Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The revolution will be supervised.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

It’s a doggy dog world.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

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

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

We’re not going back!

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

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83Comments

  3. 3.

    lamh35

    @amk:

    “Mitt Romney, while touring the Chez Vachon restaurant in Manchester, sat down at a table with two older men, one of whom was wearing a “Vietnam Veteran” hat.

    Bob Garon, 63, of Epsom, N.H., asked Romney if he, as president would seek to overturn New Hampshire’s law legalizing gay marriage. Romney gave his standard response affirming his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

    Garon, who is gay and was seated with his husband, Bob Lemire, then said to Romney: “It’s good to know how you feel, that you do not believe everyone is entitled to their constitutional rights.”

    Romney replied: “Actually, I think at the time the Constitution was written marriage was between a man and a woman and I don’t believe the Supreme Court has changed that.”

    Garon, a political independent later, told reporters he was unimpressed with Romney.

    “The guy ain’t going to make it,” he said after the exchange. “You can’t trust him. I can see it in his eyes.”

    Garon said he was married in June. “In New Hampshire, where it’s legal. Unless Mitt Romney gets elected.”

  4. 4.

    lamh35

    Michelle O-bots Unite!

    Michelle Obama, world record holder

    Michelle Obama is now a world record holder. The first lady announced in an email Monday that her October bid to break the record for the most people doing jumping jacks in a 24-hour period succeeded. Mrs. Obama says 300,265 people participated, shattering the old record.

  6. 6.

    Mudge

    I don’t remember any references in the Constitution to male-female marriage. Also, remember that when the Constitution was written, right to bear arms meant a muzzle loader. Funny how some definitions are not allowed to change, but others are. Go Mitt.

  9. 9.

    Redshift

    @Mudge: Yeah, it’s pretty impressive to be able to unintentionally make a mockery of “original intent” and “literal interpretation of the Constitution” in just one sentence.

  10. 10.

    amk

    @lamh35: willard hasn’t learnt anything at all about running for prez. To be upstaged by inept pols like cain, perry and now newter even after 5 years of running for prez speaks volumes.

  11. 11.

    Benjamin Franklin

    A wordsmith you may not be familiar with.

    http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/12/the-cookie-crumbles.html

    “The sceptered isle is now Europe’s dog-house. They stayed out of the Euro currency for a reason: so that their equivalent of Wall Street, the City of London, could short the shit out of it when the time came, a strategy that begins to look absolutely brilliant – except considering what Old Blighty is otherwise left with as an economy: Scotch whiskey, mints, and a whole lot of Hallel grocery shops, with the Royals as window dressing. (I’d sooner invest in Argentina, with its amber waves of grain.)
    The old animosities are leaking out of Pandora’s History Box. Stolid Angela Merkel is stepping on Nikolas Sarkozy’s size 14 ½ neck – how long before he starts to buck and holler? The astrologasters cannot come up with any math that shows Italy can meet its forthcoming debt payments. But they are only the leaders of a deadbeat posse that includes virtually everybody else in EuroClub, except perhaps Holland, Germany, and Finland. Could they really start beating up on each other with armies again? It would appear unthinkable. But that is exactly why the First World War destroyed the morale of Western Civ in 1914, too, after the Long Peace that followed the Napoleonic Wars. You’re standing there on a lovely street corner in Verdun and the unthinkable whaps you upside the head. So much for the quality of advanced thinking in the Modern Age. Maybe its Poland’s turns to rule the world?

  19. 19.

    Poopyman

    @Amir Khalid: A very nice Stille Nacht, indeed. A bit disquieting following Mr. Franklin’s comment, since it’s performed in a Dresden church, and that history is too recent to just be some abstraction.

  23. 23.

    Amir Khalid

    @Linda Featheringill:
    I’m doing okay, all things considered. And I’m still commenting. Although I had a bit of a scare lately when Dee Loralei suggested I should become a a front=pager here. Apparently she wasn’t entirely kidding.

  25. 25.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    @lamh35:

    Romney replied: “Actually, I think at the time the Constitution was written marriage was between a man and a woman and I don’t believe the Supreme Court has changed that.”

    I wonder if Mitt could point to the exact verbiage in the actual Constitution that codified that particular definition of marriage for all eternity…

    I’ll gladly wait for Mitt’s answer…

    As far as Rochester goes…

    Grew up a little east of there, over in the Finger Lakes…

    HATED upstate NY, back in the day… used to call it ‘The Great American Outback”…

    But there were some cool things in Rochester…

    I recall an observatory on the east end of town…

    And the Eastman School of Music… faaaaaabulous auditorium…

    Saw Keith Jarrett there once, for $2… two 45 minute solo sets…

    And Oscar Peterson & Joe Pass on a Saturday night in August, 1976… one of the best shows I ever went to…

  26. 26.

