s revival-film synopsis as “the classic grade B movie.”

    when i was at Sorcerer’s University, the film-forum ran it once every year, and all us architect-wannabes would faithfully attend, clacking our triangles at the lame dialog & laughing at the yoogly architectural designs, which were in a style best described as ‘Deco-Eisenhower-Moderne’. Cap’n Arky would turn up after the show, w/ T-square, white scarf and WWI flyer’s helmet.

  70. 70.

    JK

    @ellaesther:

    That was a cool U2 review on your site. Your Middle East postings are very informative as well.

    One of the side benefits of Balloon Juice is discovering the many great websites of the commenters.

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    Prime wingnuttery candidate:

    Heard an NPR story on Vera Lynn while tooling around Los Angeles; on how she’s back on the charts at age 92. So, checked out Youtube for link to her famous “We’ll Meet Again.”

    And please note the plea to leave the political comments aside and just enjoy the song. Youtubers have apparently been fighting the health care battle and sliming the National Health Service (socialism on parade).

    Can’t we just appreciate a woman’s second moment in the sun without trolling? Apparently not.

    Here’s the Youtube with the plea to leave the politics out in first frames:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcunREYzNY&feature=related

    And here’s a very touching rendition with British RAF members singing along.

    The greatest generation, at their best. (At least the British contingent.)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Drw4aZhdT8

  72. 72.

    Punchy

    This Cobert Report bit about the Special Forces learning to stare at goats in order to kill them is a joke, right? Please tell me the military did not spend money on a project to kill animals by staring at them. Please tell me this didn’t happen.

  73. 73.

    Anne Laurie

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    As a child, I recall that TV seasons started around the first of Sept., if not earlier. Why are all the shows waiting until nearly October to come back with new episodes (spec. House and Lie To Me)?

    The two reasons I’ve heard: The ‘big’ networks started pushing their season premieres back when the World Series got moved further into September, so new & returning shows wouldn’t lose ratings momentum as people switched to watching beisbol. Then the cable networks started having real success with new “summer season” shows — stuff like Rescue Me — so much so that the ‘original’ networks have their own summer shows now, like Warehouse 13.

  74. 74.

    ellaesther

    @JK: Thank you very much for saying so!

    And you’re right about finding more and more interesting places to visit just by coming here in the first place — though then the problem, for me anyway, is that there are so many things that I want to read, and so few hours in the day!

    That’s always my problem, actually.

  76. 76.

    jibeaux

    @Punchy:

    I read the book because it is going to be made into a movie with George Clooney, and I wanted to be ready.

    Yes, it’s real, according to this book anyway. It’s HIGHLY weird. Reads like a novel. It has the most captivating first chapter of a book I have ever read in my life, I dare you to try to not read it all the way through.

  77. 77.

    Alan

    Anyone see the Snowe video yet?

    We only hear of this now after everyone’s laughed the Baucus bill dead. Is this more bullshit from a Republican trying to get a bad bill passed in the Senate? Call me suspicious.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    My random question for the evening. As a child, I recall that TV seasons started around the first of Sept., if not earlier. Why are all the shows waiting until nearly October to come back with new episodes (spec. House and Lie To Me)?

    dunno. I see that some premieres have rolled out (Gossip Girl, Bones, Fringe).

    I wonder if Fox has a slice of the Baseball Playoffs/World Series.

  82. 82.

    freelancer

    Is it just me or are Viacomm’s sites for TDS and Colbert buggy as hell?

    They’re video player is completely fucked up, and at random, the html for it is incompatible with whatever site you try to put it on, you can’t find anything, so you’re at a loss as to how to catch up.

  85. 85.

    JK

    freelancer

    These are decent overviews of the ACORN scandal

    http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/09/16/what-is-the-acorn-controversy-about

    http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/179441.asp

    Joe Conason and Glenn Greenwald both have columns about Acorn on Salon. I’m not linking to the columns because I want to avoid moderation Hell.

    As for media coverage, you should periodically check the websites of the Columbia Journalism Review, The American Journalism Review, WNYC’s On the Media, and Laura Flanders GritTV on Firedoglake. Democracy Now has an interview with ACORN’S CEO. You can view or read the interview at their website.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    @TEL:

    Interesting article at 538 about perceived bias in the MSM. For me, the most interesting part is that it wasn’t until 2007 that a majority of Democrats distrusted the MSM.

    Thanks for the link reference.

