Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

In my day, never was longer.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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Document dump/open thread

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You know I’m a bit monomancial if you read this blog. My two big political fixations right now are Huey Long/LBJ type politicians and the politics of gender.

Here’s an interesting long piece about Robert Caro’s massive five-volume biography of LBJ. If I have a long retirement, I would like to read all five.

Here’s two short to-the-point pieces about the what an old boys’ club banksterism is. Knowing a few banksters, it rings very true to me, and I think it goes to why a lot of these Very Serious Wall Street types have the political attitudes that they do, regardless of what regular guys they are, what “hard-scrabble” childhoods they might have had, how much they know about “what it takes for America to be competitive”, etc. etc.

What internets have you been reading today?

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  4. 4.

    cathyx

    I’ve worked in environments with men having that same attitude. It isn’t just banking.

  5. 5.

    Svensker

    Here’s two short to-the-point pieces about the what an old boys’ club banksterism is.

    I saw one article about a guy buying sex. Yucky, yes, but not very unusual. Was there another article?

  8. 8.

    BethanyAnne

    I’ve been reading Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind”. I know it was dissed here, but I think it complements “The Reactionary Mind” quite well. I saw a good small fundraiser here, to get a kid a wheelchair. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I kicked in a few bucks.

    Also, beginning to plan the move back to San Francisco, and I finally built the robot I was given for Christmas. A good friend bought me a gift certificate to Robot Nation, and it’s nifty. You plan out your robot figurine, and they print it on a 3d printer, and send it to you. :)

  9. 9.

    PurpleGirl

    Was reading a bit at Slacktivist this afternoon. Fred Clark highlighted a bunch of interesting articles. Other than that I’ve been crocheting and I saw my dentist this afternoon. I’m not really in the mood to read politics today.

    ETA: I read Robert Caro’s biography on Robert Moses (The Power Broker) when I took the Alinskyite organizing training with the Industrial Areas Foundation. I read the first volume on LBJ.

  11. 11.

    Chris

    Here’s an interesting long piece about Robert Caro’s massive five-volume biography of LBJ. If I have a long retirement, I would like to read all five.

    I started reading “Master Of The Senate” the other day. So far only worked my way through the introduction, which details the history of the Senate up to the 1950s – it leaves me utterly disgusted with the institution. (Never realized the extent to which it was a Dixiecrat-run private club for so long).

    Anything good about Huey Long? For the longest time I didn’t know much about the guy other than the popular image of a fucking radical who was borderline fascist. Then I actually broke down and read his Wikipedia article – and his popular image is bullshit, methinks. Nothing remotely fascist there, and I think I’d have voted for him in a heartbeat if I’d been Louisianan at the time.

  12. 12.

    Water balloon

    Has Caro won the Pulitzer? He really should. The Power Broker was great, but his stuff on LBJ has been amazing. Everyone interested in American history or politics needs to read Master of the Senate.

    LBJ may have been a monster personally, and Vietnam can’t be ignored, but he really was a political genius, and did an incredible amount of good. He was a new dealer originally, and had the smarts and ruthlessness to outdo even Roosevelt in terms of domestic accomplishments.

  13. 13.

    Mr. Long Form

    Don’t wait to read the LBJ books! They are probably better than anything else you will be reading instead of them. I am re-reading the first three volumes in anticipation of the 4th (due out May 1st.) I’m also lighting candles and offering unblemished goats on altars so that he lives long enough to finish the last volume.

  15. 15.

    schrodinger's cat

    @DougJ, Head of Infidelity: David Weigel has posted on the thread about himself, you might want to check it.
    I found another snarky blog, instead of politics this blog makes fun of life style blogs, mommy blogs, fashion blogs and the like. I think many of the commenters there make the jackals here look as tame as labs and goldens.

  19. 19.

    DougJ, Head of Infidelity

    @Chris:

    “All The King’s Men” is based on Huey Long and it is by far the best book I have ever read about politics.

  20. 20.

