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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.
In after Baud. Damn.
There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.
We still have time to mess this up!
Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)
Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.
One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.
Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson
Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.
Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?
This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.
Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.
It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.
If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.
twiffer
me too.
UncommonSense
Why do reporters care anymore who Mark Sanford hikes the trail with?
He’s a single man. If he didn’t charge the trip to the State of South Carolina, he go where he wants, can’t he?
Steeplejack
Well, I’m not. Just got home from an early shift. Ready to catch up on Balloon Juice and other important social phenomena.
. . . Well, okay, then.
licensed to kill time
Hey, Sanford comes out in support of Kagan!
Oh wait. He was talking about his personal life. Never mind.
Gozer
Not good enough Cole. We require 100% of your attention.
freelancer
tpm:
Gee, I wonder why Hispanic students would ever think that white people are discriminating against/oppressing them.
Punchy
Boycott Milwaukee!
jibeaux
@freelancer:
My favorite part of that story was that the legislator who introduced it has been doing so for years, motivated by a quotation from some Latina woman supposedly saying, I guess in a class like that, “Republicans don’t like Latinos.” To which he apparently reacted with, “oh yeah? You ain’t seen nothing yet! That 40% that voted for Bush can go WAY down, baby!”
Mike Kay
Jane Hamsher HAS SOLD YOU OUT!
mediaite.com/online…..-erickson/
The thing I can’t get over is Hamsher trashing Media Matters. That’s O’reilly’s schtick.
And her valentine to Morning Joe (priceless)—guess Jane will be the new fill-in for Mika. Just don’t fuck him, Jane, you’ll end up like the dead intern.
And ya know what’s so delicious about her being an Erickson apologist – when he was hired, most of Jane sycophants naturally recoiled in horror that CNN would give this right-wing extremist a platform. Oh, are they’re little hearts gonna be so broken when they find out their mommie-pin-up figure has sold them out.
mai naem
Well, there you go. Kagan needs to hook up with Mark Sanford and dump him. He can them be forced to give the “she’s my soulmate for life” speech deux. Kagan can meanwhile admit that she hooked up with him only because she was trying to get over her major major crush on Barack Obama and ,then, Obama, can finally come out and say that he was trying to get rid of Kagan by appointing her to the USSC because he was worried that she was going to go stalker on him. He can explain that his strategery was that she would then hook up with Clarence Thomas(another black lawyer) and actually turn him into the fifth liberal vote on the court.
licensed to kill time
More guns in bars! What could go wrong?
Mike Kay
Elena Kagan’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
America is a better and freer nation than Elena Kagan thinks. Yet in the current delicate balance of the Supreme Court, her rigid ideology will tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be.
No justice would be better than this injustice.
jibeaux
Mike, you’re here enough without cross-posting, dear.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
…
Now please, let’s have a mega thread on how Obama is letting us down. Wingnuts rampaging across the countryside like Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan combined, and Obama isn’t delivering enough ponies. And yes, it is a two front political war we are in. One against the wingnuts, and the other against ourselves. Let’s defeat Kagan to show em who’s boss. She ain’t liberal enough to suit, so let’s join with the wingers and fix her wagon good, and Obama’s.
I may start drinking again. You think I’m surly now.
Dave C
@Gozer:
Indeed. Here we are now–entertain us!
jeffreyw
Mmm…breakfast.
Kagan Watch
No Kagan post today? That’s too bad, because Paul Campos went batshit before our eyes at LG&M today. Kagan is unqualified because she was once mean to a student who didn’t do the required reading!
mai naem
@freelancer: While the Republican numbnuts are trying to out Pete Wilson each other here, these laws/discussions are having real impact on people’s lives right now. We have our colleges saying this is affecting the recruitment of much needed faculty. There’s talk of cancellation of the AllStar Game. There’s actual tourist related convention/meetings that have been cancelled. These not only support jobs, they bring in taxes(rental car/hotel/sales) that we need badly. The same taxes that pay the salaries of Brewer and Arpaio. F*ck these people.
Zifnab
@Dave C:
Agreed! Dance monkey, dance!
