Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

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

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Come on, man.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open thread

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  5. 5.

    gogol's wife

    That’s really funny.

    Thanks to someone on the comments last night who mentioned looking up an ancestor on the Ellis Island website, I was inspired to find my father there (he died in 1984). I now know that he arrived on May 25, 1910 — so I can celebrate the 100th anniversary of his coming to America. Thanks, Balloon Juice.

  8. 8.

    gogol's wife

    @DougJ:

    The Hungarian part of the Hapsburg empire — present-day Slovakia. It was very hard to find him on the list because he told many different stories about how to spell his last name. Even when I went to his birthplace and found some relatives, it didn’t help, because he was illegitimate and they have a different last name.

  10. 10.

    JGabriel

    Mock if you like, but I found it profoundly moving – the comedy part of the tragicomic being well-balanced by the tragedy in this theater of the absurd.

    How can one not suffer a complete nervous breakdown at Charlie’s final plaintive cry: What’s gonna happen?

    .

  11. 11.

    Mark S.

    Larison on McCain:

    He determined that the fastest way to get attention and to aggrandize himself was by breaking with his party in melodramatic fashion over issues that happened to appeal to mainstream media journalists and pundits. . . It helped that he always frames his disagreements with others in the most obnoxious, moralizing way possible, so that he is always playing the heroic crusader against corruption and his opponents are tainted villains on the take.

    While all of this is true for McCain, I was struck by how well this describes Joe Lieberman as well, especially the “obnoxious, moralizing” part. This is what bipartisanship means in DC, and why most people can’t stand it.

  16. 16.

    demo woman

    @SiubhanDuinne: Once again our lovely state is being mocked for the microchip bill. Before the vote a woman spoke about her experience with microchip implantation. If you haven’t read the Political Insider please do although TPM and Washington Monthly talk about the new law. Barnes had a good come back mentioning that if this was such a great concern why is it only a misdemeanor.

    Stuck, Charlie is adorable. I so love to see pics of happy dogs.

  18. 18.

    kay

    @Mark S.:

    During the primaries, he had no scruples about making the most outrageous claims against his opponents, including the lie that Romney favored “surrender” in Iraq, and we saw the same habits emerge during the general election campaign as well.

    I watched the debate where McCain did this to Romney and I just found it so satisfying, because I (foolishly) believed he had finally, finally exposed what a fraud he is, but media rushed to cover for him, and it passed.

    Romney was amazed and really angry at the lie, although he shouldn’t have been. He must not know McCain.

    The article is dead-on. Great read.

  19. 19.

    stuckinred

    When asked by host Bill O’Reilly if he was comfortable with the possibility of racial profiling, McCain said he wold be “very sorry” if it happened, but suggested it’s justified because of “the people whose homes and property are being violated. It’s the drive-by that — the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.”

  21. 21.

    Mark S.

    @Comrade Kevin:

    Big Ben is the first athlete that I’ve actually hoped suffers a career ending injury. Then loses all his money and dies in a gutter.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @demo woman:

    Thanks! I just read Galloway’s Political Insider column and as many of the comments as I could stomach. Did you see the one that said the CIA has been implanting microchips in people since before World War I, maybe since the Spanish-American War?

    Am about to check out TPM and WaMo. Thanks for the reading tip; I’ve been out of state all day and haven’t been on top of anything beyond work.

    ETA: The Charlie Rose video is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. Wonderful!

  25. 25.

    mai naem

    McCain is a spoiled brat son and grandson of Admirals who was a legacy admission to the Naval Academy who them managed to destroy several planes and then was stoopid enough to get shot down or whatever over Vietnam. And I have had this twit not only be my freaking Senator but also my US Rep. Classic carpetbagger. I have thought of switching parties just so that I can vote for JD Hayworth because he would be easier to beat than Vietnam War POW War Hero Now Not Maverick Formerly Campaign Reform Hero US Senator John McCain. But,hey, ask me how I really feel about John Sydney McCain.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    When I was scrolling through the SCOTUS animal cruelty thread a while ago, I was trying to remember where I had recently come across a stunning declaration in unequivocal support of the First Amendment.

