Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“But what about the lurkers?”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

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

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

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

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

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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68Comments

  2. 2.

    Kryptik

    Yeah, Doug? That’s because you’re a Communist. Don’t you know that the CEOs know infinitely better than some poor prole on the street? You want proof? They’re RICH. If they weren’t smart and better than everyone else, they wouldn’t be rich. It’s just common Calvinistic sense.

  5. 5.

    MikeJ

    The first 500 people in the phone book all still have landlines. Some, but not all, of the Fortune 500 CEOs aren’t idiots. The google guys are ok, but they aren’t the CEO, are they?

    On balance, having Steve Jobs in charge would be really bad.

  7. 7.

    jwb

    Actually, I’ve sometimes wondered if drawing lots wouldn’t work better than elections—especially now when so much of an election is determined by money.

  10. 10.

    schrodinger's cat

    Even the liberal NYT is praising Chris Christie and Bobo has a slobbery op-ed about Mitch Daniels.

  12. 12.

    Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods

    I would rather be governed by the first five hundred people in the telephone book than by the CEOs of the Fortune 500.

    I’m Abraham A. Aaronson and I approve this message.

  16. 16.

    Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)

    Step away from the caffeine please, Doug Hill, son of Doug Hill(R)– I can’t keep up.

  18. 18.

    Citizen_X

    Open thread? I’m gonna pretend it is, because you have to listen to the radio show posted here. Some drive-time mooks interview Donald Rumsfeld, but they happen to have Louis C.K. in the studio (whom they keep referring to as “just a local comedian”). Louis keeps on Rumsfeld about whether or not he’s an alien human-eating lizard. (Rumsfeld never answers!) Doesn’t really get more topical, and I think it may be stronger for that. The exception is when Louis asks Rumsfeld, “So what was it like when you shook hands with Saddam Hussein?”

    My first impression is that it might go down as an historical bit of political improv comedy. You will end up listening to this at some point, so you might as well go and do it now. (Note: it is 17 minutes, but worth it.)

  20. 20.

    Violet

    The first 500 people in the phone book would be bought off by the CEOs of the Fortune 500, so we’d be back to where we are now. We need a better system.

  23. 23.

    Joey Maloney

    Better the first 500 than the last 500.

    Ralph Zzyzzmjac changed his name two years ago. his real name is Ralph Zyzzmjac. A friend persuaded him to add a Z to be the last guy in the phone book. He’s a bachelor, a librarian working for the City of New York. For a good time he goes to the movies, alone. He’s sixty-one.
    __
    Edward Zzzzyniewski is crazy. He’s been in and out of Bellevue. He spends most of his time thinking about that bastard Zzyzzmjac, who two years ago knocked him out of last place, his only claim to fame. He broods about him—a man he’s never met—fantasizing that Zzyzzmjac is out to get him. Last year he added two Z’s t his name. Now he’s thinking about stealing a march on that bastard Zzyzzmjac. He’s sure Zzyzzmjac is adding two more Z’s this year, so he’s going to add seven. Ed Zzzzzzzzzzzzniewski. That’d be nice, he decides.

    Cuz I luvs me some John Varley.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    Would go with a random 500.

    Naive, but I think you’d find more ethics and less greed with a random sample.

    Probably an Alvin Greene or two.

    Whatever the Harvard Business School teaches, it does not seem to be good for sustainability.

  26. 26.

    Berial

    If that’s the way it worked all CEO’s would be named A A. A, with the lower tier being named AA A. AA. You can’t win as long as money can buy power and they start with 100,000x as much money as everyone else.

  27. 27.

    loretta

    Top 500 CEOs – the world’s biggest idiots, cheats & thieves. An immediate story comes to mind – a top CEO recently rewarded himself (via the board that showed a stock increase of 38% in 2010 after laying ofg 40% of the workforce and scaling down the marketing budget) a million dollar CASH bonus, along with 4 other principals getting slightly less, even after the company showed a loss in its revenue.

    In real life, if you lose money you cannot give yourself a raise.