Mumphrey
@Mike Kay:
Your link didn’t work. I really don’t get all these commited “liberals” like Hamsher or all those wacky PUMAs 2 years ago, who suddenly begin working to undermine everything they say they believe in because their feelings are hurt that Obama or the Democratic primamary voters or somebody else didn’t listen to their overawing wisdom. Don’t most people, when they grow up, learn that you can’t always get what you want? I could swear somebody even wrote a song about that…
ulee
I’m busy too. But if I had a blog I wouldn’t insult my readers with a two word post. But I don’t have a blog so I’m going to get another beer.
jibeaux
@mai naem:
Yup. And I do feel bad when people’s businesses are hurt through no fault of their own, but there just isn’t any other thing people outside Arizona can do other than boycott. We can rant all we want, but we’re not voters. But if people can get an Arizona voter pissed off because his/her hotel lost $8000 worth of reservations in one day and THAT person calls…
The Moar You Know
@UncommonSense: You know what? I really, honestly, hope it works out for him. There’s not enough love in the world as it is, maybe he’ll hit the lottery and it’ll work for him.
Art
“It’s the only way to live life…think you’re gonna win…don’t hang your head…life’s too short, every day’s a bonus…” – -Badger Bob
Hat tip to Stoosh @ thepensblog.com
LET’S GO PENS!
Lisa K.
I called Olympia Snowe today to ask what she was going to do about the teabaggers taking over the party in her state. The nice young man named Andrew on the other end of the phone essentially said, nothing.
Not only are they gasbags, they’re thieves.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
If Obama was more of A Commanding Figure, this shit wouldn’t be hap hap happening.
I want my Bush backety ack ack!!
Mike Kay
@Mumphrey:
Thanks for catching the error.
Here’s the link:
mediaite.com/online/twitter-fight-jane-hamsher-and-joe-scarborough-vs-media-matters-over-erick-erick…
bemused
@UncommonSense:
Ok, I confess that I clicked on that. As usual, Sanford cannot resist saying more about his personal life than most people (other than media) care to know. Yet, he says the obsession with one’s (his) personal life has to end. Hilarious. I have a feeling he’d be mighty disappointed if no one asked him how it was going with the ‘love of his life’. His ex-wife is miles above him in intelligence & class.
freelancer
If he used the bully pulpit, Arizona wouldn’t be a wingnut-ran feudal kingdom anymore.
lamh31
Don’t laugh, but I had some time to kill before seeing ironman2, so I am actually sitting here watching hot tub time machine!
Polish the Guillotines
Fuck politics, and FTFY.
Dallas Braden.
Linda Featheringill
@Mike Kay: Fair game.
Do you have links or something to her opinions?
Martin
Rejoice, Mac users! Steam has finally arrived. It’s free! Portal is also free for the next few weeks! Play and enjoy, Mac users, for we have arrived! (Well, sorta, just a little bit, but more than before, okay?)
bemused
@mai naem:
How long before the Arizona business world starts freaking out or are they already? R’s are supposed to be pro-business. Did any Arizona R’s worry if there could be some serious financial blowback over that law? Maybe it never occurred to them to worry. It seems pretty rare for rightwingers to look before they leap.
Elisabeth
@mai naem:
I read a WaPo story that said 23 activities (for lack of a better term) have been cancelled thus far that will cost the state up to $10 million.
But yet, Brewer said she didn’t think the law would affect the state. Oops!
Mark S.
Glenn Greenwald:
Oh, what a happy coinkydink! I’m sure it has nothing to do with how much the media loves “Even libtards like Greenwald hate Obama” memes. They really do love you for your mind, Glenn.
freelancer
@lamh31:
Prepare to be underwhelmed. My friend didn’t like it at all, and I was distracted, but apparently that didn’t diminish the film much.
Davis X. Machina
Waaaaay too many people left the polling booth in November of ’08 thinking ‘Payback time. Now we’ve got our Bush. Son of a bitch better start breaking shit.’
Did you stop to think con-law professors from Hyde Park don’t break shit? It wasn’t a secret then, and it shouldn’t be a surprise now.
Randy P
@Martin:
I’m a Mac user but I guess I’m out of touch. What am I supposed to be excited about?
stuckinred
But Jane is soooo pretty and she is the ONLY one who tells the truth.
Mike Kay
@Mark S.: I soooooooooooooo hope the republicans call glentard as a witness at the confirmation hearings.
Bob L
@Elisabeth: Yes but they were are Liberal (as in illegal alien supporting) activities like the GOP convention that when to Tampa so no problem at all for Arizona. Remember only conservatives count under the new rules.
Jay B.
Not only do they not break things, they rebuild, evidently.
Can I be pissed about this yet or are you sycophants going to start bitching about the Red Cross and the BBC now?
BethanyAnne
@Martin: Portal on my Mac! Where’s yer link, dammit?