    It was this past weekend, on Bob Edwards’ Sunday on NPR in the “This I Believe” segment. This week the statement was from ACLU attorney Arthur Garfield Hays who recorded his piece in the early 1950s, around the time McCarthyism was in full blossom. Here’s a small part of his statement:

    Freedom is a social luxury, say some. History proves that freedom is a social necessity. All this is regarded as platitudinous by most Americans. Yet, there are differences in interpretation. Take freedom of speech, for example. Most people believe not in freedom of speech; they believe in “freedom of speech, but.” I believe in the right of anyone to express any opinion, no matter how wild, radical, blasphemous, or loathsome such opinion might be; and no matter how unpopular, vicious, or discredited the speaker may be.
    __
    Mark you, I’m not talking of incitements to violence or violations of law; those are not opinions. Thought must be free. Men cannot think unless they express themselves. Is this an absolute? Yes, just as the right to think is an absolute. Are there no exceptions? None whatever. Has not society the right to protect itself against noxious ideas? No. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Noxious ideas are like champagne; expose them to the air and they fall flat.” Who can be certain of what is the truth unless all views are heard?

    You can read the transcript, and hear the audio, at http://thisibelieve.org/essay/16627/ . Really worthwhile reading/listening.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @gogol’s wife:

    Thanks to someone on the comments last night who mentioned looking up an ancestor on the Ellis Island website, I was inspired to find my father there (he died in 1984). I now know that he arrived on May 25, 1910—so I can celebrate the 100th anniversary of his coming to America. Thanks, Balloon Juice.

    That was me, and your dad came in roughly two months after my great grandfather. I still need to find my grandfather (g’ grand-dad came over, and then brought his kids over several years later), but that was 1925, so it’s not in the database and I’ll probably have to go to a branch of the National Archives and dig through piles of microfilms.

    dms

  32. 32.

    JGabriel

    So. Now that Arizona is checking all the furriners papers, how long before the tourism industry starts (legitimately) boycotting them?

    I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to be someone with brownish skin from, say, Spain or Italy, in AZ. All it would take is one cop in a bad mood looking at you the wrong way and you could end up in jail for leaving your passport in your hotel room.

    .

  33. 33.

    The Main Gauche of Mild Reason

    Gah, I’m listening to marketplace on the public radio station right now, and they had a segment interviewing business leaders in Little Rock, AK. They started out whining about how government criticism of the bankers and their private jets hurt aerospace firms in the city. Then they whined about the government “takeover” of student loans, saying how it was an honorable business with a “small” profit margin that lenders got into out of philanthropy for students (leaving out the massive govt subsidy to the industry). Then they start criticizing the stimulus package, saying “I’ve seen some government jobs, but I haven’t seen any new industrial jobs open up, clearly the administration doesn’t know what they’re doing”. I wonder if the reporter was a family member or close friend of Megan McArdle.

    If this is really what “business leaders” are like in AK, no wonder Lincoln is such a useless pol.

  35. 35.

    JGabriel

    The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:

    Then they whined about the government “takeover” of student loans, saying how it was an honorable business with a “small” profit margin that lenders got into out of philanthropy …

    Then they should be happy to have the gov’t take it over. All that “philanthropy” can’t be good for the bottom line. Now they can focus on more profitable endeavors, like mortgages and derivatives.

    .

  36. 36.

    demo woman

    Did Tunch eat John? Maybe John was mopping the shower again and he fell and he can’t get up.

  37. 37.

    swalker

    This is the most awesome video ever. I just watched a dvd collection of Beckett plays, I can’t wait to show this to my husband – thank you for posting it!

  39. 39.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    Enter the Age of American Devolution.