    Poopyman

    @Amir Khalid: I think she has a point. It’d be great to get an off-continent view of things. And it’s not like you have to fill every post with great insights or great snark. And not that you’d have to report about mopping while naked, but just little daily snippets of life in Asia would be great.

    Not that I’m pushing, or anything.

  27. 27.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    I’m finding it hard to keep up spirits in general even as XMas nears and I look forward to seeing family again.

    It’s just….guh…I can’t seem to look at news anymore without feeling a literal twitch come over my face, because it feels like if I don’t self-select, and moderate myself to places like here for news and analysis, I just end up seeing the darkest, darkest parts of America. From the whole thing about the “All-American Muslim” thing with the FFA ‘convincing’ companies to pull their ads, I see minimal reason trying to suggest that maybe Muslims can be American, but instead a deluge of “FUCK YEAH, LOWES! FUCK THOSE FUCKING TERRORISTS GOOD! ALL OF THOSE BROWN FUCKS ARE TERRORISTS!!!”

    With economics, the disturbing continuance of “Only Trickle Down Is Allowed To Work!” and even colleagues who got to see OWS first hand and supported them first are pulling away not because of some antics protesters did, but because the cops cracked down, meaning of course the Protesters HAD to have been bad and thus the 99% is bullshit! Viva La 53%ers!!!

    It honestly makes me feel surrounded and like America really does absolutely fucking abhor everything I stand for. I feel like I’m told by everything around me now “YOU DON’T FUCKING BELONG GET THE FUCK OUT YOU FUCKING HIPPIE!”

  28. 28.

    Svensker

    @Poopyman:

    And not that you’d have to report about mopping while naked, but just little daily snippets of life in Asia would be great.

    Personally I’m all for mopping naked while in Asia stories, but YMMV.

  29. 29.

    different-church-lady

    Another overtime win? I’m beginning to think there might be something to this Jesus stuff…

  30. 30.

    LGRooney

    Tried to leave the following over at Huffing-n-Puffing on the possibility of Prokhorov getting in the race against Putin. There are so many breathless comments on the situation that I felt some experience might be worth the enlightenment.

    Oh, please. Anyone thinking this is a real run does not know politics, especially former(?)-­Soviet politics well. Prokhorov has, in all likelihood­, already cleared this with Putin and his henchmen, since he already has a history of “opposition” to Putin he is a good pick. If the votes go to Prokhorov, Putin will be guiding him all the way, otherwise the “dirt” will get out on how he made his billions. Regardless of the outcome, Putin can say, “See, the democratic process works. Democracy in Russia is alive and the people have spoken.”

    It’s the Soviet version of “heads I win, tails you lose.”

  39. 39.

    The Other Bob

    Here’s a fun one at WaPo:

    “The private security contractor known as Blackwater renamed itself Xe Services nearly three years ago.” It is now changing its name to Academi.

    Here’s the real kicker:

    “Former Attorney General John Ashcroft now serves as ethics adviser…”

  42. 42.

    Hill Dweller

    Newt response to Willard asking him to return the Fannie/Freddie money: “I would just say that if Gov. Romney would like to give back all of the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, that I would be glad to listen to him.”

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    I’ve been finding Christopher Hitchens’ ruminations on the cancer ravaging his body sad, brave, and illuminating:

    I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my “will to live” would be hugely attenuated.
    __
    I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true. Almost like the threatened loss of my voice, which is currently being alleviated by some temporary injections into my vocal folds, I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.

  45. 45.

    Benjamin Franklin

    Republicans have been remarkably consistent since Reagan…

    http://consortiumnews.com/2011/12/11/the-nyts-new-contra-lies/

    The Reagan administration’s premeditation in protecting the Contras on drugs was underscored, too, by documents revealing that in 1982, Casey negotiated with Attorney General William French Smith to spare the CIA from a requirement to report on drug trafficking by its clients.

    In short, the case proving major Contra-drug operations and the Reagan administration’s complicity was overwhelming by the summer of 1998. But that history disappeared in Adams’s review in the Times.

    After the Times’ July 17, 1998, story (acknowledging widespread Contra drug trafficking), I noted that the prestige newspaper appeared hesitant to follow up its own belated disclosures, a reaction that suggested a reluctance to know more. The Times made no editorial demand for the prompt public release of Hitz’s Volume Two, upon which the July 17 story was based.

    The July story also included no explanation of how the Times had been so wrong on the Contra-drug issue for so long. “Possibly,” I wrote at the time, “that hesitancy reflects a recognition by Times’ senior editors that their pious condemnations of other people’s reporting standards might be turned against them, that it might be their turn to stand in the crowded dock of journalistic shame.”

