Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

šŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockinā€™ šŸŽµ

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Itā€™s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are ā€œtheyā€ and not ā€œwe.ā€

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Fight them, without becoming them!

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

We know you arenā€™t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

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

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

So many bastards, so little time.

The media handbook says ā€œcontroversialā€ is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and itā€™s Trumpā€™s fault.

“But what about the lurkers?”

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  1. 1.

    Lee

    Anyone have a link to a rebuttal to the Mcardle piece on healthcare costs?
    Here

    I seem to remember I read one but I cannot find it.

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    Of course the memorandum study calls Business Insider a liberal blog. I’m not sure I’d trust their methodology.

  5. 5.

    Kinky Beats

    Ugh…it’s never fun to watch your team lose in the bottom of the 9th. Oh well. Go Dodger Blue! It looks like we’ll have to settle for a record of 160-2

  6. 6.

    keestadoll

    Some all-balls Onion:

    href=”http://http://www.theonion.com/articles/trusted-sistine-chapel-janitor-convicted-of-sexual,27934/”>

  8. 8.

    lamh35

    not that anyone cares, but I’mabout to call an early night. Iā€™ve got 2 straight days off from work starting tomorrow, then Iā€™m working everyday for at least 2 weeksā€¦no breaks.

    So for next 2 days, I plan to stay in bed and only get up for the essentials, interneting and blogging ainā€™t essential, so unless I gotsa lot to say, Iā€™ma be in B.E.D.

    Not even gonna answer my phone. Iā€™m gonna try to free my mind of clutter, politics and stress. Hereā€™s hoping I can do it.

    Good Night BJers.

  10. 10.

    samara morgan

    goodnight juicitariat.
    this one goes out to Cole.
    ;)

    I had a way then losing it all on my own
    I had a heart then but the queen has been overthrown
    And I’m not sleeping now the dark is too hard to beat
    And I’m not keeping now the strength I need to push me
    __
    You show the lights that stop me turn to stone
    You shine It when I’m alone
    And so I tell myself that I’ll be strong
    And dreaming when they’re gone

    fucking basilisk.

  11. 11.

    Martin

    @Lee: There’s so much there to rebut. Mainly it’s a huge sin of omission (as usual). She holds up Singapore as a model, arguing that their compulsory health savings accounts are the key to their costs. Well, no. They’re a secondary cost control. The primary cost control is that Singapore heavily regulates the price of healthcare. The IPAB that McArdle detests as ‘socialism’, Singapore implements nationwide for ALL primary care.

    If you want to know why Singapore pays so little for health care, it’s because Singapore mandates that health care cost so little. That’s pretty much it.

    The truth of the matter is that in a captive market, which health care is, insurance can provide some secondary cost control – by steering people from higher to lower cost services, but insurance is just as captive as we are. If you go to the hospital, the hospital will determine what services you’ll receive and what they’ll cost. The insurers can negotiate this down some, but in the end they’re going to have to pay up – so the care providers have pricing authority that cannot be counteracted except by government.

    As I’ve said before, a free market is only free when you can opt out of it. Now, the teatards will argue that should apply to health insurance as well, but you can’t opt out of health care, which is the crux of the matter. The market isn’t free, can’t be free, will never be free, and can’t be treated as free. It can only be regulated, and you can regulate insurance as a necessary step to regulating the entire market (as opposed to single payer which is eliminating that layer of the market in order to regulate it more directly). McArdle leaves all of those messy details out – but they exist in every health market that she would hold up – either in the UK market where the government is the market, or Singapore where the government has their boot on the neck of the market’s pricing ability. No other market works.

  12. 12.

    jon

    The fucker carpetbagger Jesse Kelly won the primary to face Ron Barber in the AZ-8 race to finish Gifford’s term in the House. Bet you all can’t guess who I’ll vote for in the special election.