  28. 28.

    jwb

    @loretta: They really do make their own reality.

    The ones I really hate are the guys who buy up some successful business that makes good products; they come in and find ways to cut corners resulting in shitty products but the firm increases profits temporarily on the basis of brand reputation, so the stock price goes up, the execs cash out before the company comes crashing and burning to the ground, taking the workers and shareholders down with it. I don’t really feel that bad for the shareholders, who should have been paying attention, but the workers really don’t deserve it.

  30. 30.

    WereBear

    No no no, if you want a benign dictatorship, you gotta go with the last 500 names.

    These aren’t spoiled brat Abrams and “I never waited in line” Aaronsons, nossir!

    Your X’s and Y’s and Z’s are people who understand patience. They’ve spelled their names for people a thousand times. They’ve learned to keep their temper when people constantly mispronounce their name. And they all know each other from grammar school; waiting in the back of the line for something to happen.

    Your X’s and Y’s and Z’s are people who know how to fly under the radar, too. Always in the back of the room, able to work together, unlike the goody-two-shoes Andersons who are stuck in the second row.

    If we are going to take our country back, we need Edward “Woody” Woodrow and Susan “Sparky” Zelnick!

  33. 33.

    Benz

    Doug, you’ve hit it out of the park.

    Someone in Wisconsin should make this deep thought into a poster. Better yet, the Democrats should all be using this as their message, verbatim and saying this line over and over.

  34. 34.

    Benz

    Seriously Doug, someone MUST send this clever line to the Democratic party.

    I’m not f*cking joking. This is just too clever than what the Democrats could ever come up with.

  35. 35.

    Corner Stone

    I would rather be governed by the first five hundred people in the telephone book

    Which telephone book?
    Because if you choose the one from my hood you’re gonna be praying for the Galtian Overlords of yesteryear compared to what these ignorant sonsabitches decide.

  37. 37.

    KG

    @Violet: I think Plato came up with a better system, but it’s only worked, in theory, once, and then Alexander went and got himself killed trying to conquer the world.

  38. 38.

    Comrade Dread

    Doug, I’ve long believed that we would have a better overall government if a computer just pulled 535 random names off the registered voter list and assigned them a job as President, Veep, Senator or Congressman for a one year term with a mandatory psych evaluation before they were sworn in.

  39. 39.

    Southern Beale

    I’m still waiting to find out what that 1 weird old tip is to have a tiny belly. They never tell you, you have to read five chapters of crap. I gave up.

    Anyone know?

  40. 40.

    cyntax

    @Citizen_X:

    “How many people have you met who’ve been hanged?”

    Ah, it’s great when fate transpires to put Louis CK and Rumsfeld on the same radio show.

  41. 41.

    Southern Beale

    I would rather be governed by the first five hundred people in the telephone book than by the CEOs of the Fortune 500.

    Oh yeah that reminds me: remember when Bush was supposed to be our “first MBA president”?

    LOL LOL LOL

    How’d that work out for ya, America?

  43. 43.

    ppcli

    @WereBear: Actually I think the Overlords may have already anticipated Doug’s suggestion and taken measures. That’s why they made Aaronson an unperson. Along with Jones and Rutherford.

  45. 45.

    Comrade Dread

    @Southern Beale: Meh, not really. It would certainly be a lot more entertaining when we got the inevitable congress composed of fundamentalists and atheists, actual Marxists and libertarian anarchists, gays and redneck hillbillies.

  47. 47.

    gelfling545

    @Southern Beale: In my county we’re now suffering the effects of having elected a county executive who promised to “run the county like a business” and has yet to discover that you can’t run something like a business that isn’t one. Why people always fall for this I do not know.

  48. 48.

    ppcli

    @gelfling545: Quite true. Somehow “Let’s run the county like a county” doesn’t pull in the votes, even though you would think it hard to argue with.

  49. 49.

    Glen Tomkins

    That phonebook thing — been done.

    It’s called Athenian democracy.

    After going around the pike a few thousand times with monarchy and tyranny, aristocracy and oligarchy, and representative democracy — the Athenians settled on participatory democracy.

