Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

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

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

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

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Republicans in disarray!

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

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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Reader Interactions

95Comments

  4. 4.

    JWL

    I recently bit the bullet and now subscribe to the NYT. If the shot callers don’t cut a deal to the satisfaction of those employees with whom the paper is currently negotiating, it will be my last subscription, too.

  5. 5.

    droog

    Ha! I sent this to DougJ, too. Shrill minds shrill alike. Or is it mine? Am I reader A? Magnets do what now?

  6. 6.

    David Koch

    O.T

    Howard Kurtz is on CNN, right now, saying WaPo’s Romney bullying story is “a cheap hit”.

    HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

    This from the same guys who obsessed over Clinton smoking pot as a 20 yr old in college.

  7. 7.

    Roger Moore

    I don’t know which is more disturbing, that the NY Times is putting advertisements for a business like that on their web site, or that the ad is quoting what appears to be a NY Times review proclaiming them the best.

  8. 8.

    Steve

    “It’s nice to be liked, but it’s better by far to get paid” –Liz Phair

  10. 10.

    Emerald

    Ya know, as I learned from someone on this site, the NYT’s firewall is a cinch to beat.

    In the address line of every blocked article, you will find a “?” usually right after the “html” although not always. Highlight the ? and everything behind it and delete that, then reload.

    Poof. No firewall.

  11. 11.

    Suffern ACE

    I’m at a loss to figure out how the NYT did their rankings on sugar daddy fishing holes. How many were considered? Is rankings really their thing? That seems so Time Out New York or New York Magazine.

  12. 12.

    jibeaux

    @David Koch: Weird, you know what I think is a cheap hit? Intentionally guiding a visually impaired teacher into a door.

    I’m sorry, but these stories of cruelty tell you something about the man, no matter how long ago they were. Normal people’s regrettable high school moments typically involve cheap beer and poor character judgment.

  13. 13.

    Suffern ACE

    @jibeaux: Yep. You know, I know these things don’t matter, but the point of the profile was to show how Romney isn’t Mr. Stiff that he appears to be. Romney actually wants that “joker” out there because it is a negative traight for him. Every time they try to show what a practical joker he is, he doesn’t exactly come off like Alan Funt.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m pretty sure I just saw that ad at the top of one of the pages here at Balloon-Juice. I am not joking.

  19. 19.

    Violet

    Doesn’t that ad say more about the search habits of Reader A than the NYT’s ad policy?

    @Cain:
    Happy birthday! Hope you have a good one.

  21. 21.

    David Koch

    @Suffern ACE: that’s the point, it doesn’t matter, unless it’s a Democrat. Just two weeks ago, the media was feasting on the story that Obama had ate dog meat at age 6. Howard Kurtz didn’t come out with a big sad, wringing his hands and wagging his chastising finger at the media for focusing on an 45 year old incident.

  22. 22.

    gbear

    Why does anyone bother paying any attention at all to what non-entity Howard Kurtz has to say? He’s the perfect excuse to stop reading or watching. He’s a complete waste of time.

  23. 23.

    Roger Moore

    @jibeaux:

    Normal people’s regrettable high school moments typically involve cheap beer and poor character judgment.

    Or lack of contraception and unintended pregnancy, as exemplified by a certain former VP candidate’s daughter.

  24. 24.

    Mag

    @Roger Moore:

    The quote isn’t a direct quote from the NYT, but rather it is a paraphrase of a quote by Seeking Arrangement’s founder, Brandon Wade, that he made in the NYT article:

    Sugar babies outnumber daddies 10 to 1, Wade says, providing what one sugar daddy called “the best fishing hole I ever fished in.”

    NYT as sales is seemingly okay with this ad being misconstrued as something Times editorial is saying, when it is actually a ‘quote’ from the ad buyer, itself.

  25. 25.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    droog:

    Ha! I sent this to DougJ …

    Mnemosyne:

    I’m pretty sure I just saw that ad at the top of one of the pages here at Balloon-Juice. I am not joking.

    I have never gotten that ad.