    This is really sad, and means that the Limbaughs and their right wing ilk have won a major victory in the culture wars.

    Worse: A Yahoo News story on the rise of Glenn Beck:

    GOP media strategist Mark McKinnon thinks there are two people in the world who fear Glenn Beck — even if “neither will admit it.” The first is Barack Obama. The second is Rush Limbaugh.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/27282

  87. 87.

    Steeplejack

    @Laura W:

    Hey, to really push Bitsy over the top, how about a Project Wonderful ad with a barbecue fork sticking in her head? That would be gold, I think.

    Signed,
    Religiously Voting Every Day

  88. 88.

    Mark S.

    I made Cincinnati chili tonight. A couple of weeks ago on one of these open threads someone (I don’t remember who) asked about it and I gave him the linked recipe. If that person is reading this, did you try it and did it turn out okay?

  91. 91.

    JGabriel

    @TEL:

    …it wasn’t until 2007 that a majority of Democrats distrusted … Fox news.

    Not a lot of people were watching Fox news. My mother, for example, associated Fox with bad TV, T&A, and reality TV until about 2 years ago, rather than biased news.

    It’s only recently that Fox’s biases have become clear to a lot of people. It’s partly because of increased attention during the elections, and partly due to Fox not even trying to appear faux-balanced anymore. Someone who was not paying much attention (and never watched it) may have thought Hannity & Colmes was a balanced presentation of views; when it’s just Hannity, the bias is a little more obvious.

    .

  92. 92.

    steve s

    “#

    #
    29
    September 17th, 2009 at 10:28 pm Reply to this comment

    AkaDad

    Rush Limbaugh has a 6 inch penis.

    #michellemalkinmath
    ”
    I have a 6-inch penis. Is that a problem?

  93. 93.

    JK

    @Brachiator:

    I think Fox has the broadcast rights for the World Series until the sun goes nova.

    ABC, NBC, and CBS long ago ceded coverage of baseball to Fox.

    I like Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, but I miss the good old days of baseball on NBC (Bob Costas with Tony Kubek and later Joe Morgan; Vin Scully with Joe Garigiola) and ABC (Keith Jackson with Howard Cossell and later Al Michaels alongside a revolving door of very good color commentators).

  95. 95.

    freelancer

    @Steeplejack:

    Hey, to really push Bitsy over the top, how about a Project Wonderful ad with a barbecue fork sticking in her head? That would be gold, I think.

    There is a specific group of people who, reading that, are now gut-laughing. Fortunately for you, they are all readers here.

  96. 96.

    Mark S.

    @JK:

    I don’t hang out at sports blogs much, but it seemed like everyone hated Buck and McCarver more than Hitler. I never watch baseball unless it’s the playoffs, and those two never seemed that bad to me.

    Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell used to do baseball?

  98. 98.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @freelancer:

    It’s possible, last night, you drove by snark and went full on Beck. What the hell was that about?

    Mocking Spoof Therapy. You should try it.

  99. 99.

    JK

    TEL – Thanks for that link

    JGabriel – One of the great lies Fox News has gotten away with for a long time is that the conservative slant only exists during their primetime lineup. This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Any person who spends several days viewing Fox News during the morning and afternoon hours will see that the anchors hosting during these hours are are almost always carrying water for the conservative line.

    Brachiator – There are few things more nauseating and distressing than the stunning commercial success of this raving, drooling, bedwetting lunatic Glenn Beck. Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Dobbs are some of the most repulsive and dangerous demagogues alive. Hopefully, we’ll be able to ride out their reign without losing our sanity.

  100. 100.

    Ash Can

    @Mark S.: Count me among those who think Fox sucks ass at baseball. The commentary is dimwitted, the camerawork blows, and the graphics are annoying as hell. Fox doesn’t do news worth a shit, and it doesn’t do baseball worth a shit either. Everytime I watch baseball on Fox I want to hit Bud Selig with a rolled up newspaper for giving those morons any broadcasting contract at all, let alone such an obscenely lengthy one.

  101. 101.

    ninerdave

    Knock me over with a falafel:

    BIll O’Reily:

    “O’REILLY: But you know, I want that, Ms. Owcharenko. I want that. I want, not for personally for me, but for working Americans, to have a option, that if they don’t like their health insurance, if it’s too expensive, they can’t afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks.”

    I can haz public option now Obama/Senate?

  102. 102.

