Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

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

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Not all heroes wear capes.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

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

The revolution will be supervised.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Mendacity

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Steeplejack

    Still gingerly inspecting the apocalyptic hellscape that is Balloon Juice post during site rebuild.

    Test message.

    ETA: Strikeout did not work on post above.

    ETFA: And the edit-mo-tron is messed up. It let me edit the comment, saved it successfully and then just left me on the WP Ajax Edit Comments screen. Good times. Back to the fallout shelter for me, then.

  2. 2.

    YellowJournalism

    I can’t see on the mobile site, but if this is Cat…I LOVE that movie. Personally, though, I think Breitbart resembles May and the underlings are her “no-neck little monsters.”

    I only wish I could ever look half as good as Liz Taylor did in that film.

  3. 3.

    Schlemizel

    I’ll admit to being semi-literate . . . I have never seen “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” so this comparison escapes me. If it is anything even remotely like Dimbarts cesspool I feel free to stop feeling guilty about never seeing it.

  4. 4.

    the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)

    Love love love Paul Newman, but not in that.

    Also, is there a better 4 hours on TV every week to listen to smart people rationally discussing complicated issues than Chris Hayes followed by Melissa Harris-Perry? No, no there isn’t.

    ETA: Tim Wise is such a great panel member. He should be everywhere.

  11. 11.

    PurpleGirl

    Maggie is one of Liz Taylor’s best roles. Tennessee Williams wrote some of the best roles for women evar.

  12. 12.

    Punchy

    I just tried cutting my own hair. Big mistake. Now off to work to endure myriad chortles from the students before I can enlist Soopahcutz to fix this abortion on my head. Grumble……

  13. 13.

    LGRooney

    I’ll chime in and say I like the look of the rebuild. I can’t make any claim to being a BJ power-user so I am not sure what is and what isn’t working. I like the look and it seems to load faster. I think the Blogroll is still overloaded but if you read them all… it’s not my web site. Now, if we could get the mobile version going…

  14. 14.

    bemused

    I like the new look. It’s a bit like home spring cleaning and painting…everything looks lighter and brighter. I have to say I really miss seeing funny little guy holding balloon and it would be sweet to still see that great image here somewhere. It always makes me smile.

    How much dry cat food should we feed two 8# (I think), 9 mo old kittens per day. One is starting to get a bit tubby (boy, she loves to eat) so it’s time to have set feeding times with the right amount of food so she doesn’t turn into a soccer ball with legs.

  17. 17.

    ShadeTail

    Via the Washington Monthly blog, Rick Moran of the American Thinker lies about the President’s statement on Trayvon Martin by falsely claiming President Obama called for Zimmerman’s arrest and conviction.

  18. 18.

    YellowJournalism

    “I wish I had a pill to make PEOPLE disappear.”

    Had to add that quote, because someone must have found that pill and used it on Breitbart.

  19. 19.

    amk

    Obama-Every year, the Gridiron dinner is a chance for politicians to say some truly outrageous things. For those of us not involved in the Republican primary, that’s a rare opportunity.

  20. 20.

    Schlemizel

    @Irving:
    I read and saw “Glass Menagerie” in school & found the whole thing extremely depressing. Sort of put me off Williams.

    I ran over to wikipedia and read the synopsis just now. Familial deceit, dysfunctional relationships, alcoholism. Crap, if I had wanted to see that I would just have gone home why on earth would I pay money to watch other people live that?

  22. 22.

    LGRooney

    @Mark S.: Yeah, I took my son to the park the other day after work. While my kid is running around with his elementary-school cohort, I give pointers in soccer to the older kids (junior and senior high) and kick it around with them. One of them, upon arrival, excitedly asked me whether I was going to see Hunger Games as if it was the only thing happening outside of the home. I replied I didn’t even know what it was and he looked at me as if I am an old man. Then I remembered to 30 years ago and thought, yeah, well, you are old, right before yelling at him for being too lazy at his age and needing to run to the ball and then proceeded to dribble the ball through the whole gaggle and scoring just to prove to myself them, that I am not that old.

  23. 23.

    jnfr

    Two weird things for me:

    1. I do not see an author name for posts. It’s oddly disconcerting, but I suppose I could entertain myself trying to tell Tom posts from Betty posts from the topics.

