Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

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

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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

Optimism opens the door to great things.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

The willow is too close to the house.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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

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

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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Reader Interactions

137Comments

  2. 2.

    Strandedvandal

    I just changed to a picture I took when I was in Costa Rica. Warm, sunny. Good to look at that when weather outside is miserable.

  8. 8.

    cleek

    i’ve got mine set to rotate through the default Win7 landscape shots.

    my desktop is usually completely obscured, tho. so it doesn’t really matter.

  11. 11.

    Sentient Puddle

    If you’re switching wallpaper on your Mac, I’m quite the fan of the leopard in snow wallpaper. I also recall using a black and white lightning photo included back in 10.4 that I liked quite a bit…not sure if it’s still around.

    Otherwise, I generally prefer solid colors for my wallpaper. It may just be an issue of perception, but they always seemed to slow my computer down back in the day, and that conditioned me.

  14. 14.

    jibeaux

    Mine’s of a food truck in Puerto Rico called “SOL FOOD”, with a sign on it in the middle of the day saying “Gone snorkeling / hasta manana.”
    For some reason it never makes me feel bad even though it is the opposite of my life.

  22. 22.

    Lavocat

    Waterfalls with a sound link.

    So soothing that you might actually fall asleep at your desk.

    Then again …

  24. 24.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Avoid the problem – get Win 7 starter, which doesn’t let you change the wallpaper.

  25. 25.

    Sentient Puddle

    @Tim F.: I actually do have a blue screen image as my work screen saver. And it’s brilliant! I’ve had more than a few people chatting with me in my cube, saying “uh oh” when the screen saver kicks in, then get thrown off balance when I poke the mouse and my computer is apparently working again.

    Downside is that I’ve also seen various blue screens on coworkers computers, and assume it’s also a screen saver. But…their problem.

  26. 26.

    BeccaM

    Go for Ryan Bliss’s work at DigitalBlasphemy.com. I bought a lifetime subscription and my desktop wallpaper has been one of his for years now.

    Even without a paid subscription, he has a ton of great free wallpapers. Plus a trial period if you’re not sure.

  29. 29.

    IndyLib

    I use the abstract setting in my Mac system preferences. Nice swirly, tie-dye looking background that is set to change every half-hour.

  30. 30.

    J.W. Hamner

    I found Glen Greenwald’s latest to be both bizarre and absurd.

    The only people arguing that there were 50 votes for a public option were on FDL and DKos… the fact that we now know there aren’t and weren’t, doesn’t prove a Democrat conspiracy to punch hippies… it proves FDL and DKos were wrong when they kept screaming about how much more awesome things would be if we tried to do HCR solely through the reconciliation mechanism. Not only would we have lost all the regulations and the like, we wouldn’t even have gotten a public option.

    So the Progressive “strategery” thrown about by people like Armando all summer and fall is shown to have been seriously wrong… and yet it’s all Obama’s fault.

    Classic.

  33. 33.

    BenA

    @J.W. Hamner:
    I do think there’s a little bit of “lets placate the angry left” in the list of senators who support the public option…. but yeah for the most part the Greenwald thing is first rate concern trolling.

  44. 44.

    BenA

    My background is almost always just black. A throwback from the days when putting a background on a Windows box would cause your harddrive to churn like a chainsaw through concrete.

  45. 45.

    Clark

    @Curtis:

    Nice one, especially for a first comment.

    John, I have a nice picture of the Arch in St. Louis that I use as a screen shot. It’s taken from underneath the Arch looking up at the sky, with the sun brightly shining and only partially obscured by the Arch.

    Bonus: It was taken while waiting for Obama to speak at the rally that drew 100,000 to the Arch grounds.

  46. 46.

    A Mom Anon

    The PBS website had a few really nice pics from the National Parks you can use for wallpaper. I rotate between some of those and a B&W of John Muir taken somewhere in the Sierras.

    (I also really loved the Ken Burns National Parks series,I have it on DVD and I watch it whenever I’m having an especially crappy time of it. The story of Stephen Mather is interesting,I wish more was known about him and his life)

  54. 54.

    licensed to kill time

    I have a cool picture of a crop circle taken with a fisheye lens that shows the sky, the field and the (apparent) curvature of the earth. A friend saw my desktop and said “it’s not real, you know” and I said maybe not, but it’s a beautiful image. Some of them are incredibly complicated and lovely. Just be prepared for some friendly ribbing if you use one.

    (I was going to say tickling, but…..)

  55. 55.

    Citizen_X

    On-topic (open thread!) but demoralizing, here, h/t Digby, is a good post by Allison Kilkenny about how criminalizing normal childhood behavior and normalizing torture is producing a more docile public and crushing democracy. Her point about the civil rights movement is especially apt.

    Oh, and if you’re tired of Hubble shots, Cole, you’re DEAD to me! DEAD!

  56. 56.

    theturtlemoves

    @BeccaM: I’ll second the Digital Blasphemy rec. While right now I’m sporting the Lone Wanderer walking into the sunset with Dogmeat at his side (I am still addicted to Fallout 3 over a year on), I’ve had some Digital Blasphemy background up off and on for years.

