Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This really is a full service blog.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

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

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

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

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

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

Consistently wrong since 2002

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

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

The willow is too close to the house.

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73Comments

  1. 1.

    Comrade Mary

    Defends or defunds?

    As a bike riding Canadian pinko, I have never heard Car Talk. Is my life richer or poorer for that?

  2. 2.

    Superluminar

    BBC reporting Libya has announced a ceasefire. I guess this proves the utter futility of the resolution then. Anyway, it’s not like we could possibly know what the end goal of the anti-Quaddafi protesters might be (and they’re just as bad as the regime in any case).

  3. 3.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Comrade Mary:

    He was making fun of the Republicans for de-funding NPR, in an emergency session, yet.

    I heard the Car Talk guys once. I’m not interested in their topic but they seemed harmless enough to me. Also, where I live I can get at least 50 other FM stations if I want to.

  4. 4.

    gypsy howell

    @Comrade Mary:

    Much, much poorer. Click and Clack are the best part of weekend radio, if only for their closing credits.

    ETA, you don’t have to be even remotely interested in cars to enjoy listening to their show.

  5. 5.

    Suffern ACE

    @Comrade Mary: Poorer, I think. You’d know something about car engines and could impress your friends when you say “It sounds like you have a loose flange.”

  6. 6.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Comrade Mary:

    Definitely poorer, I mean I find it strange that I enjoy listening to a car show but those guys are damn funny, as well as informative. I listen to them for the same reason that I watch “Top Gear” I have no interest in cars but the show is funny as hell.

  8. 8.

    artem1s

    Saturday mornings, running errands with my dad while listening to Tom and Ray. Pretty happy memories. Of course after I left home and my dad got infected with Beck and Limbaugh hate, listening to NPR was completely off the table.

    Tom and Ray are perpetually young at heart, highly educated, regular guys who help callers work out rational solutions to everyday problems. Definitely enemies of the state.

  9. 9.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @Comrade Mary: As my cyber-friend I must tell you that you are missing out a bit if you haven’t heard our national treasure Tom and Ray talk about cars in their thick Boston accent.

    Thanks for the video, made me smile this morning. And trust me when I tell you that was a tall order this a.m.

  10. 10.

    RedDirtGirl

    Any suggestions on best on-line news sources now that the Grey Lady is going to start charging for a peek up her skirt?

  12. 12.

    Kirbster

    Such speeches are wasted on the rage-drunk, irony-blind, obtuse literalists of the GOP. Not even a billboard with flashing lights and sirens, screaming “This is Satire!” in back of Weiner would help them understand it.

  14. 14.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Superluminar:

    Cease fire in Libya:

    I read the reporting on The Guardian and Al Jazeera. They were pretty much alike.

    If this holds, it would be wonderful!

    However, initiating the no-fly zone as a means of monitoring the situation might be wise.

    Still, if it is true and if it works, this is the best news I’ve heard in quite a while.

  15. 15.

    RossInDetroit

    Tom & Ray are the sanest thing on the radio by far. They discuss people’s real car problems in a rational way and actually help them. I’m a tech guy and the content level in their show is very high. if only more radio programming could actually have that much value to listeners.

  16. 16.

    David in NY

    @Comrade Mary: They are, I think, the most popular Saturday A.M. NPR show. I think my wife, and sometimes I, are not so tolerant of their banter which most find funny — we question whether they should spend so much of their show laughing at each other. Which was the gist of Weiner’s faux attack on them. But we both find their approach to diagnosing an old car’s ailments fascinating, when they break into their chatter to do it — like a skilled doctor figuring out the source of your symptoms. And they are smart, both MIT grads, I think.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @Linda Featheringill:

    You’d almost think that was the outcome the UN was hoping for, and yet a whole bunch of trolls spent yesterday telling us that the US was champing at the bit to wage a war of aggression on Libya and there was no way to stop the juggernaut.

    ETA linky to AP story since Joe Beese will show up any minute now to tell us it’s all a CIA psy-ops plot and the US is fueling up planes as we speak.

  20. 20.

    Comrade Mary

    Well, I do like Top Gear (most of the time: Clarkson deserves a through nad-kicking sometimes) and I have the NPR app on my iPhone, so I will give it a try.

    Oddly enough, I used to listen to a Saturday morning show on car maintenance here in Toronto, where the expert mechanic, a francophone mother of two young children, would diagnose people’s problems with a deft touch and an accent that made me ridiculously nostalgic. I do have a fetish for competence, so if they regularly geek out, that will definitely work for me.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @gypsy howell:

    Click and Clack are the best part of weekend radio

    You must not know about “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, then. Car Talk might be funnier without the exaggerated accents and if the hosts had gone to a real engineering school.

