Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

No one could have predicted…

This really is a full service blog.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Everybody saw this coming.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The willow is too close to the house.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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43Comments

  2. 2.

    Steeplejack

    Was sitting here feeling irritated about everything and dreading going back to work today. I hate my part-time job, especially my jerk boss, but it’s got health insurance.

    Then I get a phone call from an extremely connected friend about a couple of possible job leads. She doesn’t really understand my field (software), but one of them sounded at least a little in the ball park. Yay, nepotism networking! At least some motivation to get through the week.

  9. 9.

    Rick Taylor

    Maybe people know this already, but Fishgrease’s diary on daily kos is good for learning some very basic things about cleaning up oil. It’s also good if you’re just not feeling enough outrage already at the incompetence that is destroying so many of the ecosystems of the Gulf Coast. Sadly, it’s not just the BP that comes off badly; I can’t comprehend why we’re leaving it up to the perpetrators to clean up their own spill (this is separate from capping the well).

  10. 10.

    cat48

    @Rick Taylor:

    I tried to read one of his diaries but it wore me out with fuck as every other word and I didnt learn anything except he was angry. They do have the Natl Guard & Coast Guard working on that part. I’ve actually seen pictures of them working. So now Obama is all to blame, right?

  11. 11.

    Perfect Tommy

    @Rick Taylor:
    BP has a long history of this kind of thing. Folks probably don’t remember, but BP was the majority stakeholder in Alyeska, the consortium that dropped the ball after the Exxon Valdez went aground. Why is this company allowed to drill in US waters????
    If you can find a copy of “In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez” by Art Davidson, I highly recommend it. The train wreck in the Gulf looks to be a replay of Prince William Sound in 1989.

  12. 12.

    Mumphrey

    I’d like to remind everybody once again that I have a small non-profit, and I’m looking for teachers who would like to teach in Honduras next school year. I raise the money to pay their wages while they work at a small bilingual school in Tela, Honduras. For every teacher I can support, the school has that much money freed up to use for other things–scholarships, upkeep, supplies, and so on. It costs $200 a month for the teacher’s wages every month, and then there is about $40 more every time I make a wire transfer. I can pay for a teacher’s whole year with about $6000.

    As always, any contributions are most appreciated, and are tax-deductible. Bilingual Schooling for Tela, Atlántida (BiSTA) is non-profit as recognized by the IRS under section 501( c )3 of the Internal Revenue Code. All the money I raise goes to the teachers and to incidental costs like wiring fees. I don’t pay myself anything, though someday I’d like to.

    And, please, if anybody knows of anybody not long out of college who’s fairly adventurous and very flexible about life (you have to be flexible living in Honduras), then please, steer them toward me. Mid-Atlantic is best, since I’d like to meet any prospective teacher before agreeing to work with them.

    Click on my user name to go to my site.

    Gracias,
    Upshur Whittock

  13. 13.

    bemused

    I wish I would never again have to hear the word ‘accountability’ coming out of conservatives’ mouths. I can’t think of any debacle from sexcapades to financial theft to oil spills that conservatives haven’t used every trick in the book to & often succeeded in completely avoiding responsibility for their own actions while at the same time making everybody else the fall guys.
    I’ve been laughing all morning thinking of Rush Limbaugh’s gaudy, frou frou home decor & wonder if his wingnut callers & fans know their idol has such frilly, frenchie decorating tastes.

  14. 14.

    chuck

    The funny thing is, she’s still more level-headed and qualified for the office than either of the Republican candidates in Nevada.

    As for the WWE fan base voting Democrat: they’re young, which is an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency… when they actually vote that is. Mid-terms, not so much.

  15. 15.

    PaulW

    The reason why Obama is letting BP get away with everything so far – up to and including murder – is because the goddamn wingnuts and teabaggers spent the last 2 years screaming he was a “Socialist” who was going to take over our Sacred Capitalism and destroy us all. So if Obama does anything perfectly rational – like say taking the BP and Transocean executives and line them up against the wall for the firing squad – the FOX Not-News crowd will all jump and scream “SEE HE’S THE EBILZ SOCIALIST WE SAID HE WAS! IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AAAAAAAAH!” and set off gods-only-know how many white rage street riots.

