Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

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

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Consistently wrong since 2002

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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Pollen levels are simply through the roof around here. According to the pollen index, they are near pegged at high. According to the thin layer of film on my windows that has appeared in the last few days, I would have to think the index is accurate.

Speaking of crap floating around in the air, the most depressing thing about the blank slate folks like Elena Kagan is that she is obviously very smart, but has to be careful what she says lest she be punished for her thoughts. Meanwhile, deeply stupid people like Mike Pence, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, Joe the Plumber, and so on, are unfettered by similar restraints and in fact rewarded for their idiocy, often with great sums of wealth and power and status well beyond what they deserve. As such, the smart people are quiet, and the morons run around polluting our discourse.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike Kay

    to bad the refs don’t call a foul. lord knows if some liberal step out of bounce, they’d get flagged. maybe the refs are in on the fix.

  5. 5.

    Cat Lady

    The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of shit passionate intensity.

    Yeats FTMFW.

  8. 8.

    cleek

    to me, and to 99% of the country, she’s as much of a “blank slate” as any other SC nominee. she’s clearly a smart, hard-working, well-respected legal-oriented cipher – just like all the others.

    and who the fuck cares what her opponents say, given that we know the plan is to oppose her no matter who she is ?

    days like today, i think politics is too stupid to waste my precious brain power on.

  9. 9.

    kid bitzer

    whoops–cat lady got there first with the yeats quote.

    it’s a good point nonetheless.

  11. 11.

    mclaren

    As such, the smart people are quiet, and the morons run around polluting our discourse.

    Life never changes from junior high school, does it?

  12. 12.

    valdivia

    sorry what is this she is a blank slate thing? really she is a total blank slate? We may not know a lot about her but she has written scholarly articles and we know stuff about her so the whole blank slate thing is just perverse *and* baffling.

    Smudge on the other hand is a cutie.

  15. 15.

    eemom

    you know, I really wish you’d stop calling Kagan a “blank slate.” It’s ignorant and demeaning and it’s not true.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    I just got done with jury duty and Jesus H. Christ was that a bullshit case. I have no idea why the prosecution decided to waste our time and the state’s money, but I actually started getting angry with him towards the end of it.

    Short version: a graduate student who does research at the courthouse accidentally left a knife in her purse — a good-sized hunting knife, not a little plastic jobbie — and the prosecutor decided to try and convince us that she deliberately put the knife in her bag and brought it to court that day — but not any of the previous days she’d been to the courthouse — because shut up, that’s why.

    Hey, look, mclaren’s here! S/he can use 10 or 20 comments to tell me that I’m just licking the taint of the fascist police state by participating in the jury system and I really should have let the case be decided by a bunch of teabaggers because the only way people will learn how bad the system can be is if this poor girl has a misdemeanor conviction on her record that means she won’t be able to complete her PhD.

  18. 18.

    Paula

    @Quicksand:

    lolz.

    You, know, we haven’t had an Obama-is-our-first-Nerd/Dork-American-President dogwhistle in ages. And saying shit like:

    “It’s a levitator. It’s a hovercraft. It’s for fun!”

    is pretty nerd/dork-tastic.

  20. 20.

    eemom

    Also, if she’d written 1000 judicial opinions and scholarly articles, and thus perhaps escaped condemnation by mindless Greenwald-parrots as a “blank slate,” she’d have to be even MORE careful what she says. Jesus Christ.

  21. 21.

    Karen

    Don’t you know that Kagan’s biggest sin was to not be promising that if she’s on Supreme Court she’ll demand Obama be arrested? Anything less than that is unacceptable to the Teapublicans.

  22. 22.

    Mike Kay

    she’s worse than a blank slate. She’s a nazi. The most right wing justice in US History.

  23. 23.

    oklahomo

    @kommrade reproductive vigor: In this region, it’s the oak trees that have been terrible this year. Every surface looks jaundiced from the pollen, and after a rain, a huge area around the tree darkens from that stuff.

  25. 25.

    gnomedad

    More and more, I see “stupidity” as a strategy rather than an affliction.

  26. 26.