  24. 24.

    vtr

    He Conviently omitted the fact that they both play in a leftist nazi commy Islamic bluegrass band. Pretty good, too.

  25. 25.

    Superluminar

    @Mnemosyne

    But…but…American Empire!!! In the last two seconds the US killed more people than Hitler and Jimmy Carter combined!

    Viva La Canada!

  27. 27.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    the master and slave cylinder bit was brilliant, as was the whole attack on what the gop told their sponsors and the screaming teeming masses they were going to do, and what they actually may end up doing.

    if congress was more entertaining, like this, i think more people would engage, but of course, every bit like this, is decried as being unserious…only because most people can’t pick a serious message out of a seemingly light snark.

  28. 28.

    RossInDetroit

    Car shows that deal with real world issues are rare. With the exception of Top Gear some times most automotive journalism tends to spectacle and novelty over utility to the consumer.

  34. 34.

    Suffern ACE

    @Superluminar: At some point during the discussion, I the, newly renamed Fascist ACE, wished the US would lob a few shells at Canada because their citizens are so, well, grating on the nerves when one is trying to work though a problem.

  38. 38.

    jibeaux

    @liberal:

    KagroX called it on the twitter, putting the Internal back in IRS.

    Also too, aren’t these the same people who thought health care reform was going to create this militia of armed IRS agents? To police the death panels or something?

  40. 40.

    Cat Lady

    @malraux:

    The Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me show about Jamaicans courting Jewish tourists was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. They did a quick reggae version of Hava Na Gila, and mentioned yarmulkes knit in the colors of the Jamaican flag. Peter Sagal is underrated.

  41. 41.

    eemom

    as another sign of imminent apocalypse, Michael Gerson actually has a quite reasonable piece denouncing O’Keefe’s shenanigans in the Kaplan cesspool this morning. Not journalism, but rather “a sophisticated version of political dirty tricks,” he says.

  42. 42.

    Pongo

    @Superluminar:
    Sad, isn’t it? All the outrage and hand wringing on the part of the right about America being engaged in ‘another war’ and ‘abuses of executive power’ over the administration’s support for this resolution yesterday and today not a peep from Sullivan, et al over the ceasefire. Did it never occur to any of them that maybe de-escalation of the existing crisis was the primary endgame here–not military intervention–and that now diplomatic approaches can be initiated? The UN and the pres seemed entirely confident that this was the right approach, so maybe it’s possible that they knew Gaddafi was in a weaker position based on having, you know, access to actual intelligence, than the military strategists over at The Daily Dish. They (UN and Pres) appear to have been right, given how quickly he backed down.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jibeaux:

    Also too, aren’t these the same people who thought health care reform was going to create this militia of armed IRS agents? To police the death panels or something?

    That is where they got the idea.

  44. 44.

    Superluminar

    @ Pongo

    I know. And it’s not even as if the US has actually had to take much of a lead (at least so far). Maybe if Sully started calling people fifth columnists again it would make him feel better.

  45. 45.

    batgirl

    @RedDirtGirl: In the US: mcclatchydc.com Much better than the NY Times.

    Otherwise I head outside the country for my news: the BBC, the Guardian, etc.

  47. 47.

    gene108

    I want the CPB defunded. I’m tired of Republicans using it for political purposes.

    ***********************

    The House bill, like damn near every other House bill the 112th Congress has passed, will die a quiet death in the Senate.

    What’s interesting is the amount of attention failed Republican efforts to do anything get so much attention. Nothing the House has passed will be approved by the Senate or be signed by President Obama.

    Yet the Republicans keep celebrating these as victories. I heard a freshman Congressman from Texas state, when asked what Republicans have done to create jobs and he stated – with a straight face – “repealed Obamacare”, even though for the repeal to be effective the Senate has to ratify and the President has to sign it into law.

    Sadly, no one pointed this out to him and I couldn’t get through on the phone lines.

  48. 48.

    petorado

    Maybe this will get NPR to wake up and quit making NPR stand for “nice, polite, Republicans.” Their appeasement to anyone with an R after their name needs to end to journalism needs to get back on track.

    And yes, “Wait, Wait” is about the only time I get into full belly laughs anymore.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @Pongo:

    They (UN and Pres) appear to have been right, given how quickly he backed down.

    I will freely admit, I neither predicted nor expected this outcome, but it makes sense when you think about it. In the many decades that he’s ruled Libya, Gaddafi has always looked out for number one. Whatever will save his own ass is what he’ll do, so (in retrospect) there was very little chance that he was going to go down fighting.

    Of all of the dictators in the Middle East, he seems like the most likely to accept a bribe and retire quietly to Switzerland.