Mike Kay
@stuckinred: you know, glentard gets a lot of that too. his groupies are smitten with his brooding dustin hoffman emo looks. it’s like friggin high school: kagan’s looks, jane’s looks, glentard’s looks.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mark S.: LOL the dude has been preaching against her for at least a month before she was even picked, wanking on in article after article, repeated teevee and radio appearances. And now called out on his bullshit is surprised about becoming “identified” with the pick and didn’t “intend” and now “engulfed”. Spare me the whiny drivel already.
BethanyAnne
Fine, make me spend 3 seconds with Google…
store.steampowered.com/freeportal/
bemused
@Lisa K.:
Wow.
I love the 8th grade student who commented that the adults were acting immaturely. She evidently has parents who have taught her well as opposed to the some of the R’s who were in the classroom.
Mike Kay
@Linda Featheringill: Kagan is the most right-wing justice in US history. She makes the Gestapo look like boy scouts.
gbear
@twiffer:
Me three. Today has been fail day at work. I’m so glad it’s coming to an end.
I’m staying away from the news (and blog entries about the news) lately. Shorter version of every story seems to be ‘If someone said it, wrote it, or did it, it’s moronic.’
Sentient Puddle
@Randy P: Steam is the biggest form of digital distribution of gaming on Windows. An OS X client coming out is a pretty big coup for Macs in terms of gaming.
And Portal is one of the best games of the past few years.
Midnight Marauder
@mai naem:
It goes beyond that. There are already reports that students and their parents are calling higher education institutions in Arizona and telling them concerns about the new law are causing them to either withdraw from those schools or reconsider altogether:
And that article is from April 30. I can’t imagine Gov. Brewer’s actions today have helped matters at all.
Mark S.
@Mike Kay:
Maybe he’ll convince them that she’ll move the Court to the right.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
His site has basically been elenakagansucks.blogspot.com
gbear
@ulee:
Psssst…this way we get to talk about him behind his back and he’ll never ever even find out about it. Bwahahah.
robertdsc
Maybe when you’re done, John, you can catch Tunch hot-rodding down the hallway or watching birdie TV.
Martin
@BethanyAnne: Sorry, that should have been obvious to include. Duh.
@Randy P: Steam is sort of an app store for games, or an XBox Live for Windows/Mac, that kind of thing. It’s been PC only until now, and many of the top games have as a result been PC only until now. The developer of Steam (Valve) is in the process of porting many of their very highly regarded games over to the Mac. Portal is one of the first and more are coming quickly. It’ll really help elevate the Mac to being less embarrassingly behind Windows in game availability. What’s nice about Steam is that once you buy a game, the server keeps track of what you own. If you get a new computer, reinstall Steam and ask it to reinstall all of your games. You don’t need to worry about tracking down DVDs and such. A lot of games rely on Steam for distribution and handling multiplayer game tracking, so having it helps grease the wheels for those developers to come along.
lamh31
@freelancer
very underwhelming. Almost time for ironman anyway
BethanyAnne
@Martin: np, it was only about a 3 second detour :)
Looks like all the Mac users lining up for cake are gonna still be in the cold for a few – seems that the servers have gone boom. Mebbe I’ll fire up the xbox, and play Portal there :)
Martin
@Midnight Marauder: I can’t imagine wanting to teach in a state where the legislature comes in and says that an entire field of study, broadly accepted, needs to be eliminated from public institutions. This isn’t creationism here, there’s nothing pedagogically controversial about it.
The state will still get teachers, but the really good ones will surely be driven off by this – even in fields far removed from ethnic studies. To anyone in academia, this is sheer madness, and more reminiscent of what you’d find in repressive nations than in America. Even if it’s found unconstitutional, it’s clear what the motivation and intent here is, and if nothing else, the legislature still controls the budget for these institutions, and they’ll find a way to get what they want.
Lisa K.
@bemused:
This story also made Rachel Maddow’s blog…
Nick
WTF?!?!?!??!!??!?!
YellowJournalism
@Lisa K.: Holy crap! The comments section on that story is filled with people screaming outrage at the “lefties” for believing the “lies” of another couple of “lefties” (the teacher, the principal. Despite the many eye witness accounts in the article and in the comments from students, they still cry foul and have some kind of conspiracy theory where the teacher is lying about it along with the principal and have had the paper write this article all to condemn not only the local GOP group but the entire Tea Party, as well.
My biggest problem with what happened is the fact that they obviously looked through the teacher’s property. They had no right to look in the box that had the constitution copies, which leads me to believe that they probably went through the rest of the teacher’s room, too.
