Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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

White supremacy is terrorism.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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77Comments

  5. 5.

    srv

    Biden says the way to growth is cutting the deficit – 1 Trillion dollars baby!

    Geithner is going to kill us all. This blog and my FB are filled with newly unemployed. Even Summers has given up parroting the crazy.

  11. 11.

    Warren Terra

    @Mike Kay (Chief of Staff):
    Not that I greatly care, but according to your own link the car’s registration is current. He put the wrong license plate on the car – a customized “US Congress 9” plate instead of its proper plate. That’s vain, and probably illegal, but it’s not the offense you accuse him of.

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @stuckinred: Not much, just back from my 25th college reunion. Very tired. Mme Omnibus is packing up to move to NY. I am getting ready for job interviews this week. Things like that.

  18. 18.

    Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)

    @Warren Terra: I gave him a break, what he actually did is odder, to say the least. It’s one thing to ignore your yearly registration fees, quite another to switch plates. And let’s remember, he’s a congressman, not some ditzy blogger, he has a greater responsibility to follow laws.

  22. 22.

    El Cid

    America is saved again.

    WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House of Representatives is poised to pass, as early as Wednesday, a sweeping spending bill that would slash funding for the regulatory agency responsible for policing against excessive speculation and price manipulation in oil markets.
    __
    House members are expected to approve an agriculture spending bill that would deeply cut the annual bill that funds the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates trading in oil, grains and other commodities.
    __
    The House bill would provide $171.9 million for the agency, a decrease of about $30 million from the $202.2 million given to the agency the prior year.

    The argument is that it isn’t about speculating on oil which is really difficult to see how it because of supply and storage etc, but among the financial ‘instruments’ we know and love as swaps and derivatives — and why would anyone want any regulatory oversight for those?

    Among those powers is regulating, for the first time, the complex over-the-counter market, where private parties enter into secret bets, called swaps, on movements in the price of oil and other commodities.
    __
    These so-called dark markets are seven times as large as the regulated futures market, where contracts for future delivery of oil are traded. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler says he now oversees seven times as much territory as the CFTC did before Dodd-Frank and must have a bigger budget to protect the public from market fraud and manipulation…
    __
    …Oil prices are now hovering just below $100 a barrel, even as the United States and other developing nations are seeing weak demand for oil because of sluggish economies. This price volatility happened during a period when financial investors reversed a longstanding trend and now make up to 88 percent of all oil trades, pushing end users of oil to the sidelines.

    However, this is wrong, because the Republicans have got their most brilliant analyst on the case.

    Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who’s shepherding the spending bill, cited a Democratic commissioner of the CFTC, Michael Dunn, as saying there’s been no proof that excessive speculation has driven up oil prices.
    __
    “The discussion of the CFTC and oil speculators is a red herring. The real issue that the Democrats have failed to address is drilling for oil in order to increase the supply,” Kingston said on the House floor.

    The way to take care of pricing in a situation of weak demand is to allow for more drilling because obviously what happens when demand is down is that suppliers increase supply, so low demand can then be followed by lower prices, if all goes well.

    You see, you have to be an expert on how supply & demand works in order to realize the inverse correlation between supply and demand.

    Meanwhile, French President Sarkozy is a fucking god-damned Communist.

    BRUSSELS—French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday ramped up calls for increased regulation of the trading of commodities such as oil, wheat and copper, invoking countries’ fight against the mafia in a rare speech to policy makers here…
    __
    …In the speech at an EU conference on raw materials and commodities, he called on the European Union to follow the U.S. in passing tough financial-market legislation. In particular, Mr. Sarkozy called for minimum cash deposits for derivatives trades, a central global registry for all commodities trades, and drafting new rules against “market abuse,” although it remains unclear how exactly that is to be defined.
    __
    He took aim at trading houses like Glencore International AG, whose initial public offering earlier this year set a record. Without naming the company, he said a record $60 billion IPO this year for “a leading commodities trading concern” was “an emblematic episode” illustrating how trading of raw materials through financial contracts had expanded in recent years.
    __
    He said the “gap between the reality of physical markets and that of financial markets has widened” and blamed this “financialization” phenomenon for bringing the world “to the edge of a precipice.”…
    __
    …European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Christine Lagarde, French finance minister and prospective International Monetary Fund Managing Director, sat in the front row… Mr. Sarkozy lectured Mr. Barroso “as if he were a student.”

    At this stage, his Manchurian training by ACORN kicks in.

    The EU, he said, should “be inspired by what the U.S. already has done.” Last summer, U.S. legislators passed the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, which consolidated regulatory agencies, forced more derivatives trading onto exchanges and tightened regulation of credit-rating firms.
    __
    Mr. Sarkozy wants the EU to go further, especially in regulating what he called speculation.
    __
    “In oil, the size of financial markets is currently 35 times that of the physical market,” he said on Tuesday, his voice rising.
    __
    “In agricultural raw materials, on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange alone the total of derivatives annually exchanged is 46 times the world production of wheat.” This, he said, “is not how a market economy should function, and we need to act.”
    __
    “The determination [to regulate financial markets and trading houses] by France is total. I hear that we need fair competition between financial markets, and that we [shouldn’t regulate too much]. I know this argument.
    __
    “But let me ask a question: Should we all give up fighting the mafia just because one country fails to fight the mafia?
    __
    “If a country has a deficit in one regulation, does the world have to follow that country?”

