Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

No one could have predicted…

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

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

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

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Reader Interactions

31Comments

  2. 2.

    Mark S.

    Obama Won’t Force Muslims To Worship Jesus

    Silly me. A week ago, I would have thought that was over the top.

  5. 5.

    asdf

    Let’s see, how about –

    OBAMA
    Makes me feel a little gay
    That’s why I’m voting Tea Party

  6. 6.

    Joseph Nobles

    Obama has violated the 3rd Amendment by taking up space in my head and making me crazy – that’s why I’m voting Tea Party.

  7. 7.

    Joseph Nobles

    This is fun:

    OBAMA
    WANTS TO FORCE ME
    TO BUY BETTER
    HEALTH CARE
    INSURANCE

    THAT’S WHY I’M VOTING
    TEA PARTY

  9. 9.

    My Truth Hurts

    These are not cheap shots. Very Serious People need to figure out that these lunatics cannot be reasoned with. Your only weapon is satire.

  10. 10.

    Zach

    I wouldn’t make stuff up, but if I weren’t out of the DC area on reclaim the dream day (or whatever he’s calling it), I would print up huge signs featuring nothing but quotes by Glenn Beck, Palin, etc. “Barack Obama has a deep seated hatred of white people” … “you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims’ families? Took me about a year.” “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw” … stuff like that. And I wouldn’t use Gotham type face.

  11. 11.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)

    Open thread. So.

    I saw my therapist today, and we were talking about having finally put it together that I simply can’t read other people’s non-verbal cues. She mentioned that this is similar to a symptom that people with Asperger’s Syndrome have, and I should take a look at some websites in order to find out what sorts of coping mechanisms they use.

    So I did. And I found that there are a bunch of Asperger’s symptoms that I have. There are also some that I don’t, and a bunch that I’m not sure of. So now I’m sitting here, managing to talk myself into a medical diagnosis, which isn’t the smartest thing in the world. I think I need to make an appointment with my psychiatrist.

    And I swear that I had no idea what Asperger’s was (I’d heard the word, but nothing else) when I got into that spat with DougJ last night.

  13. 13.

    burnspbesq

    @Origuy:

    In the town where I live, there was once a guy who pulled his kids out of public school and had them home-schooled because the schools celebrated the pagan holiday, Halloween. Said looney tune then proceeded to run for the school board and was elected by an overwhelming margin. At the same time, another member of our school board proposed that the district stop participating in the Federal school lunch program because taking Federal money was like being addicted to heroin. It took us four year to recall these fools.

  15. 15.

    Ailuridae

    @That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):

    If you’re good with numbers and not so good with people at some point somebody will half-jokingly suggest you have Asperger’s. I doubt there is anything “there” there but if looking into it can give you tactics or information that can help you interact with folks more naturally there probably is no harm.

  18. 18.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)

    @Ailuridae: You’re probably right, but it wasn’t just that. It was some of the particular ways that I’m bad with people. I am also prone to the sort of clumsiness that seems to go along with it. I am very capable of becoming obsessively focused on something (as anyone who has read my responses around here can attest), while spending much of the time being unable to concentrate on anything. I have some very strong ritualized behaviors, though they don’t sound exactly like what was described.

    As I said, you’re probably right. It’s certainly possible that the lists are written in such a way that everyone is going to think they have something. I scored high on each of the four online self-exam tests that I took, but they are undoubtedly skewed in the direction of making one think that you have it.

    So, I don’t know.

  19. 19.

    chaseyourtail

    not helpful

    LOL. There are way too many arbiters of what’s “helpful” or not on the internets.

  20. 20.

    Restrung

    sometimes I think I’m agoraphobic because I let my front yard get too long and I don’t want to go out there. Cuz, y’know, somebody’s probably watching me and thinking “why didn’t you do it five days ago?” Guilt about laziness?
    For some, being socially awkward doesn’t really need a name. I could be wrong… forget I mentioned it.

  23. 23.

    Anne Laurie

    @That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): There is a lot of disagreement among experts as to where “not good reading people” ends and “Aspergers” begins. Simon Baron-Cohen has made a career of researching what he calls “mindblindness” as an extreme version of “the male brain” (good w/numbers, not w/faces).

    The other, overlapping diagnosis you might want to do some reading about is Attention Deficit Disorder. Despite the name, one of the key components of ADD is that we have two attention settings — zero, and eleven. Driven to Distraction (written by two ADDers, one a neurologist) is the best single-source summary of current ADD theory & treatment — it’s been helpful not just to me & many of my ADD friends, but also to our non-ADD loved ones, who have to put up with us.

    On the looking-for-solutions front, this is going to sound bizarre, but I read the first couple of Miss Manners’ books cover-to-cover back when they first came out, and her advice remains very helpful to me. Judith Martin isn’t about checklists; she very thoroughly (and wittily!) lays out the way “people” tend to behave in a great many different scenarios, with explanations of which methods for reacting work well and which don’t. If, like me, you were never any good at “intuitively” picking up the non-verbal signals from your parents, teachers & peers, Miss Manners can give you a vocabulary for interacting with the rest of the human world.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):

    Anne Laurie beat me to it, but apparently there is quite a bit of overlap in symptoms between adult ADD and Asperger’s. I’m in the process of finding an adult ADD doctor to get myself evaluated because I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on, but I also scored quite high on online Asperger’s tests — like, only one or two points below “yes, you have Asperger’s.”

    I’m in the middle of reading a book about ADD right now that I’m really enjoying called More Attention, Less Deficit. Well, I’m not really enjoying the specific part I’m on now since it’s all about evaluating how much ADD has effed up your life, but it’s really a good book. I’m reading it on my iPod, but it comes on paper, too.

    (Edited to bypass moderation. FYWP.)

  28. 28.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)

    Sorry. I had to get out for a while. I’ve been evaluated for ADD. The doc said that, while I have some symptoms of it, he’s pretty sure I don’t have it.

    Honestly, this would never have occurred to me if a professional hadn’t told me that I have some similar symptoms and should look into how they cope.

  29. 29.

    Anne Laurie

    @That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): “Pretty sure” would seem to be a question of interpretation; if you haven’t brought up the possibility with your therapist / psychiatrist, I would definitely do so.

    Also, whatever the cause, my advice about Miss Manners stands. If “normal” humans can make you feel like a visitor from another planet, Judith Martin is an excellent anthropologist for explaining their odd rituals & expectations.

  30. 30.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @Anne Laurie:

    I had a friend from work who was brilliant but a bit socially awkward. She said when she was in college she would watch the news programs and see how the anchors all interacted with each other. Really helped, she said.

  31. 31.

    daryljfontaine

    @Emma: That one’s been around since the deep Bush/Cheney mire; it originated with Jonathan Rosenberg, the creator of the webcomic “Goats.” (RfV t-shirts on sale at “Webcomic Walmart” TopatoCo here. I use the term “Webcomic Walmart” with humor and love.)

    I remember first seeing an RfVoldemort bumper sticker in the wild in 2004 or 2005 when I went to Carlsbad. It was my first experience with Internet “culture” invading real life.

    D

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