    I_D_Inuse

    History and especially history via biography can and does seem fluffed today. On this blog you have people who lived that history, and yes we are struggling to understand, so shall you when your grand kids ask about the G W Bush years from 911 on. We were there in the sixties as you will be in the oughts, I suspect you like me will struggle to not only explain but make sense of what the hell happened. Caro’s book will be instructive in this election if only for the civil rights act. The past is prologue so wisdom affirms.

  23. 23.

    schrodinger's cat

    I have been reading
    David Copperfield, it gives a nice glimpse into the world GOP wants us to live in, replete with debtors prisons, and rigid gender and class boundaries.

  24. 24.

    Water balloon

    @Chris: Huey Long planned to run against FDR in 1936 with the full throated support of Father Coughlin to split the left vote and let the Republicans win. To me at least, that’s unforgivable.

  26. 26.

    dmsilev

    @Wildcat12: I think Dick “more often wrong than Bill Kristol” Morris had one a couple of days ago. For whatever little it’s worth.

  29. 29.

    Chris

    @Water balloon:

    Huey Long planned to run against FDR in 1936 with the full throated support of Father Coughlin to split the left vote and let the Republicans win. To me at least, that’s unforgivable.

    Well, I don’t think it was to split the left vote, intentionally, so much as just having such a huge ego he thought he could pull it off and win. But yeah, I’ll agree in condemning that.

    I was mostly going off of what he did for Louisiana, e.g. breaking the old political machine, repealing the poll taxes, the energetic relief programs (which went to black people as well as white ones, I believe, which took some balls in the Deep South even during the Depression).

  31. 31.

    Merp

    I can’t remember reading something recently that was as consistently funny as this:

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/89571423/Peepers-by-C-L-Kattan

    “Peepers: A Canticle” is a re-imagining of Being There with Mr. Peepers in place of Chance.

    From the introduction:

    On the evening of September 10th, 2001, Christopher Lee Kattan unrolled a sheet of paper from his great-uncle’s battered Remington typewriter, poured a snifter of brandy, and allowed himself a brief moment of pride. He had succeeded where none thought he could. He had transformed one of his popular Saturday Night Live characters, Mr. Peepers, from an amusing but simple exercise in physicality, into something of a very different stripe, and though he dared not voice it lest propriety’s cri de coeur echo from the parapets, something he hoped would transcended modern comedy altogether.

    The whole 110-page screenplay carries that erudite academic tone. And has poop jokes. It’s phenomenal. And I didn’t like the Mr. Peepers sketch very much.

  32. 32.

    Schlemizel

    I have been reading “Tombee”, it is a two parter. There is a long explanation of the day-to-day life of an antebellum “planter” and the second part is his daily diary.

    Just into the first part now. It is interesting as it goes into the logistics of slave owning & plantation running plus there are detailed notes on the horrid society the owners built for themselves. A legal and social nightmare that trapped the slave owners and all their community so that in many ways.

    So far there has not been much about the real horrors of slavery. Some casual cruelty and the obvious discounting of slaves humanity. But given the book covers the owner I expect a portrait of a more banal evil.

  33. 33.

    Linnaeus

    I’m a historian, and if anything I write has a tenth of the impact that Caro’s books have had, I will be truly fortunate.

  34. 34.

    Schlemizel

    @Merp:

    Problem for me is when you say “Mr. Peeper” I automatically think of Wally Cox.

    At least he was funny

  36. 36.

    Raven

    I’m reading Pacific Crucible, you know, the war where LBJ was awarded a fucking Silver Star for being in a plane that never was even shot at and that no other crew member received a decoration. When the Doolittle Raiders flew over Tokyo Bay, Emperor Hirohito was flying around in a small plane and actually could see the American pilots in the Mitchell Bombers.

  38. 38.

    Constance

    Caros’s bio of Robert Moses and first volume of LBJ are possibly the best biographies I’ve read. Caro is an amazing writer. The LBJ opus started out as a three-volume journey. Wonder if I’ll live long enough to read all five. Something, certainly, to aim for. Thanks Doug for reminding me of Caro’s work.

  39. 39.