  57. 57.

    Sloegin

    Natl Geographic has a desktop of the day that you can save as wallpaper. DeviantArt is great, but you’ll get sucked in forever looking at everything.

  60. 60.

    Maude

    Have a look at desktopnexus Black Horse. It is for Xp, but it nice for about two days.
    Go to technology, Windows.
    It has a lot of great wallpapers. You can also enlarge the wallpaper to see if you like it before you download it.

  65. 65.

    mikey

    I go to flickr and steal people’s vacation shots. Some of them are lovely and dramatic and exotic. Lakes in New Zealand, a beautiful modern shot of that infamous cliff on Saipan, tiny cobblestone roads in eastern europe, victoria falls, the Bosporus, it’s endless and quite an enjoyable way to spend an hour…

    mikey

  66. 66.

    srv

    John, yes, go spend some time on flickr, deviantart or photo.net. If you find something from there, throw some karma or dough – these people don’t upload fine pics not to be used somewhere.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorenzemlicka/2858350973/in/set-72157613143028788/

    There’s a kid from the Seychelles or Maldives that just has incredible shots. I don’t think this is the guy, but an example:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/matey/2060394246/in/set-72157605948335686/

  67. 67.

    Joel

    I have an awesome picture of Angkor Wat on my desktop. (I can’t find the original link)

    Here’s one of Wat Arun in Bangkok. The skyline looks too low, I wonder if it’s been photoshopped.

    there are other stunning landscapes, IMHO like Mendocino, CA, for example.

  71. 71.

    Curtis

    @twiffer:
    That’s not going too far, sausage and bacon strips were meant for each other.
    Although there’s nothing wrong with two sausages or two bacon strips.

  74. 74.

    gbear

    My wallpaper is landscape photos taken on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin. I’ve had them up for a couple years and I love the area so much I never get tired of looking at them.

    Pick an unbusy photo that you’ve taken on your absolute favorite drive. It will always transport you away from the computer.

  75. 75.

    Stephen1947

    Wikipedia is an excellent source of wallpaper since most of its illustrations are big files – plus it has a whole extra Wikimedia component which you can use to look up just images. So whatever you’re interested in other than pets and Hubble (i’ve been using the same Hubble shot since November), just wiki it and you will probably find what you want.

  83. 83.

    craptractor

    @J.W. Hamner:

    “So the Progressive “strategery” thrown about by people like Armando all summer and fall is shown to have been seriously wrong… and yet it’s all Obama’s fault.”

    Uh, who said that? The Greenwald piece you’re citing lays the blame on “Congressional Democrats.” If they aren’t responsible for their own unwillingness to vote for the PO then who is? You had a pretty reasonable argument going there but your conclusion seems to have gone off the rails a bit.

  85. 85.

    jl

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Tunch is not a ‘pet’. This fudamental brute fact of Cole’s life is clear to all the B-J readers if not to Cole himself.

    Cole needs to reach the stage of ‘acceptance’ of his current situation in life and set a Tunch ‘Obey’ graphic as his computer wallpaper.

    Just go ahead and press the button, Cole. Get it over with.

  90. 90.

    J.W. Hamner

    @craptractor:
    For the most part you are right… he’s is just blaming Dems in general for not wanting a public option and jerking Progressives’s chains. However there is this:

    I’ve argued since August that the evidence was clear that the White House had privately negotiated away the public option and didn’t want it, even as the President claimed publicly (and repeatedly) that he did.

    It probably isn’t enough to justify the assertion that he is “blaming Obama” exactly, but I’m probably more sensitive to the “Obama conspiracy against the Public Option” since I’ve argued with Greenwald supporters about in the past (Mainly at Yglesias’s place).

  91. 91.

    canuckistani

    @anonymoose:

    Those are fantastic. My own astrophotography attempts were considerably less successful. But as you say, the knowledge that you did it yourself makes up for a lot of flaws.

  94. 94.

    craptractor

    @J.W. Hamner: Yeah I saw that part, but given that it was towards the bottom and he’d opened the piece by mentioning Congressional Dems multiple times I didn’t really feel like it would’ve been accurate to say he was blaming the O. I mean, I am a Greenwald supporter and from observation of the WH’s behavior I’m extremely sympathetic to the idea that the PO was a bargaining chip. To me that just stands to reason based on the way they’ve tried to dance around making any kind of concrete pronouncements on the issue since taking office. All the same, I realize this is just a theory (which, by the way, Greenwald explicitly states in his post as well) and his link supporting the claim that there were 50+ votes for the PO goes to an FDL list that requires leaps of faith, ie. Senator X voted for Bill Y which contained the PO, therefore Senator X supports the PO. By that logic we have 60 Senators who publicly support the Nelson/Landrieu deals.