    With Adams’s review, it appeared that the Times answered the question of how “the newspaper of record” would avoid the humiliation. The Times simply used its power over the official record to falsify the history.

  46. 46.

    Amir Khalid

    @The Other Bob:
    Good luck to the company with that second change of name. But I understand that no one has actually stopped calling them Blackwater because, well, that’s still who they are. What they need is a change of identity.

  48. 48.

    Svensker

    @Amir Khalid:

    Trust me on this, everyone: you do NOT want to see me naked, mop or no mop.

    We don’t want to see John Cole naked either, mop or no mop. But we do like to hear those stories! Feel free to pitch in, for all our sakes…:)

  49. 49.

    Benjamin Franklin

    Move along. No child rapists here. Nothing to see.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story

    “Reporting from Washington— Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

    Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

    He also called in a Predator B drone.

  52. 52.

    Dee Loralei

    @Amir Khalid: Ha! I wasn’t kidding at all. I think you’d be a brilliant addition. And the fact that you don’t want it proves the rightness of my thinking, LOL.

  53. 53.

    FlipYrWhig

    Re: number 3… Ya know, Mitt, I’m not sure you want to go down this road. At the time the Constitution was written your religion didn’t exist.

  55. 55.

    flukebucket

    I talked with a guy this weekend who told me that his employer had advised his employees that the company would reimburse them for any out of pocket medical expenses they had in 2011. He said he was told it was legal and beneficial for the company due to Obamacare. Does anybody know anything about that?

  56. 56.

    David in NY

    @Brachiator: I found Tony Judt’s memoir, The Memory Chalet, written while he was immobilized below the neck with ALS and slightly touching on the disease, a wonderful recapitulation of the life of an interesting, principled, and wholly decent man.

    I don’t think I’m going to read Hitchens.

  57. 57.

    Rommie

    It looks like the Mittster won’t go down without a brawl vs. Newt – but the Grinch is willing to Go There(tm) in retorts, so he’s slippery, and hard to hit solidly.

  59. 59.

    Linda Featheringill

    Another cause for doom and gloom:

    http://aranchersview.blogspot.com/2011/12/texas-outlook-on-crops-and-cattle.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ARanchersView+%28A+Rancher%27s+View%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

    This is a rancher’s blog from south Texas that I follow. Things are rough down there.

    And by the way, the ranchers and farmers down there are quite aware that Texas might be in the process of turning into a desert.

  60. 60.

    Benjamin Franklin

    I don’t think I’m going to read Hitchens.

    Especially when it’s a deathbed conversion.

  61. 61.

    Suffern ACE

    @Benjamin Franklin:

    Maybe its Poland’s turns to rule the world?

    Ugh. The last time that was possible, Europe ended up with war after war for centuries as everyone north and east adn west and south tried to get bits and pieces of it.

  63. 63.

    handsmile

    Perhaps the most prudent story I’ve encountered so far today on the intertubes, “Black Holes: Don’t get sucked in”:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/shortcuts/2011/dec/11/black-holes-discovery-supermassive

    The article was occasioned by last week’s announcement that astronomers have discovered the two largest black holes ever found, each one billions of times more massive than our sun. Fortunately, both are more than 300 light years away.

    I’m only a modest astronomy geek, but few things make me better appreciate my own puny irrelevance. (“The cosmic is always is danger of losing its ‘s’ “: Nabokov).

    For even greater value, however, I would have amended the headline to read: “Black Holes (and Internet trolls): Don’t get sucked in.”

  64. 64.

    Hill Dweller

    @Rommie: Yeah, Newt bringing up Bain and then betting ten dollars(and reiterating ten, not ten thousand) Romney won’t want to talk about it is pretty clever.

  65. 65.

    Brachiator

    @David in NY:

    I found Tony Judt’s memoir, The Memory Chalet, written while he was immobilized below the neck with ALS and slightly touching on the disease, a wonderful recapitulation of the life of an interesting, principled, and wholly decent man.

    Yes, I agree that Judt’s memoir is quite good.

    There are a number of very good reviews of the book and remembrances of Judt, such as this one from the Guardian.

    @Benjamin Franklin:

    Especially when it’s a deathbed conversion.

    I have no idea what you are talking about. None. Then again, you have no idea what you are talking about, either.

  66. 66.

    Benjamin Franklin

    @Brachiator:

    That’s because you think the word cryptic, has something to do with a funeral. But, then, you didn’t understand that my comment was directed to someone else, not you.

  67. 67.

    Amir Khalid

    @Brachiator:
    Hitchens announced a while back that he is terminally ill. He is steadily getting sicker, but as far as I know is not quite on his deathbed yet.

  68. 68.

    Brachiator

    @Benjamin Franklin:

    That’s because you think the word cryptic, has something to do with a funeral. But, then, you didn’t understand that my comment was directed to someone else, not you.