    I want to go to the web sites you two are going to.

    .

  27. 27.

    David Koch

    Mittens will present the commencemnt address tomorrow at the religious right Liberty University.

    Obama will present the commencement address Monday at the women’s college, Barnard University.

    the difference couldn’t be more stark

  28. 28.

    Suffern ACE

    @Mag: “Eligible for the New York Times Best Sellers List for 20 months.” –

    For $25, they’ll sell you that blurb.

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Sweet jumping jesus

    I just saw Paul Broun, after proposing to gut the voting rights act, apologize to John Lewis if “I hurt his feelings” or “if he got angry”. I wish I hadn’t seen it. I am ready to sign the petition to call on that meteor.

  30. 30.

    jwb

    @David Koch: Does Obama have a mole in Romney’s scheduling office?

    I’m sure the $5 billion dollar ad buys will help keep the election close, but if we’re starting from here and Rmoneybot and his team growing increasingly desperate, I can only imagine what level of stupid we’re going to hit by August.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    I took a look at Seeking Arrangement’s web site, and it’s exactly what it seems to be. Kind of déclassé for the New York Times, yeah; but a buck in ad income from Seeking Arrangement is as good as a buck from IBM, right? (I wonder if Reader A is a prospective Sugar Daddy/Momma, or more of a Sugar Baby.)

    @Cain:
    Selamat harijadi!

    @Suffern ACE:
    School Bully Mitt seems quite unlike Alan Funt, whose Candid Camera pranks never involved cruelty or violence to the unwitting butt of the joke. And it does seem of a piece with Presidential Candidate Mitt, doesn’t it: the serial failures of empathy, the Uncanny Valley problem, the lies and flip-flops, the dismissiveness toward other people’s concerns, the bone-deep sense of entitlement? It’s no low blow to bring up Mitt’s school days; not when he’s still like that in ways that show him to be unfit for the Presidency.

  32. 32.

    General Stuck

    OT

    House wingnuts     want to keep you in the dark to what they are up to

    House Votes to Slash Political Science Funding

    Wonder why?

    “funds many valuable data collection efforts including the National Election Studies. No other program was singled out like this.”

    Getting warmer

    Insider Higher Ed points out that several of the projects that Flake singled out “touch on issues such as whether policy makers do what citizens want

    Wolverines!!

    Every single thing these people do is ideological. They probably get up in the morning and read a chapter of Ayn Rand, just to be able to take a dump.

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @Mag:

    NYT as sales is seemingly okay with this ad being misconstrued as something Times editorial is saying, when it is actually a ‘quote’ from the ad buyer, itself.

    That’s why I was careful to say that it appears to be a quote from the Times, not that it actually is a quote from them. Maybe I should take comfort that this proves the ad sales department is independent from the editorial department, except I have no confidence at all that the reverse is true.

  35. 35.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    OT: Rev. Al show just started with Al talking in front of a background that has a pic of Rmoney and the words RUNNING WITH SCISSORS superimposed over it.

    Made me lol!

  37. 37.

    JPL

    Baud last night suggested Don’t cut my hair bro…bumper stickers..
    I think Beauticians for Romney would work also…

  39. 39.

    mai naem

    @Cain: Happy Birday and Many Happy Returns

    @gbear: I am pretty sure that Howie’s married to some Republican operative(vaguely remember that from either Clinton or Bush/Gore days.)

    @jibeaux: For me, this story has really really turned off Romney. Granted I would vote for Obama even if they found a live boy or a dead girl in his bed, but that WaPo story shows just a really downright meanness to Romney. He did this to people who he knew. He lived with some of these people as a boarder. This isn’t some anonymous group of people you laid off because you were going to make money from laying them off. He pulled this crap just because he could. There was nothing to be gained from it. And then he claims not to remember it. I can’t believe this story is just being shook off as some high school prank. The blind teacher I might have bought in grade school, like under 10 yrs old. But as a high school student, that isn’t a prank, that’s just being a dick. I hope the WP is working on stories from his sojourn in France because I bet the same kind of stuff is going to come from there.

