Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

The revolution will be supervised.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

The lights are all blinking red.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

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

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Giving up is unforgivable.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

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Reader Interactions

106Comments

  7. 7.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    John C., Southland was renewed for a new season today. Chuck is still on the bubble, but it looks good.

    Also, saw a sweet little independent film with Zachary Levi, Shades of Ray. I watched it just to see him and was pleasantly surprised by the whole movie.

  8. 8.

    Brian J

    So apparently, Rob Lowe is joining the cast of “Parks & Recreation” on NBC, after deciding to leave “Brothers & Sisters” on ABC. And of course, he famously left “The West Wing” midway through the fourth season, only to fail at launching a show of his own.

    What’s his deal? I mean, it has no real impact on my life, but I wonder how much of it is his personality versus issues with the direction of the show. He joined “Brothers & Sisters” a couple of years after it launched, but he supposedly acted like quite the diva on set.

  11. 11.

    Dave C

    Since we’re talking about TV, does anybody else watch and enjoy NBC’s “Community” like I do? The characterization isn’t spectacular, but they writers and cast consistently make me laugh more than just about any other show on the air right now. Last week, they paid homage to just about every mob movie ever made. . .using chicken fingers!

  14. 14.

    Chuck

    @trollhattan:

    And even when Apple is *literally* kicking down doors, the comments are full of enablers giving Apple special pleading. What the hell does Jobs have to do to lose these people, skull fuck a kitten at the next MacWorld?

  16. 16.

    gwangung

    @Chuck: Y’all should try another instance. This isn’t that out of line when it comes to industrial espionage and trade secrets.

  17. 17.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Chuck:
    Background: Apple did the same thing a couple years ago (IIRC) with some other blog. They are probably claiming it’s a “trade secrets” issue, not a first amendment issue, at least that’s what they claimed last time.

    Still, dick move.

  18. 18.

    freelancer

    I have a major crush on Yvonne Strahovski. I can’t be the only one.

    Like Evangeline Lilly on LOST, if Strahovski ain’t your type, cut it off dude, you’re hopeless.

  20. 20.

    arguingwithsignposts

    And on another note, I’ll say that the audio ad is now even *more annoying* than the $1,000 Walmart gift certificate. Today, for the first time, I had to *mute* my computer when catching up on BJ from the work computer.

    If this doesn’t stop, I’m going to go back to ad-blocker and no-script for this site.

  24. 24.

    Mark S.

    Why does anybody hire this guy? He has a different stupid reason every time he wants out of his contract, which he’s gotten out of about nine of them. My favorite was when he was saying he would really like to coach high school ball. They don’t pay you five million to do that, Larry.

  25. 25.

    freelancer

    @JMY:

    Tom Friendly:

    In the third season premiere “A Tale of Two Cities”, Tom tells Kate that she is not his type.[2] This comment resulted in online discussion in regard to Tom’s sexual orientation,[21][33] and Lindelof and Cuse hinted that a Lost character would later be outed.[34] Gainey joked, “if [Kate’s] not your type, you’re gay”, and began playing the character as such.[26] He tried to subtly flirt with Jack, claiming that this attraction “got [him] through the first half of the season.”

  27. 27.

    Nicole

    @Dee Loralei: Yeah, The Tudors is definitely still chock full of the nakeds but I think I am ready for it to end. It’s hard to top the Anne Boleyn storyline and since they decided to not make Henry a total Jabba the Hut (in real life he was pretty big by this point, yes?) I think they’re having to reach a bit to justify the 5th wife’s cheating. What do you think?

    But I still watch and sigh. I love costume porn.

  33. 33.

    Yutsano

    @jeffreyw: Okay you must have done something right or they’re for the shelter. Either way you should still get to sneak a couple. Does she refrigerate the batter overnight?

  34. 34.

    JMY

    @JK:

    That won’t go to well with the Israeli lobby. It was stupid to say though. I hope people won’t call for his resignation. But, whatever. I’ve had white friends tell me black jokes. And yes, while it pissed me off & made me wonder why they knew so many black jokes, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  38. 38.

    JK

    @rootless-e: @JMY:

    I love a good joke from Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, David Letterman, et al as much as the next person, but I think James Jones was a clueless jackass to treat his appearance at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as some kind of open mike nite. He needs to leave the comedy to the pros.

  43. 43.

