Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

When we show up, we win.

This fight is for everything.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

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

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

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

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

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Open Thread: We Live in Hope

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Professor Warren, you go, girl! From TPM:

Former White House financial reform adviser Elizabeth Warren will officially launch her campaign for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts on Wednesday, challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown, a source close to Warren told TPM on Tuesday…
__
A recent survey showed Brown leading the lesser-known Warren by 44%-35%, but with the incumbent below the crucial 50% mark in a state that is expected to vote Democratic by a wide margin in the presidential race.

Cole has promised to help me set up an Act Blue page here once the official announcement is made tomorrow. Nothing about this campaign will be easy — Brown’s been craftier than anyone expected about threading the needle between Massachusetts progressivism and his GOP masters, and every bank-related Kochsucker that hates the CFPB like a cockroach hates the light will be inciting the Teabaggers into full spittle-and-lies mode. But I’m looking forward to this fight!

(Since I can’t offer new Tunch photos for his insatiable fan base, here’s Sydney and Gloria at the driveway gate, living in hope that a car ride might be on the agenda.)

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  2. 2.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Here’s me being a contrarian hardass:

    a source close to Warren told TPM on Tuesday

    You couldn’t get anyone on the record, you stupid motherfuckers?!

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I heard the strategy is to portray her as a carpet-bagging egg-head– “professor” as a term of disdain. I ton’t think that’ll work. My meters are very much not tuned to most Americans (I liked Gore and Kerry more than Clinton, and the notion of “having a beer with” George W. Bush made me want to drink alone) but I find Elizabeth Warren to be very down-to-earth and appealing as a candidate.

  4. 4.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    God they love to go! My knuckle heads almost have a stroke every time I pick up the keys. Of course, they almost always get to go.

  5. 5.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’m not from MA, so maybe a local can enlighten me, but does “eggheaded professor” really work as an insult in Massachusetts? It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat there without hitting some nationally-ranked university or liberal arts college.

  6. 6.

    texascowgirl

    Now wait a minute. Elizabeth Warren is running for the Senate? I thought she wasn’t going to head up the consumer protection agency because Obama likes throwing liberals under the bus and punching hippies in the face? Turns out she wanted to get Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat back.

  19. 19.

    Warren Terra

    From TPM (and in its entirety, because it’s short):

    TIPPING THE SCALE
    __
    Pennsylvania Republicans are planning to change the state’s way of apportioning electoral college votes, getting rid of winner take all. Since Dems usually win Pennsylvania that would have the effect of neutralizing the state in the Electoral College. And it could have a big effect on the outcome of next year’s election.

    Just when you thought they’d run out of ways to surprise and amaze you with their sleaziness …

  21. 21.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Spaghetti Lee: MA’s reputation for liberal-ness is somewhere between mildly overstated and profoundly overstated.

    It keeps electing Republican governors — albeit pretty pallid ones by national standards — and some of the walruses in the Democratic party aren’t all that liberal. An effective one-party legislature on Beacon Hill means some of the Democrats are only Democrats because there’s no future in being a not-Democrat.

    And there’s been a virulent, and vicious, local talk-radio culture from the B.R. era (Before Rush) going back to the likes of Howie Carr and Jay Sevarin.

  23. 23.

    Anne Laurie

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    I’m not from MA, so maybe a local can enlighten me, but does “eggheaded professor” really work as an insult in Massachusetts?

    There are plenty of Masshole yahoos to hate on those of us who not only can read but will do so without coercion. Rumor is that Scotty’s handlers are funneling money to the other Democratic hopefuls (nice guys, who couldn’t offer Cosmo Boy a serious challenge even if they could be politically Voltronned into one all-purpose Perennial No-Chancer), and using EGGHEAD SMRT WOMEN HATES RANDIAN FREEDUMB! ! ! ads to solicit funds from out-of-state Teabaggers, robber barons & glibertarians.

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cathyx: those races aren’t comparable in a lot of ways, and Warren is poised and coherent on TV, Ned Lamont came across like an unprepared high school debater

    @Warren Terra: The nerdy small-d democrat in me thinks this should be a nation-wide reform. The cold-blooded pragmatist in me is pissed.

  27. 27.

    Fulcanelli

    @efgoldman: Hey neighbor (central RI) have you heard so much as a frickin’ peep in the MSM from our congressional delegation about the debt ceiling dust-up or jobs, or anything at all other than the lame newsletters they send out every month?