    Just a few days after Arizona lawmakers passed an immigration law that will essentially require anyone who is or looks like an immigrant to carry their proof of residency at all times, the Arizona House voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate and prove his own citizenship status.

    edit – didn’t see Gabriel’s post. but here is link

  43. 43.

    Luthe

    Since when did we have ads *between* blog posts? And really, _Mormons_ ads?

    I can deal with headers and sidebars, but between posts is pushing it.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @demo woman:

    The saddest part of the story, to me, is that the woman is very likely schizophrenic. Believing that the government has implanted things in your body to monitor you is an extremely common delusion.

    But did these a-holes in the Georgia legislature get her the help that she needs? No, they paraded her through their chambers to whip up support for a ridiculous bill.

  51. 51.

    SGEW

    This video is amazing. Divine, qua qua qua. And that ending is pure Beckett.

    Rose: Steve is not happy.

    Rose: What’s going to happen?

    They do not move.

    Curtain.

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    Just watched Colbert from last night. George F. Will (sans bow tie) was a complete douchebag both on baseball and politics. And he was extremely condescending to Colbert. The trifecta!

    Will on Obama:

    He is a good American progressive, that is, he believes in progress, poor dear, and he also believes–he believes that there will be lots of progress if he can just get over the Founding Fathers’ fetish about separation of powers and dispersed and limited government and can concentrate enough power in the hands of the various national faculty clubs.

    Jesus, was this guy asleep during the Bush administration?! (Rhetorical question.) They trampled the very idea of “dispersed and limited government.”

    And “various national faculty clubs”? Aside from the extreme humor fail there, the first quasi-“academic” society that springs to my mind is the Federalist Society. You know, the right-wing spooks who legitimized BushCo’s trampling of dispersed and limited government.

  54. 54.

    zhak

    I have a question & I’m hoping one of you good people can answer it. Recently — say the last week or so — I saw a blog post about how Southerners have been re-writing the root cause of the Civil War almost from the get-go. Namely, they went to war for the right to own other human beings, and immediately after they lost the war, they rewrote their reasoning as “state’s rights.” This post featured a run down of various proclamations by seceding states & the number of mentions of slavery versus the number of mentions of state’s rights.

    Can anyone help? It really was a superb post.

    tia.

  55. 55.

    KRK

    @dmsilev:

    I also want to thank you for your mention of the Ellis Island records in last night’s thread. It spurred me to look there and to begin exploring what’s available in Canadian immigration records as well.

  57. 57.

    Svensker

    Years ago when I was living in Los Angeles Charlie had a show on at like 2 in the morning. It fascinated me — he seemed so earnest, so handsome in a blue blazer and khaki kind of way, and so intensely dumb. I felt sorry for him, plugging away in the wee hours trying to drum up viewers.

    Laugh’s on me.

  62. 62.

    J. Michael Neal

    @SGEW:

    This video is amazing. Divine, qua qua qua. And that ending is pure Beckett.

    Actually, it reminds me a lot of some of the exchanges on Cartoon Planet. Someone really needs to get Zorak in there.

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Yutsano #60:

    the pair act out several lude acts

    Why is it that “lude” looks far more “lewd” than “lewd”?

  67. 67.

    zhak

    @Steeplejack:

    No, I don’t usually read him. (Except for Fallows, I think the Atlantic bloggers are terribly over-rated, though I have to say a lot of that feeling is due to McArdle, who is really a very bad writer and an inchoate, silly thinker.)

    I was wondering if it was one of the Confederate History month posts here at BJ, or perhaps something at Crooks & Liars… it’s something I should have made a note of at the time, but was multitasking & now I’m kicking myself about it.

    Bummer.

  69. 69.

    Steeplejack

    @zhak:

    Well, feel free to scroll through Balloon Juice and look up the Confederate History Month threads. The Coates post quotes the secession documents. Sorry it wasn’t exactly what you need.

Comments are closed.