    JMY

    @JK:

    Oh, I agree. I was just saying that me personally I don’t get worked up over insensitive jokes, even if they are about my race. But he and anyone else in the administration should just not try to be funny. If they have a thought…just let it go…or the only time to be funny is in a rebuttal to Republicans, conservatives, teabaggers, etc.

  44. 44.

    rootless-e

    @JK: Screw Foxman. He’s another one like the Catholic Bishops with an acute sensitivity to Democratic “sins”.

    He can gayn kuck in dreid as my late grandmother would have said.

  49. 49.

    MikeJ

    @Chuck: Steve Jobs skull fucks kittens as a way to protect you from anything bad that kittens might do. Sure, Linux and Windows users can cuddle and pet a fluffy little kitty, but when they get cat scratch fever they’ll regret it.

  50. 50.

    JK

    @JMY:

    I don’t understand politicians or government appointees who feel the need to prove they’re funny. I don’t see David Letterman or Bill Maher running over to the Brookings Institution or the Council on Foreign Relations and delivering speeches on banking reform or Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

  53. 53.

    slag

    @trollhattan: Tech companies are quickly getting as bad as telecom companies.

    @gwangung:

    In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

    Surprise surprise surprise. You’d think more people would be interested in finding out who’s behind all this garbage. Specifically, those who are supposed to be in the business of informing the public might be curious as to who’s going behind their backs to do their job for them.

  56. 56.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    It took me, for some reason, years to figure out that you just say things like this to troll the blog. I mean, Chuck cannot be even in the top 100 of the best shows ever on tv. Or 200. I will give you maybe 300. By comparison to really good shows of past times, like Hill Street Blues, or Homicide, which were ground breaking in their day, Chuck is just intensely ordinary. It’s basically Earl with spies and a techno theme, and without the twang.

    But considering that NBC isn’t dead to you, it’s basically just dead, in terms of prime time broadcast, by comparison to the rampaging successes of cable tv, I would think that anyone who pays attention to network tv would be praising NBC for even keeping Chuck on the air as long as it has. Their list of programming gaffes is so long it could reach from here to … you know … there.

  57. 57.

    Violet

    @Dave C:

    Since we’re talking about TV, does anybody else watch and enjoy NBC’s “Community” like I do? The characterization isn’t spectacular, but they writers and cast consistently make me laugh more than just about any other show on the air right now.

    I love “Community,” especially Danny Pudi as Abed. The only character I don’t really get is Chevy Chase’s. It’s definitely consistently funny, in a weird, quirky kind of way.

  59. 59.

    ruemara

    @arguingwithsignposts: They are the cutest at that stage. Not so cute when they are singing at the top of their lungs at 3 am to go outside, or eat or whatever the fuck is on their tiny minds. Appreciate the love now.

  60. 60.

    slag

    BTW- if NBC cancels Chuck, they are officially dead to me.

    Wow. Harsh words.

    Having never seen this show and having only read reviews, I’m assuming it’s good. But is it rental worthy?

  62. 62.

    Tommy

    If you are following the Deepwater Horizon spill, the USCG has a new chart of the spill posted.

    The latest NWS forecast will help oil recovery efforts by holding the spill offshore for the next two days, but then things take a turn for the worse:

    Tonight: W to NW winds 1O to 15 KT. Seas 3- 5 FT.

    TUE : W to NW winds 10 to 15 KT. Seas 2 -3 FT.
    TUE NIGHT: NE winds 15 to 20 KT. Seas 3 -5 FT.

    WED and WED NIGHT: Variable winds 5 to 10 KT Seas 3 -5 FT.

    THU: E to SE winds 15 to 20 KT increasing to 20 to 25 KT late. Seas 3 -5 FT Building to 5 -8 FT late.

    FRI: SE to S winds 20 to 25 KT. Seas building to 7- 10 FT.

    SAT: S to SE winds 20 to 25 KT. Seas 8 – 10 FT.

  63. 63.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    @MikeJ:

    Linux and Windows users can cuddle and pet a fluffy little kitty, but when they get cat scratch fever they’ll regret it.

    Heh, in the case of Linux users, when they find that they have run into a hideous problem with some simple everyday thing they can do on a PC or MAC OS every day, like troubleshooting a wireless network problem, or whatever, and have to go on the Internet and start reading the techy geeky forums from hell to get “ideas” on what to do next, and never ever get the frigging thing to work right, they will wish they had only gotten cat scratch fever.