    Ben Franklin

    I’ve been reading Marcy Wheeler on how McChrystal and Petraeus have fucked us all in Assghanistan. Obama?

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Raven: Sometimes, and I may be reading into things a bit, but sometimes it appears that you really don’t think all the well of LBJ. Am I off base here?

  42. 42.

    dp

    The fundamental complaint about both Long and Johnson is that they used the methods of the ruling class to actually GET SHIT DONE for regular folks. That is unforgivable in the eyes of our plutocracy.

    I really hope Caro lives long enough to finish Johnson — I’m scared he’s not going to make it.

  43. 43.

    Raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: Fuckin skunk. Stanley Reasor died today and I was explaining the chain of command memorization from bootcamp. LBJ was at the top for me, the Honorable Stanley Reasor was the Secretary of the Army.

  45. 45.

    Ben Franklin

    @Raven:

    He was one of the last true Dixiecrats, but at least he had a conscience re; the assassination of JFK and repented to a measurable degree.

  46. 46.

    dp

    @Chris: Dig up T. Harry Williams’ biography. It’s warts and all, but the conservatives’ preferred policies are so antediluvian that you come away with the idea that, well, the corruption was a fair tradeoff for the rejection of feudalism.

  47. 47.

    Chris

    @Ben Franklin:

    I’ve been reading Marcy Wheeler on how McChrystal and Petraeus have fucked us all in Assghanistan.

    Oh? How’s that?

    @dp:

    The fundamental complaint about both Long and Johnson is that they used the methods of the ruling class to actually GET SHIT DONE for regular folks. That is unforgivable in the eyes of our plutocracy.

    This. A hundred times.

  48. 48.

    burnspbesq

    @Ben Franklin:

    I’ve been reading Marcy Wheeler on how McChrystal and Petraeus have fucked us all in Assghanistan.

    That explains a lot about how your world-view came to be the bizarre thing it is.

  49. 49.

    eemom

    @Raven:

    I’ve been waiting all day to tell you how right you were about fucking Jim Webb.

    I fucking HATE him for what he said yesterday. I can’t remember ever having been so totally mistaken about someone.

  52. 52.

    burnspbesq

    @eemom:

    I can’t remember ever having been so totally mistaken about someone.

    Hold up, there, girlfriend. I remember where I met you.

  53. 53.

    David Koch

    @Raven:

    the war where sitting congressman LBJ was awarded a fucking Silver Star for being in a plane that never was even shot at and that no other crew member received a decoration.

    /fixed

  54. 54.

    eemom

    @burnspbesq:

    heh.

    Hey did you — and Raven — see my showdown with TBogg when he came galloping along to defend Lady Jane’s honor?

    Fuck HIM, too. Though he is still funny as shit.

  55. 55.

    Citizen_X

    Here’s two short to-the-point pieces about the what an old boys’ club banksterism is.

    That second one is pretty illuminating, especially the bit about the female banker who is constantly being second-guessed. But that first one, wow! It’s “Why I pay for sex,” but he never really answers why. The answer appears to be, “Because I’m a rich entitled asshole.”

    @lamh35:

    “No to Obama, Osama, Chelsea’s Mama.”

    Ugh. Cross out one of those names, losers.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @PurpleGirl:

    I just found out about this project today, which teaches crochet to women in Haiti and helps them set up microbusinesses to sell what they produce. I really need to reduce my stash, so I may be sending them some yarn soon.

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Citizen_X:

    But that first one, wow! It’s “Why I pay for sex,” but he never really answers why. The answer appears to be, “Because I’m a rich entitled asshole.”

    To me, the answer seemed to be that women wouldn’t if he didn’t.

  59. 59.

    burnspbesq

    @eemom:

    TBogg needs to desert that rathole and migrate over to this rathole. We have a much better class of rats.

  60. 60.

    Ben Franklin

    That explains a lot about how your world-view came to be the bizarre thing it is.

    But you understood the metaphor and that means you screw on your pants as deftly as Nixon did, Segretti….