    JK

    @Mark S.:

    Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are fine by me. I’m not one of those sports nuts who develops a passionate hatred for certain sportscasters.

    “Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell used to do baseball?”
    Yes they did.

    A few years ago, ESPN produced a very entertaining miniseries called the Bronx is Burning starring John Tuturro as Billy Martin, Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner, and Daniel Sunjata as Reggie Jackson. The story juxtaposes the Yankees 1977 season with the Son of Sam investigation.
    The Bronx is Burning uses some actual footage of ABC’s broadcast of the World Series between the Yankees and the LA Dodgers. You can see and hear Jackson and Cossell in this miniseries. I’d recommend this miniseries if you’re a baseball fan.

  103. 103.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    This:

    http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation

    is an extremely good point.

    Psychologist Martin Seligman discovered that if you administer enough random shocks to a dog, the dog will eventually get so demoralized that it won’t even try to avoid them when can easily do so. He called the phenomenon learned helplessness.

    Inducing learned helplessness seems to be the GOP strategy for the Obama age. … Their M.O.? Freak out randomly: The president telling kids to stay in school?!!! Counseling seniors about living wills!?! Czars?!! That these spasms make no sense is a feature, not a bug. The key is that there be absolutely no way to predict what will set off the GOP. At this rate, the Democrats will be reduced to a whimpering puddle on the lab floor in no time.

    This is why I keep saying that any attempt to deal logically with the Wingnut fringe is hopeless, and worse, it’s dangerous. Searching for internal logic and sputtering in rage “But… but…. you said A, and now you say B!!” is useless, and it plays into their insane approach.

    The only response is: “You lost. Someone else won. Tough luck. Deal with it. Or not. Bye now.”

  107. 107.

    Brachiator

    @JK:

    There are few things more nauseating and distressing than the stunning commercial success of this raving, drooling, bedwetting lunatic Glenn Beck. Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Dobbs are some of the most repulsive and dangerous demagogues alive. Hopefully, we’ll be able to ride out their reign without losing our sanity.

    The only problem is that the overt shift to right wing ideological propaganda is accelerating.

    For decades, the Southern California area has had two all news talk radio stations. One of them, KFWB, which had the better mix of local and national news, just switched to a combination of news and conservative talk (Dr Laura is now on this station).

    But early in the morning, KFWB now features something called “America’s Morning News,” which is syndicated by the Washington Times. It sounds like a standard two-anchor news cast, but is pure right wing propaganda (“in a recent poll, the most preferred political description was ‘is like Ronald Reagan’ “).

    Additional irony: KFWB is owned by CBS Radio, a subsidiary of CBS Corporation which also owns KNX, the only all-news station in Los Angeles. In effect, CBS is helping to further undermine mainstream media by underwriting an arm of the GOP Smear Machine. Ah, profits!

  108. 108.

    Mark S.

    @JK:

    I did want to see The Bronx is Burning. Might put it in the Netflix queue.

    @Mayken:

    “You see, this summer has been brutal for Operation Rescue,” Newman wrote. “Not only did George Tiller’s death throw everybody in the pro-life movement for a loop (and especially us),

    It kind threw George Tiller’s family for a loop, too. Asshole, I hope they do go broke.

  109. 109.

    Something Fabulous

    So (not to treat this pithy and politically trenchant blog like a soap opera or anything, but so long as this is an open thread…): I got lost in a bad couple of weeks’ consulting out of town and didn’t check in much lately. Am back now, and curious. Whatever happened to the commenter who was going to Canada to propose??? How did it go?

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Damn it. Tried to answer earlier and lost my comment in some WordPress-generated snafu. Okay, trying again.

    As a child, I recall that TV seasons started around the first of September, if not earlier. Why are all the shows waiting until nearly October to come back with new episodes [. . .]?

    I think it could be as simple as that they produce far fewer episodes these days per season. Back in the golden age, i.e., the ’60s, a season was typically 30 or more episodes. Now it’s down around 20 (or fewer), with the pathological case being HBO’s “special” series where it’s, “Uh, we did six and we’re exhausted. We’ll be back in a year.” Yes, I’m looking at you, Sopranos and Six Feet Under. Hmmph. But I digress.

    Just checked a few random examples at IMBD. Gunsmoke, 1962-63, was 38 (hour-long) episodes. Bonanza, 1965-66, was 33 episodes. With those you could start in early September and ride on through to May with only a few dates knocked out for the Christmas holiday. Even the third season of Dallas, 1979-80, was 25 episodes.