    Whitehouse must’ve been taken abducted and taken for a ride in a black helicopter cause it seems he flamed out and fell off the radar after trying to tackle the torture issue back when he got elected.

    One of our clients is a BFF fundraising coordinator for Sen. Reed and I’m tempted to ask her if he’s still alive next time I see her… Christ, we need all hands on deck over here… WTF

  28. 28.

    Morzer

    @cathyx:

    I am not so sure about that. Warren has a much higher and more impressive profile (and list of achievements) than Ned Lamont ever managed.

  29. 29.

    Mark S.

    @Mark S.:

    Ugh, I didn’t read that Jonah brain-fart I linked to very closely at first, but unsurprisingly he’s full of shit:

    On the other hand, I think [Perry’s] argument that he did this because he will always “support life” is dangerous hogwash. He mandated government inoculations against STDs because he’s a pro-lifer?

    No, dumbass, Perry was talking about cancer:

    Worldwide in 2002, an estimated 561,200 new cancer cases (5.2% of all new cancers) were attributable to HPV, making HPV one of the most important infectious cause of cancer. . . About a dozen HPV types (including types 16, 18, 31, and 45) are called “high-risk” types because they can lead to cervical cancer, as well as anal cancer, vulvar cancer, vaginal cancer, and penile cancer . Several types of HPV, in particular type 16, have been found to be associated with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer (OSCC), a form of head and neck cancer.

    The man is an embarrassment to National Review, which is saying something since National Review is quite an embarrassment itself.

  30. 30.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Yay! I am thinking that Jon Stewart will be gearing up his campaign for his hottness. “I so want to make out with you right now”. Warren. She will be an incredible force, Scott Brown should worry.

  31. 31.

    aimai

    I think she can sell her “champion of the middle class/credit card/debtor” shtick and that will do her really well. Because Brown hasn’t done a thing for any ordinary person. He can’t point to a single vote or act which wasn’t done for the bankers. He can run as a “regular guy” and a “JAG” or whatever but he can’t run as a populist. And she actually can. There’s a ton of sexism in MA, especially among blue collar voters and middle class democratic voters. But I’m really sure she can do this. Tomorrow I’ll be donating and calling up to help organize and GOTV. I’m hugely excited by Warren. The more they attack her nationally the more MA democrats will want to vote for her because they think of their seat as one of national importance. I think it would have been much harder to get out the vote for the team of seven well meaning liberal dwarves who were running. Sorry, but its true. They didn’t have enough name recognition between the X of them to pick up their own mail.

    aimai

  34. 34.

    Anya

    I love Elisabeth Warren and will donate the maximum to her campaign, but I am not sure if I can trust MA’s reputation for liberalness all that much. I was there for a short time during the 2008 primary and some racist shit came out. It was a shock to my system when going door to door at some Boston neighborhoods. Also, too, NY-09 proves that Democratic voters can be as racist and easily swayed by prejudice and an incredibly parochial worldview. Fuck em they deserve what they get.

  38. 38.

    jl

    And my Open Thread presentation for today is this careful review of the effect of minimum wage laws on employment. That I found at rortybomb

    Guest Post: Minimum Wage Laws and the Labor Market: What Have We Learned Since Card and Krueger’s Book Myth and Measurement?
    Posted on September 1, 2011 by Mike

    rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/guest-post-minimum-wage-laws-and-the-labor-market-what-have-we-le…

    I think that the review is a little too favorable to minimum wage laws on teenagers. I think there is good evidence that higher minimum wages slow uptake of teenagers into first jobs, and slow their wage increases over time.

    How important that is depends on what you think teenagers should be doing with their time, I guess.

    But otherwise, this seems to be careful review.

    thank you class.

    Tomorrow my presentation at Open Thread will be deranged diatribe, damning Cole for lack of cute pet pics.

    P.S. Dang, that URL for the link is way too long. I wonder if it will work.

    Edit: the link works. The wonders of mark up language.

  40. 40.

    Morzer

    @Anya:

    Judging by vote maps from the Scott Brown-nose aftermath, Massachusetts is split between very blue areas and very red areas, which would fit with my own experiences here in Boston. I have also heard that there are two different Democratic machines (West MA and East MA) and that one factor in Coakley’s not entirely successful outcome was that she was from the “wrong” machine. Menino, in my opinion, is something of a bastard, but I don’t think he would want to see the Democrats lose Kennedy’s seat twice running, and especially not with his fingerprints on the dirty deed.

  41. 41.