  63. 63.

    burnspbesq

    @Ben Franklin:

    Mr. Incomprehensible Strikes Again!

    Segretti does good work. His clients like him. Can you say either of those things about yourself?

  66. 66.

    Ben Franklin

    @burnspbesq:

    Segretti does good work. His clients like him.

    I knew you were Old Pasadena Money. Your parents worshipped at the Nixon Shrine, right?

    LBJ was a liberal too. :_)

    Thanks for verifying what I knew, intuitively.

  67. 67.

    Hill Dweller

    @Ben Cisco:

    Also had a chance to ask Jake Tapper about his query re President Obama’s travel to battleground states at taxpayer expense. His answer made me wonder why he even asked in the first place, but he did respond

    Fox/Republicans lead the rest of the media around by the nose. This horseshit talking point has been bubbling up in the wingnut swamp for a while. Initially they focused on Michelle, but I see they’ve decided to expand their stupidity.

  69. 69.

    Ben Cisco

    @burnspbesq: It gets worse. When I asked him that very question, and also whether it had been such a problem in previous administrations, he said yes. Then he says that even though the expenses get reimbursed, it uses a formula that doesn’t “get at the real cost tho, but that’s not the WH fault.”

    Then why the hell did he even ask the question?

  71. 71.

    DougJ, Head of Infidelity

    @eemom:

    That was incredibly pathetic I was glad you replied in detail to him, but you didn’t have to in the sense that the quote he used completely contradicted his point.

  72. 72.

    Gin & Tonic

    Since this is an OT, and about books – I’ve been a loud and annoying Luddite about e-readers, but I’m facing a period of months when I’m expecting to be on planes and trains a lot, and not sure I want to always carry real books. I like the e-ink displays, and don’t really want to spend a lot. Is there any reason to get anything other than a low-end Kindle?

  73. 73.

    burnspbesq

    @Ben Franklin:

    I knew you were Old Pasadena Money. Your parents worshipped at the Nixon Shrine, right?

    Wrong and wrong, ignoramus. You really should shut up when you have no idea what you’re talking about.

  74. 74.

    Water balloon

    @Chris: No, the entire point was to defeat FDR and then have Long run as the Democratic nominee in 1940. It’s a welll known fact that was the plan.

  77. 77.

    Ben Franklin

    Wrong and wrong, ignoramus. You really should shut up when you have no idea what you’re talking about.

    Segretti;

    USC Lawyer? Segretti apologist? Wrong?

  78. 78.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    __

    I cannot let you iron that shirt.

    __
    At least not during peak hours, Dave. You may iron your shirt between 10PM and 6AM or between 12noon and 3PM but not at any other time.

    PS All you pedants: I made up the times cuz I’m too lazy to look it up.

  79. 79.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks for posting this. I must have some cotton in the yarn stash that I can contribute. Maybe some hooks, too. But I’ll definitely look in the stash bags.

  80. 80.

    Ben Franklin

    @burnspbesq:

    You know if your masochism becomes oppressive there are Dominatrix’s who can tie you up, Segretti.

    It’s not necessary to display your fetish amongst your peers.

  81. 81.

    Water balloon

    @Chris: As for relief programs, the CCC as well as the WPA were open to blacks as well as whites. Tying in to LBJ, that’s where he got his start in politics, running the Texas division of the National Youth Administration,part of the WPA.

  82. 82.

    burnspbesq

    @Ben Franklin:

    My, aren’t we smooth. When you don’t know the answer, change the question. How very Republican of you.

    Now, here’s a bottle of Liquid Plumb’r and a straw. Do the right thing.

  83. 83.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Gin & Tonic: Yes. Amazon sucks and is a shitty deal for authors. Kindle format books are a pita.

    I use a Pocketbook – eink screen, reads 18 different file formats, and at 5″ fits in my pocket. It’s a bit more expensive and not quite so user friendly (you actually have to load things yourself or load in all the friendly websites you want) but I like it and i’m a dyed in the wool dead-tree book lover.

  84. 84.

    Ben Franklin

    @burnspbesq:

    How very Republican of you.

