Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

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

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

“Alexa, change the president.”

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

We still have time to mess this up!

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

T R E 4 5 O N

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

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Reader Interactions

88Comments

  3. 3.

    Violet

    A bunch of sprouts intensely watching something. March Madness? A concert? Max frolicking? Whatever it is, they’re very engaged.

  7. 7.

    The Dangerman

    The forces behind the mandate are the insurance companies; the mandate, and the ACA, will stay. If the mandate goes down, the ACA goes down, and we will be going to single payer (ok, it may take a decade or 2 or 3, but the die will be cast; it will be single payer eventually).

  11. 11.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @The Dangerman: Both of your statements are wrong. As has been pointed out, a lot of liberals – Clinton, Krugman – were in support of the mandate. Also, there’s a party that feels that the 1890s were an awesome time.

  12. 12.

    Napoleon

    @Ash Can:

    Well I clicked through after my guess and we are both wrong. It does really look like that stuff that grows on a chia pet though.

  13. 13.

    LGRooney

    Don’t finalize those plans? You say that as if it’s not been completed. I just need to pull the trigger.

  15. 15.

    lamh35

    OMG! How sad is it that is took me this long to figure out that I could hook up my laptop to my HDTV Plasma screen with an HDMI cord d use the flatt screen as a “monitor” for my laptop. Answer…too damn long! I may nver use my laptop moitor again…lol. Oh an I just so happened to have a wireless mouse and keyboard for one of my other old laptop, so my laptop is on the ther side of the living rom and I can use the mouse and keyboard to manuaever around….

    LIGHTBULB!!!!

    I’m considered the more knowledgeable of my friends and family when it comes to electronics, computers etc, but I was way too slow on the uptake on this one…lol!

  16. 16.

    RossInDetroit

    I like moss. I planted a bed of Irish moss 4 years ago but it was overrun by English ivy and I gave up on it. That is not a metaphor.

  17. 17.

    The Dangerman

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    As has been pointed out, a lot of liberals – Clinton, Krugman – were in support of the mandate.

    Didn’t mean to imply they weren’t; of course they are, given the politics of single payer.

    But, the bottom line, if the USSC strikes only the mandate, private insurers leave the market almost immediately (as their bottom lines go up in smoke), and if they strike down the whole enchilada, single payer is the only out.

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    I have been staring at this photo very very very hard, and I still cannot find the dog. I may need new glasses.

  22. 22.

    Satanicpanic

    I have to take a break from trolling yahoo news articles about Trayvon Martin, the comments are just too damn depressing.

  25. 25.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    Gosh, if it weren’t for the banner ad running at the top of the page, I never would have realized that the 9 SCOTUS justices were all such healthy looking young ladies.
     
    What??
    They aren’t justices? Are you sure?
    Not even one of them? Not even on one of the lower courts?
     
    Then why do they want to “chat” with me? I thought we were here to talk about the PPACA?

  28. 28.

    Violet

    @PurpleGirl:
    The last time I read comments on a Yahoo thread was probably a decade ago. The comments sections of websites like that have always been sewers.

  29. 29.

    kindness

    @PurpleGirl: Yea the comments at Yahoo are as sucky as the CNN comments, the WaPo comments and just about any MSM publication. Those comments creep me out more than the articles.

  30. 30.

    Satanicpanic

    @PurpleGirl: I like to comment there just so the crazies don’t totally take over. But sometimes it’s just a lost cause. Especially when it comes to race. There are some messed up people in this world.

  31. 31.

    WereBear

    @lamh35: Well, you are the tech thinker in your crowd; they hadn’t thought of it at all.

    Finished my antibiotics (2 courses) a few days ago, and feel better, but tired. So I’m lying on the couch, typing past a cat butt on my Chromebook.

    They love it; I get to type and they get to lie on my chest.

  32. 32.

    WereBear

    In separate news, we don’t get spaces between the paragraphs in our comments anymore?

    Not that I can claim we’ve been good, mind you.

  33. 33.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Satanicpanic: I don’t know if you read anything at DK, but there was a diary yesterday about all of these people freaking out – in the worst way – on Facebook over two of the characters being played by black people. What was really shocking is that the author described the characters as having dark skin.

  34. 34.

    Satanicpanic

    At this point the big news companies should shut down their comment sections, there really is no point to them. I guess they create jobs for paid trolls.

  36. 36.

    Violet

    @WereBear:
    You have to use the old blockquote paragraph spacing technique. Put two underlines between the paragraphs to create the space. I hope it’s just a workaround while they sort it out.