  40. 40.

    eemom

    @David Koch:

    At my gym yesterday, where they insist on shoving Fox News in my face on two out of the five large screen teevees, I saw the headline, “Gender Gap Among Obama Supporters”, which struck me as a fairly hilarious spin on Mitt’s woman problem.

  41. 41.

    Marc

    How hilarious is it that the ad for “The #1 Sugar Daddy Fishing Hole” appears right above a story about Obama’s evolution on same-sex marriage? It’s like a pre-rebuttal of the first comment-section moron who goes off about protecting the sacred nature of heterosexual marriage.

  43. 43.

    Hill Dweller

    @eemom: Willard is an inveterate liar. The problem is getting the media to actually acknowledge it.

  46. 46.

    Randy P

    @eemom: There is a gender gap. Every time I see a breakdown by gender, I see that for some unfathomable reason, Romney has a majority of my gender. How is that possible? I know that most of us are idiots, but I didn’t think we were idiots.

    I get embarrassed on behalf of my fellow males every time I see one of those polls.

  47. 47.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Randy P:

    I get embarrassed on behalf of my fellow males every time I see one of those polls.

    __
    I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a plurality of adult males are assholes. It explains a lot.

  48. 48.

    WereBear

    @Randy P: I get embarrassed on behalf of my fellow males every time I see one of those polls.

    I’m sure one of these days, the Republicans will lay men off from their union job, steal their pension, and stick a medical device up their tuchis.

    See the turnaround then!

  49. 49.

    Cassidy

    Was watching Faux News today (couldn’t help it; only thing on) and was astounded at how the some turs was claiming the Romney story needed more scrutiny then switched to Elizabeth Warren being a liar. I truly despise these people.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @JGabriel:

    I think it popped up in the thread about the pedophile scandal in the Hasid community in New York. In which case, eeeewwwwww.

  52. 52.

    Bago

    I can’t view source on my iPad, but most likely they are using the Doubleclick ad engine, and the tracking cookie is being used to modulate the marketing segment of the query string, and the ad engine will reply appropriately, serving up an ad weighted to all of the vectors, that your request provides. /evil

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amir Khalid:

    I actually saw something on one of those prank shows that restored my faith in humanity. It was when Jamie Kennedy had his prank show, and the prank was that they pretended that an employee of a boat tour in Florida fell off the boat and was being attacked by an alligator.

    They had to physically restrain one of the tourists to prevent him from jumping into the water and trying to save the guy being “attacked.”

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @mai naem:

    I am pretty sure that Howie’s married to some Republican operative(vaguely remember that from either Clinton or Bush/Gore days.)

    Good memory! According to Wikipedia,

    Kurtz married Sheri Annis in May, 2003. Annis, a media consultant and political commentator, served as campaign spokesperson for Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and has played major roles in various conservative initiatives, including California’s Proposition 227 and Proposition 209.[2]

  57. 57.

    MikeJ

    @Cain:

    Ok.. who will be the first to wish me happy birthday? ?!

    You are Richard Feynman and I claim my five pounds.

  60. 60.

    Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ

    “Howie Kurtz, the Villager’s Villager.”

    He’s more like the Press Corpse’s Corpse.

  64. 64.

    r€nato

    @lamh35: *HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*

    I thought it would take til Monday.

  65. 65.

    General Stuck

    @lamh35:

    Romney has no where to go but further right. It has not been long enough for the republicans to be out of the WH, to sublimate their urges for purity, enough to let Romney tack toward the middle. They already neither trust nor like him, and the downside to having a formidable messaging apparatus, is that it tends toward the ideological to keep their pols in line. Romney has to fear the RINO label to get the wingnuts, especially the religious wingnuts, to work and go vote for him, when their Christianist tendencies are already piqued toward abhorrence for the Mormon. He has no chance without a strong evangelical effort to get him elected.

  66. 66.

    JPL

    @lamh35: Thanks… I liked this statement about the occupy group
    On another topic, Romney said that he thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters who targeted the Bank of America in Charlotte this week are too young to understand the economy or what banks do. Unfortunately, the perfect follow up would be J.P. Morgan…

  67. 67.