    2. You have that “Share/Save” widget which I appreciate, but it shows up under the post and then vanishes. I use that widget on my own site and I can see it there, so I am not sure what is happening.

    Nice new look though. I hope someday I can view author names.

  26. 26.

    TaMara (BHF)

    Love this movie. Love Paul Newman in it, every shade of emotion and he plays them like a violin. One of Elizabeth Taylor’s best roles. When given excellent material, she sure could rise to the occasion.

    Funny, I’m reading the play right now and I think the film script is much better. The play is a bit too self-indulgent and somehow with some guidance, the screenplay tightened up quite a bit.

    And Dame Judith Anderson, wow. The most surprising performance for me was Burl Ives, because, for me he was “candy mountain” and the Snowman in Rudolph before he was ever the bastard he was in this movie. Revelation.

    /theatre geek

  27. 27.

    Schlemizel

    @bemused:
    We have 2 cats. One eats anything she can get her teeth into. No food is safe unguarded. She goes nuts any time one of us is in the kitchen and we have to keep a spray bottle handy to have a meal without her going nuts on us. She weight just a tad over 7 pounds. The vet says there is nothing medically wrong with her, we have had her looked at a couple of times to be sure.

    The monster kitteh hates all human food, barely touches canned cat food (#1 wolfs hers & #2s if we let her) and generally just nibbles. She is 15 pounds on the same size frame as #1.

  29. 29.

    cintibud

    It just occurred to me that in Sanford Florida, you can blow an unarmed person’s head off, claim self defense and the police will let you go on your merry way.

    The guy in the Johnny Cash song made a big mistake by shooting a man in Reno instead.

  30. 30.

    Ash Can

    I can see the analogy for the bickering, and the venality on display by some of the characters, but I don’t see any of the Breitbart minions resembling Maggie the Cat. She’s got too much innate dignity and decency.

    As for the site redesign, I like it overall — the idea of tabs at the top left for the categories, FPers, et al. is particularly inspired — but, like others, I don’t like the fact that post authors’ names turn up only on the front page, and disappear on the clicked-through version of the post.

    Also, am I the only one who misses the “Recent Comments” feature? That feature let me see if any of my favorite commenters had left pearls of wisdom in any of the threads, and also let me see which threads had likely degenerated into food fights and were best avoided. Please bring it back.

    Third, for my own amusement, since others had complained about it:

    testing strikethrough using button

    testing strikethrough manually

    ETA: OK, that’s interesting — neither the button nor manually inserted strikethrough HTML markup works. Ufixplzkthxbai.

  32. 32.

    wobo

    Cat On a Hot Tin Roof starring Elizabeth Taylor (foreground) and Leonard Nimoy in earrings (background).

  33. 33.

    JPL

    @cintibud: The law needs to be highlighted. If Zimmerman is charged with a hate crime at the federal level, the law stands. Stand your ground has a big loophole that allows you to reasonably believe that a person might bring harm. When the other person is dead and there are no witnesses, there’s no one to dispute your side.

  34. 34.

    Nom de Plume

    Holy crap, the new authors list is something else. I’ve often joked about how there are 20934850298357 frontpagers on Balloon Juice, but it seems I wasn’t exaggerating as much as I thought I was.

  35. 35.

    the fugitive uterus

    just read on FB that Martin family attorney says Trayvon Martin was shot in the back of the head, on a radio broadcast today

  37. 37.

    Ash Can

    And I’m with Steep — I don’t like left hanging on the editing page after I edit a comment. Fuck that shit.

    Let’s see — what else can I bitch about?

  39. 39.

    Kirbster

    A brother name “Gooper”!?

    The art of making movie trailers has really changed since 1958, hasn’t it? The narration and transitions seem positively quaint.

  41. 41.

    Comrade Mary

    @MonkeyBoy: Can you or someone else tell me where the up/down vote buttons are on YT these days? I haven’t been able to see them for weeks?

  42. 42.

    bemused

    @Schlemizel:

    We had one of those insatiable eaters once. He would even rip open a bag of bread if it was left out. He was a real pain in the butt that way and others, such as finding his tooth marks in a fat extension cord, close call there. Our vet said they couldn’t even leave a tomato on the kitchen counter or their cat was sure to eat it.

