Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

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

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

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

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

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

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Second rate reporter says what?

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

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92Comments

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    @slag:

    back when John Cole blogged here

    Go on the twitters and describe for him your lack of the pants. Seems to be what he’s about now.
    That and cooking for drunks.

  5. 5.

    eemom

    That should be populist gold

    Nope. Not until those bridge walkers explain just exactly what the fuck they were walking on that bridge FOR.

  10. 10.

    John Cole

    @slag: This blog has been going for ten years. I’m a touch burnt out, and have been for the last two-three months. But I try to keep a place going where you all can still come until I am done being emo. It’s just hard keeping up with all the fucking “REPUBLICANS ARE NUTS AND THE MEDIA IS IGNORING IT” bullshit without a touch of burn out.

    I mean, for fucks sake, a Republican Presidential candidate was hunting at “NIGGERHEAD” and I’m supposed to keep at a manic pace 24/7 without just saying “OHFUCKITALL.”

    Work with me, for fucks sake. I’ll be back in the groove once I snap out of the funk.

    Did I say fuck enough?

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    @Violet:

    I also like “I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.”

    They killed Arthur Andersen dead after Enron.

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    @slag:

    Well, at least he has a name for his new show on the Food Channel.

    Making chicken fried rice or reheating pepperoni pizza wouldn’t hold a show for very long.

  15. 15.

    JCT

    @John Cole: Dead-on.

    It’s something else to wake up every day and think, “what ridiculous bullshit will the Republicans pull today without suffering any consequences?”

    Life as a bad fucking reality game show.

    And one of those fuckwits could actually be elected. Holy crap. This would be the widest IQ gap between successive Presidents ever. These guys make Reagan look like Richard Fucking Feynman.

  16. 16.

    Svensker

    @John Cole:

    I mean, for fucks sake, a Republican Presidential candidate was hunting at “NIGGERHEAD” and I’m supposed to keep at a manic pace 24/7 without just saying “OHFUCKITALL.”

    And was criticized by a black Republican prez. candidate who was then roundly denounced by Republican punditry and then B.R.P.C. backs down because “niggerhead” is NOT racist.

    Tweet on, oh pantsless one. It makes as much sense as anything else these days.

  21. 21.

    burnspbesq

    Difficult to tell whether (a) said Twitterer has never head of Raj Rajaratnam or (b) said Twitterer doesn’t think that insider trading constitutes bankrupting the country or (c) said Twitterer refuses to let the facts get in the way of a rant that makes him or her feel better.

    Whichever it is, it’s a fail.

    ETA: FYWP. If I want the fucking copyright symbol, I’ll paste it in.

  25. 25.

    clayton

    @Corner Stone: Whining about football threads is your trademark lately. I’d just like for you to whine abut no White History Month thread for a change.

  26. 26.

    burnspbesq

    @Corner Stone:

    It was the eevil Feds done kilt AA. Texas would have erected a monument to David Duncan for helping the quintessentially Texas company screw the people of those hippie enclaves California and Oregon.

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    @slag: There are three things in life that are guaranteed to sate the drunken binger.
    Left over pizza.
    Any form of Americanized Chinese food.
    My kick ass nachos.

    ETA, I like the term limiter “enough”. I baby sat my two best friends through high school on a multi year drunkenly debauched festival.
    Had all the dealing with drunks that ain’t me I ever need.

  28. 28.

    burnspbesq

    @Comrade Kevin:

    If caring about the facts is “lawyerly,” I plead guilty.

    The more interesting question is why you are so willing to not care about the facts.

  30. 30.

    slag

    @Corner Stone: Exactly. So, Cole has to produce a whole three shows (+ maybe one Super Bowl special on a recipe featuring American Cheese) and then put that shit on re-runs. Let the royalties roll in.

  31. 31.

    Suffern ACE

    @burnspbesq: AA killed themselves, if i recall. And if and when Sarbanes-Oxley is killed as one of those “regulations that kill jobs” another big 4 will kill itself in the same way.

  32. 32.

    Corner Stone

    @slag: I like the way you’re thinking. Since it’s nominally a related political theme blog let’s throw in a Super Tuesday Smorgasbord. And then an X-Mas/New Year’s throw down and I think we’ve got something.

  33. 33.

