Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

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

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

White supremacy is terrorism.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Come on, man.

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Reader Interactions

70Comments

  1. 1.

    cathyx

    That sounds like something my daughter would gush over. Too bad we don’t have that channel.

  2. 2.

    vheidi

    thank you, mistermix & B-J ers; we have a newly purchased Roku box which seems to accept our crap verizon dsl speed just fine. Anyone need a 3 yo wii?

  4. 4.

    cathyx

    It’s funny listening to my daughter watch shows like that. All I hear is oooh! aaah!, that’s so cute! I want one of those so bad!

  5. 5.

    bloodstar

    Amusingly enough, we’re watching the same thing over here. We’re fostering 4 kittens, (well, they’re more like cats now as they’ve hit 9 months, and the fostering seems to be turning into ownership…) and the siberian looks remarkably like one of our kittens (who was named ‘Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All’) right down to the markings.

    If the next show is as cute as this one, we’ll have to break out a bag of candy hearts… just cause.

  6. 6.

    Martin

    Watching a show on Animal Planet called TOO CUTE!, which is following three litters of kittens.

    Holy shit, you are such a little fucking girl.

  8. 8.

    cathyx

    @Martin: Really Martin?!? We finally get a man to be sensitive, caring, and love things women love and you have this as a response? Go away with your macho crap.

  12. 12.

    jl

    Auntie B, is that you running this blog?

    I guess the blog is where you vent your cranky side.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    The kitten’s face is soft and furry,
    The kitten’s voice is soft and purry.
    The trouble with the kitten is that
    Eventually it becomes a cat.

    — Ogden Nash

  16. 16.

    RedKitten

    Actually, that show sounds very soothing. Sometimes, when you look at how incredibly mean and cruel and unfair the world can be, it’s a nice respite for the psyche to mindlessly coo over cute kittens. After all the right-winger punches that have been directed towards we women lately, one feels a tad bit raw.

  22. 22.

    Delia

    Maybe I’ll go find that show. I’m down to one dog and one cat, having lost my beloved cat Saffy to cancer a couple of weeks ago. So I’ve sworn that I now have enough pets, having racked up a huge vet bill during her illness and passing. And this afternoon I find my way onto some site called Vetstreet and I’m looking at pictures of cats and kittens and forcing my hand away from the Petfinder link. . . .

  25. 25.

    cathyx

    @Delia: We have a public access show that goes to the pound and shows all the dogs that they have and tells a little about each one. I can’t watch it without crying.

  30. 30.

    Southern Beale

    Hmmm … seems there may be more to Olympia Snowe’s resignation than meets the eye:

    Last August, while Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was in the midst of an intensive round of fundraising for her 2012 reelection bid, a four-year-old civil lawsuit alleging fraud by an education company in which she and her husband are heavily invested became public.
    __
    Nationally, most of the coverage of Snowe’s decision to drop her reelection bid has focused on the centrist Republican’s frustration with the polarized politics on Capitol Hill. But in Maine, a few newspapers have speculated that her husband’s legal entanglements had a role in Snowe’s sudden and surprising decision, which left her with more than $3 million in her campaign coffers and her party without a Senate candidate less than three weeks before the filing deadline for Maine’s June 12 primary.

  32. 32.

    Seebach

    @Ben Franklin: Biden’s always been fuck-poor on the drug war. It was his idea to create a “drug czar” in the first place.

    It’s his fucking war, and he fucking believes in it. He’s no damn messenger boy. He’s an architect.

  35. 35.

    RossInDetroit

    @cathyx:

    Baby anythings are cute. Really, they all have big eyes and stumble around and play.

    My wife tends to rescue baby animals in distress and bring them home. I have lived with little bunnies, duckies (in the BATHTUB) and black squirrels. All so adorable you’d do anything to make them happy. Cute things totally own us.

  36. 36.

    cathyx

    @RossInDetroit: I saw a program on PBS on baby animals. They said that they are cute on purpose so that we(parents) would take care of them. Do other animals see their babies as cute?