    You’re the King of Evasiveness, USC Lawyer Segretti Apologist.

    When your mother told you not to touch the hot stove, you couldn’t resist. It is a continual issue for you, isn’t it? Get some help, Masochist.

  85. 85.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    @Gin & Tonic: No. You can still carry around 400 books with you with the low end Kindle. I still read ‘book books’, but am so glad I have a Kindle when I travel (or when I’m reading outdoors in the sun). I also like having an iPad for reading in the dark when I’m traveling at night.

  87. 87.

    TheMightyTrowel

    I like the small screen – i just zoom in the text. PocketBook makes a 6, 7 and 9″ as well but the 360+ (teh model I bought) is designed to be compact

  89. 89.

    burnspbesq

    @Ben Franklin:

    If you knew anything at all about me, … Aw, never mind. I suppose I should consider it an honor to have my very own personal troll.

  91. 91.

    Canadian shield

    As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

    Letter to C.L. Moore (August 1936), quoted in “H.P. Lovecraft, a Life” by S.T. Joshi, p. 574

  92. 92.

    WereBear

    I use the Kindle app on my iPod touch, and my friend’s Kindle is even better: look at the higher end ones and if none of the extra features appeal to you, ,the low end one would work well.

    It’s authors like Caro who bring out another advantage of e-Readers: Master of the Senate is a small-dog-squishing size that made my wrists ache; and I nearly hurt my cat by almost dropping it on him. I can have the entire series on my touch and it doesn’t weigh one ounce more.

    I’m second to none in my love of books; Mr WereBear and I have a storage unit devoted to the volumes we just can’t part with… and won’t fit in our tiny apartment. But while I still love haunting the websites like Abe’s Books, I buy new ones from Amazon; I think they are incredible, opening the door for self-publishing, they give me a better deal than any other publisher, and I can afford new books in a way I can’t with hardbacks.

    Love books: yes. But I realize the whole “truck the trees, truck the paper, truck the books” is no longer the best use of resources.

    Caro rocks. Period. The first book had a chapter on rural electrification that made me cry. Beautiful, lyrical, passionate writer; I’ve read each of the volumes a dozen times.

  93. 93.

    Damian

    The LBJ biographies by Caro are fantastic and they have a lot to say about the current political morass we are in, especially the third book, Master of the Senate. On the one hand, you can tell Caro is sympathetic to the liberal lions in the Senate at this time, namely Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and Paul Douglas of Illinois. But you can also see that he almost has nothing but contempt for these same people because they don’t understand how to use or gain political power to achieve their goals. On the other hand you have LBJ who wants nothing more than power and wants power for its own sake. Here you can also tell that LBJ’s naked pursuit of power nauseates Caro, but then there is something of a grudging admiration for LBJ that when he finally has full power in the Senate, he pursues civil rights legislation. Perhaps you can cynically say that LBJ was eyeing a run for the presidency in 1960 and realized that if a Southern was going to be nominated and win, he had to show that he was not hostile to civil rights. But would you rather have somebody who does the right thing because of pure political ambition, or have somebody whose heart is in the right place, but is a bumbler when it comes to trying to actually do the right thing? Obviously those aren’t the only two choices out there, but if I have to pick one, give me the first every time.

    If we are going to be successful in pushing a liberal agenda we have to have people who are passionate about what they believe AND who are also masters of the political process. We can’t act like we are above getting our hands dirty. In the future, only the totebaggers will be poo-poohing the uncivilized way we went about getting our agenda enacted into law. I’ll take that over losing and getting golf claps from them for trying to do things the right way.

  95. 95.

    The Original Raven

    “I’m too sexy for this bank / Too sexy for this bank…”

    Croak!

    The news, frankly, is enough to make a sensible bird want to fly far, far away. The best to hope for is another four years of this?

  96. 96.

    The Original Raven

    @Damian: “We can’t act like we are above getting our hands dirty.”

    Yeah, half a million Americans dead in ‘nam, a million Vietnamese. Just gettin’ your hands dirty, and feedin’ the corvids.

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