Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

I really should read my own blog.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Let there be snark.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Republicans in disarray!

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

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

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

In my day, never was longer.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

“But what about the lurkers?”

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70Comments

  3. 3.

    A Mom Anon

    Coffee and perhaps a sigh of relief,a small one. I have to admit,I’m worried some nutbag is going to open fire in DC tommorrow after this bill passes,these people are freaks,and not in a fun way.

    Thursday I took my awesome doggie in for her spay and to have her back dew claws removed. She had a bad time when I got her home Thursday afternoon. She whimpered and cried til the after effects from the anesthesia wore off,which meant no sleep for me til Friday night. Of course now she thinks she has no reason at ALL to chill and relax,and is super pissed at me that I can’t take her for her daily walk(she has bandages on her back feets and she’s supposed to chill til her stitches come out). She’s running around chasing the cat and wants to go back to what she normally does,but she can’t. 40 lbs of dog(and growing)isn’t as easy to control as one might think.

    During all this,The Teenager downloaded a virus into my computer via a link he followed on You Tube and I lost everything. Had to take the thing back to the place it was at when it came home new from the factory. Yummy fun that is. Fortunately I had saved all my photos to flash drives,so I didn’t lose anything I couldn’t replace. But still,a pain in the ass.

  5. 5.

    Linda Featheringill

    Good morning.

    To AMA: Wow – you had a fun week, didn’t you?

    I heard a bird this morning that I haven’t heard in months. I guess spring is here. Don’t know what it is. It always sings [lustily] in the dark about an hour before daybreak. Don’t think I have ever seen it.

    Hoping the vote this afternoon will be on C-Span.

  6. 6.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Two slices whole wheat toast; two patties of vegetarian ‘Gimme Lean’ sausage; two brown organic fried eggs; sausage and eggs fried in olive oil.

    50/50 caff/decaf Copenhagen blend/Keny AA coffee. My favorite style of coffee, I don’t care for the dark burnt taste of French roast style.

    Worked four hours yesterday trenching drainage, spreading peat moss and composted manure, then tilling my backyard garden.

    I HURT ALL OVER. Everything gets harder each year with advancing age.

    But the good new is, the upper half of the garden had its final turn and till in of a little additional fertilizer, went fast, because major prep with peat moss and compost was done last fall before winter set in.

    So within next five days I will be planting all the greens, cabbages, and sugar snap peas, all the early, cold weather crops. All that work last fall paid off big time.

    By end of next weekend, the remaining half of the garden will be prepared, including the new and expanded separate strip of herb garden I am starting, it is only in its second year. Then towards middle/end of April, tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, the stuff you need to wait till last frost threat is past, will go in the ground. Here in South Central Indiana, that used to be early to mid-May. You can pretty much count on moving that up to mid- to late April now, reliably. Last year I planted on that schedule and there was no late frost.

    I am experimenting this year with mulching the tomatoes with mulch including pine needles. I researched it, and supposedly they are acid loving and will like it. The area is all covered and ready, all I have to do is rake it aside and plug each plant in the ground when the time comes.

  7. 7.

    A Mom Anon

    @Linda Featheringill: Yes,I’ve had more fun than one human should be allowed to have,lol. I am totally willing to share that fun too,just cuz I’m such a nice person.

    @Napoleon: Throw some cinnamon and vanilla in that oatmeal and I’m totally excited. Add some coffee with caramel creamer and I’m elated. This is what happens when you’re pushing 50 and sleep deprived.

  8. 8.

    geg6

    I couldn’t sleep any later this morning. I feel like a kid on Christmas. Will Santa bring me that HCR that I’ve wanted my entire life? Will I get that student loan reform that I know will spread joy across the land? I don’t know how I can tamp down my anxiety, fear, and excitement. I will atempt to do so by brewing up some Seattle’s Best, juicing some fresh oranges (ridiculously expensive!), and whipping up a batch of my breakfast specialty, Eggs Portugal. Cubed bread, eggs, mustard, milk, cream of mushroom soup, sausage, and cheddar cheese. My mom’s recipe and I have no idea what any that has to do with Portugal. But it is delicious and will keep me busy for a little while so I don’t freak out for a little while, at least. I don’t often indulge in the morning, but the bong may have to come out so I can mellow out enough toþ follow the recipe correctly and make the casserole look pretty. Gonna be a crazy day, I think. Oh, and go Pitt!

