Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We still have time to mess this up!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I was promised a recession.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

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

This really is a full service blog.

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

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

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

You can’t love your country only when you win.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

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

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

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

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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116Comments

  4. 4.

    Anonymous At Work

    Go HOGS! Battle of the Boot will, most likely, determine a BCS bowl bid for the winner. Arkansas will move up into the Top 8 or so with a win (#11-12, 3 teams ahead have lost, LSU would lose as well). Lots riding on Mallet completing a regular season with KICK-ASS.

  7. 7.

    sherifffruitfly

    I feel kind of lost. After spending all day yesterday on the couch, I think I’m actually getting sick of football. Maybe I’ll check and see if there’s anything out there beyond my door.

  9. 9.

    Rommie

    Ugh, Michigan’s defense has been bad bad bad all season. It has to improve next year, it can’t be worse.

  11. 11.

    You Don't Say

    @Linkmeister: I felt awful for him, but then I saw him interviewed and he parroted the coach, saying no one play loses the game, etc., and thought just say you feel like crap and be done with it. Ah, he’s just a kid.

  13. 13.

    tbogg

    My daughter was the kicker on her high school football team and she never missed a FG under 30 yards. I spoke with her last night and she just said, “Jesus. Those are chip shots. That just sucks for him.”

  15. 15.

    Yutsano

    @tbogg: Kid pressured himself, end of story. That and even Tiger Woods can miss a chip shot. It’s why we play the games.

    Having said that, I am now an instant Beavers fan.

  17. 17.

    jeffreyw

    Fuckin Ritz crackers–How do they work? No shit, been lookin for a copycat recipe to make a clone cracker to no avail, though I have run across a few similar laments. Gonna go with a generic butter cracker recipe. Grumble.

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    @stuckinred: Tease. :)

    @jeffreyw: Never dissected them properly, but you might try using butter flavored shortening instead of straight butter. It sounds crazy, but shortening gives a lighter texture, plus it’s cheaper and easier to use. And if it doesn’t work I’mma gonna fly to Georgia and have words with a certain Mr. Brown.

  23. 23.

    Andy K

    @You Don’t Say:

    Hey, I never asked them to hire that guy. Nor did I ask them to hire David Brandon as AD, who will probably do the wrong thing at every turn for a few years before he quits to run some fucking wingnut’s campaign again.

  25. 25.

    Ed in NJ

    @Linkmeister:

    If JC’s any kind of a WVU fan, he’s rooting hard for Cincinnati over UConn (which isn’t looking good right now). The only way WVU gets a BCS bid is with a UConn loss this week or next and a WVU win next week over my already-packed-it-in Scarlet Knights.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    OSU’s up, but Gee’s still an idiot — not because he gave an uninformed opinion on the BCS, but because he refused to return the Student Union’s Mary Cassatt painting to them unless they arm wrestled him for it.

  33. 33.

    Phyllis

    Just biding time until Carolina/Clemson at 7 p.m. It’s not so much of a nail-biter for either team as it has been in past years. Still, gotta root for the Garnet & Black. Go Cocks!

  35. 35.

    Bill Murray

    Grambling St vs. Southern on NBC. About 9:30 left before their usually fantastic show and about the only one still shown

  36. 36.

    inkadu

    @Bill Murray: QB’s are running the ball alot this game. I like it. One of the things that sucks about pro football is that it’s too dangerous for the QB to run the ball.

  39. 39.

    debit

    If I don’t stop eating leftover sausage stuffing and gravy I am going to be sick. And weigh an additional 50 pounds. But it’s so good!

    @jeffreyw: NOM!!

  43. 43.

    wmd

    Indiana University beats Purdue University in overtime.

    Which only matters to IU and PU alumni and students.

    When I was in grad school I saw someone modify a “Purdue University” window sticker to read “Undue Purversity” – kind of funny when you realize Purdue is the A&M land grant college in Indiana.

  44. 44.

    wmd

    @tbogg:

    No Promo of FDL Book Salon? You’re hosting Matt fucking Taibbi today.

