Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

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

No Justins, No Peace

Their freedom requires your slavery.

No one could have predicted…

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

I really should read my own blog.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

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31Comments

  2. 2.

    scav

    Like this lot colors within the lines. Still, I’m rather sickly enjoying the image of multiple elephants in multiple rooms sidling over every so carefully and breathing in certain big players ears.

  4. 4.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
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    Even Nobel Peace Prize laureates sometimes need to secretly drop cluster bombs on civilians. Discuss.
    .
    .

  7. 7.

    alwhite

    @5 no its not a story – we were assured that it was just firebagger FUD being spread because it fit the “Obama caves yet again” meme. Therefore this can never happen.

  8. 8.

    aimai

    I can’t get enough of this story. Here’s the money quote from the Reuters piece:

    Editors would then often use damaging stories as bargaining chips, trading them for future access to public figures or to build relationships with stars. Often, the paper would drop the story they had altogether and publish something more sympathetic.
    “It would be things like: ‘We know you were sleeping with your secretary but we’ll keep it out of the paper if you give us the story about how you were given away as a child,” said the long-term freelancer.
    “They used to call stories ‘levers’,” said the general news reporter. “They weren’t necessarily interested any more in using the story you’d proved or got past the lawyers. They were interested in using the story as leverage in order to get a different story. Sometimes the kind of story that you would bargain as an alternative wasn’t actually the truth. It annoyed a lot of reporters.
    “It was relationship-building for them. Basically, she (Brooks) was trading in your hard work to be friends with influential PRs. They used the stories to bank credit with influential people. It then made the whole raison d’etre of the place something different.”

    What are the fucking odds that they didn’t do this to any and every politician with whom Fox and the WSJ has a good relationship? The good relationship, aside from being paid for on the Republican side, is also (no doubt) due to the withholding of damaging information. This is like reading about the Hollywood studio system of dealing with its own stars gone wild.

    aimai

  10. 10.

    Bruuuuce

    Zahi Hawass fired as Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities

    Money quote:

    “He was the Mubarak of antiquities,” said Nora Shalaby, an activist and archaeologist. “He acted as if he owned Egypt’s antiquities, and not that they belonged to the people of Egypt.”

    I wonder if this means he’ll be on even MORE documentaries and pseudo-documentaries now. (If that’s even possible, considering that he seems to be on all of them that discuss Egypt.)

  11. 11.

    Lol

    Richard Cordray nominated as Director, Raj Date is becoming Acting Director and Elizabeth Warren’s going back home to teach, presumably to school Scott Brown.

  13. 13.

    handsmile

    Scav (#2):

    Related to our exchange yesterday on the UK Independence Party, there is a truly delicious story in today’s Guardian on the party’s head of research, “Lord” Christopher Monckton, one of the world’s most prominent climate skeptics. (I didn’t know his party affiliation.)

    Well, it seems that “Lord” Monckton, as he is always identified, claims a fraudulent title. On Friday, the clerk of the Parliaments sent him a cease-and-desist letter, advising “You are not and never have been a member of the House of Lords.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/18/climate-monckton-member-house-lords?INTCMP=SRCH

    No connection here sadly with the Murdoch scandal, but it does seem in keeping with what’s becoming the theme song here at BJ, “another one bites the dust.”

    A protocol question to anyone who cares to respond: I would like to comment on today’s WSJ editorial but have arrived quite late to the threads discussing it earlier. As a general rule, can one post such a comment (i.e. one relevant to an previous thread) at an open thread or should it be consigned to the tail end of the earlier one (“you snooze, you lose’)? Thanks!

    Edit: Missing one important little word on Monckton: one of the world’s most prominent climate change skeptics.

  16. 16.

    Nutella

    @handsmile:

    No, he is a lord. He’s not a member of the House of Lords. It used to be that lords with his rank were members but that was changed by law and he refuses to accept that the law applies to him, just as he refuses to accept that climate change applies to all of us.

    Looking at the picture of him in your link, I have to think that his lordship’s reasoning errors have something to do with serious inbreeding.

  17. 17.

    PurpleGirl

    Bruuuuce @ 10: I was wondering when he be forced out permanently. I wonder if the Discovery Channel and National Geographic will have statements about the status of future shows with him.

    Whatever his flaws and “sins”, I can’t help but think that he did give Egypt a new profile for tourists to see. Whoever does become the next antiquities chief will have to deal with tourism concerns.

    (I’ve always wanted to go to Egypt and take a tour of the Nile and major sites.)

  19. 19.

    handsmile

    PeakVT (#14): Thanks for the reply! I’ll blame you if necessary. :)

    Bob (#15) Never trust those “radicals at the Guardian.” [see below] Also too, tabulation of box office receipts has a well-known liberal bias.