  37. 37.

    lamh35

    Ok, so I talked to the HHS Human Resources department today about my application to CDC and it looks like I did not get the job I applied for. From the statement I got from the HR Specialist, I wasn’t considered for the position. They rank you based solely on your answers to the online questionnaire in comparison to the resume you post on USAJOBS.gov. Based on an algorithm used for Federal job applicants to weaning out qualified applicants for positions, they rank you on a scale of 100%. For the job I applied for, my ranking was 89%. The HR Specialist said that I was considered a “well-qualified” applicant, but based on my score, I wasn’t the “best-qualified” applicant (i.e. >95%) for the position.

    So that’s that then. I think I’m gonna spend the rest of the summer saving some money and deciding what my next journey will be.

    thanks everyone who provided me some good vibes.

  38. 38.

    Lyrebird

    Well I really like the moss picture, moss is lovely!

    __

    __

    Since this is an open thread I wanna say that for anyone else who wishes they coulda gone to a gathering for Trayvon Martin, there’s a website here at the law firm’s website which does take donations.

    __

    __

    PS: Thanks for the tips on spacing. ETA: You need two separate ones for whitespace, is it?

  40. 40.

    John Weiss

    You’ve made a nice photo of “blooming” moss. Here in far south west Oregon, we’ve quite a lot of moss…

  45. 45.

    Mark S.

    “Once the government has said that the mandate is not an independent requirement, it merely provides a choice of paying the tax or having insurance, and given the fact that the Chief Justice yesterday recognized that, it is quite possible that you could have four votes to uphold this under the Commerce power and two votes to uphold it under the taxing power,” Dellinger said.

    I thought everyone agreed yesterday that it wasn’t a tax. If it is a tax, doesn’t that anti-Injunction Act kick in?

  46. 46.

    David Margolies

    To add to Mike 19, the moss leaves look like they have whitish tips, and a Bryum shaped sporophyte, so Bryum argentum? (It is common and widespread.)

  47. 47.

    Brachiator

    @The Dangerman:

    The forces behind the mandate are the insurance companies; the mandate, and the ACA, will stay. If the mandate goes down, the ACA goes down, and we will be going to single payer (ok, it may take a decade or 2 or 3, but the die will be cast; it will be single payer eventually).

    I don’t know that single payer is the only or even best outcome if there were some wildly overreaching Supreme Court decision that invalidated the Health Care Act.
    __
    This thing could go all kinds of ways. Ultimately, you gotta wait for a decision to see what happens next.
    __
    .

  49. 49.

    gene108

    @The Dangerman:

    if they strike down the whole enchilada, single payer is the only out.

    I don’t know. I think some folks maybe planning to turn the uninsured into soylent green or other acceptable alternative, as a solution to achieving universal health care.

  51. 51.

    David Koch

    For the people like Michael Moore who said there was no difference btwn Bush and Gore, even regarding Supreme Court appointments, what do you have to say now?

  52. 52.

    Amir Khalid

    @WereBear:
    Ya no the two-underscores-between-paragraphs trick thatcha gotta do with block quotes? Well, now ya gotta use it in yer comments too.

  53. 53.

    wrb

    @The Dangerman:

    and if they strike down the whole enchilada, single payer is the only out.

    Not a chance.

    They strike down the whole enchilada health care for the poor and those with pre-existing conditions is dead, at least for a decade or two, barring some unlikely progressive sweep of both houses and the presidency .

  55. 55.

    Egg Berry

    @David Koch:

    For the people like Michael Moore who said there was no difference btwn Bush and Gore, even regarding Supreme Court appointments, what do you have to say now?

    Allow me to call forth the Spirit of True Progressives Present: “Obama is worse than Bush! He sold us out!”

  56. 56.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @beltane:

    Would anyone like to take a guess at the percentage of people in favor

    It rhymes with plenty Heaven?

  57. 57.

    Maude

    Mittens thinks we’re still in the Cold War.
    He riled Russia today. He oughta get McCain for Veep.
    They could rile almost everyone within a week.

  59. 59.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @The Dangerman:

    if they strike down the whole enchilada, single payer is the only out.

    Churchill’s maxim about how Americans always do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities comes to mind. There are a lot of other possibilities left to exhaust, and with so many state governments as stenographers to ALEC, they’re not pleasant ones to consider.

  60. 60.