    IndyLib

    I have a help request for the BJ community. The flood in Tennessee didn’t get a whole lot of news coverage for some reason, and there are still a lot of families in a bad way. One of the communities that was hit really hard was Naval Air Station Millington.

    There are over 230 families whose base housing was flooded and they lost everything they own. Now, these people are more secure than some others in the area, I know. They will have their houses repaired and have a place to live again in time and they had the military community to care for them during the flood, but I guarantee they will not be given extra pay to replace their personal goods that were lost in the flood. Military personnel that live in base housing are typically at the low end of the pay scale, they usually live in base housing because they cannot afford to live in housing in the local community and they all have children.

    Navy folks are lucky enough to have an organization that comes to their aid in times like these – it’s called the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. They offer Navy and Marine personnel interest-free loans to help them out in emergency situations. My family has utilised them in the past, they loaned me the money to fly my kids and I to my hometown when my father had a stroke several years ago. I needed to take my kids with me because my husband’s Navy job made it impossible for him to take care of them for even a few days and I had no family in the area to help out and we did not have the money at the time to cover 5 plane tickets. Without this organization I have no idea what I would have done. They do really good work. Loans they make in the situation like the Millington flood will be used to replace clothes, children’s toys, washer and dryers, furniture, etc.

    I know a lot of you probably donated to the Red Cross at the time when the flood was still in the news, but if there’s anyone who could help out by donating to NMCRS now, it would be greatly appreciated. The Navy community is sending out SOS’s for clothes, household good donations and monetary donations this week because these unfortunate folks are still in need of some serious help. If you click the box on the page for a memorial or tribute gift and fill the box that pops up with “flood assistance”, the money will be used specifically to help out the flood victims.

  27. 27.

    Bhall35

    fwiw, the warlord wearing Cam and Mitchell’s “Hillary 2008” T-shirt on last night’s Modern Family was the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in years.

  28. 28.

    WereBear

    I hope it’s just a case of stupid getting over-representation.

    There’s a snarky slogan in there, but I had a ride back from the business mixer and so I’m +3 and in no shape to come up with one.

  30. 30.

    Annie

    I hate doctors (for full disclosure I am married to one, although he no longer practices but does international health stuff)….

    I went to a doctor for an ear ache…Had a check-up, got pills and drops and went merrily on my way.

    A month later, I still have an ear ache. Went to a different doctor. Seems it is not my ear, but my sinus. Today got more pills, more drops, and advice that I should not travel until it goes away. Scheduled to go abroad on Sunday for work…Can’t cancel…

    Why couldn’t the first doctor have figured that out?

    Shouldn’t drink with pills, but I am so pissed that I am…

    Probably will need a 3rd doctor…

  32. 32.

    Corner Stone

    You know what I’m pissed about? The Kagan dealio takes second seat here. I’m ticked off about – Big Wheels. Since when did the stop putting the hand brake on these things?
    It’s a complete waste if you can’t power slide!!

    Words can not express how angry this makes me.

  33. 33.

    Corner Stone

    @Mnemosyne:

    Hey, look, mclaren’s here! S/he can use 10 or 20 comments to tell me that I’m just licking the taint of the fascist police state by participating in the jury system

    You know the old saying – “Just because mclaren is after you, it doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

  36. 36.

    matoko_chan

    Increased pollen in the atmosphere is due to “juicing” caused by global warming.

  37. 37.

    eemom

    @Annie:

    a few weeks ago the WaPo health section had a story about a woman who suffered from an itchy scalp for like a year and went to about 85 different doctors who said she had everything from schizophrenia to brain cancer…….before somebody finally figured out it was head lice.

  38. 38.

    Corner Stone

    @MattR: It’s been a while since I trashed a few of these things, but Big Wheels no longer are sold with the hand brake. You know, get a head of steam going, turn the handle a little and jerk the hell outta the hand brake. POWER SLIIIIIIDE!
    It’s what made the whole deal tolerable.
    Nowadays, the Big Wheel does not have a handbrake. I can’t find a store in the Greater Houston Metro Area that sells one with a handbrake.
    Kinda defeats the whole purpose. Yo.

  39. 39.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Annie:
    Sorry you’re not feeling well.

    Sudafed, the real stuff with pseudoephedrine in it, helps shrink everything that is swollen and hurting. Very good for sinuses and middle ears.