  53. 53.

    malraux

    @gene108:

    I want the CPB defunded. I’m tired of Republicans using it for political purposes.

    The problem with that approach is that then they’ll find something else to go after.

  54. 54.

    Nied

    Why haven’t I seen anyone comment on this story? I mean I can see firebaggers skipping it since forcing banks to pay $30 billion to millions of underwater mortgage holders as punishment for foreclosure fraud kinda contradicts their “Obama sold us out to the big money boyz” storyline, but this really looks huge to me. The administration is essentially going to skip fining banks and instead force them to pay $30 billion in new stimulus! That’s fucking awesome!

  56. 56.

    El Cid

    Our Republican Governor here in Georgia has opposed the cutting of funds to NPR, since one of the things they do here is actually to fund all sorts of rural and small radio stations throughout the state.

    [Added: I didn’t know our Republican Senators also opposed cutting NPR funds.]

  57. 57.

    schrodinger's cat

    @jeffreyw: Do you have any newer photos? Homer is going to be a big kitteh. My kittehs kept growing (they are both huge, Yogi is long and lean and Inji is Tunchesque) till they were 2.

  58. 58.

    Suck It Up!

    @Nied:

    hmmmm….I will have to keep an eye on that.

    don’t worry. someone will be along soon enough to say it isn’t enough.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    I will freely admit, I neither predicted nor expected this outcome, but it makes sense when you think about it.

    I’m surprised as well, but to me this is totally unexpected. And who knows whether the cease fire will hold,or whether Gaddafi is just trying to buy time.

    Of all of the dictators in the Middle East, he seems like the most likely to accept a bribe and retire quietly to Switzerland.

    Not too sure about that. Much of the “wise head” conventional wisdom was sure that Mubarak would hold on for dear life. And clearly a lot of people misjudged the tenacity of Gaddafi loyalists.

  61. 61.

    slag

    @Pikov Andropov: You know that when Republicans complain about unemployment, they’re really concerned that it’s too low. Otherwise, they’d be working to preserve rather than kill your and Heywood Ubuzov’s jobs. Very telling indeed.

  62. 62.

    catclub

    I rarely listen to This American Life, because it is excellent, and also challenging to listen to.
    Does it count as NPR?

    I think it did David Sedaris and the Santa Diaries, as well as the excellent show on how the subprime meltdown happened.
    “A giant pool of money searching for slightly higher yields.”
    A show on a man taping his own son’s drug dealing in order to try to get him to stop. All pretty amazing. But as I said, also challenging.

  63. 63.

    Nied

    @Suck It Up!:

    don’t worry. someone will be along soon enough to say it isn’t enough.

    That’s something else that’s been percolating in my head for a couple months now. Obama got a bunch of stuff that’s “to small” passed last year and got a lot of criticism for it, but in each case it was followed up by some other “too small” thing and I have to believe that stuff starts adding up. The state aid bill, the payroll tax cut, the unemployment extension, now this mortgage fraud settlement. $30 billion here $100 billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money. It’s like a stealth stimulus.

  66. 66.

    gypsy howell

    @catclub:

    Yes, but he was well within the Marge Inaverra. This thread is getting Bud Tugly. I better call customer service specialist Heywood Jabuzzoff.

    Oh yeah, I could go on and on…

  67. 67.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @eemom: I too thought it was a promising article, until Gerson went to the false equivalence place with the crank call to Scott Walker. Also, why am I not surprised Kaplan gave Scott Walker a free forum to peddle his lies?

  68. 68.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @eemom: I too thought it was a promising article, until Gerson went to the false equivalence place regarding the crank call to Scott Walker. Also, why am I not surprised Kaplan gave Scott Walker a free forum to peddle his lies?

  69. 69.

    Carrie

    Did Stephen Colbert’s writers help Weiner out with this? I’m asking seriously, and I mean that as a compliment.

  70. 70.

    allyn Totino

    @Comrade Mary: You are much the poorer. Click and Clack are pure fun. My husband and I often argue about which is the best NPR show. It’s always between Click and Clack and ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’. Listen to it before it goes away.

  71. 71.

    allyn Totino

    @Comrade Mary: You are much the poorer. Click and Clack are pure fun. My husband and I often argue about which is the best NPR show. It’s always between Click and Clack and ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’. Listen to it before it goes away.

  73. 73.

    MARTinNJ

    Weiner is right! They are from Massachusetts. They are are probably communists or socialists, and they probably like OBAMACARE (vs. Romney care which was the role model).

    Thank God the Repugs have figured out it wasn’t jobs, jobs, jobs, the American people are concerned about, it was LOL….NPR….let me write IN GOD WE TRUST so I can feel good about America….hey somebody go read the Constitution out loud again….

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