    The difference between big corporate software and communityware is that as bad as big corp software is, somebody in the big corp might have to actually take responsibility for supporting and fixing the problems, whereas with communityware, nobody is really accountable for anything. Those non-accountable people love to give advice (“try setting the port number on the frogfuck driver primary interrogation response to one higher than the REPTILE value you used in the previous version”) that never actually works in your particular context.

    Personally, I always found that working in a situation where if I couldn’t make my stuff work they would FIRE ME was a real motivator to making stuff work. Just saying.

  65. 65.

    Brian J

    I don’t think “Chuck” will be canceled, at least not this season. Its demographics are good and the critical reception is still positive. Plus, NBC has a lot of holes to fill next season, so there’s no reason to add another one by dropping this show.

  66. 66.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    @demo woman:

    Well, Geico commercials make me laugh too, but I don’t hyperventilate that if they take them off the air I will declare a network dead to me. I just make an adjustment and get on with my life. Just as I would if, say, I lost a toenail.

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @AngusTheGodOfMeat:

    O/T but I am very glad to see that you have eschewed your JackBootedThug cowsona and have reclaimed your bovine divinity.

    (Not sure I would have chosen a thread called “Chuck” to do it, but that’s just me . . . .)

  69. 69.

    demo woman

    @JK: Columbo was good but Monk was better. Peter Falk and Tony Shalhoub both were excellent in their roles but Monk took idiosyncracies to a new level.

  70. 70.

    4jkb4ia

    So John,
    a) the Penguins could be the highest seed left in the next round
    b) Game 7 in Washington would be a good opportunity for Obama to drop by.

  75. 75.

    MikeJ

    @AngusTheGodOfMeat: Meh. Buy a support contract from Red Hat any any of another couple of dozen companies. I’ve never had any trouble with it, but I’m a server guy. Which means there’s a severally restricted set of apps that ever get run and nothing gets updated or changed in any way until it’s been tested to death. It runs, it runs well, it runs without any hassle, and I don’t have to reboot it every few days to keep it sane.

    Computers are things that sit in the closet and do what they’re told. Certainly not something to worship.

  76. 76.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    @MikeJ:

    Yes, what the world needs is an operating system that needs a support contract.

    Windows user for nigh onto 20 years, and I have never made a support call to Microsoft for the retail OS (server products, another story, but that’s another world).

    Caveat, I did once drive a car intentionally over a Windows laptop. Several times. With gusto and pleasure.

    Once I apologized to the owner, everything was good.

    Just kidding, it was mine.

  78. 78.

    slag

    @AngusTheGodOfMeat: That’s actually really helpful. I hate feeling like I’m missing out, but then, I hate having to go out of my way to watch stuff only to be disappointed with it. And now that I know that Adam Baldwin is in it, my interest has waned.

    Plus, having recently discovered the genius of a show called NOVA scienceNOW, I’m probably set for quite a while as far as teevee goes. Seriously, if anyone hasn’t seen that show, I highly recommend checking it out. Science magazine shows seem to have come a long way since I last encountered one. This one is excellent! We, in my household, can’t get enough of it.

  79. 79.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Keith G: My Lai:

    I am confident that PBS will do a good job on it.

    I did a masters-level report on My Lai while getting MA in history. I know too much about it. I felt dirty during the entire project and I feel dirty everytime I think about it. I don’t want to watch a program about it.

    It is a good thing that PBS is telling the story, though. Lest we forget.

  80. 80.

    robertdsc

    Caveat, I did once drive a car intentionally over a Windows laptop. Several times. With gusto and pleasure.

    LMAO. Thank you. /Mac guy

  81. 81.

    Keith G

    @Linda Featheringill: I bet.

    We all know the headlines. They have gone into exacting detail interviewing members of Charlie Company and citizen/victims of the hamlet…covering events before, during and after the massacre.

    An amazing program, but not a happy one.

  83. 83.

    Cain

    Man.. I guess I’m in the wrong demographics here. I like watching Supernatural, which is like life action Left4Dead hold the zombies, Fringe, Castle, and um… that’s it? Well I’m waiting for Warehouse 13 to come back. I’m still waiting for some decent sci-fi to come back. They stopped all my fav shows :(

    BTW X-Files is now on netflix streaming..fucking rock.

    cain

  85. 85.