  37. 37.

    redheadedfemme

    Why, when I click on the comments, am I getting what looks like the mobile version of Balloon Juice instead of the desktop version? And when I click on the “switch to our desktop site” at the bottom of the page Google tells me it can’t connect. Anyone else having this problem?

  39. 39.

    nitpicker

    Q: Why did the libertarian chicken cross the road?

    A: That’s none of your business and even asking this question proves you believe in slavery.

  40. 40.

    jl

    Just to clarify, I heartily approve of Cole watching Animal Planet. Better that than WoW and that stuff. My auntie B watches all the time, and she is a very nice well adjusted person.

    Strong work Cole.

    I assume you have done your homework, young man.

  42. 42.

    jl

    @cathyx: Interesting question. I read that scientists, of some kind or other, have done studies of how humans and some animals read each other’s faces.

    Humans all have the same sequence and pattern, which IIRC is to read from upper left to lower right (but that might be wrong, but anyway, there is a uniform pattern.)

    I do distinctly remember reading that dogs are the only animals which read faces using the same pattern as humans, I think both other dogs and humans.

    Coincidence? Dogs and humans go far back something as basic as how we ‘read’ each other is the same.

    Anyway, makes me wonder how similar dog thoughts are to humans when they see a baby face of their own kind.

  45. 45.

    Beth in VA

    It was amazingly cute. I just saw a bit of some herder dog puppy learning from the mom dog how to herd ducks. Or geese. As the Minnesotans say, “Oh for cute!”

  47. 47.

    jl

    I am agnostic on whether other animals have anything analogous to things like human thoughts and emotions. I find it interesting from reading and my conservations with biologists around academic centers that so many scientists who believe so strongly in evolution, and in the unity of, and conservation of, vital mechanisms and functions in animal life, can be so dogmatic on the uniqueness of human thoughts and emotion. They seem very reluctant to credit animals, even mammals closely related to humans, with anything analogous to the things that go through human brains.

    Is the scientific consensus changing on that, or does it still poop all over the fun with charges of anthropocentrism?

    And while I am agnostic on the issue, I just know baby dogs and cats and duckies and chickies are warm and cuddly and have warn cuddly and cute thoughts, because they are just so dang cute.

    Also too: Cole, raise a family of ducks if you want daily cute up close and personal. It is fun and cute and adorable, until they get big, at which point they become obnoxious and a mess. But you will figure it out. You’ll need a pond, or sizable but shallow pondlike hole with some water in it.

  48. 48.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @jl:

    at which point they become obnoxious and a mess

    Ducks are the only creatures on earth that can fly, run and swim. I think it makes them cocky.

  49. 49.

    scav

    @cathyx: Good number of them seem to share the interpretation of young critter features (big head and eyes etc.) as meaning “Not Lunch! Feed ME Instead!” as well as a cue to put up with a lot of shit (Stop biting me ya little twit!) that larger critters don’t get away with. Don’t know if they call it “Cute” but the behavior is probably ingrained enough to keep us from chewing on the next generation to extinction. For those of us critters that don’t just scatter the offspring in large numbers and hope for the best, that is.

  50. 50.

    Bill in Portland Maine

    And after the pooties they moved on to puppies.

    John, I almost died of “Squeeeeeee!!!!!”

    –

  51. 51.

    Kristine

    @RedKitten: The Art of Swaddling Slippery Sloths! The last few seconds of that video break my heart. “Oh, they did the same thing to you that they did to me!”

    I hope the little beans get better soonest.

  52. 52.

    Friday Jones

    Here’s the beauty of TOO CUTE! and Antiques Roadshow and et al.: No heartache. No drama (except…is the puppy going to go outside for the first time?!?!??? or is that old watch really worth that much???!???). No increased blood pressure, although as Cole mentioned, perhaps increased blood sugar. I love shows like that. No one is demeaning anyone else, I don’t know who’s republican or democrat, nothing gets killed. Total freaking peace. And when television fails me, there’s this video of a baby goat I watch on YouTube. It’s like taking two xanax.

  55. 55.

    jl

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Never thought if that way. I would say they are the only domesticated farmyard animals that can do all three. But it fits all together. Geese can honk, which means that they are the only creatures that can fly, run and swim and honk. Geese are even more uppity than ducks.