    Guess I’ll do it for you. 2 PM PST, 5 PM EST.
    So what if there are some kool aid drinkers and of course the “Jane Hamshers of the Left”. Matt should be a lively discussion and it might be nice to have something besides “how did Obama cause all this crap” in the comments for him.

  51. 51.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @wmd: Of course the big question at IU is, will this win be enough to save head coach Bill Lynch and his staff.

    I personally hope it will be. Lynch is one of the finest and most decent college coaches I have ever worked with. And after the turmoil of the past 10 – 11 years at Indiana University.

    That period has included four changes in head football coach; the insane and needless sacking of Bob Knight, followed by the debacle of Kelvin Sampson (hack, spit) and the hiring of Tom Crean (great hope for the future); and four different Athletics directors, one of whom was an interim only appointment.

    IU needs stability and patience to rebuild. I personally think it would be just one more set-back for the football program to sack Lynch at this time, just when the program is starting to become stable and show progress and ability to recruit. This year’s team came within a hair of defeating both Iowa and Michigan this season. The kids have really played their hearts out, except for the disastrous route at Northwestern.

  54. 54.

    JCJ

    @HeartlandLiberal and @wmd
    Purdue and IU alum here plus a native of West Lafayette – bummed my Boilers lost but agree IU needs stability. Felt bad for IU after their losses to Iowa and Michigan. I was at the Wisconsin game – Oy! Chappell will be very hard to replace. I remember when IU beat Ohio State back in ’87 or ’88 prompting the OSU coach, Earle Bruce to say, “This is the darkest day in Ohio State football history.”

  57. 57.

    Yutsano

    @efgoldman:

    My daughter played/marched four years in the prizewinning UMass band. Our favorite fall day was Band Day at UMass, when @3000 high school kids came in to participate in halftime, and the UMass band did their show for all the other kids during postgame.

    I’ve talked about this before, but if you ever get the chance to go to a major bowl game, watch the band kids. The alumni of the respective schools will maintain a polite distance from each other, and the partisan hacks are even worse. But when the two bands get together in the same place at the same time, they will literally RUN for each other, usually by respective instrument sections, and hang out and talk for as long as they can. By game day (bowl trips are between 4-7 days, depending on the game) they’ll play their guts out for their team and engage in friendly partisan sniping, then all try to hang out and party their asses off before having to go home. It’s a really fucking amazing phenomenon.

  58. 58.

    sb

    UCLA alum here. Great news! We scored 34 points.

    I’d rather not share the bad news. So… 34 points! And people thought our offense weak. Pah! Go Bruins!

  59. 59.

    Kathy

    @Andy K: I think for the first time ever, I was almost rooting for Ohio State. A bad loss hopefully will be the last nail in RichRod’s coffin. Of course no announcements hopefully until Stanford is done with their season. I am glad Bill Martin is no longer calling the shots. However, if RichRod is still there next season, it will be really hard to maintain my level of Michigan fandom.

  64. 64.

    JCJ

    @stuckinred
    I was at IU in ’87 when they beat UNLV then Syracuse to win the national championship. I remember grudgingly thinking that it was impressive coaching by Knight since the star of the team was the extremely overrated Steve Alford (although Keith Smart and Dean Garrett were the best players on that team.) Then the next year in an exhibition game against the Soviet national team therre was a questionable call against IU so he had a tantrum and pulled his team off the court and refused to play any more. What an ass.

  65. 65.

    wmd

    @HeartlandLiberal:

    I’m not holding my breath for IU to have a football or basketball program to write about any time soon.

    Soccer on the other hand is still strong.

    Swimming and diving are still OK as far as I know.

  67. 67.

    Yutsano

    @efgoldman:

    You didn’t have to line out “party their asses off.”

    Hehehe. It “officially” never happened. At least that’s the cover we gave our director. Plausible deniability and all that. But there was indeed partying. Hell one bowl trip our hotels were on opposite sides of the city. We still managed to mingle.

    But yes, you’re absolutely right about band kids, everywhere and at every level, at least until they get good enough to be taking cut-throat auditions of one kind or another.

    I dunno if we’re all supposed to be the great examples for the world or what. This happens even with rival games regardless of the intensity of the rivalry. Put a uni and a horn on someone and it’s like a spark goes off. It’s a strange wonderful beautiful phenomenon.