    In contrast, the most recent season of Medium, out on DVD in October, is a paltry 19 episodes–not even five months. That’s a lot of extra dates you have to block out or recycle with “catch-up” reruns, which a lot of shows do in January or February, on the theory that you’re so stupid that you’ve forgotten everything after the blocked-out holiday hiatus.

    Man, I have spent way too much time on this. Wonder if I can get a master’s in television studies via University of Phoenix on line . . .

  113. 113.

    JK

    @Ash Can: @ninerdave:

    When will Bill O’Reilly apologize for constantly referring to Media Matters as leftwing smear merchants and take back the many deranged attacks he’s launched against the Daily Kos and Huffington Post?

  114. 114.

    Steeplejack

    @freelancer:
    @Tattoosydney:

    Hey, I’m a marketing guy. What can I say? Some would say marketing genius, but, heck, I’m modest. I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else. But when my pants are on, I create genius ads. Just sayin’. And I want more cowbell.

  118. 118.

    JK

    @Brachiator:

    You paint a very bleak and depressing picture.

    My recommendation to you and any other Balloon Juice reader disturbed by the worsening performance of the MSM and the growing strength of wingnuts like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other rt wing news outlets is to visit this website

    http://www.themediaconsortium.org/our-members

    and donate money to as many of these independent media outlets as you can afford.

    I also recommend becoming a subscriber to one of the five Pacifica radio stations if you live near any of them. Their stations are WBAI in NY, KPFA in Berkley, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, and WPFW in Washington DC.

  119. 119.

    JK

    @Steeplejack:

    This was news to me. I thought the highest number of episodes for a primetime drama or comedy was 26.

    Of course, I’d take 13 great episodes of any series over 25 mediocre episodes.

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack

    @Comrade Luke:

    Yeah. The detailed IMDB pages are interesting, because they give the actual air date for each episode. Nowadays series seem to pack it in around mid-December, come back in mid-January, and then there are a couple more gaps in late January and somewhere in March-April. And then they still end up running out earlier than the old series did.

    Even a no-production-values, 30-minute sitcom like The Big Bang Theory did only 17 and 23 episodes, respectively, in its first two seasons. In contrast, I Love Lucy, six seasons (1951-57): 35, 31, 33, 30, 26 and 27 episodes.

  121. 121.

    JK

    @Steeplejack:

    I Love Lucy is one of the exceptions to the quality vs quantity conundrum. I’ve watched too many sitcoms to count during my lifetime but I Love Lucy remains for me one of the greatest sitcoms ever produced.

  122. 122.

    Steeplejack

    @JK:

    It was groundbreaking in many ways. It’s weird: I really like some of the episodes, but there are some that really irritate me, e.g., the candy factory production line. Don’t know why.

  123. 123.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mayken: I’ve got my fingers crossed, because if ever a group deserved to vanish it’s Operation Rescue. But as a lifelong cynic, the tag-end of the interview makes me very suspicious:

    Newman said his group has had 50,000 donors in the past 10 years, and has 150,000 people listed in its database… Operation Rescue’s fundraising letter hinted at a secret project it hoped to launch in the next 30 days that would be a “new phase in the pro-life fight.”

    Sounds to me like an old-fashioned Bidniz Pitch — “under new management, now with extra krazee(tm)!”

  124. 124.

    Comrade Luke

    @JK:

    Of course, I’d take 13 great episodes of any series over 25 mediocre episodes.

    If only that was why they did it. It’s more so they can save money by producing fewer episodes. Then they fill the DVDs with “extras” like cast interviews, behind the scenes stuff, etc, to justify the cost. That’s part of the reason behind the strike of a couple of years ago: there’s still production stuff going on, even though the number of episodes is decreasing, so the creatives want to make sure they still get paid.

    I’ve never bothered to chart it, but I’m guessing that the way a series goes these days is that they get a smaller number of episodes per season, then they get a couple bigger deals once the promised land of syndication is on the horizon.

    Things have really changed in just the last 5 years or so. Seinfeld wouldn’t see the light of day today, just based on its first few episodes.

  125. 125.

    ninerdave

    @Ash Can: @JK:

    Well that was my initial impression, but I do believe that BillO is an entity unto himself, and unlike the slimballs that inhabit the congressional halls, he’s probably not Rush’s bitch.

    Will be interesting to see if he walks it back…if there is enough made of it.