    Elie

    @John Cole:

    Hang on Bro– these are not just tough times — they are absolutely fucking WEIRD…

    On this site we go from discussion about “niggerhead” to being alternately offended and offensive about obesity, participating in pointless arguments with each other about a Republican asshole who hasn’t even decided to run yet. Like our venom glands got too distended and had to be emptied pronto — on each other!

    This too shall pass.

    My solution? Right now, I am into baking and giving away cakes, cookies and whatever else I can put flour and sugar together on… thankfully not eating it but just gotta do something good in a real real small way. At least my friends and neighbors are liking it…

  35. 35.

    Corner Stone

    I absolutely love the “Facebook” girl on that Toyota Venza commercial.
    When she looks up and says, “This. Is living.” I just want to ask her to friend me.

  36. 36.

    Corner Stone

    @slag: I keep trying to get him some lucrative spots but all he does is put on a bath towel, start dancing, and yelling about “the Kwan”.
    Whatever the hell that is.

    ETA, thank the gods for the bath towel.

  38. 38.

    birthmarker

    It’s just hard keeping up with all the fucking “REPUBLICANS ARE NUTS AND THE MEDIA IS IGNORING IT” bullshit without a touch of burn out.

    This is what the repubs are counting on. Our burnout.

  40. 40.

    YellowJournalism

    Do not listen to the sock puppet “John Cole”! It’s just Tunch covering the real Cole’s whereabouts. The real Cole is chained in a basement somewhere while a posse of Tunch-led fat cats (non-Repub, non-Wall Street) plot to force cat food companies to bring back Tender Vittles with the little heart treats tucked among the moist food!

  42. 42.

    YellowJournalism

    Seriously, though, I feel your burnout. While mine isn’t political, I’m at the point of recreating the “Fuck You” scene from Half-Baked while among some people I know, and I’m pretty sure I can do it better than Britney Spears.

  43. 43.

    opium4themasses

    @burnspbesq: Ok. So let’s update that for you.

    “One arrested for bankrupting the country. 700 arrested for walking on a bridge.”

    Yes, let’s totally condemn that twitterer for how far off they were. Seems to me you care far more about the minor error than the major miscarriage.

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Svensker:

    And was criticized by a black Republican prez. candidate who was then roundly denounced by Republican punditry and then B.R.P.C. backs down because “niggerhead” is NOT racist.

    Ok, this has to be a prank, right? Rethuglican pundits wouldn’t go there, would they?

    What’s next? Rush Limbaugh yelling “NIGGER!” at the top of his lungs during his show? I mean, I know he wants to…

  48. 48.

    handy

    @Kristine:

    The impression that I got was that the media relations people in the Cain camp were working the Sunday morning talkies to allow him to get that message out. It felt too coordinated. As a frontrunner maybe trying to pour on Perry.

    Of course, if all that is true, it also means he doesn’t really “get” how to work Republican primary voters. The moral of the story being, it appears he worked awfully hard for something that in the end he’s forced to shrug off as if he wasn’t the one injecting the issue in the first place.

  51. 51.

    suzanne

    700 arrested for walking on a bridge.

    Don’t you get it, John? That’s 700 people fucking up the rich men’s idyllic fantasy of themselves as noble job creators when they actually remember to leave a 10% tip for the waitstaff. AKA THOSE HIPPIES DON’T LOOK GOOD ENOUGH TO BE VISIBLE FROM MY PENTHOUSE WINDOW.

    Fucking shotguns, how do they work?

  54. 54.

    Corner Stone

    @J. Michael Neal: If you’re going to be a fucking prick then maybe you should look up the spelling of “Arthur Andersen”.
    I’m not big on the typos but for you I make exceptions.

  55. 55.

    Corner Stone

    @handy: It was an LLP. Not like I was citing case law, just bringing up an interesting nugget I thought of.
    Some people here just take the O and the C to the D.

  58. 58.

    eemom

    @John Cole:

    Nobody gives a shit if you are burnt out or emo. All we ask is that you show up and post some shit once in a while, just to show you CARE.

    I mean, if even-tempered, dispassionate, coherent, well-reasoned, and methodical political analysis were our thing, do you think we’d be hanging out HERE? Bwaaahaaaahaaaahaaahaaaa.

  63. 63.

    suzanne

    @eemom: I know you love to shit your pants just to watch me wrinkle my nose, but I’m sorry I can’t give you all the attention you need.

    Maybe see someone about that.