    And cutthroat auditions are just nasty. I get the necessity, especially at UMass levels, but it seems to ruin the spirit of openness to me. Oh well. I survived 95% of mine so I guess I shouldn’t bitch too much.

  69. 69.

    wmd

    @JCJ:

    I’ve got mixed feelings about BK.

    He was an ass. And he was a clean coach that made his players study and graduate as well as pay the game well.

    I wasn’t sorry to see him fired.

    BTW, 3 time IU alumni BS math, MA math, MS computer science.

  70. 70.

    Anonymous At Work

    Re: Battle of the Boot (Ark-LSU),
    Up until that play, I was thinking that the game was incredibly tame compared to the usual tradition.
    But “wild” for Arkansas usually involves 6+ OTs.

  71. 71.

    JPL

    OT…Professional Football…. Situations involving domestic violence are always sad, and disappointing. Hopefully, the NFL comes down hard on this guy because often it is overlooked in sports and particularly the NFL.
    link

    File under good news for the Falcons..

  72. 72.

    Yutsano

    @efgoldman: That’s a correct the behavior immediately (you don’t break formation for anything save natural disaster, I consider a defensive lineman part of that category) then laugh about it later on in the year. Just because I’m a vindictive old bitch, how long did it take for the mascot to get up?

    @jeffreyw: Yes. That will do. That will do quite nicely.

  74. 74.

    Svensker

    @Yutsano:

    I’mma thinking a road trip for crab dip and homemade crackers looks like a fun future to me.

    I’m with ya. God, I’m drooling here.

    Edited to add: @jeffreyw: You are an evil evil person. Send some over right naow!

  77. 77.

    Lavocat

    Seen a few pictures lately and I really have to wonder: is Tunch a cat or is he really just an animatronic throw rug? I’m leaning towards the animatronics.

  78. 78.

    Yutsano

    @efgoldman:

    His first declaration: The girls can’t march, because they can’t do it right.
    Fall of 1966. We marched what amounted to a chamber band of 48 guys, woefully unbalanced as to instrumentation.

    A very similar situation during World War II led to the founding of a band sorority. Plus there are women out there who can march fucking circles around me. And I wasn’t a slouch. I could play too.

    Nothing impresses me more though than a girl who marched for the University of Washington. She played tuba. She was also Army ROTC. She’s 4’6″.

  79. 79.

    wmd

    @stuckinred:
    You fuck him, he’s not my type.

    I can see my way to giving him faint praise for running a clean (and winning) program and graduating his players.

    that’s it.

    He’s also an nasty asshole.

  81. 81.

    chaseyourtail

    Can we have a thread on last night’s Barbara Walters interview with the Obamas? Or can we just create an award for most idiotic questions asked in an interview?

  82. 82.

    D-Chance.

    A class act.

    New Orleans Saints defensive end Will Smith was arrested Saturday in Louisiana after he was accused of grabbing his wife’s hair and pulling her down the street.

    Police in Lafayette, which is about 50 miles west of Baton Rouge, said Smith and his wife had gotten into an argument just after 2 a.m. while leaving a nightclub.

    Long-time common sense adage: nothing good happens at ANY nightclub after midnight. And, haven’t there been more than enough incidents to lead sports teams to contractually demand that their players avoid nightclubs… especially during the season?

  83. 83.

    JPL

    @Yutsano: From NBCSports

    PFT has learned that Scarnecchia’s first offense was being part of the Patriots’ video operations — even though he left New England after the 2004 season and wasn’t part of the team during the infamous Spygate matter of 2007………….In fact, Scarnecchia was actually the Jets’ director of video operations at the time that the Patriots were caught videotaping the Jets’ signals.

    Gee, I wonder what he did for the Jets?

  86. 86.

    JPL

    @D-Chance.: The NFL ignores the violence that occurs off the field until it’s to late.
    The guy was on TV with his family on Turkey eating day wishing all a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope they nail him.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @tbogg:

    Wasn’t it really wet and rainy? Not to minimize the choke factor, but just sayin’. I saw only a little of the game, though.