    David Koch

    Dahlia Lithwick did a interview with Charles Fried, who is a conservative legal scholar at Harvard and who served as Regan’s solicitor general./// He said, of course the mandate is legal, even though he didn’t like it. He had discussions with his fellow conservative scholars around the country and they all agreed, noting how the very conservative Laurence Silberman had upheld the mandate in the DC circuit./// But then he ended the interview, sharply, by saying only a political hack would overturn the mandate. Sadly that is what has happened to the supreme court.

  61. 61.

    Culture of Truth

    @Maude: Appropriate, since he’s building a Bond villain’s lair in La Jolla, complete with car elevator.

  63. 63.

    The Dangerman

    @wrb:

    Not a chance. They strike down the whole enchilada health care for the poor and those with pre-existing conditions is dead, at least for a decade or two…

    Yes, it will be dark days for a decade or a generation, but a solution that would be anathema to private insurance will be the eventual result.

  64. 64.

    Violet

    @WereBear:
    It’s been working for me since someone here told me about it. I’ve always used it in blockquotes, but it’s annoying to have to use it to space every paragraph. Really clunky. I hope it’s going to be fixed.
    __
    If the whole health care law gets overturned and a bunch of young adults get kicked off their parents health care, there’s going to be a lot of angry kids and adults.

  65. 65.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @The Dangerman:

    Yes, it will be dark days for a decade or a generation, but a solution that would be anathema to private insurance will be the eventual result.

    Nach Aetna, uns.

  67. 67.

    WereBear

    @Culture of Truth: I love it madly.
    __
    You get interrupted, so you close the lid; when you come back, you go right back to where you where in 2 seconds. Essentially, you never shut it off, because I’ve had the battery last over four hours today; and it still had 22% left when I plugged it in just now. With Pandora radio running the whole time.
    __
    Light as a Mac Air; at 1/4 the price.
    __
    Now, my whole office thought it was neat… and went back to their Nooks and Kindles and iPads. But I’m a writer… and they’re not. I gotta have a keyboard.

  68. 68.

    Rome Again

    Sure looks like bean sprouts to me (no, I didn’t click through).

    Yesterday I went through the criminal files of George Zimmerman. I was unable to make a graphic that included all of the information, but, I noticed that there were fees on the two cases (one a state felony (two counts) violent battery upon a law enforcement officer case which was plea bargained down to a misdemeanor non-violent case) and both cases had fees associated with them which went unpaid until just this month (?!).

    I’ve made a graphic showing this (the original felony case is in an inset box placed on the county non-violent misdemeanor case). About $300.00 sat on the books for over five years and Zimmerman decided it just wasn’t important to pay them off until he got in trouble again. Also, while I didn’t note all of the occurrences on the graphic itself, there are at least two failure to appears from Zimmerman and one from his counsel on the county misdemeanor case:
    http://haughty-culture.blogspot.com/2012/03/trying-to-show-visual-of-non-payments.html

  69. 69.

    Martin

    That’s Santorum’s speculum garden! Grow little speculum halves, grow! He has a job for each and every one of you!

  72. 72.

    trollhattan

    @David Koch:

    David Stockman now allows as to how Reaganomics and Bushonomics are nonsense (as well as Obama’s policies) but nobody listens to him, either. Out of the village he goes!

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    I don’t know if you read anything at DK, but there was a diary yesterday about all of these people freaking out – in the worst way – on Facebook over two of the characters being played by black people.

    This was about the appalling racism, largely from younger people, concerning The Hunger Games, right?
    __
    One thing that is truly depressing is the outright use of racial epithets.
    __
    The other is the degree to which these people, who read the book and transformed black characters into white people in their imaginations, were shocked that their racial editing was not confirmed by the film makers.
    __
    Worst of all is the degree to which these people felt that their enjoyment of the movie was ruined by the inclusion of black characters into their whites only universe.
    __

    Attention, everyone: Racism is BACK! [Electric guitar riff.] As you may have heard (because it’s both bonkers and everywhere), our national brain trust of semi-literate racist teenagers is not pleased with some casting choices in the newly released Hunger Games movie. And lo, they took to Twitter with a fury.
    __
    “Kk call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn’t as sad,” wrote one. (Okay, you’re racist. And you left out a “k.”) “HOW IN THE WORLD ARE THEY GOING TO MAKE RUE A FREAKIN BLACK B*TCH IN THE MOVIE ?!?!?!??!” wondered another. One didn’t mince words (or use them correctly in any way): “Sense when has Rue been a n ***er.” (Sidenote: Pretty much all of these teens have since locked or deleted their Twitter accounts—because it’s totally cool to be racist in front of your friends, but the rest of America can be a real drag, bro.)