    Tonal Crow

    @jibeaux: And further on Romney, the conditional non-apology shows that the Romney who’s running for President won’t assume responsibility for his actions, From the NYT article:

    “…if I hurt anyone…I would be very sorry for it and apologize for it.

    Not “I *am* very sorry that I inflicted this pain on my classmate. I should have apologized to him long ago, when it could still have made a difference. That I did not is my failure, and mine alone.”

    Romney’s a liar, bullshitter, and deceiver that’s as slippery as they come.

  68. 68.

    Steeplejack

    @mai naem:

    Kurtz’s wife:

    Sheri Annis is a media consultant and political commentator whose clients range from California to Washington, D.C. She was the spokeswoman for Arnold Schwarzenegger during his first political campaign. She was chief spokeswoman for California’s Proposition 227, the successful measure to eliminate California’s failed bilingual education programs. In addition, she played a major role in California’s Proposition 209 campaign, which eliminated race and gender-based preferences in government hiring, contracting and education. Her early career began in the California think tank world.
    __
    As president of Fourth Estate Strategies, she provides media training and communications strategy for high-level executives, academics and prominent think tanks. Her professional interests also include free market advocacy, race and gender issues, and political analysis.

  70. 70.

    Alison

    @lamh35: For fuck’s sake. “Whoops, I almost came close to having the tiniest shred of decency on a single topic. Best nip that shit in the bud!!”

    This guy, I swear.

  72. 72.

    PeakVT

    I can’t remember if there were any stories about Bush like this. Romney and Bush strike me as pretty similar, except for their specific religion and that Romney was actually “successful” as a businessman.

  73. 73.

    r€nato

    @JPL: my takeaway from that quote was that it’s a bunch of condescending shit that is not exactly going to win him any votes from the under 30 crowd. I think they have a pretty good idea what the banks did and have done to us, and the notion that there’s something ignorant about protesting BofA – the worst of the big banks – proves yet again how completely out-of-touch Rmoney is.

  74. 74.

    Cassidy

    @PeakVT: Honestly, I don’t see a lot of similarities beyond surface stuff. I think Bush started out as the kid who just wanted to sit home and play video games the rat of his life, but didn’t because he was obligated to do something. OTOH, we owe Mitt, at least in his mind. I think the Harold and Khumar “Bush” would have been his ideal life.

  75. 75.

    Redshift

    @r€nato:
    And then there’s this:

    “I understand — it’s a very understandable sentiment if you don’t find a job, and you can’t see rising incomes. You’re going to be angry and looking at someone to blame. But the people to blame and the person to blame is the president and the old school liberals that have not gotten this economy turned around.”

    These kids just aren’t smart enough to figure out they should blame the people I want them to! And that isn’t at all blatantly self-serving!

    Gee, Mitt, I wonder who set the economy in a direction where it needed to be “turned around”? Somehow I don’t think the kids are going to be very impressed at your telling them they shouldn’t be mad at the people who crashed the economy, just at the people who haven’t fixed it fast enough.

  76. 76.

    JGabriel

    __
    __
    Mnemosyne:

    I think it popped up in the thread about the pedophile scandal in the Hasid community in New York. In which case, eeeewwwwww.

    Yikes. Reminds me of the time I saw local story about a pedophile scandal with a link to “See Related Photo Galleries.”

    Eww. No. Do not want to see.

    .

  77. 77.

    JGabriel

    via Redshift:

    But the people to blame and the person to blame is the president and the old school liberals that have not gotten this economy turned around.

    Shorter Conservatives: It’s the Democrats fault for not cleaning up our mess fast enough while we kept flinging shit at them!

    .

  79. 79.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    OT: A “gay” commenter at Redstate speaks out!

    I’m for civil unions as a rule. I don’t feel that I am oppressed because if I wanted to get married, I can marry a woman at anytime. Why should we as members of the gay community try to be like heterosexual couples? We have our own culture, with it’s own social and sexual mores. Why not have our own unique institution exclusive to our community? That is the question I would love to ask.