    El Cid

    Something I’ve screamed about in various blogs including this one regarding our gigantic recipient of stupendously ineffective anti-narcotrafficking military aid (if you pretend that’s the goal) ally Colombia, which since 2009 has been rocked by the disclosure that the US- and Fred Hiatt-beloved Uribe government illegally spied on the opposition using US-provided electronic surveillance equipment, including Colombia’s Supreme Court, and with many of their victims funneling the info to their narco-paramilitary death squad allies to threaten or assassinate them.

    Jan Schakowsky and Jim McGovern follow up on a serious set of reports of how high the program went. Even the Washington Post turned towards very serious reporting. (Only after, however, Uribe was out of office; back then he was our only Savior from Hugo Chavez.)

    McGovern gave this version for the Congressional record.

    U.S. Rep. McGovern called for better accounting and oversight of U.S. Aid to Colombia’s Department of Administrative Services in a floor speech this morning, as well as in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cosigned by U.S. Rep. Janice Schakowsky on Wednesday.

    For the past decade, Colombia’s intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security – or the DAS – has engaged in illegal activities.
    __
    Created to investigate organized crime, insurgents and drug traffickers, the DAS instead provided paramilitary death squads with the names of trade unionists to be murdered and carried out illegal surveillance on journalists, human rights defenders, political opposition leaders, and Supreme Court judges.
    __
    American cash, equipment and training to help shut down drug-trafficking may have been used for spy operations, smear campaigns and threats against civil society leaders in Colombia.
    __
    Several U.S. agencies aided the DAS – the State Department, Pentagon, DEA, CIA, and DIA – even as scandal after scandal after scandal became publicly known.
    __
    It was only in April 2010 when U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield suspended U.S. aid to the DAS, diverting those resources to the Colombian National Police.
    __
    Yesterday, Congresswoman Schakowsky and I sent a letter to the Secretaries of State and Defense, the U.S. Attorney General and the CIA Director asking them to provide Congress with a comprehensive report on all forms of U.S. aid to the DAS and to tell us what the DAS used the aid for.
    __
    It’s not too much to ask, Mr. Speaker.
    __
    There has been a shocking lack of oversight over all the U.S. aid that poured into the DAS over the past decade. Getting to the bottom of this is what oversight is all about.
    __
    Colombia is doing its part. The Attorney General is carrying out an aggressive investigation and series of prosecutions. Six former high-ranking intelligence officials have confessed to crimes. More than a dozen other operatives are on trial, with more still under investigation.
    __
    President Santos has promised to dismantle the DAS and replace it with a new intelligence agency. In the meantime, the old structures still remain. Witnesses cooperating with the Attorney General find themselves and their families threatened; and human rights defenders, even now, are STILL under surveillance.
    __
    Mr. Speaker, I’m sure that U.S. intentions were good. But I also believe that the DAS was generally “up to no good.” I find it impossible to understand how the State Department and embassy officials can say with certainty that absolutely no U.S. funding was ever used by the DAS for criminal purposes.
    __
    Congress must insist on safeguards to ensure that no funding, equipment, training or intelligence-sharing with ANY Colombian intelligence agency is used for illegal surveillance or criminal activities, now and in the future.
    __
    The Administration or Congress must prohibit any further funding for the DAS – including aid in the pipeline – until the Attorney General has completed all investigations and prosecutions, finds out who ordered these illegal activities, and President Santos has completely dismantled the current agency.
    __
    I ask the Committee Chairman and Ranking Member to guarantee the Members of this House that no further aid will be provided to the DAS, and if that prohibition is not explicitly in this bill that they will work with the Senate to include it in the final conference report.

    But Hugo Chavez once shut down a TV network which supported a violent overthrow of his elected government, so of course our favored Colombian government is awesome.

    By the way, the compliments to the Attorney General should not be in any way considered praise of “the Colombian government,” since the AG is independent, does not work for the Administration, and in Colombia’s (as in many other nation’s) legal system, the Courts themselves can order investigations.

    In fact, investigators had to fight Uribe’s government every step of the way.

    The reason we know about this is that a small weekly newsmagazine, Semana, investigated reports that giant info erasing was starting to go on in DAS and made contact with DAS agents who turned evidence to them.

    Unlike one could imagine ever happening in this country, the very morning of Semana‘s report, the AG’s forces invaded the DAS offices and placed as much of the building as possible under arrest & lockdown so as to prevent the destruction of evidence.

  42. 42.

    magurakurin

    total dick Rethugs in the Senate block disaster aid.

    Two things.

    One. are there bigger dicks than these guys?