  15. 15.

    noodler

    Did anyone enjoy the shuttle discovery arrival in DC today? Such an awesome sight, perfect weather too. Kids got out of school to see the fly by. I caught it from the Ellipse. As an aviator, I really dig that sort of thing, but as an american, it was enough to get choked up about. Got some great pics to tweet.

  17. 17.

    samara morgan

    since I’m krunk….

    Pliny: He does not impel his body, like other serpents, by a multiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He kills the shrubs, not only by contact, but by breathing on them, and splits the rocks, such power of evil is there in him.

    i may slay the basilisk….but ill be dead n/e ways.

    What though the Moor the basilisk hath slain,
    And pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain,
    Up through the spear the subtle venom flies,
    The hand imbibes it, and the victor dies.– Lucan

    its real y pointless, isn’t it?

  18. 18.

    MikeJ

    @noodler: Thank gopod that piece of shit is gone forever. The concept of reusable spacecraft is ok, but after DOD screwed the original design the whole thing should have been scrapped.

  19. 19.

    David Koch

    @Ron:

    They also called Politico liberal.

    It’ a set up.

    If they can brand politico as liberal, then the reactionaries can use it the way they used “even the liberal New Republic” to undermine liberal positions with non cognitives and low info voters.

  20. 20.

    MikeJ

    Hahaha. Just read the raw data for the article in the post. They call alicublog (roy edrosos’s jernt) super duper red because all he ever links to is winger sites, the nuttier the better.

    Also too, 0 is his neutral number. Anything under zero is blue, over zero is red. Under -10 is *dark* blue, but to get *dark* red the score has to be over 30.

  22. 22.

    CatHairAnywhere

    Have to share this with all of my fellow animal-loveing BJers, because I am boiling mad. Can’t believe how stupid our City Animal Control is! My friend lives in a neigborhood where bats were discovered and one cat had rabies. Animal Control’s solution was to round up all the neighborhood kitties they could catch WITHOUT LEAVING A NOTE OR NOTIFYING THE OWNERS and putting them all in quarantine in our quick-kill shelter. Luckily, my friend checked there when her cat vanished, but she hasn’t been able to get him back. They appear to have no clue what they are doing or how they will deal with this. What about all the other neighbors who are wondering where their beloved family pets are? We haven’t had a case of rabies here in years, and our city aimal control is notoriously incompetant. Bad combo.

  23. 23.

    CatHairAnywhere

    hmm… comment ended up in moderation- not sure why… didn’t use the soshu
    ism word. FYWP.

  24. 24.

    CatHairEverywhere

    Have to share this with all of my fellow animal-loveing BJers, because I am boiling mad. Canā€™t believe how stupid our City Animal Control is! My friend lives in a neigborhood where bats were discovered and one cat had rabies. Animal Controlā€™s solution was to round up all the neighborhood kitties they could catch WITHOUT LEAVING A NOTE OR NOTIFYING THE OWNERS and putting them all in quarantine in our quick-kill shelter. Luckily, my friend checked there when her cat vanished, but she hasnā€™t been able to get him back. They appear to have no clue what they are doing or how they will deal with this. What about all the other neighbors who are wondering where their beloved family pets are? We havenā€™t had a case of rabies here in years, and our city aimal control is notoriously incompetant. Bad combo.

  25. 25.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    @MikeJ: Well, the Wired article does say this:

    This automated analysis is not a commentary on the personal opinions and beliefs of any blogger

  26. 26.

    Mark S.

    A comment someone made earlier got me thinking: Do Republicans have any popular proposals? Tax cuts, I guess. But I’m trying to think of a positive spin to any of their other proposals. Health Care: tort reform and deregulate it so it’s more like credit card companies. The skyrocketing cost of college: basically, IGMFU.

    are there any positive things goopers can run on anymore? If you have to cut taxes, reduce spending on everything but increase spending on our micropeni military, there aren’t a hell of a lot of inspiring things to run on.

  27. 27.

    CatHairEverywhere

    Fpers- please delete the 2 comments of m ine that ended in in mod. FYWP won’t let me. Many thanks and sorry for my dumbassery.