    Cain

    My co-workers and I were discussing the Arizona law and my thoughts on it is that it is going to backfire. Let’s see did manage to deport a whole bunch of illegals (there is a lot I admit), who is going to replace that labor? No american is going to work for that little wages. Consequently, prices go up. Fruits and vegetables, landscaping, and whatever else go straight through the roof. Even better, you have the crazies who will sue the state govt and will continue to sue. Taxes will have to go up to pay for all the legal stuff. It will be awesome.

    I hear that San Fransisco is no longer going to do business with Arizona as well. Oh yeah, bring the popcorn.

    cain

  87. 87.

    handy

    @Mark S.:

    Actually I thought brave pseudepigraphal commentator “Guest” was quite hilarious:

    Saint Digby shows her envy at Breibart’s green. Whatever Andy is, he’s a lot less like a welfare queen than our own little Miss Hit My Tip Jar. If Digby made $500 k on a big deal, she’d donate the entire amount to Our Lady of the Sainted Taser Victim’s Torture Recovery Center LLC.Really. Because, like, she really, really cares.

    “Little Miss Hit My Tip Jar” LOL

  88. 88.

    MTiffany

    Cancel Chuck? The Toddster? Whatever would they do without Chuck Todd? He’s the greatest, ever, isn’t he? I mean, besides Tom Friedman.

  90. 90.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Linda Featheringill:
    @Keith G:
    Well, and one could possibly go back further than Vietnam, right? Dresden? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Something from WW1? Civil War? Abuse of Native Americans? Trail of Tears (was that military?)? Abu Graib? I honestly don’t think there should be a “worst atrocity” tagline, which is why I threw it out there.

  91. 91.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @Cain:

    Consequently, prices go up. Fruits and vegetables, landscaping, and whatever else go straight through the roof.

    I never cease to be amazed at the number of “liberals” who make this argument and it drives me nuts when people say this because it’s incredibly racist. Really, what you’re saying is “Illegal immigration is a good thing because since illegals can be fucked in the ass by their employers and have no rights and can be deported if they get uppity and start asking for the same treatment that American workers get. And that’s why I get cheap fruits, vegetables and landscaping. Whoo hoo! Keep those illegals coming so I can freeload off of them.”

    The Arizona law is going to backfire because it’s stupid and racist, but do you know what, if we had a sensible immigration policy that didn’t marginalize illegals into a ghetto where they have no rights and work at the mercy of their employers the price of fruits, vegetables and landscaping would end up increasing because employers wouldn’t be able to fuck over illegals any more and would have to pay them a decent wage. But saying that laws against illegal immigration are going to backfire because they’ll drive up prices for commodities produced by illegal aliens and opposing them on this basis is akin to someone 150 years ago arguing that abolishing slavery would backfire because it would increase the prices of tobacco and cotton.

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    Big Ag has sooo many subsidies at play, the cheap/illegal labor “discount” contributes what has to be a manageable fraction of the total, at least averaging it out across all of agriculture. I’d suspect, however, that certain very labor-intensive crops/products would be hit heavily if ag labor prices somehow jumped into the legal realm. But they’d adjust in a year or three.

    But why worry? The Republican-led gutting of the blue-collar middle class has left us with a big labor pool for agriculture to draw from. (Can you imagine farm labor contractors hauling vanloads of laid off steelworkers to some Monterey County broccoli fields?)

    The whole situation is a bloody mess and Arizona’s “solution” won’t help one iota. But at least we get to watch Arizona in action. BJers who were worried about who would replace Napolitano were right to do so.

  94. 94.

    burnspbesq

    @Chuck:

    What the hell does Jobs have to do to lose these people, skull fuck a kitten at the next MacWorld?

    Stop producing products that do what users want them to do and are fairly priced.

    You have a problem with potential crimes being investigated?

  95. 95.

    Yutsano

    @burnspbesq: Damn you and your infinite sense of reason!

    BTW read a column online about how hated some sports teams/figures are and thought of you because good ol’ Duke led it off. The big winner turned out to be Pay Fraud A-Rod.

  96. 96.

    burnspbesq

    Can I just say how strange it is to look at the men’s lax top 20 and not see Hopkins in it?

  97. 97.

    burnspbesq

    @Yutsano:

    I can’t get excited about that when Obama is worse than Bush on civil liberties and detainee issues.

    /Glennbot

  98. 98.

    burnspbesq

    @Yutsano:

    We’d rather be hated than irrelevant. Sow consistent excellence, reap hatred.