  67. 67.

    eemom

    While the Enron fiasco was going down I worked at a firm that shared floor space with the local office of the dying Arthur Anderson, and there were Destructo-Doc bins parked outside its doors 24/7. True story.

  69. 69.

    eemom

    @suzanne:

    mais non! Fat people from Anchorage to Australia were lined up outside the doors waiting for you to show up and champion their cause. Hell, Chris Christie himself sent a special helicopter.

    With great compassion comes great responsibility. I’d’ve thought you knew that.

  71. 71.

    Samara Morgan

    @John Cole: well, you’re fucking wrong about the bankstahs CAUSING the whole shebang.
    America also spent 14.3 trillion dollahs we didnt have trying to build fucking girls schools in dar ul Islam, lol.

  72. 72.

    suzanne

    @eemom: You know what, if you want to be a small-minded, small-hearted bigot, you go right ahead. Way to show ME what’s up! You GO, girl!

    @handy: At times, sure. All in all, I could do with more funny and less mean. It’s the least interesting commenters around here who don’t know the difference. (See above.)

  73. 73.

    eemom

    @suzanne:

    right now, you’re being a doosh. Uncool.

    Ah. Now I see. You’ve moved on from PC Spokesbot Du Jour to All Purpose Time Out Wielding Kindergarten Teacher.

    You might wanna work on that abuse of the Special Ed kids though. Just in case the principal drops by.

  75. 75.

    suzanne

    @eemom:

    You might wanna work on that abuse of the Special Ed kids though. Just in case the principal drops by.

    I am working on it. She’s somehow elevated herself to the position of second-most-flagrantly-asinine commenter on this blog. I’ve been a model of civility.

  77. 77.

    suzanne

    @Citizen_X: That link would be hilarious if it wasn’t so damn terrifying.

    It’s frightening how pointing out bigotry is more divisive than, you know, actually being a bigot.

  79. 79.

    burnspbesq

    @J. Michael Neal:

    Distinction without a difference. Partners in an LLP don’t have unlimited personal liability for partnership obligations. That lack of personal liability makes risk management an afterthought. As a Big 4 alum, i have been there and seen it up close and personal.

  80. 80.

    handy

    @Citizen_X:

    But Erickson is right in a way.

    (warning: bad “certain game of cards people play for money which I cannot name due to the lame FYWP spam filter” analogy incoming)Cain took a gamble going for Perry’s throat after his “inspired” straw poll win thinking now he was holding aces.

    The consequence is that he seriously mistook his hand here. He’s not playing the Villagers.

  85. 85.

    Suffern ACE

    @burnspbesq: Its a corporation when it’s sued in civil court, a partnership when it is taxed, and when foreign operations get in trouble, its just a little ol’ company that owns a brand sells franchises, like a Dukin’ Donuts. Or so they hope.

  86. 86.

    J. Michael Neal

    @burnspbesq: The distinction I was making was that, as far as I know, no kind of partnership has the personhood attribute of a corporation. Though what the hell an LLP or an LLC actually is defies my ability to describe. I think that such structures are abominations.

    Once everyone is smart enough to make me dictator of everything, the *only* way you can get limited liability is to go the corporation route. If you want a pass through income stream, take your unlimited liability and like it.

  87. 87.

    J. Michael Neal

    @burnspbesq: On a different note, I’ll be very surprised if the Union women’s hockey team doesn’t win more games this year than they did last year. You guys played us a lot harder than Syracuse did, no matter that the final margin was larger.

    Though, the Saturday game against St. Cloud (another candidate for worst team in the country last year at 1-26-1) should be worrisome. SCSU dominated you, too. Part of that is really just a statement about how much stronger the western teams are. It’s also a comment that St. Cloud is better this year; we’ll see about that this weekend when they play the Gophers.

    One of the Union parents says that the team showed up out of shape at the start of practicing and was gassed for the last four periods of the weekend. I don’t know exactly what to make of that. On the one hand, it doesn’t speak well of the team’s commitment. On the other, it suggests that they could be stronger once they get into shape. Who knows.

  90. 90.

    jpe

    The distinction I was making was that, as far as I know, no kind of partnership has the personhood attribute of a corporation.

    Of course they do. They can sue and be sued, open bank accounts, be taxed (even if they aren’t under federal law in most instances), etc.

  91. 91.

    jpe

    AA killed themselves, if i recall.

    No, they had to surrender their CPA license on conviction. That did ’em in.

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