Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans in disarray!

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

This chaos was totally avoidable.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

He really is that stupid.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

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

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Come on, man.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

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Reader Interactions

95Comments

  1. 1.

    Morbo

    Where’s ED Kain? Where’s ED Kain? Where’s ED Kain? Wallah, my cognitive power dwarfs you cudlips. Oh btw, where’s ED Kain?

  3. 3.

    Amy

    It’s time to call the White House and your federal representatives to tell them that you don’t want the huge cuts for important programs in the budget. I bet they’ve been hearing from the Tea Party crowd while a lot of progressives are more focused on the union-busting in the midwest.

  4. 4.

    piratedan

    thinking its time for a cult movie marathon this weekend…. think I need to queue up some MST3k goodness maybe with a side of Buckaroo Banzai and Big Trouble in Little China.

  7. 7.

    Punchy

    Please tell me we’ve reached Peak Wingnut. There’s just no other way to explain this

    AZ now wants to just ignore whatever law they choose. Wasn’t a fouth-grader in social studies around to explain to these clowns just how unConsty this is?

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @geg6:

    I know this is very difficult to believe, but Charles White of Indiana does not dress like a pimp.

  9. 9.

    Face

    @Punchy: And when this is struck down by the courts in about 8.3 femtoseconds, watch Fox News go apoplectic with “Aktvist Jujez!” and the like. As predictable as sunrise.

  10. 10.

    Culture of Truth

    Tallahassee, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Rick Scott’s authority to kill a proposed Orlando-Tampa high-speed rail line backed by President Barack Obama.

  11. 11.

    J.W. Hamner

    This is a pretty interesting article at Slate discussing how the pharma “1 billion R&D per drug” number is complete nonsense. I wait with bated breath the McCardle “rebuttal” to this assault on the Uber Aswesomeness of profit motive when applied to R&D.

  12. 12.

    Crashman

    I have a feeling I’m going to be really bored this weekend. I need a video game to keep me busy. Any recommendations?

  14. 14.

    singfoom

    @Crashman: PC or console? For PC, grab Evil Genius from Steam for 10 bucks.

    Console? Any of the Katamari Damacys.

    Book? Been a fan of Iain M Banks latey….

  15. 15.

    Paul in KY

    @Punchy: I’m beginning to think that ‘peak wingnut’ is sorta like lightspeed. You can get to 99.9999% of it, but you can never hit it due to basic Einsteinian physics.

  16. 16.

    Crashman

    @cathyx: I was also going to start reading “WAR” by Sebastian Junger this weekend, but I was also looking for some interactive distraction. I will take other book recommendations though!

  18. 18.

    Third Eye Open

    @Culture of Truth:

    If it wasn’t such a close to home kick in the junk for me, I would ask for someone to pass the popcorn while I await the khaki-shitting fits of apoplexy from the arch-conservative ‘Growth-Machine’ fucktards here in beootiful Floriduh, once they fully grok the magnitude of just how fucking insane this move is.

  21. 21.

    Third Eye Open

    @cathyx: Been reading, Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. Palahniuk flirts with Orwell while sexting Christopher Moore. Yeah, it’s that good…

  22. 22.

    4jkb4ia

    Page 27 of Yoo’s response to OPR Report second draft. Maybe I can wait to the end to throw up.

    (I am sorry there cannot be a Bradley Manning thread here because it would become “Why I Hate Glenn Greenwald So Much” so quickly.)

  23. 23.

    MonkeyBoy

    Mike Huckabee’s just out book “A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don’t!)” could really use some help from you readers in adding descriptive tags. (you need to be logged into an Amazon account).

    I like the current tag “keeping America stupid” though the existing tag, “pig vomit”, is rather distasteful. You can vote up existing tags or make up your own.

    UPDATE: Since I pimped this yesterday, the most popular tag, keeping america stupid has gone from a support of 2 to 18. More reader tags and support is needed, particularly in applying tags here and then adding such tags to other books in the wingnutosphere.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @Culture of Truth:

    Hey, we here in California will gladly take the money. I’m sure Scott is going to try the same ploy as Wisconsin and New Jersey and claim that he can keep all of the money for other infrastructure projects because shut up, that’s why.

