Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Wait, what?

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

When we show up, we win.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

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

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

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

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

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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Archives for 2010

The Return Of Not Cynical Enough

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For my tastes, Tbogg doesn’t quite get across here what it feels like to be a liberal Democrat in the age of Obama. This version hits a bit closer to the mark.

“Hey, John. I noticed that you got a new lawnmower but you didn’t toss the old one. I could use it if it’s just taking up space in your garage. If you want I can pay something for it.”

“I don’t really want to sell it, Barack, but I might let it go for $50 if you give me some money to think about it. Say, five bucks.”

“Sure! Here’s eight. Can I give you fifty bucks now?”

“Mmmm, no. I might sell it for eighty, but you have to give me another eight first.”

“Okay! How about now?”

“No.”

“Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. Here’s ten bucks.”

“Hmm. No.”

“Really?”

“Hey! Smith! You see this guy threaten me? Get off my lawn, you sumbitch! I’m getting my gun.”

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Harass, snatch or neutralize

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I found the WikiLeaks dump interesting but not very surprising. The biggest news was how much Arab countries want us to attack Iran, but I already suspected that might be the case. But I am surprised (though I probably shouldn’t be) by the ferocity of the neocon attacks on Assange:

“Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are? Why can’t we disrupt and destroy WikiLeaks in both cyberspace and physical space, to the extent possible?” Kristol writes.

I don’t know what neutralize means here, but I’m guessing it means assassinate. And snatch presumably means kidnap.

Forgetting for a moment about whether one thinks WikiLeaks is good or bad for the world how could anyone fail to see what awful PR it would be for the US to kidnap or assassinate Assange right now? The worst I’ve heard about the recent document dump is that it makes the US “look bad”. How much worse would it look if the CIA grabbed or shot Assange?

This is so dumb I can’t wrap my head around it.

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Getting What You Voted For

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Y’all made your bed:

Tempers flared at an unemployment office in Louisville, Ky. as the end nears for federally-funded extended jobless benefits.

Local CBS affiliate WLKY captured a bit of the scene on Monday — amid some commotion, a man can be heard saying in a raised voice, “What did you just say to me?”

WLKY reported that “at least two people were escorted out” of the office. With the threat of benefits expiring for 100,000 Kentuckians, WLKY reported, “tempers are flaring.”

It’s the type of scene that contributed to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development’s decision to add armed guards to each of its 36 field offices where workers can file unemployment claims (previously only some of the offices had armed security).

Kentucky just voted Rand Paul into office for six years with 56% of the vote. Here are Rand Paul’s thoughts on unemployment benefits:

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul has a blunt message for the millions of Americans who remain unemployed in the long-term: “Accept a wage that’s less than [you] had at [your] previous job” and “get back to work.”

According to Paul, the issue is “bigger than unemployment benefits” and the Tea Party-backed Senate hopeful made his position on the matter clear in an interview with talk radio host Sue Wylie on WVLK-AM last week.

“As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again,” Paul explained. “Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.”

Paul’s advice for the increasing proportion of the long-term unemployed came in response to a question from Wylie on Republicans successfully blocking a measure that would have extended $120 billion in unemployment benefits to jobless Americans in the Senate last week.

Obviously I feel sorry for the people of Kentucky, but it is kind of hard when they continue to vote against their own interests. If unemployment benefits do get extended, it will only be after the GOP secures tax cuts for millionaires. Maybe the people of Kentucky ought to get a damned clue.

Wait until they find out what Rand thinks about their social security checks and tells them they can’t have free scooters from Medicare anymore (although he’ll still keep accepting their medicaid payments for visiting his office). Knowing these folks, they’ll probably pitch a fit and then give him 64% of the vote, because, you know, Charlie Rangel.

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Sometimes the Snark Writes Itself, Megan McArdle edition

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Update, Correction, and (gulp) Apology:

As Megan McArdle notes below — very mildly, I’d add, given the provocation — there is a material error in this post, right there in the first line below this correction.

I said “She actually writes…” when, as she says, she did not.  The quoted lines below are from the Post itself.  McArdle was quoting the Post’s ombudman, Andrew Alexander.