    I presume that comments made to other posters in an open forum are also public.

    So I still wonder what the “deathbed conversion” is supposed to refer to.

  69. 69.

    El Cid

    Krugman’s column and followup blog posts on the relationship between our current effective Depression and the loss of appreciation for democracy — coterminous with the love affair with frontal class super-attack by the super-rich and their parallel governing forces via “austerity” and contractionary moves — is worth a read and discussion. The most serious manifestations he notices are in Europe.

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    @El Cid:

    Krugman’s column and followup blog posts on the relationship between our current effective Depression and the loss of appreciation for democracy—coterminous with the love affair with frontal class super-attack by the super-rich and their parallel governing forces via “austerity” and contractionary moves—is worth a read and discussion. The most serious manifestations he notices are in Europe.

    Makes sense. There is this from a recent Economist piece about the City of London:

    The message from these persistent surpluses is that the City, for all its faults, is a source of comparative advantage. One pound in every three managed in Britain is done so on behalf of foreigners, according to the Investment Management Association. London is the world’s leading centre for cross-border bank lending as well as marine insurance, according to CityUK, a lobby group. It accounts for two-fifths of global turnover in foreign exchange, more than New York and Tokyo combined, and similarly dominates the market for bespoke interest-rate derivatives. Britain is second only to America as a home to hedge-funds and private equity, even though the 50% tax rate on high incomes has driven some business to Switzerland.

    An article in Financial Times notes that the City of London is “home to more than three-quarters of Europe’s derivatives trading.”

    The battle to save the euro is seeing more European governments push austerity budgets, especially in the UK and Spain, larger, relatively more stable economies than, say, Greece or even Italy.

  71. 71.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    I dunno about seeing you naked, but I heartily second or third or eleventy-thousandth the suggestion that you become an occasional BJ front-pager. I love your insightful and funny comments, and I greatly admire the way you keep your temper while Toko-Loko calls you names. Seriously, if John is seeking another FP voice, in my opinion he’d do well to ask you.

  73. 73.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    @The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:

    Wow….to add on…I just found out that a big, significant chunk of my friends have totally bought into the ‘War on Christmas’ bullshit, and seem to look at me as some kind of fucking alien for not seeing the War.

    Fuck it all…

  74. 74.

    Paul in KY

    @Brachiator: How does professor Hawking write? He can get some kind of voice activated thingee. I have little use for that drunk, war cheerleader.

  76. 76.

    Paul in KY

    @The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: yeah, everywhere I go in KY, I see people not being allowed to celebrate Christmas. I think they are forced to worship Baal now.

    Next time you see your friends, tell them about the xmas display that was converted into a Baal children-sacrificing station & a Starbucks. Then break into tears about it.

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    @Paul in KY:

    How does professor Hawking write? He can get some kind of voice activated thingee. I have little use for that drunk, war cheerleader.

    Don’t know. Hitchens’ illness is obviously different, and it may be consuming him faster.

    Interesting contrast between those who continue to hold a grudge against Hitchens for his repellent views on the war in Iraq, and the scientists and free thinkers who applaud his iconoclasm:

    An asteroid discovered by Ted Bowell, the former director of the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search, has been named after Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens. The asteroid orbits Mars, Jupiter, and Earth. It’s an ironic but fitting honor for an iconoclast who has spent much of his life shaking his fist at the heavens and the deities they may or may not host.

  78. 78.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    @Paul in KY:

    Doesn’t help with the sense that I really am just too much of a dirty fucking ugly horrible hippie to everyone and that my attempts to try and draw people leftward toward only makes people jerk that much harder rightward because God abhors all fucking leftists.

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    @The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:

    Doesn’t help with the sense that I really am just too much of a dirty fucking ugly horrible hippie to everyone and that my attempts to try and draw people leftward toward only makes people jerk that much harder rightward because God abhors all fucking leftists.

    The only thing we know for certain is that the deity loves Tim Tebow. All else is speculation.

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    @Paul in KY:
    I’ve seen Stephen Hawking talk: he uses that famous voice synthesizer, which if I’m not mistaken has some kind of keyboard input adapted for his extremely limited mobility. I imagine that’s how he writes as well.

  81. 81.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid: The synthesizer is cued to his eye movements somehow. It’s a fascinating piece of technology. I think it was developed specifically with him in mind.

  82. 82.

    El Cid

    Hawking also has one or more astoundingly dedicated people who work with him constantly.

    One of his assistants told me he got the job partly because Hawking was impressed by how natural he was during the silences. He also told me the worst thing you can do is to try to second-guess Hawking – he grinds his teeth to show disapproval – and also that he knows the whole of the London A-Z by heart; when they drive in the capital, Hawking tells him which route to take.

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