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @A Mom Anon — sorry your new pup is going through a rough time and not allowing you much sleep — and *very* sorry about the puter virus, such a pain. Hope all those things improve soon.

    I share your worries about some nutter acting out the more extreme teabag fantasies in the immediate wake of HCR. And I feel much as I did on election eve 2008, a somewhat stressful combination of confident, excited, and apprehensive. I haven’t slept a wink this night just past, not for lack of trying. Read, BJ, lights out, eyes wide open, mind like a hopped-up hamster on a wheel with greased ball bearings, lights on, more reading and BJ, rinse and repeat. Finally, I think around 5:00 a.m., I turned on the teevee again — it was still on C-SPAN — and at that moment I realized why I had needed to stay awake until then. They were re-running the POTUS pep rally with Dems from yesterday, and I turned it on just as Steny Hoyer was introducing him. I had missed his whole speech earlier and was thrilled to watch the whole thing.

    Damn, he’s good. We are so lucky — I will even say we are blessed — to have this man at the helm at this particular time. And his address to the Democratic caucus was one of his finest orations (heh, no teleprompter, bitchez) and deserves to be included the next time someone updates the Obama Spoken Word Anthology on CD.

    Now I’m going to do that trying-to-get-to-sleep thing for a few hours.

  10. 10.

    HRA

    Good morning

    I just woke up at this dark dismal hour on the weekend to start preparing the feast for my once a month family dinner day.

    Breakfast will be cereal and tea.

  11. 11.

    electricgrendel

    Vicodin.

    I’m recovering from leg surgery, but am back doing night shift since my sick time ran out. So- when I get home I’m eating some vicodin and going to bed.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Linda Featheringill: Yes, C-SPAN announced they plan to beging live coverage at 1:00 p.m. Eastern, obviously subject to change if circumstances warrant blah blah. But that’s the plan as of about half an hour ago.

  13. 13.

    Napoleon

    By the way I failed to mention that I am making my oatmeal with the tears of Bart Stupak.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @electricgrendel: Ouch. All best for fast, comfortablee and complete recovery.

    I think I said I was going to try to get some sleep.

  17. 17.

    debit

    I’ve been up since 5:00. Rolled over and nudged a cat who squawked about it and woke me up.

    Breakfast is peanut butter toast and Costa Rican coffee. Then the makings for chili go into the crockpot and I start praying to the weather gods that today will be a little bit warmer than yesterday so I can take my rebuilt bike out for a spin.

    @Napoleon: Mmmmm, tears.

  20. 20.

    RedKitten

    I was up from 3 until 4:30 with SamKitten, who is sneezing a lot and has a distinct snotty sound to his breathing (snotty as in full of mucus, not snotty as in a 1980’s James Spader character). He just finished his breakfast of Greek yogurt with banana mashed into it, topped off with 6 oz. of formula.

    For us? I’m thinking it might be a steak and eggs kind of day. Oh, and coffee. Multiple pots of coffee.

  21. 21.

    geg6

    Heh. Nancy Pelosi is even more awesome than I thought if Politico is to be believed. Apparently, she is the one who convinced the big O to go big on HCR reform after the Brown debacle. Rahm was counseling the small, incremental change strategy and Nancy said no. Called Rahm’s strategy “Kiddie Care.” Love, love, love her. She has a bigger one, apparently, than the Pen1s of Doom.

  24. 24.

    Sarah in Brooklyn

    a bagel and green tea before my run. wondering if i can get cspan on my phone at the cat rescue place this afternoon.

  25. 25.

    mikefromtexas

    Breakfast? Either making migas or going out for barbacoa tacos, maybe menudo. It is South Texas. Except it’s about 40 degrees outside, with a NW wind blowing 25-30. In late March, middle of spring break. This shit just doesn’t happen here. So it’ll probably be migas.

  26. 26.

    freelancer

    Damn, a substantive piece of GMA about how the HCR will actually affect specific people who are being fingerfucked by the status quo. Their whip count is 212 YES / 214 NO, with the rest in the middle. Good report, except the reporter pronounced Skype as “Skupp”.