  126. 126.

    jl

    AsianGrrrl Balloon-Juice Asian Posse Scandal Explodes…..
    Developing….

    As a native Californian, who has known forever that Chop Suey was invented on the Pacific Coast by the Chinese immigrants, my life might have just been turned upside down!

    Wikipedia says Chop Suey from China!

    Chop suey is widely believed to have been invented in America by Chinese immigrants, but in fact comes from Taishan, a district of Guangdong Province which was the home of most of the early Chinese immigrants; the Hong Kong doctor Li Shu-fan reported that he knew it in Taishan in the 1890s.[1]

    (snip)

    …Some say it was invented by Chinese immigrant cooks working on the United States Transcontinental railway in the 19th century….

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chop_suey

    ‘Some say’ my fat ass! That is the truth foe sure. California dish all the way.

    The truth has been revealed about the awful liberals, ACORN, now the Balloon-Juice Asian Posse -riddled with fraud right from the beginning.

    Some one has to step up and find out the truth. This here bidness given me the galloping fantods, its too many for me, and I am whippersmacked. I’m gonna drown myself in Common Beer, and hit the sack and whip up a Hangtown Fry tomorow morning. That might shake it off me.

  128. 128.

    Brachiator

    @JK:

    My recommendation to you and any other Balloon Juice reader disturbed by the worsening performance of the MSM and the growing strength of wingnuts like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other rt wing news outlets is to visit this website.

    Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check out the various outlets and see what they’re like.

    I haven’t listened to Pacifica stations in a long time. KPFK went through a period when they were self-indulgently stoopid. But maybe it’s time to give them a chance again.

  129. 129.

    ninerdave

    @Comrade Luke:

    Things have really changed in just the last 5 years or so. Seinfeld wouldn’t see the light of day today, just based on its first few episodes.

    As was Cheers. It tanked in its first few seasons (and I think MASH did too, but I can’t recall for sure).

    This is endemic in the entertainment industry, artists are not allowed to grow. Unless you are a hit immediately, you have no future. Entertainment, is a commodity anymore.

    Sad, but true.

    The Intertubes™ provide a change mechanism for this, but the the mass market power of a big corporation has yet to emerge, so a lot of great acts (music and visual) go unnoticed.

  131. 131.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack:

    Nowadays series seem to pack it in around mid-December, come back in mid-January, and then there are a couple more gaps in late January and somewhere in March-April.

    “Ratings months”, when the upcoming advertising rates are set, are November, February, and May. That’s why the the giant gimmicks — special guest star cameos, stuff blowing up, romantic/sexual pairings — are scheduled for those months, in the hopes of goosing viewer curiosity. (That’s also when the local news broadcasts run very important serious week-long “informational” exposes like ‘Are There Child Predators Loose in Your Neighborhood? ! ?’ and ‘Can Your Choice of Laundry Detergents Give You Cancer While Destroying Your Baby’s Chances of Getting Into Yale?’)

    In defense of the new shorter schedules, however, it really has gotten much more expensive & complicated to produce a 42-minute hour of network television. I recently watched the first (1982) season of “groundbreaking, multiple-Emmy” ST. ELSEWHERE via Netflix, and the ‘storyline’ for each of those episodes would occupy about 15 minutes of a GREY’S ANATOMY episode or 10 minutes of HOUSE MD. The professionalism of the camera work, special effects, soundtracks, and sometimes even acting has also improved by orders of magnitude. (The writing itself, not always so much, but even there I think nostalgia makes us remember our old favorites as better written than they often were.) I’m definitely among those who’d vote for 19 or 13 or even 6 (BBC) very-good-to-excellent episodes over 22 or 38 episodes containing 6 episodes’ worth of good writing bulked out with tshirt-ready cliches, panning shots of scenery, and characters staring wordlessly at each other / driving franctically from place to place for no reason but to use up another 90 seconds.

  132. 132.

    Sly

    This sort of went under the radar everywhere except the WSJ, but Sen. Leahy introduced a bill today that would repeal the anti-trust exemptions that health and medical malpractice insurance companies have under the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act.

    http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200909/091709a.html

    This is pretty good news, and basically means that Leahy is trying to do an end-run around the milquetoast reforms taking place in the Finance Committee. McCarran-Ferguson essentially makes insurance exempt from the Sherman Act so long as a state regulator is in place (some practices aren’t exempt), and was drafted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners after the SCOTUS held that insurance was interstate commerce in 1944. They didn’t want to lose their little fiefdoms, after all.

