Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I really should read my own blog.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

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

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

This really is a full service blog.

So cool that a Black prosecutor nailed his ass.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

The words do not have to be perfect.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

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Archives for January 2012

Open Thread

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So what is everyone doing on this fine Friday evening?

I had a late breakfast dinner and have been cruising through the first season of the West Wing while dealing with three animals on my lap jockeying for prime position. Good thing I have ample lap.

I’d forgotten how good the West Wing is- I am several episodes into season 1 and haven’t even really noticed that it isn’t letterbox or HD. That means it is good, because I basically refuse to watch anything that is not HD. Unless of course it is internet porn, and then you just cope.

Also, this was inevitable:

Le sigh.

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Friday Evening Open Thread

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(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
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Jonathan Chait, formerly of TNR, now at NYMag‘s Daily Intel, says that he’s “always had a soft spot for Mitt Romney, who strikes me, in a way I can’t completely define, as a good guy.” Which explains the general election demographic to whom Romney hopes his non-stop pandering will appeal: Totebaggers. And yet, even Chait admits that “Romney does lie a great deal“:

… Even by the standards of politicians, Romney seems unusually prone to dishonesty. Again, you can ascribe this to circumstance rather than character. I see him as a patrician pol, like George H.W. Bush, who believes deeply in public service but regards elections as a cynical process of pandering to rubes. I think you can plausibly make other interpretations, and you can separate Romney the man or even Romney the president from Romney the candidate. But I don’t see how you can paint Romney the candidate as in any way scrupulous about the truth in any form.

My own ‘plausible interpretation’ is that George H.W. Bush was a giant tool, born to a family of well-connected thugs, who had a political career as a way for his family and their cronies to loot the Treasury and our joint national inheritance. And that Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney is also a giant tool, and a sociopath, who’s having a harder time ascending to his fReightful throne in the Oval Office because (a) we’re all more sophisticated about Diebolding elections now; and (b) thirty-plus years of looting by two generations of Bushes and Bush-handlers have left so little for the rest of us that even the low-information voters have started to catch on. But, hey, I’m sure Willard — or, more likely, his paid surrogate — would be a perfectly lovely partner at the NPR phonebanks during pledge month!

So… apart from my personal biases, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?

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Song of the week

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From JPK at Can’t Explain (that song came out in 1998, I feel old).

Sarah McLachlan, “Angel” (1998)
I know Balloon Juice is rife with animal lovers but I’m not really trying to pander here—not really. In fact, I’m a little tired of that long BC SPCA End Animal Cruelty ad that uses this song and seems to saturate my teevee every December and at other random points. Tired of having my heart broken by the pictures in it as much as anything (I’m a softie myself, with three cats, two of them rescues, one missing a leg). It’s a kind of porn, I know that. But before that particular commercial came along I always loved this song and I still do. It’s so generous about the way it acknowledges and accepts human frailties and weaknesses with no judgment and a compassion that feels bottomless. I think it’s just beautiful.

Update. DougJ again here (the blurb about “Angel” is written by JPK). I’m adding another song because I convinced a young person to do it at karaoke and now I can’t stop singing it.

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Setting Me Up Just to Knocka Me Down

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I’m sure this will cause some smiles in the Obama campaign:

The office of pollster Peter Hart, who helped do the survey, sends over the numbers among independents. While Romney’s positive numbers among them have been roughly stable, at just over 20 percent, here is the change among independents in the past few months:

In November, Romney was rated somewhat or very negatively by 22 percent of independents.

In December, Romney was rated somewhat or very negatively by 29 percent of independents.

And in the new poll, Romney was rated somewhat or very negatively by 42 percent of independents — 20 points higher than two months ago.

Also: In November, Romney was beating Obama 47-34 among those voters. Now the numbers are upside down: Obama is beating Romney 44-36.

We need some more GOP debates.

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Bank-ridden, God-forsaken

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This is awesome (via):

GUESS WHO just got back today? Them bailout boys that had been away; Not much changed since they last came to stay; But man, they still think our stats are great . . .

It was quarterly return time again yesterday and as poor Mother Ireland presented herself for another pat on the head from the visiting international overlords, we felt a song coming on.

[….]

“I see encouraging changes,” said Klaus Masuch of the ECB, who felt the Irish are showing a “great understanding” of why they are being forced to endure such a severe course of fiscal action.

“I’m impressed by the depth of discussion in Ireland,” declared Klaus, before ruining our brief restoration of national pride.

“My taxi driver from the airport was very, very informed, I must say. Very, very informed.”

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It’s Weird What Passes as a Smear These Days

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I was reading Spencer Ackerman’s attempts to shame people for their use of terminology he dislikes in this exceptionally tedious debate about the smear campaign started against CAP and others (Glenn has a good piece on it), and came across this:

On Tuesday, writer Max Blumenthal used a gross phrase to describe Goldberg: “former Israeli prison guard.”)

Jeffrey Goldberg worked in an Israeli prison. He wrote a book about it that was critically acclaimed. He talks about it all the time. How is this a smear? It’s part of who he was.

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