  29. 29.

    WindyCityCat

    Just watched Network for the first time ever today. The parallels between Glenn Beck’s last days at Fox and this movie are…striking, to say the least. This should really be required watching for most people today.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @Ron:

    They also called Politico liberal.

    Not quite. They’re essentially saying that Politico is slightly to the left of center among the blogs Memeorandum is looking at as shown by their linking behavior. That might show a bias in blogs in general (e.g. if right wing blogs are noisier than left wing ones) or in the blogs that Memeorandum is looking at. It’s also a fairly crude measure of their politics. They’re looking at linking behavior without looking in any way at whether the links are favorable or unfavorable. IOW, they can’t tell the difference between a “yes indeedy” link and a “look at what those assholes are saying now link”. So a site that links to both sides but for different reasons may look centrist even if it’s very partisan.

  33. 33.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Mark S.: They thrive on the proposal that they will cut off the freeloaders, stop coddlin’ ’em, and make ’em work for a livin’, goddamnit. That’s their most popular policy.

  37. 37.

    freelancer

    Next week’s wingnut outrage brought to you today, the right wing is going to SHIT A BRICK if they catch a hint of Bobcat Goldthwait’s new movie “God Bless America”. It’s a dark comedy that’s kind of a mashup between Idiocracy, Network, Falling Down, and Natural Born Killers.

    I’m an hour into it and OMFG, in the mind of a right-winger, it is an alarm bell for their paranoia, the libruls are coming for us!

    I can’t say it’s brilliant on the levels that the aforementioned films are, but there’s a definite element of catharsis and satire. They are going to fume, I promise you.

  38. 38.

    Martin

    @Mark S.:

    Do Republicans have any popular proposals?

    Preserve social power. Fuck over the poor, blacks, immigrants, gays, atheists, whatever. You stand a pretty good shot at selling it to everyone but poor black immigrant gay atheists whatevers, because even the occasional black person will be afeared of the gheys enough to sell out their own social power to stay at least one rung from the bottom.

  39. 39.

    Mark S.

    @samara morgan:

    I have to admit, though, that Tapper article is bone-crunching stupid.

    Though it did get me thinking: there are some animals I can’t imagine eating. I’m not sure I could eat escargot. Snails really gross me out.

  40. 40.

    MikeJ

    Because of the discrepancy in colour scores, National Review is a moderate right site with a score of 12, while balloon-juice is hardcore left with a score of -11, and Fred Hiatt’s WaPo is even worse at -21.

  42. 42.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @freelancer:

    I sure hope it’s that good. I’d love a nice sharp political satire instead of Transformers 6 or Iron Man 3.5 or whatever.

  46. 46.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @WindyCityCat: Watched Network about a month ago for the first time since it came out. I remembered a lot of it, but holy shit, I thought Chayevsky was doing a satire, not a forecast!

    We are so fucked.

    BSoSR +3

  47. 47.

    slag

    This automated analysis is not a commentary on the personal opinions and beliefs of any blogger ā€” no amount of linear algebra can prove that. What this shows is the biases in their linking behavior: the stories that each site chooses to cover, or not cover, and their similarity to others like them.

    You can’t say this and then talk about “left-leaning” and “right-leaning” blogs. It makes no sense. If all you’re saying is that “right-leaning” refers to blogs that primarily link to rightwing sources, you’re not saying anything at all. The whole article is nothing but a long tautology that pretends to be meaningful.

  48. 48.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @Martin:
    __

    …sell out their own social power to stay at least one rung from the bottom.

    __
    Fuck you Jack, I’ve got my curtain rod, I’ve got my sparrow.

  49. 49.

    CW in LA

    @Mark S.:

    I’ll cheerfully eat a squid if you deep-fry it and call it calamari. But even though snails, like squids, are mollusks, I have no interest at all in eating snails.