    Leahy did the same thing back in late 2006, but the bill was bottled up in the Judiciary Committee until the new session started. Insurance lobbyists raised holy hell, saying that it would kill small insurers, who “need” to share loss data, policy language, and consumers who engage in joint underwriting. The reality is that most large for-profit insurance companies wouldn’t survive without their exemptions from Sherman, because their business model depends on barriers to entry, price fixing, and market allocation.

    It got a good amount of support following Katrina and Rita, when lawmakers from the Gulf Coast got an earful from their constituents as to how they were being ripped off by companies like AllState. Even Trent Lott joined as a sponsor of the bill.

  133. 133.

    Mayken

    @Something Fabulous: Oooh, oooh, User fail (as we say in IT, PEBKAC)! Sorry, that was supposed to be addressed to the comment by JK in response to mine. Mea culpa.

    @Anne Laurie: yeah, that’s why I haven’t put on my dancing shoes yet. But I do really want to see these clowns go under and it would be poetic justice if Tiller’s murder made more people recognize the crazy and stop giving.

  134. 134.

    Mayken

    @Mayken: Not sure why my comment at 130 is in moderation but @Something Fabulous sorry, my comment was supposed to be addressed to JK’s comment above yours. Complete user fail!

  135. 135.

    Anne Laurie

    @burnspbesq:

    Senator Dukakis? Hmmm, not sure how I feel about this one.

    Just until January, while we gear up the special election for Teddy’s permanent replacement. One of the local news stations cornered Dukakis yesterday, and he said that yes, he definitely agreed it was important for Massachusetts to have a full team on the Senate floor, and no, he would not “speculate” about who Governor Patrick might appoint, when the legislature hadn’t even agreed to such an appointment yet. Whatever you think about Dukakis’ presidential run — and I may be one of only three women in America who found the man sexy — you have to admit that his record is such that if he says he’d step down in January, he’ll step down.

    Of course Therese Murray, and at least a good handful of her fellow statespersons, would love to have “Senator” on their resumes, if only they could figure a way to warm the seat in DC without giving up their day jobs on Beacon Hill. I suspect most of their jurisprudential reluctance to ‘tamper’ with the ‘will of the people of the Commonwealth’ is a time-waster while everybody’s public-relations experts polls a range of possible options to see who can wring the maximum juice out of this without annoying too many potential supporters.

  137. 137.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    I don’t qualify to join the AsianGrrrl Balloon-Juice Asian Posse but can I be a cheerleader? While I am as pasty white as fresh fallen snow I do get Chinese-eyes daily from getting stoned. Eh? Eh?!

    I don’t have any pompoms but I can see if I can get my wife to shake hers for us.

  138. 138.

    JK

    @Comrade Luke:

    I have no doubt that you’re right regarding a desire to save money on production costs.

    I’m just grateful for the number of extremely high quality drama series that have aired or are currently airing in recent years – The Sopranos, The Shield, The West Wing, ER, Damages, Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, Mad Men, Law and Order, L&O:CI, L&O:SVU, and House.

  139. 139.

    Calouste

    @Steeplejack:

    BBC series do 6 episodes usually. Yes, six. Fawlty Towers had 2 seasons of 6 episodes and that was it. Luckily for the BBC it was so good they could repeat it every year for more than a decade without anyone complaining. Mr. Bean? Didn’t even do seasons, just 14 separate episodes.

  140. 140.

    JK

    @Anne Laurie:

    Regarding the issue of writing in tv drama series, my personal feeling is that the quality of writing in series such as The Sopranos, The Shield, The West Wing, ER, Damages, Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, Mad Men, Law and Order, L&O:CI, L&O:SVU, and House is head and shoulders above any drama series that aired in the 1970s, 1980’s and early to mid 1990’s. I was born in the early 1960’s, so I’m not in a position to evaluate the quality of writing for tv drama series which aired in that decade.

  141. 141.

    Deech56

    About the cats:

    The orange tabby is the alpha male and he gets the choicest spots, leaving the van-wannabe, not-Tunch to find the second best spot. The cats force me to pack very quickly – as soon as the suitcases are open they take up shop.

  145. 145.

    AkaDad

    I have a 6-inch penis. Is that a problem?

    I imagine that’s a question for your girlfriend/boyfriend.

    I used michellemalkinsmath, so in other words, it means Rush suffers from a permanent case of shrinkage.

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