Whatever one may think of the context of McArdle’s celebration of the Post’s errors, what I wrote was wrong, and I apologize to Ms. McArdle for the error.

Did that hurt to write?  Yes it did. But it is necessary.  Live by the snark, die by it, on occasion.

_____

So Megan McArdle actually goes there.  In a post titled “Department of Awful Statistics,” she busts on the Washington Post for its presumed tropism toward arithmetical mistakes.  She actually writes

I regularly hear complaints that numbers in Post stories don’t add up.

__

…Many [errors] are inexplicable, such as last Tuesday’s A-section story that said new industry-wide health-care rules, “will affect about 180 Americans with private insurance” (it should have been 180 million).

This, from the woman who infamously mistook $250 for $25, and then proceeded to build an entire argument on why we shouldn’t bother allowing taxes on the rich to return to Clinton-era levels.  (Don’t worry — that link leads to the most excellent Susan of Texas’s blog*, in which Ms. McArdle is (metaphorically) gutted like a Grand Banks cod and left to dry on the margin.)

__

Sometimes one fumes at the egregious “work” (sic–ed.) of the Atlantic’s Business and Economics Editor.  Sometimes one rages.  Here, it’s just a snort and a chortle.

A kinder person would simply avert one’s gaze and pass by in silence.

Me — I gotta laugh…and put put the boot in. Whereof that which is miscounted, those who cannot count must remain silent.

*I should note that Susan got there first with this snark too, but then she always does.  And hell — I come by the post honestly, having tracked McArdle down — with wonder — from the link at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ fabulous post on The Sons of Confederate Veterans celebration of slavery and the Times‘ miserable coverage of same.

Image:  Nicolas Neufchâtel, ” The Schoolmaster Johann Neudörffer and a Student,” 1561.

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Hands touching hands

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Ever since FourLokoGate, TrashGate, and TSAGate overwhelmed this blog, I’ve felt very trapped. I have fairly limited interest in these topics (I have some interest in the TSA stuff and none in the others), and my inclination is mostly to make fun of it all, but I know where that leads — to me getting blamed for being the childish nihilist who ruined all the honest discourse with simplistic snark — so I’ve been soft-pedaling it. But then I got an email from a commenter I respect the other day saying that the place was turning into an Atlantic-style circle jerk, where we all respectfully disagree with each other’s principled, intellectually honest positions about stuff. I’m not one to be stung by criticism, but that one really hurt.

Is that commenter right about what this place is becoming? What can be done to stop this from happening?

Update. Everyone has the same complaint: too much back-and-forth on the front page that belongs in comments.

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This Should Be The End of DADT

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In a rational world, at any rate:

Okay, I’ve got some more detail for you on the findings in that forthcoming Pentagon report on the impact repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t tell will have on the military. The upshot: It will leave GOP moderates with no reasons left to oppose repeal.

One of the key findings in the report is that a whopping 74 percent of spouses of military service-members say repeal of DADT would have no impact on their view of whether their husbands or wives should continue to serve. This number comes by way of a Congressional staffer who attended a private briefing that the report’s authors, Defense Department officials Jeh Johnson and Carter Ham, gave to Senate Armed Services Committee staffers this morning.

This finding is important, because it undercuts a key argument made by repeal opponents: That having service-members mingle with gay colleagues could worry their families.

Also: The report will also undercut another key argument being made by repeal opponents: That opposition remains strong in the Marines. According to the source, while the report does find that concern runs high among Marines, it also finds that 84 percent of Marine combat corps combat arms units who said they thought they’d worked with homosexual service-members in the past found the experience either very good, good, or neutral.

The entire report is here (.pdf), and here is the endorsement from Mullens.

As I said, in a rational world, this would be the end of this ugly and discriminatory policy that makes no sense and demeans us as a nation while also limiting our military effectiveness. However, this is not a rational world, and we have a bunch of elected neanderthals who would rather be seen as bigots than do anything that could be perceived as a victory for the opposition party. So, basically, your guess is as good as mine if this will finally be repealed.

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