  28. 28.

    gene108

    Anybody have a cure for stress induced binge eating. It’s killing whatever “progress” I make in losing weight.

  29. 29.

    cathyx

    @Crashman: I’m currently reading the Wallander series by Henning Mankell. They are mysteries. I’m trying to read them in order, I’m on the 4th or 5th of about 12 or so. They are very good.

  30. 30.

    Poopyman

    @Punchy:

    Please tell me we’ve reached Peak Wingnut.

    Peak Wingnut is an asymptote. It cannot be reached, only approached as wingnuttery approaches infinity.

    Hope this brightens your day!

  32. 32.

    Bulworth

    If it wasn’t such a close to home kick in the junk for me, I would ask for someone to pass the popcorn while I await the khaki-shitting fits of apoplexy from the arch-conservative ‘Growth-Machine’ fucktards here in beootiful Floriduh, once they fully grok the magnitude of just how fucking insane this move is.

    You mean not all conservatives have bought tickets on the Let’s Kill All Transportation and Infrastructure Spending teabagging initiative?

  34. 34.

    Chinn Romney

    So I notice that my browser banner says “I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog”.

    Nice. Guess that’s the end of reading this site at work, can’t trust it anymore.

  35. 35.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Mnemosyne:

    At this rate California may have enough money to build more than twenty miles of high speed rail. Hell, we may even be able to afford a locomotive.

  39. 39.

    Sentient Puddle

    @Chinn Romney: You’d get in trouble at work for reading a web page that displays the word “shit” on it? I think you should find a new job.

  41. 41.

    PurpleGirl

    Just saw a commercial for one of those reverse mortgage companies. This one with Fred Thompson. Great punch line — federally insured. Yay, he’s all for small government, low taxes and yet he takes money from some company to shill for reverse mortgages and touts their federally insured status. Well, he’s a wingnut…

  42. 42.

    PurpleGirl

    @Poopyman: Oh, yes, I agree. I’ve called peak wingnut asymptotic here before.

    (I note that I misspelled it in my prior comment; my bad. When I did math typing at the Courant Institute at NYU I was known for spelling it correctly when even the mathematicians who could develop them couldn’t spell the word.)

  45. 45.

    nancydarling

    We all live down stream. Here is a link to the NYTimes expose of the regulation (or lack thereof) of hydraulic fracking in New York. Ian Urbina, the author was on Washington Journal/CSPAN this AM Amy Goodman had a segment about this on today’s DemocracyNow. The Arkansas Geology Commission just shut down two injection wells used to dispose of the fracking fluids in Falkner County because of concerns about the recent swarm of earthquakes.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04gas.html?ref=science

  51. 51.

    Genine

    Has anyone read this CNN article about the oppression of White People?

    http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/21/white.persecution/index.html?hpt=T2

    Oh, my god! Now they’re promoting “Whiteness Studies” as if everything you fucking learn in school isn’t a fucking whiteness study. There is more.

    I have to say this will raise your blood pressure. If you’re black, it may cause a stroke. I already had one stroke, so I really need to chill. But this shit is crazy.

  54. 54.

    Genine

    I just want to apologize if my post is a little coherent. I did like this partial rant thing that I didn’t follow through on. That’s because I am still in a huge rage right now and need to process and calm down.

  55. 55.

    Bulworth

    Oh, my god! Now they’re promoting “Whiteness Studies” as if everything you fucking learn in school isn’t a fucking whiteness study. There is more.

    Well I’m sure some text book somewhere mentioned Cesar Chavez therefore Our White Founders are being unfairly neglected.

  56. 56.

    Culture of Truth

    Now they’re promoting “Whiteness Studies”

    Please buy a copy of the textbook, From Mayonnaise to NASCAR: A Critical Exploration of the Caucasian in America

  57. 57.

    Poopyman

    @Genine: You have to realize that for a certain subset of Caucasians, if there’s one black/brown person in the room they (the whites) are now in the minority.

    It comes from being born and raised in a whitey-white environment where African-Americans or Hispanics don’t exist, or if they are there they are invisible.