    DEFINITELY medicate yourself for the airplane flight, considering pressure changes, etc.

  41. 41.

    Mark S.

    We ain’t never fucking getting of Iraq:

    The White House is likely to delay the withdrawal of the first large phase of combat troops from Iraq for at least a month after escalating bloodshed and political instability in the country. General Ray Odierno, the US commander, had been due to give the order within 60 days of the general election held in Iraq on 7 March, when the cross-sectarian candidate Ayad Allawi edged out the incumbent leader, Nouri al-Maliki. American officials had been prepared for delays in negotiations to form a government, but now appear to have balked after Maliki’s coalition aligned itself with the theocratic Shia bloc to the exclusion of Allawi, who attracted the bulk of the minority Sunni vote. There is also concern over interference from Iraq’s neighbours, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

    I was hoping we might decrease our clusterfucks by 50%. Looks like it’s not happening.

  45. 45.

    South of I-10

    The trees are all done here and thank the gods, the ligustrums are finally finshing up. They are everywhere, and they cause me to sneeze violently!

  46. 46.

    Annie

    @eemom:

    Great…I have 83 doctors yet to visit…I feel sorry for the people on the plane with me on Sunday…I will be poping pills, spraying my nose and ears, and probably scratching my head….You may hear about me in the news on Monday as they remove me from the plane…

  47. 47.

    cay

    That post crystallized why I read this blog. It’s like the Bush years–up is down, black is white, smart should be quiet and dumb will prevail.

  49. 49.

    Uloborus

    @Annie:
    Because your sinuses and your ears are the same thing.

    Honestly. They’re directly connected. If something bad happens to your sinuses, it happens to your ears. To a lesser extent vice versa. Especially stuff to do with allergies or pressure.

    This is just one example of how it’s really freaking hard to diagnose anything reliably. The human body is a maze.

  50. 50.

    valdivia

    @Annie:

    have they checked to make sure you don’t have a wax accumulation that may be causing this pain? My father has had these many times and they feel like infections when they are not. And a lot of doctors do not know how to check for that or what to do with it–how to take it out with care. I am sure this is super ignorant as I know nothing of medicine but thought I would share the story.

  51. 51.

    Davis X. Machina

    You, know, we haven’t had an Obama-is-our-first-Nerd/Dork-American-President dogwhistle in ages.

    Poor bastard is damned — Urkel — if he does — and damned — Buckwheat — if he doesn’t.

  52. 52.

    MattR

    @Corner Stone: My earliest childhood memory is going down a hilly sidewalk in our condo complex and doing a big power slide at the end (taking out the occassional innocent bystander). I am actually still friends with one of the kids that I used to do that with.

  53. 53.

    jharp

    “Pollen levels are simply through the roof around here”

    Same here in central Indiana. I think it might have to do with the wet winter we had. The blanket of snow was great for the trees and plants. And they’re looking great this spring. Thus my theory that that is the cause of the pollen.

    And I have no idea what I’m talking about.

  58. 58.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @Mark S.: GWB and his most un excellent adventure in Iraq will be with us for some time to come. You can’t blow open Pandora’s Box and expect to walk away unscathed and without maybe releasing other evils that would likely dwarf the one we first caused. It is no win and to simply walk and let the region devolve into regional warfare, that is a good likelyhood puts Obama and American between Iraq and a very hard place. There was never really any doubt it would turn out this way from the moment the first GI crossed the berm from Kuwait. In many ways, Afghan is childs play compared to the dark possibilities in the land of Babylon’s Garden,

  61. 61.

    cat48

    Yea, all kinds of crap floating…..twitter war against Kagan by Greenwald everyday around 3……..Americablog post few days old said Newt wanted to form a coalition with blacks & disappointed white Dems…don’t know what that would accomplish exactly except help Newt…..Sully is at war now against Kagan because she is “blank slate” or somthing…all kinds of crap floating & didnt even have to visit the firebagger site

  62. 62.

    Uloborus

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:
    I was kind of hoping it had reached a point where we could step free and say it’s a mess but not a catastrophic one, best result possible, it’s out of our hands.