  28. 28.

    jeffreyw

    @mikefromtexas: Had to look up “migas”. Now I want some. Pics later. Stay tuned.

    Grind coffee for the second pot and wake up Mrs J? Or use the Folger’s? Some days start out like this. I’m up at 5am with cspan still on from yesterday. Gonna be on all day. Raining and cooler. Perfect.

  29. 29.

    geg6

    freelancer @26: GMA also had a good segment on the sick and twisted Teabaggers attacking congressmen yesterday. I sure hope the Capitol police force is being beefed up today. These people have lost whatever vestiges of humanity they ever had and I’m frightened for our congressional leaders.

  32. 32.

    debit

    @demo woman: Fabulous article, thank you! I especially liked this bit:

    Mr. Obama did not need any prodding from Ms. Pelosi, his aides say. The Scott Brown election came on the eve of his first anniversary in office, and he told aides he was irritated that his presidency appeared to be stalled. He was eager to do what he had done so often in the presidential campaign: cast caution aside in favor of bold action.

    More bold action, please. Be brave, be bold and we will reward you.

    Oh man, I take that back. This was my favorite part:

    The speaker, though, was determined to go ahead. “We will go through the gate,” she said at a news conference on Jan. 28. “If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed.”

    I fucking love this woman.

  34. 34.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    I am just glad I don’t have for a congressman the guy from California Rep Devon Nunes on Washington Journal right now. What a lying POS. He has been babbling for 10 minutes and has not said a single thing that is true. And has used the “Soshulism” and “totalitarian” words about every other word for characterizing HCR and dems efforts to pass it. Complete with code for expecting violence by saying “dangerous” with every nearly every breath. Must be the new gooper talking point. The dude is genuinely scared to death this bill will pass. You can almost smell the fear, and the call ins are no different. Misinformation and patent lies from the wingnuts. Crazy.

  38. 38.

    Linda Featheringill

    I think the intelligent and rational GOP folks are scared. Not because they think the bill itself contains something terribly evil but because it will solidify ObamaPower. And if folks like us, DFH that we are, win one battle who knows what we will try to do next.

    I think the real sticking point is not the cost of health care or any of that but rather the idea of giving rights to the powerless. If they have fewer people to dominate and humiliate [Parkinson’s anyone?], is life worth living?

    There is a word I want to use here but am not sure what it is. Maybe it is authoritarianism? Based on the fact that you don’t have to have power to support and defend power.

    If I have the wrong word, somebody please grab the ball and run with it.

  39. 39.

    BethanyAnne

    About Pelosi, one of the things that amuses me the most is when folk call her a San Francisco Liberal. I spent a decade in the Bay Area, and she’s so not a liberal by SF standards. She is probably the most conservative politician that can get elected in SF. A true SF liberal like Daly or Amaniano would scare the bejeebus out of R’s if they could (1) get elected to Speaker, and (2) accomplish their agenda. Neither of those could happen, but still, just another example of folk not knowing anything about the local landscape.

  40. 40.

    Tomlinson

    @Mike Kay:

    6:15 PM eastern time.

    Yah, OK. Bloody great.

    I am flying across the country tonight. East to west. The loooong way.

    My plane leaves at 5:45PM.

  42. 42.

    demkat620

    Morning all.

    Got my coffee and I think we will have yogurt and toast with blackberry preserves.

    Which, btw, Yoplait Lite Cinnamon Roll is very, very good. Also, too.

    Not really a big morning eater.

  45. 45.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Well, this we know:

    (1) The father is not the Republican Party; and
    (2) The father is definitely not the Teabaggers.

    So:

    Enjoy the fruit of your very own loins, if it lives. InTrade has passage down again to 82. But it was devaginated, and appears to have weighed around nineteen pounds coming out.

    Speaking of labor, I am off, so have fun either way. Breakfast is coffee, perhaps a morning tobacco product, and spaghetti.

  46. 46.

    Svensker

    @HeartlandLiberal:

    So within next five days I will be planting all the greens, cabbages, and sugar snap peas, all the early, cold weather crops. All that work last fall paid off big time.

    I hate you.

    That is all.

  47. 47.

    Napoleon

    @Mike Kay:

    Seriously? I swear yesterday they were saying 2. If they are scheduling a 15 minute long vote at 6:15 that is so they end right with the evening news coming on for the east coast. That tells you something about their confidence level.