  16. 16.

    Eric S.

    @Steeplejack: Fingers crossed. My roommate and I are in IT and he got notice that his contract will not be renewed after September. He’s trying to get out in front of it.

  17. 17.

    cleek

    I can’t comprehend why we’re leaving it up to the perpetrators to clean up their own spill

    cleaning up your own mess is pretty much what “accountability” is all about. and it’s not like anyone else knows anything about cleaning up a spill on this scale.

  19. 19.

    Face

    Just starting watching the live feed. It’s depressing as hell, especially when I consider that I’m seeing a ton of oil, and I’m only watching for 3 minutes. I have a feeling BP has low-balled their estimate of whats in the Gulf by a factor of at least a hundred.

  20. 20.

    Maude

    @Steeplejack:
    Hope you get a bite.
    I mean that nicely.
    Good luck and let us know.
    It’s hard times for IT and I don’t know about sofware.

  21. 21.

    Ash Can

    @bemused: His fans probably think the photos are all faked and the text of the story was made up by George Soros.

    And if they do believe any of it, hey, it’s Rush. If he does it, it’s OK.

  22. 22.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    re John Cole “what are you talking about”

    Just to answer your question from my comment saturday. I am talking about fuckhead for a couple of months now using my dog as a weapon to attack me, and now recently by corner stone. I thought I heard, I did hear you say once that pets were out of bounds for such purposes, but yet you said nothing, assuming you read your own blog. Only Annie and Anne Laurie could be bothered to say it. I posted pics of
    charlie and talk about him as separate to the politcal and personal battles. As for the Glenbot reference, I think that should speak for itself, it is a political label, like me being called a “mindless Obot” and such. And where is the actblue page calling for Obama to be primaried. If I thought what he was doing with the guy in Yemen was as bad as Bush torture, what you and others opined I would not support him either, and would call for a criminal investigation. Though now that he has posted a new video promising to slaughter more Americans, he should be exalted to progressive sainthood and should maybe run for senator or something. Something for the disappointed prog population to rally around.

    Please don’t take my criticism personally, I don’t when folks call me pol labels of one sort or another. You are basically a good dude imo, and both of us can be jerks, nothing has changed there, but I am mad about the pet smearing shit. No lie on that.

    And I really really don;t like the liberal nutroots, no secret there. And will be by from time to time to mention it when you side with them for poor reasons. Obot troll.

  23. 23.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    gotta go for now. time is up for my library computer hour. All you who will flame for the above comment. A pre emptive kiss my ass to you. later alligators.

  24. 24.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    gotta go for now. time is up for my library computer hour. All you who will flame for the above comment. A pre emptive kiss my ass to you. later alligators.

  25. 25.

    Mark S.

    Well, at least BP isn’t letting that lovely crude go to waste:

    They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing.

    It’s also amazing how many of these local government officials are meekly taking orders from BP flacks.

  26. 26.

    Dork

    @Mark S.: That MoJo article is a MUST READ. Unfrickinbelievable how BP basically controls everything in SoLA, especially the po’leese.

    There’s a quote in there about how the reporter calls the police station, and he/she’s forwarded to BP’s office. That’s insane.

  27. 27.

    Martin

    @cat48: Until he’s called up the Girl Scouts to haul oil booms, he’ll remain as a disappointment to progressives.

  28. 28.

    mclaren

    “Support for repeal of the new national health care plan has jumped to its highest level ever. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of U.S. voters now favor repeal of the plan passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Obama in March. “

    Source: Rasmussen Reports.

    As more people discover that the health care non-reform actually makes everything worse, support for repeal skyrockets.

    Worst of all possible worlds. Repeal would regress back to the original unsustainable out-of-control costs increases in medical care, only without mandates. Forcing people to pay for private health insurance whose premiums will rise to infinity may be worse than health insurance premiums that rise to infinity but which you’re not forced to buy…but it’s a fairly trivial difference. Either way, the entire medical-industrial complex is headed for collapse.