    I say this as a 100% Caucasian who was m/l nurtured in such an environment. You have to leave it to see it for what it is.

  58. 58.

    Maude

    @Culture of Truth:
    I just returned it to the library. It is a good book on several men who figured out what the game was and how to bet against it.
    I heard Ron Insana say this morning that after Bear Sterns fell, people knew the condition of the big banks. He has it all wrong. He was talking about the insider trading case.
    I wonder what game is running now. The finreg isn’t up and running.

  59. 59.

    Genine

    It’s not just about the whiteness studies. They’re also freaked out because now they have to share unemployment lines and social services with “those people” and it freaks with them out.

    FUCK THEM, Fuck them HARD

  60. 60.

    Dennis SGMM

    @nancydarling:
    WTF? Did they leave all of the Bush appointees in at the EPA? When the cancer clusters start blossoming and the waves of birth defects begin the motherfrackers and the gov will both be saying “No one could have anticipated…”

    We no longer need to be concerned about the future of Social Security: a lot of people are going to die before their time of pollution-related maladies.

  65. 65.

    Poopyman

    @Genine: Well, if it’s any comfort, those people are going to have a really hard time dealing with the ongoing shift in demographics. Might be wise to buy stock in the producer of Xanax, whichever pharma that is.

  66. 66.

    Poopyman

    Cool! I got put in moderation for mentioning a popular anti-anxiety drug. Shoulda known….

  67. 67.

    Genine

    @Poopyman:

    I know. I know. I’m calmer now. It’s just that initially I was in a rage. A friend of mine said this to me a few minutes ago.

    Harlequinn Bell:

    Here is what this boils down to:
    The article talks about how white people have always seen themselves as individuals.
    And that is true…to a point
    They haven’t had to openly acknowledge that they were “all together” because it is something accepted, in a nudge, nudge, wink wink kind of way.
    But now, all of these “we’re white and we’re together” people have been faced with a very harsh and sobering reality.
    They have been thinking this whole time that white protects white-
    Only to find out that money protects money.
    People in power made the decisions to cut costs by letting go the people who were making the most money
    Most of them were white men.
    Money protects money. Minorities have known this all along
    So they can blame Obama, immigration, muslim terrorists, latinos, whatever
    But what they should be blaming is themselves for thinking that power in power gave a shit about them.

    And I said “They should but they don’t want to because that would question the entire foundation of their worldview.:

    So I understand. I really do. It’s just reading that long involved article on utter bullshit tipped me over the edge.

    EDIT: Blockquote fail

  68. 68.

    MikeJ

    @Josie: That Huckabee story refers to his “fictions” and “falsehoods” but the old grey lady still can’t bring herself to allow the L word. No, not lesbian. Lie.

  71. 71.

    piratedan

    @kdaug: no arguments from me, one of my favorite flicks, gets watched five six times a year…

    “Where are we going?”

    “Planet Ten”

    “When will we get there?”

    “Real SOON!”

  73. 73.

    Berial

    I’m sure everyone has seen the latest Michael Moore ‘controversy‘ video.

    I was wondering if anyone had a link to the entire interview. What’s being put out is of course edited to make what he’s saying sound as bad as possible to conservatives.

  75. 75.

    Perfect Tommy

    @piratedan: That reminds me, I have some VHS tapes of MST3K from its early days on KTMA. They look like they were recorded in somebody’s basement : ) I need to dig them out and transfer them to DVD. Sunday’s weather here will be ideal for that project.

  77. 77.

    Ija

    Andrew Sullivan is sounding positively McMegan-esque in this post:

    My only defense is that this has been a crazy week for me, as you might imagine with the Beast news, and distractions, pressure and producing 300 posts a week can sometimes lead to screw-ups.

    Can we have that as the new tagline for the blog? Distractions, pressure and producing 300 posts a week. Andrew, you have minions who do your bidding. You don’t actually write all those posts yourself. Stop whining.

    His sin? Publishing Ryan Lizza’s email to him without Lizza’s permission after chastising Lizza for supposedly supporting Leibovich if he wants to publish those emails from other journalists provided by Issa’s aide. What is the name of that Alanis Morisette’s song, again?