    And remember now, some Balloon Juicers insist that the Great Demographic Shift will bring tolerance and unicorns.
    __
    The hopeful sign is the degree to which sane fans of the book shut down the racists (there is yet hope for the Great Demographic Shift, if not a sure thing). The best comment from one person riffs on the movie itself in putting the racists in their place:

    Ugh, these people. May the odds be never in their favor.
    __
    .

  74. 74.

    Martin

    @Brachiator:

    And remember now, some Balloon Juicers insist that the Great Demographic Shift will bring tolerance and unicorns.

    Well, it is. But it doesn’t work as you describe. In the great tradition of ‘all politics is local’ these shifts really take root at the local level. Yeah, Alabama and South Carolina may be the last to join the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean that massive progress isn’t being made in large parts of the country.

    And the deletion of those Twitter accounts suggests that it’s getting harder and harder for those local traditions to hold on when exposed to a broader community.

  75. 75.

    WereBear

    @Culture of Truth: So can I. I also have an iPod touch… and I love it, too.
    __
    The way I see it; I used to buy used Mac laptops to fit my needs for low cost portability. Now, the Chromebook fits that niche; at lighter weight and lower cost.
    __
    And if I may vent for a moment; about half the reviews I read complained that it was just a browser in a laptop case. Duh! What part of Does What It Says On The Tin do these people not get?

  76. 76.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    Well, it is. But it doesn’t work as you describe. In the great tradition of ‘all politics is local’ these shifts really take root at the local level. Yeah, Alabama and South Carolina may be the last to join the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean that massive progress isn’t being made in large parts of the country.

    Why do you assume that these comments came from Alabama and South Carolina and similar places?
    __
    As an aside, equally obnoxious is some of the sexist attacks on the movie, by uncomfortable little male shits all over the country who deride the film for having a female action hero. These same turds are peeing in their pants in anticipation over The Avengers (cool shit), the umpteenth reboot of Spider Man (more cool shit), even the Three Stooges (stupid cool shit), and hope in vain that the upcoming Wrath of the Titans (ancient cool shit) will displace The Hunger Games (cootie girl shit) from its top spot in the box office.
    __
    And as some of the related articles suggest, Hollywood is often all too happy to play to racist expectations to satisfy audiences and maximize revenue.
    __
    .

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    Well, it is. But it doesn’t work as you describe. In the great tradition of ‘all politics is local’ these shifts really take root at the local level. Yeah, Alabama and South Carolina may be the last to join the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean that massive progress isn’t being made in large parts of the country.

    Why do you assume that these comments came from Alabama and South Carolina and similar places?
    __
    As an aside, equally obnoxious is some of the sexist attacks on the movie, by uncomfortable little male shits all over the country who deride the film for having a female action hero. These same turds are peeing in their pants in anticipation over The Avengers (cool shit), the umpteenth reboot of Spider Man (more cool shit), even the Three Stooges (stupid cool shit), and hope in vain that the upcoming Wrath of the Titans (ancient cool shit) will displace The Hunger Games (cootie girl shit) from its top spot in the box office.
    __
    And as some of the related articles suggest, Hollywood is often all too happy to play to racist expectations to satisfy audiences and maximize revenue.
    __
    .

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    ETA Have no idea where the double post came from and could not successfully edit it.

    .

  82. 82.

    Martin

    @Brachiator:

    Why do you assume that these comments came from Alabama and South Carolina and similar places?

    I didn’t. I merely was noting that broadly speaking on issues of race, the culture in South Carolina and Alabama are likely going to be the last to come around at the local level. I don’t think that’s at all controversial given the strong traditions of racism there as compared to the rest of the country. Individually, you’re going to get comments like that everywhere, but the ability for those individuals to embrace that attitude, find others to reinforce that attitude, and so on is going to be different depending on where they live. And if there’s nobody nearby to feed it, it’s going to eventually die out.

  83. 83.

    Rome Again

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):
    @Brachiator:

    I don’t know if you read anything at DK, but there was a diary yesterday about all of these people freaking out – in the worst way – on Facebook over two of the characters being played by black people.

    I must be hanging out with a good crowd, I didn’t see any of that. Whew!

  84. 84.

    Death Panel Truck

    NBC’s Pete Williams (who used to work for Dick Cheney) has already declared the ACA unconstitutional based on today’s oral arguments.
    .
    Well, okay then. It’s settled. Who am I to argue with the librul media?

  85. 85.

    JR in WV

    It’s moss putting forth spores. Without looking I know I’m not even close to first with the correct answer.

  87. 87.

    someofparts

    I just don’t understand the remark about finalizing emigration plans in this context.

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