    How did a Kenyan Muslim without a burf certifat become President of France without us knowing it?

  31. 31.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    @lamh34: Yeah, I saw that on the other thread. So it’s not the campaign itself, but a “Super PAC” that just got official last Monday, one that can raise as much money as it wants without telling anybody anything about how much they have, what they’ve spent or where it came from? One that can’t legally endorse federal candidates and keep that status?

    Then what the fuck is this? Is the loophole “Oh, we’re just telling people how BAD this woman is, but we’re not ENDORSING anybody?”

    If Assange or Anonymous or groups like that really want to do the world some good “for the lolz,” the “lolz” would never stop if they got to picking through these dumb fuckers. Wonder where that money trail stops?

  32. 32.

    aisce

    @lamh34:

    wow. just wow. but are we sure that wasn’t a prank video or something?

    because the racist and misogyny are completely expected, of course, but even i can’t imagine professional republican admakers putting “suck it mccain-feingold” in something that was meant for serious consumption.

    eh, you know what? fuck it. i’m surprised by nothing anymore. it’s probably legitimate. the only difference between the gop and the kkk is a fondness for public lynchings at this point.

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    keep hammering away mike kay. someday internet progs are gonna face up to their own latent racism and realize there’s a real progressive icon in the white house doing the people’s work like a real man and not a attention-starved clown. weiner. dean. edwards. grayson. all these phonies running their mouths and self-destructing at every turn. it’s a joy to see.

  37. 37.

    jl

    Looks like Cole has created yet another Balloon-Juice blog scandal.

    What happened with the pasta with stuff mixed in it?

    And pics?

    This will require an epic blogger ethics panel.

  38. 38.

    El Cid

    @lamh34: I think they actually face the risk that this song becomes a hit, and not necessarily among the intended audience. It’s pretty catchy. It’s library background music compared to most gangsta rap.

    But the icing on the cake is that it also uses the ‘demon sheep’ motif.

  41. 41.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    @stuckinred: Brother, I’ll tell you the truth, back in the late 80s, early 90s, going to concerts and dancing in public and listening to music the likes I will NEVER hear again … remembering it puts me of a mind of Walt Whitman: “Oh me, oh life …”

    But now? I don’t know that I’m not getting downright agoraphobic in my old age. Just the thought of being around crowds of people and getting jostled now just fills me with dread for some reason. I’ve been to one Georgia game in the last five years, the Arizona State Monsoon game, and that did nothing to make me feel better about crowds, I can assure you.

    In this day and age, if it’s a priority for you, there’s nothing to keep you from having a fine stereo and television. And I can’t think of a game or a concert I’d enjoy more if I were actually there than I would in my own home, where I can scream or dance as I please.

  42. 42.

    Violet

    @El Cid:
    It really is unfreakingbelievable. I can’t believe that sort of thing is allowed to be part of a campaign. I know, I know, free speech, Citizens United, blah, blah, blah. It’s still utterly awful. Whoever made it is just immoral.

  44. 44.

    WereBear

    @lamh34: I’m just amazed

    And there’s this:

    On his website, Ehlinger preemptively refuted charges that the ad is racist:
    __
    ~Before you charge racism at the ad, consider her one line in the video: “It takes a different kind of person to speak the language.” By that she means, it takes black people to talk to black people.~

    I just don’t know what to say, except I’m surprised someone this stupid can feed themselves, much less edit video.

  45. 45.

    Sad Iron

    Scott Walker just flushed Wisconsin down the toilet. See, that’s me, the state worker swirling around the bowl. Thank goodness there are no activist conservative judges to completely take a dump on everything decent in the world. I did, however, have a few nice brats for dinner.

  46. 46.

    El Cid

    @Violet: I’m not kidding — I really think it’s possible that this song will be a hit among the same black youth it’s intending to scare the Oldwhites with. And not just black youth, either. You wait.

  47. 47.

    James E. Powell

    @eemom:

    Is this really bad news? Wasn’t it a forgone conclusion after the Wisconsin supreme court loss?

    Isn’t this a way to keep the fires burning for the recall elections?

  48. 48.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    @MikeJ: I was at the first Athens Music Fest. The Squalls. Love Tractor. Kilkenny Cats. Vic Chesnutt. The great coming-out of the Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe accompanying them. Good times, good times.

    Still wouldn’t go out and do it today, though. About the only concert I’d go to now would be one where the expectation where you sat the fuck down and stayed quiet and just listened, and saved your cheering and clapping for the end of the song. Weird and unfortunate, yes, but nevertheless the way it is.