  49. 49.

    GReynoldsCT00

    Having Sunday coffee right now, peanut butter toast coming up shortly. Right now I’m admiring the sun starting to shine on my deck and the pansies I planted in my pot out there yesterday. Bulbs coming up too. Looooove spring!

    And oh yeah, we hopefully get a shiney HCR bill today and wingnut heads exploding everywhere.

  50. 50.

    maryQ

    Home made baked beans (pinto beans, molasses, mustard, fresh bacon, cooked low and slow for a few hours), tea with local goat’s milk and local honey, and majority rule.

  51. 51.

    JGabriel

    @Napoleon:

    By the way I failed to mention that I am making my oatmeal with the tears of Bart Stupak.

    Don’t forget to add the stem cells of aborted babies.

    .

  52. 52.

    Fergus Wooster

    Leftover Indian food, which I couldn’t eat last night because I got an attack of the yuks (not uncommon in this household, I’m afraid).

    Braising a Berkshire pork shank this morning, though, to be chilled and roasted to crackling goodness either this evening or tomorrow.

    And Nancy Pelosi rules.

  55. 55.

    Chris Johnson

    Strangely, I slept just fine. I’m a small business guy with no hope for health care of any sort, and a diagnosis for asthma in my past, and diabetes in my family. I have very much concluded that it’s luck of the draw for me- so much that it’s hard to care about the HCR push. In my mind, I have already died, unable to pay for medical things, so each day I live is a gift.

    Coffee and (soon) a bagel w. creamcheese for me, and I’ll be following all this with interest. In some ways it’s not the HCR that hooks me with this one, it’s the impending race rioting. That really pisses me the hell off, because I’m white and have too many black friends and even black potential lovers (i.e. I’ve had the ‘Hell yeah, I’d go there with this person’ thought) to shrug it off.

    I’m not a violent or hateful guy, but I am furious at these nimrods. I’m like “FINE. Let’s fight you again. You have no idea how not on your side I am…”

    Best wishes for the creaking mechanisms of civilization to stay in play- and let’s keep a sharp eye for signs that they’re failing. I do not believe in peaceful Gandhi resistance to this. That is for establishing that a subgroup is not subhuman. This is more law enforcement and defending a civil society against basically terrorism TOWARD a subgroup, not that small a subgroup either, and let’s not overlook Hispanics, who are also Americans. We’re looking at potential widespread armed terrorism toward OUR PEOPLE and I do not like it, one bit.

  56. 56.

    colby

    InTrade has passage down again to 82

    That’s actually UP from the last time you mentioned inTrade (and indeed, from the last time I checked it, last night around midnight).

    And, oh, chee, now it’s up to 84…

  57. 57.

    Linda Featheringill

    To Chris Johnson:

    Cheer up, man. Your average hippie [aging or otherwise] may look like a cupcake but actually is a pretty good fighter. Just because those ijits use fighting words does not mean they could win a fight.

    Besides, we DFH types actually know how to cooperate. I doubt if the ijits can do that.

    We are all in this together. :)

  58. 58.

    Steeplejack

    Breakfast: coffee and a leftover biscuit with strawberry jam now, scrambled eggs and sausage in a bit. Worked late last night and just got up about 9:30, so this is still (sort of) early morning for me. Check on the backlog of Balloon Juice threads, do the crosswords, see if there is a Premier League game on for background entertainment. (Ah, Blackburn and Chelsea at noon.) Right now I’m listening to Mayer Hawthorne’s A Strange Arrangement. Smooth neo-soul. Check out “Maybe So, Maybe No.”

    The weather has been beautiful all week here in NoVa, which is much appreciated after our rough, rough winter. When I was walking to work yesterday it was about the first day that the ground wasn’t still spongy from all the water it has absorbed. And there are still a few small piles of snow in the deep shade.

    Haven’t been able to follow HCR as closely as I would have liked this week, but maybe that’s a good thing? Heh. It looks like our long national nightmare is almost over moving to the next phase.

    Gonna enjoy the day, and then it’s back to work for store-wide inventory at 6:00 p.m. Good times. Should get out about 1:00 a.m., but then I’ll have Monday and Tuesday off. Hope everyone has a good day.