    If you elect people to important posts, they found that representative democracy quickly evolves back to oligarchy (money has always talked since the day it was invented), so to keep public offices from being bought, they filled them by lottery. They didn’t have a phonebook, so they had to make up and maintain a list of citizens from which to draw names at random.

    Unfortunately they didn’t trust their system completely enough. They left one office, that of strategos, or general, elective. That bought them an empire, and that never ends well.

  50. 50.

    jwb

    @gelfling545: The same reason they fall for the argument that we should run the government like a family or the federal government should be run like the state government. When people confront something unknown, the initial attempt to make sense of it is always to find an analogy to the known. Nothing wrong with that in principle, so long as you stay alert for the moments that the analogy fails and make adjustments accordingly. But once the analogy fails, many will insist on blaming the unknown for refusing to behave the way the analogy says it should; then, you are in a heap of trouble.

  52. 52.

    Southern Beale

    @gelfling545:

    you can’t run something like a business that isn’t one. Why people always fall for this I do not know.

    Good lord but I have that old canard. Everyone repeats it, even Democrats. No one ever fucking stands up and says WHY? WHY do you want to run government like a business? It’s NOT a business! Nor should it be! Then government would be COMPETING with business and that’s illegal!

    I’ve written about that a lot. It’s just infuriating.

  53. 53.

    Martin

    @MikeJ: Actually, Jobs would be awesome. People don’t seem to realize that Apple cares vastly more about the customer experience than the myriad of vendors that sit alongside Apple. Those other guys make money – it’s their job to adapt.

    Steve Jobs would make everything about the voter and tell corporations to solve their own fucking problems.

  55. 55.

    Maude

    @Martin:
    Disagree about Jobs.
    Apple has off shored it’s labor and did have child labor.
    Apple is sitting on a huge pile of cash. It is just like any major corporation. They do customer service, but some repairs can be pricey.

  60. 60.

    Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly Known as Chad N Freude

    If the government were run like a business, it would strive to make a profit. This would be done by . . . Snarky conclusion left to the imaginations of my betters on this blog.

  61. 61.

    cmorenc

    @Doug Hill :

    I would rather be governed by the first five hundred people in the telephone book than by the CEOs of the Fortune 500.

    I get the point you’re making here, I really do. However, for the suggested tradeoff to result in a better rather than a (possibly much) worse result, you’d need to be at least mildly selective in which place the phone book you used was for. There are quite a few communities across our country where 80% of the first 500 names in the phone book are dumber than dirt and don’t control much of anything, and the remaining 20%, who are smarter only by comparison with the 80%, are dominated by a tiny handful of folks who are essentially small-time, local variants of the Fortune 500 CEOs you’re replacing. That’s a bargain?

    Think, for example, how many towns in Alabama you’d be better off trading 500 Fortune 500 CEOs for their first 500 in the phone book.

    For the first 500 names in the Portland, Oregon phone directory, I would gladly make that trade. For the first 500 names in the Andalusia, Alabama phone book, well…I’m not so sure ’bout that.

  63. 63.

    Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods

    @Sly: The following is a paid political announcement: Aaron A. Aaronson SAYS he’s for family values, but how much do we REALLY know about Aaron A. Aaronson.

  65. 65.

    Splitting Image

    You do realize that people named Abdul, Ali, Abdullah, and other variations thereof are starting to dominate the first pages of the phone directories in more and more cities, don’t you?

    Doug, why do you want to implement sharia law in the U.S.?

    And why did William F. Buckley want to do it, for that matter?

  67. 67.

    Martin

    @Maude: Offshore of labor isn’t to reduce costs – it’s to reduce time to market, which is vastly more important. The big advantage of China is the ability to have all of your suppliers in such close proximity that you don’t have the kinds of production and supply chain issues that routinely beset other industries. That’s why everyone is there – China’s economic zones are the modern equivalent to River Rouge – but for a whole host of tech companies. The US needs to figure out how to deal with that.

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