    And it is peculiar indeed that so many white fans hate Duke precisely because it is (so the urban legend goes) the whitest team in college basketball.

  99. 99.

    Yutsano

    @burnspbesq: It seems bizarre to me. Duke doesn’t play dirty, they recruit like madmen but they aren’t underhanded about it, and even their bad years are beyond what most teams make ever. I personally am agnostic towards them, except when you play Gonzaga. Then it’s like the Clash of the Law Schools.

  100. 100.

    YellowJournalism

    Great episode of Chuck tonight. Interesting to see how this is going to evolve from the geek-meets-spy show into a spy-couple show. Warm fuzzies and genuine funnies=NBC better keep this show. (I could honestly say that it would be a long time before I watch NBC again since Chuck is the only NBC show I watch anymore. Never got into The Office or any other new comedies.)

    @frankdawg: The hubby loves Rules of Engagement, partly because he has a sense of humor and some priorities very similar to the Patrick Warburton character. I think hubby’s keeping a running list of favorite one-liners from him or something. I must admit to laughing at the show, too, though. Plus, I’m just glad that David Spade still gets work.

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bnut:

    We love “Modern Family.” Is it weird that the couple that seems most like us is Cam and Mitchell even though we’re straight?

  102. 102.

    Cain

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    I never cease to be amazed at the number of “liberals” who make this argument and it drives me nuts when people say this because it’s incredibly racist. Really, what you’re saying is “Illegal immigration is a good thing because since illegals can be fucked in the ass by their employers and have no rights and can be deported if they get uppity and start asking for the same treatment that American workers get. And that’s why I get cheap fruits, vegetables and landscaping. Whoo hoo! Keep those illegals coming so I can freeload off of them.”

    You seemed to have taken what I’ve said incorrectly. I made an observation that this bill is going to backfire because the real costs of agriculture is going to come to the fore. I never meant to imply that illegal labor is a good thing. Clearly you did not read the entire comment and instead comment on a pet peeve that leaped straight at you.

    I will note that illegal immigration is bad because it does in fact hide the real costs of legal work for the jobs that immigrants are currently doing since illegals can in fact be fucked over. But even then it is still BETTER than what their situation is back in Mexico. I mean that must be some serious shit going on over there if they are willing to be slave labor to the agricultural industry.

    The laborers coming south of the border are incredibly hard working people and I appreciate that and we should have a program to support it and allow them to come and go legally.

    cain

  103. 103.

    Anne Laurie

    Speaking of NBC, I’m really enjoying both MERCY (which is basically the chick version of RESCUE ME) and TRAUMA (because it has an excellent shite-blows-up / quirky character ratio). Anybody else watch either of these?

    P.S. Yes, Mr. Cole, I know you’re still bitter that ER so many seasons. But at least we can agree that more SOUTHLAND is a good thing…

  104. 104.

    RedKitten

    It is interesting seeing Chuck’s character development, isn’t it? I think that’s been the best part of the show for me – seeing Chuck grow into his new role in life while still figuring out how to remain true to himself. I honestly can’t recall any sort of comedic show that has had the lead character change this much while still remaining so likable.

    And yes, Sarah and Chuck are adorable — (SPOILER) that fight sequence where the two of them were handcuffed together was just pure delight to watch, and then later, when he was cuddling with her in bed, he was really just holding her the way that you hold someone you truly cherish. It looked so authentic. (END SPOILER)

  105. 105.

    Nellcote

    @Anne Laurie:

    I’m really enjoying both MERCY

    I really like the show. Wish they could consistantly schedule it. I never know when it’s going to be on. But that’s a gripe with most shows these days. Anyway, I particularly am interested in the way they portray her PTSD.

    As for Chuck, it’s doomed. Once the main characters hook up on any show it’s downhill from there. I think it’s a law or something.

  106. 106.

    Jeff

    @freelancer:

    Like Evangeline Lilly on LOST, if Strahovski ain’t your type, cut it off dude, you’re hopeless.

    @jmy:

    What man in his right mind wouldn’t love Evangeline Lilly?

    Yeah, because all “REAL” men are only attracted to one type of woman. Sorry, Gabrielle Union and Zoe Soldana do a LOT more for me.

    @jmy

    So are Chuck and Sarah officially the cutest TV show couple?

    No, that would be Castle and Beckett!

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