Good for every student that has come out to defend their teacher and their school. The problem for the Tea Party really isn’t that the teacher has created a group of mindless followers, it’s just that these kids are supposedly following the wrong side.
Martin
@BethanyAnne: Heh. Well, if the Mac users can blow up their servers, that’ll say something about demand from the market, won’t it?
YellowJournalism
@Lisa K.: I hope she covers it on her show.
Maude
I wonder if all of the “tv” lawyers are jealous because they weren’t nominated?
Ulee – you haven’t seen rude on this blog yet. Hang around, you’ll know it when you read it.
Lisa K.
@YellowJournalism:
I do, too. I’m planning to watch!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Nick: Great country we live in uh? Now it’s time to turn our national attention and resources into finding that elusive long form birther certificate for Obama. When we are not running around labeling unmarried jewish women lesbians, and claiming she is a complete blank slate. I am ordering some camo netting and underwear just in case, but no mini guns considering the mood I’m in.
Lisa K.
@YellowJournalism:
I just wish we were devious enough to think of something like that!!!
Mark S.
Mighty white of ’em.
soonergrunt
From The Onion, Exhausted Noam Chomsky just going to try and enjoy the day.
I just don’t understand these perpetual outrage machines on the left and the right. I mean, Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick, don’t you have a fucking lawn to mow, at least?
Hell, I’m unemployed with nothing better to do than sit here and get up a ragegasm about whatever the latest thing is, but even then I’m too damn busy because the garage needs decluttering.
Oh, and I interviewed at Fort Sill, OK. Instructor position in the Field Artillery School for small unit Infantry tactics and individual survival techniques. (Teaching the gun bunnies how to think like grunts just a little bit so they won’t be totally useless in a small arms fight.)
Martin
@Nick: That’s not unusual.
Typically in these kinds of polling, you have one demographic (Latinos) who are significantly better educated on the details of the law because they are directly affected than whites who largely aren’t affected. As a result, in a broad-brush kind of way (making illegal immigration illegal – duh!) the bill sounds fine to most citizens. In a detailed kind of way (may I see your papers, comrade) the bill sounds abhorrent to the people that would be affected by it, and probably even to those that wouldn’t be affected by it if they were motivated to learn more about it.
You have to be really careful reading (and administering) these kinds of polls. A good followup question to suss out those kinds of differences would be to ask if the responder would support a bill that required *everyone* to show their citizenship paperwork (birth certificate, naturalization forms, visa) any time they encounter a public official. Basically, eliminate the class distinction in the law and see if it would still be supported. Then, follow *that* question up by going back to the first one and asking them again if they support the law knowing that some arbitrary distinction will be made by police and that there’s a chance they’d still be asked for their paperwork, and do they still support it, or have they changed their minds.
Surveys, well crafted, can reveal a lot of information, but rarely does one question tell us much of anything.
Jay B.
Wow. No one touched the Bargam torture revelations but continue to pile onto idiotic birther comments and bitching about Jane Fucking Hamsher. There’s a shock.
Art
Herb Brooks speaking to his USA team in the 2nd intermission of the 1980 Gold Medal game vs. Finland:
“If you lose this game you will take it with you to your f***ing graves.” He started to leave the locker room, then stopped, turned and added, “Your f***ing graves.”
LET’S GO PENS!
Chyron HR
@Jay B.:
Dear Mr. B;
Thank you for your application. We are all very impressed by your ability to argue with people in your head. However, at the current time we do not have an opening for the position of Glenn Greenwald. Should this situation change in the future, please feel free to re-submit your resume.
Sincerely,
Salon.com Human Resources Department
James K. Polk, Esq.
@Martin
Or you could use your Windows partition for gaming
Corner Stone
I’m pretty sure it was stuckinred who said something like, “I come here to get away from FDL.” (apologies for no direct quote)
But damn, I don’t go to FDL in the first fucking place and yet I have the strongest sense that if I did visit there would be less Jane Hamsher saturation on her own damn site veez ah veez this blog.
Good sweet jeebus.
wrb
@Jay B.:
There isn’t enough there yet to touch intelligently. There are allegations, not revelations.I suppose one could debate the imagined credibility of those making and denying the allegations, but why bother with such a thin factual basis? Better to wait for more to come out.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Jay B.: This is an open thread and lot of shit is being discussed, not all about Hamsher. I haven’t heard about what you claim, so if you would post a fucking link then maybe we can discuss that as well.