    God bless, Georgy, did you have to tell the Pentagon that a recovery plan was for suckers and winging it was fine? Imagine how much LESS disgusting Iraq and Afghanistan would be if you hadn’t not only launched us into a frivolous war, but waged both wars without the slightest concern for the aftermath.

  64. 64.

    Annie

    @Linda Featheringill:

    Thanks…I will include Sudafed on my list of traveling drugs…

    @valdivia:

    I don’t know what they have checked…They don’t tell me…

    @Mark S.:

    hee, hee, hee. I am going on Sunday to check out their Human Rights Commission. I am sure that I will make an impact…How many people around the table will have cotton balls in their ears and noses…

  65. 65.

    NobodySpecial

    Speaking of crap floating around in the air, the most depressing thing about the blank slate folks like Elena Kagan is that she is obviously very smart, but has to be careful what she says lest she be punished for her thoughts. Meanwhile, deeply stupid people like Mike Pence, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, Joe the Plumber, and so on, are unfettered by similar restraints and in fact rewarded for their idiocy, often with great sums of wealth and power and status well beyond what they deserve. As such, the smart people are quiet, and the morons run around polluting our discourse

    As I’ve mentioned before, we have a surfeit (even on our side) of people who simply insist you cannot be a liberal in public.

  68. 68.

    John O

    John, you’re on fire lately.

    I actually somehow missed a post that Benen caught, which I figured puts you just a degree or two from the blogging A+ list, and it was excellent.

    Anyway, as a person familiar with the benefits (but sadly indifferent to the costs) of keeping my trap shut, this one really rung true. If I had to pick a contemporary movie that in 50 years might be an underground banned cult film, it might be Idiocracy.

    I’m calling BJ National Treasure first.

  69. 69.

    And Another Thing...

    @Joseph Nobles: From Erikson’s post:

    “…Keep in mind that Kagan wrote her thesis at the height of the cold war praising a group that collaborated with our enemies…”

    So Kagan’s paper was about Socia 1ists from 1900-1933. Which the last time I looked was before the Cold War. And DAMN there were a number of countries with varying degrees of socia 1ism that were our allies during the Cold War.

    Oh, and isn’t he the clown that CNN hired as a commenter.

  70. 70.

    Roger Moore

    @EvolutionaryDesign:

    No taxation without representation for Moran-Americans!

    Not much of a risk of that. As far as I can tell, Moran-Americans are heavily represented; they even have their own political party.

  71. 71.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:

    You can’t blow open Pandora’s Box and expect to walk away unscathed and without maybe releasing other evils that would likely dwarf the one we first caused. It is no win and to simply walk and let the region devolve into regional warfare, that is a good likelyhood puts Obama and American between Iraq and a very hard place.

    I’m sick and fucking tired of hearing that as a justification for continuing our most excellent middle eastern clusterfuck. Firstly because it’s reminiscent of the “domino theory”, which of course was a total fucking load of horseshit. Secondly because it’s unknowable. Maybe if we leave the middle east the whole area will devolve into even more of an intergalactic goat-roping dick-dance than it is today. Maybe things will stay as they are, maybe things will get better. Who knows? What we do know is that being over there is getting American troops killed and injured, fucking up our military and costing us billions of dollars.

  72. 72.

    Elie

    @eemom:

    Don’t get me going.

    Its bad enough for medical conditions, but absolutely, freakin terrifying if you have any mental condition.

    The psychiatric specialty is now basically about pills… not really about engagement and therapeutic “talk” therapy.

    Pills.

    ALL with side effects varying from skin crawling sensations to well, suicidal and other noxious intrusive thoughts. Less noxious but also impactful is horrible appetite excess and decrease, dizziness, ringing in the ears, horrible headaches, loss of libido…

    you get the picture.

    My poor Alan.

    We sometimes feel so alone trying to figure out what to do, whether to retain your trust in these docs or just wing it with other therapies… who knows? So little guidance…

    Pain

  73. 73.

    Corner Stone

    @MattR:

    taking out the occassional innocent bystande

    Nobody was innocent.