    Today’s squealing editorial by an organ of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing empire permits us a great, schadenfreude-laced guffaw. It is too transparently self-interested to be a serious impediment to the scandal’s momentum. For example, senior veteran police officials do not tender resignations over “moral outrage with Fleet Street.”

    Its potential for damage, however, lies in its introduction of memes on First Amendment freedoms, political partisanship, bitter competition between rivals, comparisons with Wikileaks, that will be adopted, amplified and sanitized by other print and broadcast vehicles of the corporate media not owned by NewsCorporation.

    That effort is signaled by this statement in the editorial: “Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?”

    Thus I find much more ominous yesterday’s editorial in Kaplan Test Prep Daily and today’s follow-up story there entitled, “Murdoch, rivals alike face questions about coverage of hacking scandal.” The thrust of the piece is to question the motives of domestic media such as NYT and NPR, and quotes extensively the director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center to attack “the radicals at the Guardian”, including a gratuitous slap at George Soros.

    Also, on the BBC World News this morning, a guest identified as an independent media consultant, raised the specter of government intrusion into journalistic operations, as well as the fear that healthy competition between news organizations (“media plurality”) would be squelched. She gravely intoned that politicians and others clamoring for vigorous investigations had perhaps “not thought through the implications of their pursuits.”

    These remarks could well be the first churnings of what will become a furious effort to muddy the waters by the right-wing Wurlitzer, resulting in the lamentable he said/she said, “It’s all so confusing…I don’t know who to believe.

    It would be diabolical if thorny issues of press freedom could be effectively employed to shield those individuals and corporations whose careers and operations have been successfully predicated on the dismantling of press independence and integrity.

  21. 21.

    Anna in PDX

    Off topic, I am a lurker here, and I wondered if you could do a post with the donation connection to Act Blue for the last day before the Wisconsin election. I always donate thorugh you guys so it can get to all the people running, and I notice some are still asking for last minute donations? Thank you.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    Anna in PDX

    I hope one of the front pagers will put up a new post, but in the meantime, I googled and found the link to the Balloon Juice Act Blue Wisconsin Recall donation page.

    Edit: I you press the green “contribute” arrow, it takes you to the next page where you see a concise list of all the candidates and you can enter the amounts and get a running total.

  24. 24.

    handsmile

    For fellow wretched addicts who can go no more than a couple of hours without a hit from the Guardian crack pipe, here, breathe deep:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/18/phone-hacking-nick-clegg-lib-dems-david-cameron

    (Greenslade is a frequent columnist for the Guardian and a professor of journalism at London’s City University.)

    To those who refrain from recreational drugs in the form of news media, this article relates to an engaged discussion here yesterday (don’t recall the specific thread) on the prospects of the Liberal Democrat party severing its governing coalition partnership with the Tories.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    Oh, and Lawrence O’Donnel’s historical revisionism and bad faith arguments have left me laughing about as hard as I can remember, recently.

  29. 29.

    Anna in PDX

    Thank you at #23, I have contributed, hope lots of others do too. It is looking like a close and exciting race in some of their districts based on latest polls.

  31. 31.

    OzoneR

    Though you might enjoy this

    Bob Turner, the Republican candidate for Anthony Weiner’s seat released his opening statement that sounded like he threw a box of Tea Party Magnetic Poetry against a refrigerator door and copied down what landed.

    CITIZEN TURNER CHALLENGES CAREER POL TO SUPPORT OVERTURN OF ANTI-NEW YORK OBAMA OVER-REACH
    Queens, NY- July 18…Businessman and fed up New Yorker Bob Turner (R), a reform candidate for the congressional seat vacated by Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner (NY-9, (Brooklyn, Queens) today called on Party machine candidate and career-politician David Weprin (D) to join him in supporting the overturn of Obamacare – the Medicare-gutting health care takeover that will cost New York taxpayers billions and reduce the level of care nationwide.
    Mayor Bloomberg and Democratic Governor David Paterson passionately opposed Obamacare because of its damaging effects on health care in New York, especially in New York City. In all, Obamacare will cut $500 billion from the Medicare program. Mr. Weprin did nothing to oppose it as an Albany politician, despite its clear detrimental effects on New York State.
    “David Weprin has been a politician so long that he seems to have forgotten what real people care about,” Mr. Turner said. “Hint: they want to choose their own doctors and they don’t want Washington bureaucrats in the examining room with them. As a member of Congress, I will fight to preserve Medicare as we know it by overturning Obamacare. Will Mr. Weprin make the same pledge?”

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