  79. 79.

    piratedan

    @Perfect Tommy: I know, I must have something like 60 episodes I need to burn to DVD, mostly season two, three and four. The hard part is getting my teenagers to help with the hooking up and plugging in all of the old stuff, don’t have a VHS player on active duty anymore ;-)

  81. 81.

    4jkb4ia

    Went to butcher shop and did some housework. We now have–

    “The Draft Report, however, rips the health benefits citations completely out of their context and falsely treats them as if the Bybee Memoranda had used “death, organ failure, and serious impairment of bodily functions” as a readymade, three-prong test for torture to be used (or misused) by interrogators in the field–even though the memoranda manifestly were written to guide a very small and quite sophisticated legal audience, not for any “interrogators” in the field or the bloggers from which OPR evidently gets its legal analyses.”

    They’re getting to Team Yoo, here :) Amazing use of italics through this whole thing. Earlier we had a number of snide references to law professors.
    Team Yoo hasn’t yet addressed the matter of the Bullet Points, which the CIA treated as legal advice and Goldsmith almost immediately wanted to withdraw. Your small and sophisticated legal audience probably is not dealing in good faith with what you are giving them.

  84. 84.

    Mike in NC

    @Bulworth:

    I’m sure some text book somewhere mentioned Cesar Chavez therefore Our White Founders are being unfairly neglected.

    Didn’t Obama come out with a book for children a few months back, which included stories about Chavez, Sitting Bull, and assorted other non-white non-male pseudo-Americans? It gave the folks at FOX a case of the vapors at the time.

    Just to be fair and balanced, one should probably go read Martin Mull’s “The History of White People in America”.

  85. 85.

    Mike in NC

    @Ija:

    Can we have that as the new tagline for the blog? Distractions, pressure and producing 300 posts a week. Andrew, you have minions who do your bidding. You don’t actually write all those posts yourself. Stop whining.

    Sully didn’t mention the beagles?

  87. 87.

    JCT

    @piratedan: I sent my oldest off to college with a folder filled with lovingly compiled MST3K episodes. Watching MST3K was one of our family vacation traditions. She apparently got most of her dorm hooked on it!

    And hey — starting to look like my new job might come through, might have to make the big NY -> Tucson move.

  88. 88.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @MonkeyBoy: Thanks for the tip. Rumsfeld’s book had the same tag (Keeping America Stupid), so I clicked it for his book as well since there was no tag of “Worse than Wolfowitz’s Hair Spit.”

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    Anyone in the New York City area going to go see the Pompeii exhibit? Looks to be amazing.

    But “Pompeii the Exhibit: Life and Death in the Shadow of Vesuvius,” which opens on Friday at Discovery Times Square, is unusual because its dead bodies are not really dead, and they are not really bodies. They are, however, often more affecting, and they form the fulcrum of an absorbing show about a place more widely heard of than thoroughly understood.
    __
    The bodies are made of white plaster, and their rough surfaces allow only vague outlines. But, like death masks, they capture a moment when their subjects ceased to be. A man sits crouched, his legs pulled up to his chest, covering his face, as if in despair. A girl desperately thrusts herself at her mother, grasping for comfort. A man, prostrate, begins to pull himself up a staircase but can go no farther. These bodies are writhing, groping, reaching, protecting. And their white forms are starkly displayed on black platforms in a dimly lighted gallery, looking like otherworldly figures enduring infernal agonies.
    __
    They are plaster casts from Pompeii — more, we are told, than have ever been gathered together for an exhibition. Pompeii, of course, was the Roman village near Naples that was entirely wiped out in the year 79, when Mount Vesuvius erupted, engorging the town with its ash and lava, preserving it as if it were a bug caught in sap that would turn to amber.

  91. 91.

    Ab_Normal

    Gotta love a thread with frequent Buckaroo Banzai refs in which Perfect Tommy shows up… though I must confess, BB was the start of my life-long obsession with Clancy Brown. :D

  93. 93.

    piratedan

    @JCT: congrats to you! Hope you’ve been able to hook up with the University or another fine employer down here, bienvenidos a Baja Arizona

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