    Two. Why can’t the press say the word “filibuster?”

    Here is a quote from the article

    On a 53-33 vote, the Senate rejected an attempt by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to bring up a bill that Democrats had hoped to use to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s depleted disaster fund. Democrats needed 60 votes to advance the measure.

    The Senate didn’t reject the measure. Reading this sentence it sounds like 53 senators voted against the bill. But that’s not what happened. It was a cloture vote against a Republican filibuster. The last sentence tells us that, but they just can’t bring themselves to say filibuster.

    So, maybe there are bigger dicks than the Rethugs in the Senate:The US news media.

  43. 43.

    Arclite

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    You couldn’t get anyone on the record, you stupid motherfuckers?!

    Hahaha, that cracked me up. I totally agree, newspapers do this all the time, and it’s infuriating.

    BTW, GG harps on this all the time, just sayin’

  44. 44.

    Arclite

    @texascowgirl:

    Elizabeth Warren is running for the Senate? I thought she wasn’t going to head up the consumer protection agency because Obama likes throwing liberals under the bus and punching hippies in the face? Turns out she wanted to get Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat back.

    Sweetie, it’s all part of the plan. 11 dimensional Candy Land, doncha know.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @magurakurin: I saw that earlier and it pissed me off, especially because I just listened to an interview with Al Franken where he said the ‘old bulls’ on the Dem side blocked filibuster reform. Seems to me requiring 40 votes to block rather than 60 to break a block would be pretty simple.

  46. 46.

    jl

    @magurakurin:

    I wonder if that sad and documentation free Atlantic column in an earlier post (that recommending eliminating FEMA and replacing it with fantasy free market business and just in time heroic and magically just right and perfectly efficient local voluntary disaster relief) is connected somehow.

  47. 47.

    Anya

    @efgoldman:

    Anybody notice that a black governor is now in his second term? And was re-elected really easily?

    Good point! My usually sunny outlook is clouded by the blatant islamophobia that’s gaining ground in freaking New York. But you are right and EW is a passionate speaker and really comes off as genuinely sincere person in her convictions. I think she has a huge chance. I am hoping MA dems will avoid a bruising primary.

  48. 48.

    Cacti

    So I finally got around to reading the transcript of the Chris Christie keynote speech at the secret Koch retreat.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that was so infuriating and disheartening.

    It’s not a conspiracy theory. The super rich actually have private retreats where they laugh and joke about how they’ve screwed over the working folks. They strategize about how best to take Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security away from us.

    They are the real government. Elected officials are their handmaidens. They can get a private meeting with the governor of a state any time they feel like it. Hell, they can make those governors travel to where THEY are. And you can get fucked if you don’t like it.

    It’s just astounding that there’s a baseline of 40-45% of the country who will happily line up to slit their own throats for these fuckers.

  52. 52.

    Anya

    @Morzer: You can gather from my comment that I know nothing about MA politics. The very little I know I gathered from the shocking loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. As well as from my very short GOTV stint during the 08 primary — my grandparents are from Beacon Hill which voted for Obama during the primary — causing lasting annoyance to my grandmother (not a PUMA but the rest of us supported Obama while she was a big Hillary campaigner and fundraiser). That was the only time I was exposed to MA politics. I might move there in the not so distant future, so I better brush up on intricacies of MA politics.

  53. 53.

    Morzer

    @Anya:

    These days, Massachusetts politics seems to revolve around a set of ongoing corruption scandals, tempered by a fairly resilient set of Democratic constituencies, plus a sense that the moderate Republican as a species is increasingly hard to find. If I remember rightly, the Republican governors of late were elected largely because the Democrats offered fairly horrendous candidates, rather than because Republicanism itself was particularly popular. Maybe Anne Laurie can speak more to this, but that’s how it seems to me.

  54. 54.

    Lyrebird

    re: MA politics

    I figure every state has its machines and its messes, but Patrick’s reelection was a good sign, and Mass. Republicans that I’ve dealt with tend to be Bill Weld fans. (Bill Weld being the sort of Republican who would probably be to the left of Huntsman.)

    re: Warren in particular,

    Also remember she’s ALREADY gone on the Daily Show, & Jon Stewart was going all happy-puppy all over the place. Coakley? I don’t think so.

    Barney (Frank) already likes her, and tho’ I bet he’s still got enemies in the state house (from him being smarter than them lo those many decades ago), he’s got plenty of friends, too… haven’t seen any official reax from him on this yet.

    Plus what everyone else said.