    Considering that experience, we need to adjust the present piglet’s feeding routine while she is still young. before she gets too set in a free feeding habit.

  45. 45.

    Ken

    It looks more like one of those “old dark house” movies of the 1930s to me. You know, the Colonel invites all his greedy relatives to his house to announce he’s changing his will, then gets murdered and the new will can’t be found. Usually the relatives start dying one by one, but I don’t think we can count on that in this case.

  47. 47.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I’ve never seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof nor will I ever after watching that clip. The narrator, though, sounded a lot like that guy that did voice overs for the old Batman show.

  48. 48.

    dance around in your bones

    @the ghost of cleek: Yay, cleek!

    Thank you SO much, works like a charm. It was scary last night contemplating a Balloon Juice world without the pie filter >@.@<

  49. 49.

    danielx

    @bemused:

    Two massive cats, one at 18 pounds who doesn’t look fat (well, not very) and one at lord knows what who does look like she’s an hour from delivering at least six kittens. The first, he’s 15 years old now and doesn’t eat that much. If he did want more I’d indulge him, he hasn’t got that long and appetite is to be encouraged at his age. The second? She is totally shameless and overindulged to the point where she generally eats half my spouse’s breakfast when the spouse is working at home, and that includes blueberry muffins.

    I keep griping, but she decided that my wife was her favoritest human in the whole world and she gets what she wants from the spouse, period. Said decision being about two days after my daughter and I got her out of durance vile in the kitteh slammer at the local shelter…there’s no justice in this world and no logic to the cat decision-making process, like this is news.

  54. 54.

    lamh35

    David Plouffe is def one of the better Obama surrogates out there behind Axelrod IMHO and POTUS himself.

    Plouffe calls out GOP candidates over Obama reaction to Trayvon Martin.

    White House senior adviser David Plouffe did not mince words Sunday when talking about the reaction by Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to President Barack Obama’s comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting.

    “Those two comments are really irresponsible. I would consider them reprehensible,” Plouffe said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think those comments were really hard to stomach, really, and I guess trying to appeal to people’s worst instincts.”

    “I don’t think there’s very many people in America that would share that reaction. You know, this Republican primary at some points has been more of a circus show and a clown show,” Plouffe told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @bemused: Bemused. That is exactly when my two slender kitties seemed to turn into fat piglets overnight. I was feeding good high quality food (evo) and it still didn’t help. Then I started feeding each one one-eight cup of dry food in the morning and high quality wet food the rest of the day. The weight just fell off of them. And my boy kitty’s chronic urinary tract problem went away without having to out him on prescription food.

    Edit: I use their dry food as treats, too, and then give them each a few pieces of dry food as a bedtime snack.

  57. 57.

    bemused

    @danielx:

    Yes, they have us wrapped around their paws, don’t they? Little tubby got very sick (upper respiratory virus) soon after we got the kittens, she was so weak, we couldn’t hear her meow and had to feed her by syringe. Now she never shuts up and relishes her kibble. I guess I can’t blame her.

  60. 60.

    bemused

    @WaterGirl:

    Thanks for the advice! Because we have just been letting them eat when they wanted as they’ve still been growing, now that it looks like that is slowing down, I’ve been kind of at a loss how much to give them. Your plan sounds like a good place to start with our fluffy butts.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @bemused: Because of my guy’s urinary tract problem, I started mixing their wet food with hot water. Helps fill the tummy and good for kidneys. If you stir the water into wet food, it turns into kind of an au jous effect. Not thick like gravy but yummy for them. Good luck!

  63. 63.

    gnomedad

    It feels odd not seeing the byline at the top, but maybe with some of the pre-judging trolls around here that’s a good thing.

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    It didn’t for me, because I tried to strike through one word in a paragraph (post in the first paragraph of the first comment above), and it didn’t issue a line feed. It did precisely nothing.

  65. 65.

    bemused

    @WaterGirl:

    Adding water to wet food is a great idea. They drink plenty of water dining on dry food but I can see how they might not be get enough water just from wet food.

    Now to solve the problem of one of our dogs (another critter around here who thinks no amount of food is enough) that obsessively and slyly plots to eat the cat food when we aren’t watching.