  49. 49.

    stuckinred

    @Evolved Deep Southerner: Dawg you are preaching to the choir except I’m 20 years older than you. We’ll go down Saturday night with the pups like we always do but that’s about it. We do about one concert a year, Santana/Windwood last year. I go to football games but I have it figured out so it’s fairly painless. I actually went to the ASU game at the half, the princess rarely goes so she just drives me close and I hoof a bit.

    You know Vic Varney?

  50. 50.

    Alex S.

    @lamh34:

    The guys who made this must have watched too much South Park. The rap is from the South Park episode ‘You got f’ed in the A’ and ‘You know what I’m saying’ was quoted because this line was used heavily in the episode ‘Butters’ Bottom Bitch’. Not that this makes it good or anything, I just found it interesting.

  52. 52.

    El Cid

    @WereBear: I think it’s a good thing he doesn’t normally go anywhere near the sorts of areas where young black people would be found.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @James E. Powell: There are other court challenges pending as well. Nevertheless, the permanent injunction going away is bad news. The GOP now has a chance to do some damage. Fuckers.

  56. 56.

    Violet

    @El Cid:
    Yeah, I think it could be auto-tuned and maybe the Taiwanese animators will have a go at it. Could be a viral hit/meme thing, like keyboard cat or something. It’s definitely catchy.

  61. 61.

    Sad Iron

    @jwb: Well, sort of–they were stuffed with styrofoam, which is actually ok with a spicy mustard.

  62. 62.

    Uncle Glenny

    @lamh34: WTF!

    Evolved Deep Southerner already said what I was thinking.

    —-

    Apropos some topics earlier today, if anyone’s heard of the mail order spice shop (now with storefronts) penzeys.com – they started a glossy magazine a few years back. They come off as one of these aw-shucks The walton’skind of places.

    In their premier issue of the magazines one of the families shown was a gay male couple with adopted kids.

  65. 65.

    Ron

    Can anyone answer this question? The media is reporting that NY needs to get 32 votes for marriage equality to pass it in the senate. There are 62 state senators. In the case of a 31-31 tie, AFAIK the Lt. Gov. breaks the tie. So why wouldn’t the democratic lt. gov. vote to break the tie in favor of equality?

  67. 67.

    eemom

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    There are other court challenges pending as well.

    but they’ll all lose now that fucking Prosser is still on the Court, right? Or is there some other possible outcome?

    Anyway, welcome to membership in the Residents of States Where Fucking Idiots Do Most of the Voting Club.

  69. 69.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eemom: Not necessarily. My hope is the other challenges can tie everything up until recalls have their effect.

    Gotta bet big on the recalls now.

  71. 71.

    Warren Terra

    @stuckinred:

    In other news the Army is junking those stupid fuckin berets.

    I don’t have a strong feeling about those berets in their own right, but I remember that they were introduced at the height of Dubya’s chickenhawkery, back in the Padded Flightsuit era, when our boys were getting blown up in Iraq, getting Stop-Lossed to a fare-thee-well, and the national guard was up to its armpits in Iraq tours whose durations of overseas deployment were timed just exactly long enough to deny them full benefits. So I always hated them for the fake-patriotism, Lee-Greenwood-soundtracked way they were sold.

  72. 72.

    Jade Jordan

    Not So Fast John Cole, I smell a rat. What are you eating? What are the girls doing? Has Tunch escaped? Have you broken or cracked any body parts? What the hell are the Eers doing? How is Pittsburg going to win the super bowl?

    I hate it when you don’t over share.

  73. 73.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    @eemom: Can it not be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, or the Federal Circuit Court that governs Wisconsin? It might be lost at those levels, but wouldn’t that be a holding action until we see whether the recall folks have the votes? Perhaps even until Walker himself was eligible for the same honor? Or have I been reading the TPM commenters too much?

  74. 74.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    OK, now, I smell some ratfucking here.

    I mean, come on. This fucker is so over the top that it can be nothing but ratfucking on some level.

    Part of me wants to applaud it, part of me wants to condemn it, but none of me wants to believe it. There’s got to be a helluva lot more here than meets the eye. A reverse Alvin Greene or something. I don’t know. Maybe I just WANT to believe that.

  75. 75.

    eemom

    @Evolved Deep Southerner:

    I don’t think there’s any basis for a federal claim, because IIRC state employees are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act. Without a federal claim you can only get into federal court if you have diversity of citizenship, which obviously doesn’t exist here.

    OTOH, you could possibly assert a Constitutional Equal Protection Clause violation, because this bullshit law doesn’t apply to all state employees. Some of the pending cases OO mentioned may have tried that, though it’s almost certain to fail, because equal protection challenges require either a “suspect classification” — e.g. race, religion, sex — or a fundamental right. Certainly the right to collective bargaining should be regarded as a fundamental right, but I doubt there’s any precedent to support that.

  76. 76.

    hamletta

    Just found out my pastor is retiring next month. Am v. sad.

    Lutherans aren’t supposed to get attached to anything but The Word, but we do.

  77. 77.

    Paul in KY

    Returned from Bonnaroo on Monday. Just made it to work today. If you’ve never gone, you need to go. One of the most unbelievable experiences of my life.

    So much great music, so many cool people.

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