Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Republicans in disarray!

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

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

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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29Comments

  2. 2.

    Benjamin Franklin

    WaitingfortheStorm has some links discussing the apparently, inevitable runup to War.

    You’ll see many of the same suspects……..

    The highly influential Council on Foreign Relations (aka CFR) declared this month in their online publication “Foreign Affairs” that it is now time to attack Iran.

    Connect:
    http://facebook.com/StormCloudsGathering
    http://twitter.com/collapseupdates

    Council on Foreign Relations: Time to attack Iran
    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136917/matthew-kroenig/time-to-at…

    US army ready to engage in Iran war
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8969551/US-mi…

    China and Iran’s extensive relationship
    http://www.irantracker.org/foreign-relations/china-iran-foreign-relations

    China’s Hu urges navy to prepare for combat
    http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-hu-urges-navy-prepare-combat-160509787.html

  3. 3.

    Comrade Mary

    Oh, and while we’re talking awesome music, I can’t stop listening to Why This Kolaveri Di, a Tanglish (Tamil-English) song that was put together on the fly for a movie. The movie hasn’t been released yet, but after an unofficial leak, the song has gone viral almost everywhere (except for North America, I think).

    Original version by Dhanush (I usually HATE autotune, but it works here)

    Punjabi version by Desi Touch

    Wiki summary of the phenomenon

  4. 4.

    The Moar You Know

    Had a great commute on the way in to work, listening to the Los Angeles newsguy (a GOP partisan who managed to wrangle the supposedly non-partisan “chief political correspondent” spot) flat-out lie to the audience about the results of the latest polls in Iowa.

    Listening to them, you’d never know that there was a guy in the race named “Ron Paul”.

  10. 10.

    geg6

    Niiiiice.

    I only have five more days off (out of 17, and yes, academia gets a nice winter break). So I’ve been doing a lot of cooking, both from scratch and as a re-imagining of leftovers. Going simple but hearty tonight: a lovely beer and cheese soup with big fat BLTs on fresh toasted multigrain and homemade mayo.

    I’m enjoying this too much. I need to hit the lottery or something so I can be a full-time housewife.

  11. 11.

    geg6

    Oh…I also wanted to mention that I am hating one of my Christmas gifts. My sister got me “Swamplandia” based on the ecstatic reviews and my unnatural love of Hiaasen. About a third through it and I’m done. I usually will slog through because I just hate to leave a book unfinished. But I can’t take another page of this crap.

    Happily, she also got me a gift certificate for a great indie bookstore in Sewickley, the Penguin Book Store, so I can go get something more to my tastes (favorites are biographies and histories). Any suggestions? And has anyone read Ron Chernow’s Washington biography?

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @geg6:

    Speaking of books, does anyone recall when we are going to start discussing the new BJ book club selection (Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind”)? I can’t remember if DougJ suggested a date or if that’s still to be determined.

  15. 15.

    4jkb4ia

    It is testimony to the extent to which this site has taken over my life that I even read this, and it’s adorable. Not that Tunch should have a leash, he wouldn’t be Tunch then.

    (It is time to steel myself for a situation where I can’t link to this site as often as I want OR to try to explain to them that I have home delivery.)

  17. 17.

    4jkb4ia

    Same section: The Houses of the Hopefuls Potential for good snark material, especially with Newt’s house and Bachmann’s house. The front-page photo was a strip of each of them, and I said about Bachmann’s, “That looks like a really nice house”. In the full photo, it was not a nice house. It looked like the overambitious Dream Home it was.

  20. 20.

    4jkb4ia

    But Lords of Finance really is history, and it started the Wall Street sequence, and won the Pulitzer. Highly recommended.

  22. 22.

    gaz

    Fuck this. I’ll provide an easy vote for any candidate that can promise to make VS.PHP (by JCX shitbox-software) NOT SUCK ASS.

    I don’t care how much of fascist they are. Fix VS.PHP (or for gawdsakes gimmie an alternative) and you have my vote.

  23. 23.

    Comrade Mary

    @4jkb4ia: Oh, what a neat story. I used to “walk” my cats on leashes: that is, I’d watch them in the yard while they dragged the leash. Walking the sidewalk would work for a few minutes before a stray shadow induced untold terror and flight.

    BTW, my NYTimes quota for the month had already been reached before I clicked your link, but I was able to read the whole story. I guess they have both posts and comments from this domain flagged to work without restrictions. Not that anyone should abuse this blog for their personal reading pleasure, of course.

    Although I am curious about “nightingale floors” …

    (EDIT: Yep, I can read any NYTimes link from comments here. Oh, my.)

  25. 25.

    Paul in KY

    @4jkb4ia: Wall Street has certainly been a bummer. From what I remember, WW I was sort of a downer as well.

    Have you read Orwell’s ‘1984’? Uplifting read, that (compared to WW I).

  26. 26.

    Anonymous At Work

    Open Thread Bleg:
    Has anyone found Ron Paul’s views on South Dakota v. Dole? For me, power of the purse in the hands of a deranged Federalist becomes much more scary if he supports the Supreme Court’s decision. To Paul, Congress might not be able to pass/fund the PATRIOT Act but maybe Congress could fund states to pass the Act instead. Scary.

  28. 28.

    Brachiator

    From recent news stories, and doubly interesting in light of the recent thread about drones.

    Turkey’s air force attacked suspected Kurdish rebel targets along the border with Iraq, killing at least 20 people, many of them believed to be smugglers mistaken for guerrillas, reports and officials said Thursday.
    __
    The Turkish military confirmed the Wednesday night raids, but said its jets struck an area of northern Iraq that is frequently used by the rebels to enter Turkey, after drones detected a group approaching Turkey’s border. It said an inquiry has been launched, but did not say whether casualties had occurred.

    There are other news stories suggesting that Turkey wants the US to base some Predator drones in that country, and also reports that Turkey wants to buy drones from Israel.

    Nothing like war to bring antagonists together.

    I presume that Balloon Juicers who are get so excited about drones will go on the streets and demand that they be banned by all countries.

    Elsewhere, there is plenty of killing the old fashioned way.

    A roadside bomb has killed at least 10 police officers in the south-western Afghan province of Helmand, police say.
    __
    The police officers killed by the bomb were leaving a training centre when their vehicle was hit. Some of those killed were reported to be new recruits.

    Police officers and recruits are civilians, by the way.

    But presumably this is more “acceptable” because people actually have to go out and set those bombs.

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    @The Moar You Know:

    Had a great commute on the way in to work, listening to the Los Angeles newsguy (a GOP partisan who managed to wrangle the supposedly non-partisan “chief political correspondent” spot) flat-out lie to the audience about the results of the latest polls in Iowa.

    Which station was this?

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