  52. 52.

    phil

    @Yutsano: Hey Yutsano, I just returned from drinking liberally and was wistfully remembering our BJ meetup at Sazerzac, any chance there’s another meetup in the works? Cheers

  55. 55.

    Yutsano

    @phil: Possibly, if Jewish Steel is still planning on honeymooning out this way. If not something can be thrown together though if you want me to organize it we’ll have to wait until July.

    @gwangung: This works too. But I wanna take wifey!

  57. 57.

    burnspbesq

    Romnet pretty much has to make an outside-the-box choice, because there’s nothing in the box but a big ol’ flock of albatross. Daniels is a possibility.

  58. 58.

    David Koch

    Bobcat has a new stand-up comedy special on Showtime that you can access with On-Demand.

    it’s pretty good.

  59. 59.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    Diablo III is going to be awesome. The WoW expansion looks like it’s going to be fun as well.

  60. 60.

    gwangung

    @Yutsano: Ah, it’d be perfect for her!

    @phil: SHow opens the 27th of April, then runs Th/Fri/Sat until May 26…..(and you got 27 minutes to get early bird tickets on Brown Paper Tickets).

  61. 61.

    Suffern ACE

    @burnspbesq: I’m going with Elanor Holmes Norton and a promise for DC statehood. Because the short guy from Indiana is another Romney without the sex appeal.

  62. 62.

    Jewish Steel

    @Yutsano: Alas, our finances are going to keep us grounded in the Midwest for our honeymoon. Bummer!

    We will be honeymooning in the land of Omnes Ominbus instead.

  65. 65.

    Schlemizel

    @freelancer:
    Has anyone here seen “World’s Greatest Dad?” I passed on it because with that title & Robin Williams I thought OMG-BLEH! But Bobcat wrote & directed a great movie about modern media culture and how it warps humanity, Williams gave a great performance and the whole thing is . . . well unnerving and moving. I thanked the person who insisted I see it.

    I will be looking for this one now too. Goldthwait is really becoming a very interesting filmaker.

  66. 66.

    Downpuppy

    @Martin: The other thing about the McArdle post is that it was written by Avik Roy, while McArdle was on book leave for Permission to Suck. Yes, it’s total garbage – no other way to describe idiocy like:

    So: if we measure the relative freedom of health-care systems by the dollar amount of government involvement in health spending, the French system is actually meaningfully freer than America’s.

  67. 67.

    samara morgan

    @Mark S.: /yawn
    Cole, like AllahP, poignantly believes Tapper is somewhat fair, because he appears to bash both sides.
    the truth is Tapper stirs whoevers shit that is the most inflammatory.

  68. 68.

    Lee

    @Martin:

    I think she also missed the part of the swiss market where the government highly regulates their insurance industry.

    Your last paragraph is excellent. At some point in the future I will completely steal it and use it elsewhere. Thanks!

  69. 69.

    gocart mozart

    @samara morgan:
    Fifteen years ago in Bali, Indonesia, at the base of Mount Agung (rural area) I’m pretty sure I ate some dog meat.* Of course, I ordered chicken & rice but that was no chicken! It was tough and gamey and definately some type of mammel. There were also many stray dogs running around. I suppose it could have been oxen or monkey which would have been worse but my best guess is dog.

    *The cook insisted it was chicken which was bullshit. I only had two bites. I gave a piece to a stray dog (How bad is that?)

  70. 70.

    samara morgan

    @gocart mozart: many asian and indonesian cultures eat dog. protein deficiency drives it.
    i was given a horse burger in Belgium once. i didn’t eat it. i don’t eat intelligent fish either.
    beef is just too expensive for most humans.

    i love that Obama has actual experience of living in the third world.

  72. 72.

    THE

    @samara morgan:

    i was given a horse burger in Belgium once. i didnā€™t eat it.

    I’ve eaten horse in Belgium.
    But I was a reckless preteen then.
    Not sure I’d do it now.

    Also. WTF are intelligent fish?
    Oh I know — The ones that hang out in schools. ;)

Comments are closed.