  60. 60.

    carolatl

    My husband just suggested that I take my Obama sticker off my car this morning, just in case. We live in the northern suburbs of Atlanta – very, very, very conservative. It pisses me off to no end that I even have to consider doing this. What’s the BJ consensus – take it off or no?

  61. 61.

    gbear

    @GReynoldsCT00:

    Right now I’m admiring the sun starting to shine on my deck and the pansies I planted in my pot out there yesterday.

    Damn, we still have a month to go before we can confidently put pansies out without condemning them to a frozen death. The sun is out though, and a couple of daffodils at the base of a south-facing retaining wall have decided to go for it. I wish them luck.

    Breakfast was honey-nut cheerios and a glass of OJ.

  62. 62.

    scav

    Coffee Coffee Coffee! And a seriously evil hope that all goes well today and that Madame Speaker is first at the gates with bloody pick-axe raised and all her hair in place. The evil part is because I want my sister to get her anti-pelosi face punched which is a small added glimmer to the basic glory. Still, forgive me my smallness. Also, Coffee first.

  63. 63.

    gbear

    @carolatl:

    I know it’s kind of a gutless solution, but get a sheet of magnetic material and paste the sticker to it. That way you can take it off if you’re going to park it somewhere where you’d worry about your car being vandalized. If you’re worried that people are going to shoot at you while you’re driving, that’s another matter.

    I did that with a BUSHIT sticker and I got the finger a few times while driving, but nothing worse. I used to get some shit for having a rainbow flag on my car, especially if I was driving in Michelle Bachmann’s district.

    Make sure you take it off before going thru a car wash though.

  64. 64.

    b-psycho

    @carolatl: At least you don’t have the one I considered getting before I left that area. I wanted one custom made w/ an image of the confederate flag on fire, with “the south LOST, get over it!” written next to the flag.

  65. 65.

    carolatl

    @gbear: Thanks for the advice. You know, I don’t want to sound crazy paranoid, but I’m going to have my kids in the car with me today and lots of folks around here have guns on them at all times. There’s just so much rage out there right now that I feel a little vulnerable being in such a tiny minority. It does seem gutless to give in to these crazies. OTOH, I’m willing to take a “better safe than sorry” approach where my family is concerned.

  66. 66.

    carolatl

    @b-psycho: OK, that sounds crazily provocative. Good for you!

    My dad lives in a tiny town in Alabama. Every time I’ve gone over to visit him, I’ve worried a little about that sticker. But some of the crap that’s going on out there now is really scary. I seriously think there’s gonna be violence somewhere if HCR passes. I don’t see how it can be avoided.

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    @carolatl:

    Leave it on. Let your freak flag fly.

    But I’m not giving in an inch to fear
    ’cause I promised myself this year
    I feel like I owe it to someone

    I used to live in Atlanta. I’m guessing you live in Cobb County. There are some crazies there, but most of the local wingnuts are lily-livered managerial types, afraid of losing what they have and unable unwilling to see beyond themselves to anyone else. Let ’em know there’s a new sheriff in town. Oh, and he’s a Negro.

    Now if you live in Cumming . . .

  68. 68.

    gbear

    I’m willing to take a “better safe than sorry” approach where my family is concerned.

    Yes, that sounds like a better plan. Good luck & I’m sorry that it’s so rough for you there.

  69. 69.

    carolatl

    @Steeplejack: Yeah, I live in Cobb. The transplanted conservatives are generally okay, but there are enough old school crazies still here that I’m a little concerned. The nasty stickers I see on cars just amaze me. I’m a native, and I just don’t understand sometimes how I’ve gone so far in one direction and so many around here have gone so far in the other.

    And, yeah, you couldn’t pay me to live anywhere in Forsyth County (or Cherokee, Bartow, Paulding, Polk . . .)

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    @carolatl:

    I appreciate your concern for your family, but I think one of the ways that things have to change in this country is for us–“liberals,” “progressives,” DFHs, whatever–to come ouf of the woodwork and let ourselves be seen. And change the default background vibe from Deliverance style crazy to something more normal. Make them think twice about keying a car or whatever because someone might report them. Make them feel like everyone is not automatically with them. Intimidation–even tacit intimidation–is one of the ways they maintain the status quo.

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