    And one of the guys I wrecked shit Big Wheel style with is now a sergeant in a local police force.
    One time I rode out with him and we jacklighted deer along a big watershed/gully/ditch system until about 3am. Then we played spotlight tag with a neighboring police force deputy. That was some fun shit.
    Needless to say, I have a big honkin free pass for simple traffic violations across a huge swath of Southern Greater Houston Metro Area.

  75. 75.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    I’m sick and fucking tired of hearing that as a justification for continuing our most excellent middle eastern clusterfuck.

    I know you are wily, so am i. But we can’t just wish it away as a possibility, and I think more like probable. We totally fucked up the natural political, social and economic stasis in that highly flammable part of the world and the consequences of that fuckup are ours to bear as a country. I do take some solace that we are not doing much of the fighting there now, at least not in cities, so mostly what it is is about continued cost. This isn’t domino theory like Vietnam, it is a region that has basically been at war for millenia, with only brief periods of relative peace, and is mostly about two branches of a religion that hate each other and have been at each others throats also for millenia.

    I would, so long as we are not taking many or inflicting many casualties, at least give it as much time as possible to remain stable./ I think we own the folks there that much, and the world if the place blows up. But I don’t disagree with your sentiment that enough is enough .

  76. 76.

    Mnemosyne

    @Skepticat:

    We’re in Los Angeles. There had been a stranger rape in her apartment complex so her ex-boyfriend gave her the knife, and she would sometimes carry it on campus if she had a study group that broke up late. As the law says, it wasn’t a crime for her to be carrying the knife — you don’t even need a permit. It would have been a crime for her to deliberately try to smuggle it into the courthouse, but she clearly was not doing that.

    I used to carry cop-strength pepper spray that my dad (illegally) bought me, so arming yourself in the big city isn’t that odd to me.

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @Corner Stone:

    You know the old saying – “Just because mclaren is after you, it doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

    Dude, I know we often disagree, but are you seriously arguing that leftish people should refuse jury service and leave it to the right-wing authoritarians to decide if graduate students should have a criminal record for not fully checking the contents of their bag before they leave the house? Really?

  78. 78.

    Corner Stone

    @Mnemosyne:

    but are you seriously arguing that leftish people should refuse jury service

    No. Of course not. I am simply arguing you are:

    just licking the taint of the fascist police state

  82. 82.

    Skepticat

    @Mnemosyne: I just hope she doesn’t stumble and fall on her handbag! I think she’d be much better off with your solution, for a number of reasons. (Though I’ve read that hairspray can be as debilitating–short term–as pepper spray if you hit an attackers’ eyes.)

  84. 84.

    Mnemosyne

    @Skepticat:

    It was in a pretty heavy-duty black sheath (another reason it was sitting at the bottom of her bag unnoticed) so she’s at least not in danger from that perspective. But I’m sure that, after this whole experience, she’s getting rid of the damn thing since it sounds like she hardly ever used it anyway.

  86. 86.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    So did she get convicted? You said you are done with jury duty. (Or maybe you meant done just for the day.)

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    @Annie: EarPlanes are not a cure-all, but if I put them in properly, they can reduce my pain-while-descending level from an 8 to a 2 or 3. They are available at most chain drugstores, probably even in generic brands by now.

    The other thing you can pick up at the drugstore — assuming your doctor didn’t warn you against it — is a product called DeBrox (or the generic version), which is basically a mild solution of foaming peroxide with a conveniently sized syringe that you use to flush excess wax, pollen & other gunk out of your ears. I try to use DeBrox the night before I fly (I also have vertigo issues, so I prefer to put the stuff in just before I go to bed). An allergist told me that it’s not uncommon for people with allergy problems to have earwax issues as well. If it’s your sinuses rather than your ears that are swollen, you can’t use the neti pot, but getting the gunge out of the other end of your eustachian tubes might make a useful difference.

  89. 89.

    Lex

    Of course, Kagan’s self-imposed restraint is only temporary in that within a few months, either 1) she’ll be confirmed and she can spend the next 40 years saying whatever she damned well pleases and — BONUS! — what she says may well become part of the Supreme Law of the Land; or 2) she will be rejected, and because she obviously would never be considered for a federal bench seat again, she can spend the next 40 years saying whatever she damned well pleases, only without the BONUS! Supreme Law of the Land part.

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