    I have had to deal with both. Geese get obnoxious and nasty very quickly. But ducks, you got a few months of cute adorable fun with ducks.

    When I was a kid, I loved taking the farm ducks out the pond and watching the ducklings do everything in single file after the mommy duck. Awwwww…. so cute!

    Edit: When I was very young, I fancied I had mastered the technique of herding fowl from walking after the ducks with my handy bamboo switch, guiding them to pond and back to their yard with loving care. Figured I could apply to to chickens. That did not work out at all.

  58. 58.

    Soonergrunt

    RIP Ralph McQuarrie, Sci Fi artist extraordinaire. Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Back to the Future, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Trek are just a few of the properties that he did concept work on. He also worked for the space program, and designed the Metreon Center shopping center in San Francisco, CA.
    A man of actual talent, who worked to make the world a better place, unlike some late non-lamented individuals.

  60. 60.

    jl

    @John Cole:

    Case closed. Cole is my Auntie B.

    So, saving a phone call: Glad you liked the fruit I sent for Christmas. Maybe there were good enough for an extra big Easter cookie shipment, hmmmmmm….?

  61. 61.

    scav

    @MikeJ: Nah, it could be like those cameras that captured the snow leopards recently. We’ll leave off the sound (so he’s not tense about the squeeing) but they’ll be even more mysterious for that lack. He’ll wander into a room, do something we don’t understand and then walk out. Or sit for hours, again, for no apparent reason, until he suddenly comes to the camera and sticks his nose into it. Every so often a camera will disappear and we’ll blame Tunch. After a few years, we’ll have enough footage to unleash David Attenborough on him.

  62. 62.

    Calouste

    @redheadedfemme:

    Nope. IE9 on Win7 here, and everything works fine. And of course I have google and doubleclick on my restricted sites list, which might have more to do with the issue.

  63. 63.

    jl

    @Soonergrunt:

    I did not know who Ralph McQuarrie was, but some of the best things about some of those movies were the visuals (even the good movies).

    So, I’ll link to some Forbidden Planet soundtrack, in honor of Ralph McQuarrie.

    Forbidden Planet Soundtrack Part 1
    http://youtu.be/UoiHhrFTazs

  64. 64.

    Laura Clawson

    I was about to start watching bull riding, until I read this post and switched to Animal Planet. Really, really hoping there’s something with a plot on at 12:30…

  65. 65.

    Laura Clawson

    Torn between thinking “ohhhhhh, puppies!” and “I do not like the gender politics of this show.”

  66. 66.

    MazeDancer

    The most remarkable event just happened on YouTube. A stream of a live stage reading of a play made from the transcripts of the Prop 8 case

    Cast includes George Clooney (playing David Boies!)Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Matt Bomer, Christine Lahti, Chris Cofler, Kevin Bacon, George Takei and many, many glittering others.

    Google agreed to the stream. And now it’s up on You Tube.

    You want to see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlUG8F9uVgM&feature=youtu.be

  67. 67.

    YellowJournalism

    I love how John can go from this to telling Ed Morrissey to blow it out his ass in only a single post. It’s why I keep coming here.

    And the Tunch pictures.

  68. 68.

    A Humble Lurker

    @Kristine:
    I friggin’ loved that. There’s Youtube videos of bath time and sloth gymnastics from that special. I like how they just hang the things up when they need to dry them.

    I’ve always been kind of curious about sloths, considering we don’t know much about them. If we did, they’d make great pets. Just hang one up in your living room and scare the crap out of visitors who think one of your decorations has come to life when they wake up to scratch.

  69. 69.

    Michele C

    @Linda Featheringill: The kitties in the first video on Animal Planet are from the rescue organization, Anjellicle Cats. They provided two of our three rescue cats (both full grown, even when they joined our household). The mom’s name in the Animal Planet show is Butters.

  70. 70.

    Cat Hair Everywhere

    So glad you mentioned this! I DVRed it for the small fry, and she is gushing over it right now.

Comments are closed.