  55. 55.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Lyrebird: Barney Wasn’t just smarter than they were decades ago, he’s still smarter than they are. I love Barney Frank. My father remembers him as a grad student at Harvard.

  56. 56.

    Joey Maloney

    Shifting from Mass down to NJ for a minute, specifically Newark, specifically the Newark airport: Reporter Claims TSA Agent Would Speed People Through Security For $10

    Phil Mushnick at the NYPost has an article telling about his own recent experience flying out of Newark, in which a TSA agent appeared to let people cut to the front of the security line for a “tip” of around $10. The actual amount wasn’t entirely clear, other than that she got quite upset — publicly — when only given $5. Basically, she walked around offering people a wheelchair, which she would use to bring them to the front of the line, the whole time letting them know that she expected something in return.

    Isn’t that special?

  58. 58.

    Anne Laurie

    @Morzer:

    I have also heard that there are two different Democratic machines (West MA and East MA) and that one factor in Coakley’s not entirely successful outcome was that she was from the “wrong” machine.

    Aka apple-knockers versus slum-dwellers, or so it’s been explained to me, although since I only moved to MA a couple-three years before Warren I’m just another carpetbagger. But the burning enmity between the inside-Rte-128/495 urbanists (who rely on the votes of college people & immigrants) and the populists west of Worcester (who regard their smaller population of college people / NYC summer-folk as just another resource to be milked, with guest-worker immigrants as the farm hands shovelling artisinal kibble into one end & waste out the other) does quite remind me of the NYC/upstate NY perpetual war of all against all that I grew up amidst.

    Menino, in my opinion, is something of a bastard, but I don’t think he would want to see the Democrats lose Kennedy’s seat twice running, and especially not with his fingerprints on the dirty deed.

    May-yah Mumbles has a very sharp ear for Rich College Fvcks graciously condescending to schlumpy working class folk like himself — possibly too sharp, since it seems from outside like he can gin up an enormous resentment against people, like ferinstance Jawn Fawbes K, who don’t deserve fragging from within the Democratic perimeter. But unless Elizabeth Warren’s people are criminally careless, I don’t expect that to be a problem in her case. Part of her effectiveness is that she doesn’t condescend, even to people who are being giant arseholes in her general direction; if Tommy M takes it upon himself to hate her on general principles, he’s gonna look like a putz, and he hasn’t survived this long as Boston mayor by getting known as a putz. We’ll see…

  61. 61.

    DaTechGuy

    I can see why you are optimistic, after all as yesterdays elections showed there is nothing more likely to produce a win in 2012 for Democrats than running a candidate who is, as the Washington Post says: “former Obama administration official”.

  62. 62.

    kay

    What a good race! We’ll have to breathe deep and let go of the outcome, in a Zen-like manner, because I think it’s going to be very difficult :)

    I’m glad she’s running, though.

    I don’t think the attack is going to be “egg head professor/carpet-bagger”. I think the attack is going to be “female ball-busting sheriff”. I say this because I have never witnessed gender-based bias in any job like I do in the job I have now, and it is directed at female prosecutors (so not me).

    I hear it at least three times a week, and I think I’m privy to it because I’m on the other side. I hear it from defendants (male and female), I hear it from defense lawyers (male and female), I hear it from male prosecutors. It’s amazing to listen to, because it’s so blatant. No one gets shit on like female prosecutors, and the comments are so personal, ie: she’s fat, she’s ugly, she’s a bitch or nasty. A female prosecutor can conduct a perfectly average examination or witness questioning and I will hear absolute outrage from my clients, about how aggressive she is, something I never hear them say about male prosecutors. They’ll attribute all kinds of motives to her every word: she hates sex, she hates girls, she hates boys, she never had any fun, and on and on.

    People have huge issues with women in that role, IMO, so I think Warren will be portrayed as a scold, as a person who wants to limit people’s freedom, and on and on.

    I think she knows this too, either from experience or just intuitively, because she uses a LOT of deferential body language. She smiles, she tips her head, she leans forward sympathetically, she doesn’t interrupt (even when she’s interrupted). I’m not knocking that, I think it’s smart if it’s deliberate and recognition of reality if it’s not, and I think she has to do it to win. Sad but true.

    This is my female-prosecutor theory and I’m sticking to it, and if you disagree you’re just wrong :)

  63. 63.

    Paul in KY

    Ms. Warren needs to be thinking of an appropriate putdown for when Sen. Centerfold busts out the pickup.

    From what I’ve seen of her, she’ll do fine in that regard.

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