    At the same time, the point Greenwald raises about Dems potentially being whipped to oppose the PO is troubling. Ok, so maybe they’re doing that in order to get Sanders to back down by demonstrating that his roll call vote would crash and burn, but wouldn’t that mean they’d assume Sanders isn’t willing to call the vote unless he thinks he’d win? If it can win let him call the vote; if it can’t win and he won’t call the vote as a result then nothing gained/lost; if it can’t win and he’ll call the vote anyway then what is gained by putting more Dems on record in opposition? Greenwald’s explanation might not be right but from what I can see the alternative requires beating the 11th dimensional chess horse into an even finer puree. Am I missing something?

  96. 96.

    Randy P

    @licensed to kill time: Wait. Not real? But if this wasn’t created by aliens, who could have done it? Or wanted to?

    On another topic, since this seems to be the current open thread, I haven’t seen anyone else mention this: Bizarre update to the story of Amy Bishop, the professor who shot up her department at the University of Alabama. Police sent a robot into her house and there are reports of “a small boom followed by a larger boom.”

    http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=12131188

    Why would they use a robot for this in the first place? Suggests to me they suspected booby traps.

  111. 111.

    JC

    FYI on calling reps, getting them on record.

    I got the text from OFA – I’m a subscriber – with directions to call a certain number, and ask for my representative, stating my support for health reform (which was nice, since I have an i-Phone, I just click on the number, it dials. No work involved).

    I was connected to the White House switchboard, and asked for the office of Jackie Speier.

    So, I got someone, who asked me for my info, and then I said to please pass the bill. She thanks me, and then I also asked what was her ‘official’ position on the bill.

    She had no official position.

    I asked if she is planning to have an official position.

    The answer was no. And the person on the phone, wasn’t willing/able to get back to me about when Speier WOULD have an official position.

    This tracks with what I was told 2 months ago, when calling the local office here.

    Now, I shouldn’t really have to worry about Jackie Speier, representing San Mateo county and the southwest part of San Francisco.

    But there must be some reason why she is staying mum, right?

    Is it only because the final details of the bill are still being worked out?

  112. 112.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m planning for my St. Patrick’s Day dinner and discovered that you can make brownies with Guinness … and they’re (reasonably) low calorie, too!

    Black and Tan Brownies (from Cooking Light)

    So that’s going on the menu along with the traditional corned beef and cabbage from the crockpot. Some years we watch The Quiet Man, but I’m feeling more “Father Ted” this year.

    Ted and Dougal trying to write Ireland’s entry for the Eurovision song contest: “My Lovely Horse”

  115. 115.

    craptractor

    Oh and on the actual subject of the thread I find a lot of wallpaper via google images. Just put in your screen resolution and a broad theme, color, etc. ie. ‘1680×1050 nature’ or black, modern, architecture, etc. and you’ll find all sort of stuff.

  116. 116.

    Matthew C

    I like to search flickr for decayed or abandoned buildings. That’s what I use for my wallpaper.

    And thank you for calling it wallpaper and not your screensaver. I don’t know why it bugs me so much when people do that, but it does.

  117. 117.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne:

    Black and Tan Brownies for St. Patricks Day?

    I sense some potential dissonance. Better be careful with that. The brownies might need some rebranding. I don’t think they even call the black and tan beer mix ‘black and tan’ in the Irish Republic.

  119. 119.

    TrevorB

    For my osX setup you can download all of the national geographic photo contest contestants, then just switchthrough them every 15 mins or so.

  121. 121.

    Sentient Puddle

    I just noticed that I’m apparently in moderation for saying that Sarah Walker is hot. Bah.

  124. 124.

    4jkb4ia

    Notre Dame is looking sensational. YOU try to beat them. That is all. Shabbat Shalom.

    (Evidently SLU looked sick today)
    (Illinois won!?)

  127. 127.

    J.W. Hamner

    @craptractor: The whole problem is Greenwald’s strawman framing. He’s says all over the place that “they” claimed majority support for the public option in the Senate… but “they” is Firedoglake! If there is any scandal/conspiracy going on here it’s Jane Hamsher’s. Nobody from the White House, and nobody from the Congressional leadership ever said there was majority support for a public option in the Senate. So how could there possibly be a conspiracy to deceive Progressives when all the deception is self inflicted?

    He’s not wrong that very few Senators want to have to take a vote on the public option… many clearly want to hit the sweet spot of supporting it without having to have a vote trail. I don’t really think this should surprise anyone… these are politicians. I agree with him that this has been true for quite some time.

    However, I would suggest that most of the reason that the Senate doesn’t *really* want a public option (while saying they do), is because it will cause trouble in the House… the votes we need are not the liberal ones, in general… not because they want to twist the knife in Glen Greenwald’s heart.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    I’m not going to worry about it — if G can order a black and tan at Finn McCool’s, which is owned and run by Irish immigrants, then clearly no one in California is all that upset about it.

    I remember some people whining about Ben & Jerry’s having a black & tan ice cream, but they sounded like the proverbial Some Guy With A Fax Machine who were looking for things to be upset about.

  133. 133.

    burnspbesq

    I used to have a screensaver of Ansel Adams photos of Yosemite. That was massively cool.

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