  91. 91.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    Well, it’s time to get ready for Georgia versus Georgia Tech. As my best friend in the world put it: “If that ain’t two mules fighting over a turnip, I don’t know what is.”

  93. 93.

    Origuy

    @jeffreyw:

    Fuckin Ritz crackers—How do they work? No shit, been lookin for a copycat recipe to make a clone cracker to no avail, though I have run across a few similar laments.

    Maybe you can find a recipe for mock Ritz crackers on the back of an apple pie box.

  95. 95.

    Anya

    @arguingwithsignposts: I know. I missed that too. When I listen to him, I wonder about why people hate him sooo much. I mean he really comes off as charming and decent man; yet he invokes so much hate (from some quarters). My college friend is originally from North Carolina and her dad was your average Republican (tax cuts solves all the problems and let’s bomb brown people to secure America). Aside from those two points he seemed reasonable and even stopped supporting GWB at the end of his presidency. But now he is a crazy teabagger, to the point that it strained his relationship with his daughter. I just don’t get how he can drive people this insane.

  96. 96.

    Andy K

    @Kathy:

    Shit. Forgot about that.

    I like the old tiebreaker that would have applied here: The team that’s waited the longest to go to Pasadena makes the trip.

  98. 98.

    stuckinred

    @Anya: It’s like they say about booze,” you don’t do anything drunk that you didn’t want to do when you were sober”. This hatred has been in these people all along.

  101. 101.

    Geoduck

    @sherifffruitfly:

    Assuming you’re talking about the UW.. They still have to get by the Cougars, but, yeah, it was a cool win. Here’s hoping things will only get better once Sarkasian flushes out the last of the Willingham dregs.

  102. 102.

    Yutsano

    @Geoduck:

    They still have to get by the Cougars

    This hinges upon one possibility: Locker or no Locker. If Locker is back then I’m not even going to watch because he’ll light up Wazzu. No Locker…it’ll be a ballgame.

  104. 104.

    Andy K

    @stuckinred:

    It’s like they say about booze,” you don’t do anything drunk that you didn’t want to do when you were sober”.

    Funny, but I don’t ever recall a time when I was sober when I made a conscious decision to keep myself from blacking out, passing out and/or puking.

  107. 107.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Phyllis: Sweet!

    I tell ya, I’m not used to seeing the Gamecocks playing tough this late in the season. But Florida last week (in the Swamp!) and Clemson this week (in Death Valley!) – that’s two damned impressive wins, back to back, on the road, against good teams.

    And beating Clemson is always sweet.

  108. 108.

    Kilkee

    I know that ND isn’t the fav team on this blog, but why does ABC think that more people in New England (and much of the rest of the country, outside the upper Midwest and Cal coast) would rather watch Oklahoma v. Oklahoma State than ND v. USC? Does anyone outside of OK and TX give a rat’s ass about OK or OK State if they’re not battling for #1? So aggrevating to have the last game of the season and I have to watch this. And the ND/USC game is a nail-biter, to add to the fun.

  109. 109.

    S. cerevisiae

    OK, my Beaves are getting killed, but at least I have awesome beer from Block 15 to drown my sorrows. The Vikings had better interview Harbaugh for head coach and sell the farm for Luck. That MF is goooood.

  111. 111.

    Yutsano

    @S. cerevisiae: I honestly didn’t see that win coming. I thought for sure we were gonna goose egg because our defense is weaker than wet toilet paper. Which sucks, because our soph QB is a helluva player. And he’s got a few weapons to play with, most of which are coming back. If Wulff can get some defensive juco signees…we could be dangerous next year.

  112. 112.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    @stuckinred: What’s that comin’ down the track?

    A big fucking rancid trainload of defensive fucking suck is what’s coming down the track.

    I don’t give a damn if we DID win that game, that was three games worth of defensive incompetence in one sorry-ass contest.

    God damn it to hell. We have SO far to go. I’ve been reluctant to jump on the “Run Richt out of town on a rail” bandwagon, but the guy is making it hard.

    Fucking KANSAS didn’t have two weeks to prepare, and they beat this crowd by fucking ACCIDENT.

    Fuck. Just fuck.

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