  66. 66.

    wrb

    Many of the smartest and most fair minded of well-off liberals seem to suffer some brain malfunction when working class people express fear of economic competition from illegal immigrants. There is a powerful need to see it as racism. A blue-collar citizen can make an argument that only touches on economic fears and the reaction will be “oh what a horible racist, hating on the browns.”

    However the other side isn’t immune to fantasy either: people can exaggerate the threat.

    There has been a story circulating in the taverns of the West that I thought must be apocraphal, a rural legend grown from legitimate fears about making a living in a world in which jobs are outsourced and cheap labor insourced to fill the jobs that can’t be moved.

    The story was that all the stimulus money intended to help timber workers went to illegal immigrants. The contractors who bid based on the cost of citizen labor were underbid by those who would employ illegal labor.
    Timber work is highly skilled and specialized, people have done it for generations, handing skills down. It is one field one would think resistant to cut-rate competition. However this just came from Sen. Merkeley’s office:

    In 2009, Jeff fought hard for funding for jobs in Oregon’s forests as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to put unemployed Oregonians to work thinning our overgrown, choked second-growth forests. However, the companies hired to do the work evaded federal law to import cheap foreign workers, advertising for the jobs far from where the work was being done, then declaring there were no eligible Americans to do the work.

  69. 69.

    dead existentialist

    @MonkeyBoy: I liked it for the accurate depiction of America. I just wonder why Obama needed a second term to do that to the country. He really is a slacker.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    Hmm. Striking through “this phrase” and nothing else.

    Striking through this whole line.
    Next line.

    ETA: I’m using Firefox 11.0, for what it’s worth.

  71. 71.

    MonkeyBoy

    @Comrade Mary:

    @MonkeyBoy: Can you or someone else tell me where the up/down vote buttons are on YT these days? I haven’t been able to see them for weeks?

    Huh? They are the thumbs up and down buttons immediately under the video on say the youtube page for Obamaville.

    I can see them logged in or out in both Firefox and Chrome.

  72. 72.

    WereBear

    @YellowJournalism: If it helps you, Elizabeth Taylor was certainly a lovely woman, but she got tons of help from Hollywood Magic, as they all do.

    In her case, she was “as hairy as a monkey” and endured marathon hair removal sessions; she was a bit “full figured” for the camera’s best liking and had to be dressed and lit accordingly; her thighs were considered “too heavy.”

    Yeah, I know. But such is the demands of the camera; and if we had a team of stylists and gaffers and makeup artists, we could have our own knock-em-dead moments, too.

    Sorry, quirk of mine: comes from raising a teen daughter in this air-brushed culture of ours.

    Oh, can’t use emoticons: I had put a smiley there. She’s one of my faves as far as looks go; though I’m a diehard Barbara Stanwyk fan, first & foremost.

  74. 74.

    lamh35

    Horse Head in the Bed

    David Plouffe on “Meet the Press”: “Mitt Romney is the godfather of our health-care plan.”
    Echoes on “This Week”: “The mandate is an idea supported by the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, most famously kind of the godfather of the mandate, Mitt Romney.”

  76. 76.

    wrb

    @lamh35:

    the godfather of the mandate, Mitt Romney.”

    Oooh, that’s good.

    I was thinking just this morning that it was hard to come up with a way of linking Romney to health care with it coming across as praise for his abilities as an innovator.

    Provoking reactions like,
    “The best Obama could do was copy Romney etc.”

    This works nicely.

    —

    Numbered posts would be nice. Easy to get lost in a long thread that is without them.

  80. 80.

    Bago

    Dude, just view source to see what strike through is doing. Write a unique word, view source, find, and check the HTML encapsulating it.

  81. 81.

    Steeplejack

    @Bago:

    I did that (for the very first comment in this thread). The strike tags are there in the source, but they aren’t showing up on the displayed page.

    Wonder if it’s an artifact of some arcane color/transparent attribute interaction.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    Further test of strikethrough.

    ETA: Unsuccessful, apparently. The &#60strike&#62 tag has been deprecated. Surely that’s not it? FYWP getting all finicky? Say it ain’t so.

  83. 83.

    YellowJournalism

    Werebear: Love her, too. They don’t light ’em like they used to, I guess you could say!

    Heavy thighs, eh? Who knew I had so much in common with Liz?! (I’m good on the hair removal, though.)

Comments are closed.