Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

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Archives for 2009

How Jack Russell Terrier Puppies Dry Themselves

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Just got a new puppy video. Some quick background. My father is a cleaning Nazi- German background, obsessive compulsive cleaner. Weekly cleaning involves dusting and polishing everything in the house, scrubbing the front and back porch, taking down all light fixtures and cleaning the INSIDE of them, and so forth. Formerly painted walls have been wallpapered because they could not get clean enough, and then two years later, had the wallpaper removed and were repainted because, and I quote, “I got bored with it.” Like I said. Nazi.

We also have two living rooms. One where we are allowed to be in, the other which is reserved for… well, I don’t know who is good enough to be allowed in there. Jesus, maybe. The kids, such as we are, are allowed in there for Christmas. The rest of the time- stay out.

The puppies have had a bath, and immediately raced downstairs into the “good” living room, and are bouncing from couch to couch squirming all over the place while my mother video tapes them. In the background, you can hear my father… vacuuming. At the very end of the tape, listen for the “OH MY GOD!” as he sees what my mother and the puppies are up to:

This is a typical day in the life of the Cole family.

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Deep Thought

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The only person who can save us all is Dan Savage. We need him to do to the phrase “Go John Galt” what he has done with “santorum” and “saddlebacking.”

***

Deep Thought #2:

Republicans are fond of saying Americans can do anything and everything and build anything and everything. Except, according to Republicans dogma, govern themselves. Only individuals can do that.

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Obama’s health care plan is right out of the Karl Rove playbook

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Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post today:

So Obama hasn’t strayed far from Karl Rove’s playbook for routing the opposition. But surely, you say, he’s planning nothing as divisive or as risky as the Iraq war? Well, that’s where the health-care plan comes in: a $634 billion (to begin) “historic commitment,” as Obama calls it, that (like the removal of Saddam Hussein) has lurked in the background of the national agenda for years. We know from the Clinton administration that any attempt to create a national health-care system will touch off an enormous domestic battle, inside and outside Congress. If anything, Obama has raised the stakes by proposing no funding source other than higher taxes on wealthy Americans, allowing Republicans to raise the cries of “socialism” and “class warfare.”

The Iraq war will cost as much as $3 trillion, so about five times as much as Obama’s health care plan. Bush brought the country to war with Iraq under false pretenses, by suggesting a connection with Al Qaeda and claiming there were WMD, whereas the health care crisis — specifically the fact that about 50 million Americans do not have health insurance — is chronically underestimated, probably because most reporters do have health insurance.

This may be the dumbest comparison I have ever read anywhere.

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It’s Only Capitalism If You’re Winning

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Abbie Hoffman, Noam Chomsky and other fringe critics of American capitalism must feel pretty smug right now.

Nearly 100 companies have undertaken programs that allow employees, many of them executives, to exchange sharply depreciated stock options for new awards with more generous terms.

The companies, from Google to Silver Spring-based United Therapeutics, argue that the exchange — which increases the chances that executives will be able to collect rewards even though the company stock has plummeted — is necessary to retain and motivate personnel.

Critics say the practice undermines the purpose of performance-based bonuses and puts the company’s executives and workers on a different plane from ordinary shareholders who have no choice but to hold on to battered stocks or sell them at a loss.

This time around “Black Tuesday” marks the moment when the traditional arguments for modern American business linked arms and jumped out a window. It has become hard not to conclude that the concept of ‘risk’, at least as it pertains to executives, is a lie. Remember how salary bonuses rewarded performance? In practice execs saw the same bonuses whether the firm was booming or spinning its wheels.

Now we know a firm can collapse into a smoking hole and bonus checks will still find their way to the executives responsible. That makes salary bonuses into something more like an attendance award, except compared with ordinary workers who get docked for each half-day they miss for an unscheduled cancer treatment it’s not even that. The general contours of the current crisis make the same point – lose some money and you’re screwed, but if enough firms lose enough money everyone gets to start over with public money.

The new argument that we have to treat wealthy earners even more lavishly or else the CEO might downsize himself may be true, but it sort of invalidates the original argument that bonuses represent some sort of risk. That leads more or less directly to the conclusion that Phil Grammish defenders of modern American capitalism were either lying or stupid (as always, both is an option). That does not make capitalism’s various malcontents automatically correct, but it does suggest that if you want observers who are consistently plugged into reality your search should start there.

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Rick Santelli wasn’t available?

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Fred Hiatt has outdone himself this morning. He’s assembled a panel of “experts” to whine about Obama “bleeding the rich” and the first one to weigh in is Jim Cramer:

As someone who can expect a real shock when I get an Obama-shredded paycheck the moment his plus-$250,000 tax levy kicks in, I can’t be thrilled. Only the brain-dead like to take a pay cut for doing the same job. I probably won’t get paid for my work until July, with my current salary going to fund an immense expansion of the federal budget ordered by the man I voted for.

If there’s one person I’d like to see go Galt it’s Jim Cramer.

Greg Mankiw and Michael Scherer’s the “universally respected” Douglas Holtz-Eakin show up to whore themselves — as economists are wont to to do — as well. Mankiw ends:

President Obama’s proposal to raise taxes at the top to further cut taxes at the bottom has one rationale: using the coercive power of the state to “spread the wealth around.” In addition to the obvious disincentive effects, the policy raises deep philosophical questions. If one citizen of a nation can lay claim to the wealth of his more productive neighbor, shouldn’t poor nations have the right to lay claim to the resources of richer nations such as the United States?

Because a 35% top tax rate is a Randian paradise but 39% is a philosophical problem.

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Friday Night Open Thread

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Some quick links:

1.) This Venn diagram made me laugh out loud.

2.) The birthers got slapped down by a judge. Again.

3.) Don Siegelman’s conviction mostly upheld.

4.) The Republicans really are trying to bring back the golden age of Hoover, proposing a total spending freeze.

5.) Obama will overturn the Bush stem cell decision, causing K-LO to state “Another Shot at Life from the Obama Administration.” Given her antics this morning, I want everyone to take a good look this picture:

Attention humans: After that point in your “life,” K-Lo ceases to give two hoots in hell about you. There is a reason they call it the “culture of life.”

6.) Matt Taibbi was on Hardball tonight, and his facial expressions were of visible disgust the entire time he was on. Update- video here:

7.) Don’t forget Real Time with Bill Maher is on tonight.

8.) The Unitarian Jihad name generator is still funny.

9.) An almost live action shot from the Tunch Cam 2009. Apparently we are still crabby:

I grow more convinced he is going to kill me in my sleep with every passing day.

10.) Bernie Madoff is probably going to plead guilty. If you got screwed by Madoff, it is your right to be heard.

11.) If CNN runs one more story or has one more comment about Michelle Obama’s arms, I may lose it.

If you have anything to add, here is a shiny new thread.

Also, BSG tonight, I believe.

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