    Sounds reasonable. ;)

  80. 80.

    Mnemosyne

    @PeakVT:

    There were a few hazing stories from college about Bush, but nothing this nasty. I’m guessing that W was more interested in sneaking drinks behind the dorm when he was at Andover.

  82. 82.

    chopper

    @lamh35:

    love. it.

    obama stuck his neck out on the gay marriage issue from an electability standpoint. of course mittens, as usual, takes a swing and accidentally punches himself in the junk.

  83. 83.

    Alison

    @Mnemosyne: Not that I’d be shocked to be wrong, but W strikes me as the type to do something dumb like short-sheet your bed or something.

    Of course, before hearing this, I didn’t think Romney was this kind of twisted monster, so who knows. I am getting so sick of people referring to it as a “prank”. It was a fucking assault, for which he should have been arrested. You know, if he wasn’t some uber-privileged wanker. Sigh.

  86. 86.

    eemom

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Well, I guess that answers the perennial question of how a gay person could be stupid enough to vote republican.

    I heard the CLANK! sound from the impact!

    lolz

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    @Roger Moore:

    Or lack of contraception and unintended pregnancy, as exemplified by a certain former VP candidate’s daughter.

    No, I’m pretty sure Sarah’s born-six-months-after-the-‘elopment’ eldest was a boy.

    Oh — you meant Bristol? Well, you know what they say: Dysfunctional parents pass down their crappy lifestyle choices…

  89. 89.

    Suffern ACE

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Not going to laugh at him too much though. Only to tell him that those girl friends of his who say “I’d totally go out with you if you weren’t gay” are very likely relieved that you don’t ask them out. With the exception of the “if I wanted to get married” part, the rest is me around the age of 25, living in a place with lots of gay men and places to cater to them, but without a boyfriend or an understanding that when people in the opposition SAY they don’t want marriage, they don’t exactly show up and join the gay families adoption rights group and civil unions lobby league.

  91. 91.

    Liberty60

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:
    I recall a while back that there was a raging debate within the gay community about whether pressing for marriage equality was a way of being co-opted by the straight world, and there was a faction that prized their outlaw sexual status and wanted nothing to do with conforming to traditional family roles etc and so on.

    So far as I can tell from my gay friends, that faction doesn’t have much influence anymore. But maybe they just went underground into Wingnutopia.

    Somehow the mental image of Erick Fanboy of Santorum bonding with the outre leather crowd beings a smile to my face.

  92. 92.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Suffern ACE:

    It just sounds so strange hearing someone who professes being gay saying that his solution for the marriage problem is solved by marrying a woman. Bi? Sure, makes sense. Gay? ??!!

    @Liberty60:

    I could see a faction feeling that way but while I’m not gay, I would think that acceptance and assimilation into society would be the best solution.

    Sounds like he’s a gay libertarian. ;p

  93. 93.

    Concerned Citizen

    @lamh35: I’d want blood. It’s unbelievable how poor the press has become. It’s unreal that this is not an outrage. The media is a right wing institution. UGH.

  94. 94.

    Suffern ACE

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Nah. It’s a gay man whose listened to too much Rush, if he isn’t a plant. It’s one of the standard lines of “argument” from the right for the past few years. We’re not harmed because we can get married any time we want…to someone of the opposite sex (dahduhduh smash). After a few years you can write this stuff yourself.

  95. 95.

    droog

    @JGabriel:

    I have never gotten that ad.
    I want to go to the web sites you two are going to

    I don’t have that kind of money!

    I can only guess I got the ad from reading this blog which is where I first came this topic via DougJ’s recent links.

    Does seekingarrangement work outside the USA? One thing to note is that I’m not in the USA. Maybe the ad software is offering sponsors that can sell their services abroad. It would be of little use for the NYT to offer me Barns&Nobles ads since there aren’t any in this country. Most dating sites are international so I guess SA is offered ahead of other sponsors.

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