Linda Featheringill
Video of oil/gas pouring into Gulf.
blog.al.com/live/2010/05/video_camera_captures_oil_and.html
I don’t know which one of the leaks this is. Lord, I hope it is the big one.
Scary.
liberty60
Re: Elena Kagen, Thurgood Marshall, and the alleged imperfection of the Constitution-
words from another dangerous radical:
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
bemused
@Lisa K.:
Me too, also.
Among the other behavior issues wingnuts like the classroom visitors have is they are extremely uncivilized. If the 25% of the wacko americans ever got control of our schools, police/fire depts, you name it, before they privatized & fundie religionized it all, I just know the middle class R’s I know would be pissed as hell. They would also be shocked to their bones because they never see the consequences coming. I’ve had it with R’s who are not loony tea partiers while kinda, sorta agreeing with some of the rhetoric. I am seeing some disenchantment but hey are really slow on the uptake. One of my relatives still thought there was WMD in Iraq just a year & half ago. Another one was reading Sarah Palin’s book recently. They just don’t want to know anything real.
Nick
@Martin:
This
tells us alot
Nick
@Jay B.: In this entire 80 plus comments thread, like two of them were about Jane Hamsher, so chill out.
mai naem
@Midnight Marauder: That’s old. That was one of the initial effects. I live in a college town. I can guarantee you this is going to affect rental rates around here. And,oh, did I mention that the hotels here fill up during college events. I know I will be paying higher taxes because our hotels are going to be filled up less. BTW a lot of these college students who won’t be coming pay out of state tuition. Big bucks that support our colleges. Not to mention the hard science/engineering students who end up living here and contributing. I bet Intel isn’t all that thrilled with this law. As far as the law just getting brown skinned people. Just wait until you have some olive complexioned white person who gets caught up in some immigration nightmare. There was some story a couple of years ago of a drunk/vagrant who got arrested and was stuck in some year long nightmare in ICE prisons because he told the arresting police officer he was Russian. He apparently didn’t have any ID on him, had a southern accent and finally managed to get hold of his sister who had to go through all kinds of hassle to get his birth certificate.
Lisa K.
@bemused:
That’s basically what I said to Olympia Snowe’s flunkie this afternoon. You can’t keep your head in the sand forever, Senator. Sooner or later you are going to have to take a stand and make a choice.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Nick: While I generally agree with Martin on polls,
I also agree with this.
WereBear
So the plan is to have an entire state composed of cranky old white people?
Good luck with that.
Linda Featheringill
@Mike Kay:
“Kagan is the most right-wing justice in US history.”
Kagan has never been a judge.
Martin
@James K. Polk, Esq.: Well, I do, but it’d be a lot more convenient if I didn’t. Plus, keeping Windows up to date is a pain in the ass.
bemused
@Lisa K.:
I think they are very scared people & it’s much easier to stay submerged in denial. I bet many here have heard a conservative in their lives say things about food, drug, mining safety or other massive abuses due to under regulation such as, “We can’t do anything about it”, “I can’t live my life worrying about things we can’t change”, “The liberal media exaggerates” or they just stay silent/change the subject because liberals are so hysterical.
Every time my husband hears R’s on the tv doing their tough guy routine on security, immigration, yadda, yadda, he shakes his head & says, “What a bunch of scared little babies”.
Martin
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Yeah, unfortunately it does. The surveyor needs to walk that out just a bit to get the respondent to commit affirmatively to the idea of supporting discrimination, but that’s already pretty damning.
Among other things, surveys need to give respondents the freedom to change their mind as you do this. That’s something I always look for. If their opinions are so weakly founded that I can change them with a handful of questions, that tells me how much room there is for a campaign to change opinions.
Nellcote
Florida beats out Arizona for Gooper 2012 convention. More good news for McCain.
liberty60
More off-topic open topic thoughts-
An interesting article here that would change federal law to allow prison terms for contractors who willfully endanger workers-
Expect howling from Chamber of Commerce types- jackbooted fa-scists, etc.
But it struck me- we shrug off SWAT raids over a gram of pot, but allowing a dozen miners to die is punished with…a civil fine.
Another example of how when the jackboot is on the neck of Those People its one thing, but when its on Our People, its something different.
WereBear
@liberty60: I kill one person for money, I get 20 years.
If a corporation kills a bunch of people for money… it’s just business.
SiubhanDuinne
@soonergrunt: Thx for the great Onion piece on Chomsky. Sent it to an academic friend who has written/published a book on the “Chomsky Effect” in popular culture. This will $ake a nice addition to his collection.