    Instead of genuine reform, we got this. Obama and the Democrats really blew it. And since the Republicans don’t even realize our medical-industrial complex has a problem, they’re useless too.

    So, looks like medical costs will just have to rise until America’s entire health care system falls apart. At that point, real reform can begin.

  30. 30.

    bemused

    @Ash Can:
    So true. They’d rather believe their lying eyes. Still, it is pretty amazing to watch R relatives & friends go to incredible lengths to avoid learning never mind acknowledging inconvenient truths about the party they stay so loyal to. I have to reread The Authoritarians again.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    @Mark S.: It’s not a matter of letting it go to waste – laws require that oil be disposed of that way, same as when you drain the oil out of your car, it goes on to processing. It’s a good thing, and a normal thing.

    BP loses far more money by having to do all of this processing than they can possibly recover by selling the resulting oil.

  32. 32.

    Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)

    @mclaren: You’re taking a Rasmussen report seriously? If their reports are anything like their statistics, they polled 80 republicans, 2 dems and 18 independents and are now making projections based on that.

  35. 35.

    hal

    As more people discover that the health care non-reform actually makes everything worse, support for repeal skyrockets.

    Yes, I’m sure everyone polled has in depth knowledge off what the HCR bill actually does, and are not just buying into scare tactics from the right (and maybe a little from the left, too.)

    Progressives are always saying not to legislate based on polls, to do what’s right, but that apparently only counts when it’s something you like 100%.

  36. 36.

    kay

    @Martin:

    Yesterday’s news conference didn’t really get through:

    The U.S. official leading the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill said Sunday that only BP had the expertise to plug the gaping hole in its deepwater well and that he trusted the oil company was doing its best.

    The comments by Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, signaled that the U.S. government wouldn’t take a larger role in stopping the five-week-old spill even as frustration in the Gulf coast grows over the Obama administration’s policy of letting BP run the cleanup.

    It’s depressing, but predictable, that they didn’t really hear a word he said. His nifty three-part analysis went swoosh, right over their heads.

  37. 37.

    hal

    I’m still amazed at Sarah Palin’s audacity on this oil spill. The bobble head idiot who went around the country cooing “drill baby, drill” like a fucking meth addicted cheerleader is now commenting on Obama’s actions during the oil spill.

    When was Palin calling for regulation and safety for the oil drilling in her shrill attempt to paint herself as knowledgeable on energy policy?

    I got a kick out of reading some of the comments from her Facebook page on the issue, with all her sycophants praising her depth of knowledge about oil, and lamenting the fact the she wasn’t President now to take care of this problem, without acknowledging the fact that if she had her way, this top of disaster could be a regular occurrence.

  38. 38.

    frankdawg

    @Corner Stone:

    Funny about those ‘secret’ actions. They usually are only secret to American’s. People reading European newspapers knew we were ‘secretly’ bombing Cambodia. The German’s knew our ‘secret’ defense plans in the event of a Soviet invasion was a fighting retreat (and hilariously caused such a traffic jam in the 60’s when the Army tried a simulation that the entire exercise had to be called off). Again, European’s knew that Saddam did not have WMDs if they read their papers. And certainly the Pakistani’s know we are ‘secretly’ bombing areas of their country & by extension everyone in the Muslim world knows it too. They knew about our ‘secret’ prisons & ‘secret’ renditions.

    Yeah, all that secret shit always works out so well for us.

  39. 39.

    Midnight Marauder

    @mclaren:

    I think people are going to take that post (and you) as seriously as they do Rasmussen.

    Which is to say, that post is a complete joke.

  41. 41.

    Gunga Dean

    Favorite Lines from song:

    “They say…
    That the cream cannot help
    But alway rise up to the top.
    Well I say:
    Shit floats.”

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack

    @Eric S.:

    Thanks. Hope your roommate has luck finding a new contract soon. I have been there. Actually, can’t remember ever getting as much as four months’ notice.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    @Maude:

    Thanks for the good thoughts. I’m having dinner with my friend Thursday, will learn more then.

Comments are closed.