Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Let there be snark.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

In my day, never was longer.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

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

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

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

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2012 / Building my own coffin

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  6. 6.

    YellowJournalism

    The audacity of having the employees build their fucking stage…sickening.

  7. 7.

    Violet

    Wow. That was powerful. Building your own coffin is an excellent comparison. More, more, more like this please.

  8. 8.

    MattR

    @Yutsano: With the justification that Romney only made $95 million out of the deal and not more than $100 million like the commercial claims.

  10. 10.

    Cassidy

    OT: anyone have a solution for fleas? The dogs are dying. I bathe them regularly, we’ve tried the liquids an pills. Florida is just bad this year.

  13. 13.

    shortstop

    @Cassidy: We once had such a bad infestation we had to give up and use a flea bomb. It works, but it’s SO bad for everyone, and you have to leave the house for hours, then come back and wash every dish in your cabinets (plus your cabinets), every surface of the house, etc. This was 17-18 years ago, so hopefully someone will have a safer and easier solution these days.

  16. 16.

    Violet

    @Cassidy: Diatomaceous earth kills fleas by cutting up their outsides and they dehydrate and die. Check before using it on pets to know how to use it. Also, don’t get the kind for pools as that has other stuff in it that’s toxic.

  17. 17.

    Cassidy

    Weve tried frontline and the cheap knock off from Walmart. We were having our husky take a pill but that isn’t working. We don’t seem to have a lot in the house; I grab a couple every now and then. When I bathe them I only find a small amount, about 5. But they’re still chewing the hell out of themselves. I was looking up feedin them garlic today, but the info on that seems sketchy.

  20. 20.

    Jennifer

    Also, too: I’ve heard from lots of folks that the fleas have become resistant to Frontline. You might try Advantage instead – they have not yet developed resistance to it.

  22. 22.

    andy

    Too bad they built a stage and not a gallows. And it’s funny how people like Mittens demand that their asses get kissed right to the end like that.

    A fucking stage.

  23. 23.

    Violet

    @Cassidy: Diatomaceous earth in the house, in the carpet, along baseboards, etc. Leave it for awhile, maybe 24 hours, then vacuum up. Use a mask when you sprinkle it out as inhaling it can be dangerous for your lungs. Eating it is not.

  25. 25.

    Cassidy

    Feell dumb saying this: any natural solutions? I feel like a shit dumping pesticide on my dogs. I’ll do it if it kills the fleas, but I don’t want to keep escalating our little war.

  26. 26.

    Violet

    Diatomaceous earth works when you sprinkle it in the yard too, but not when it gets wet. Don’t waste your money if you’ve got rain coming and wait until after the dew dries before you apply it.

  31. 31.

    Jennifer

    Back on topic: it’s a good ad, but I still want to see the one that lays out how much of Romney’s wealth came from looted pension funds, that the rest of us then ended up bailing out. Where’s the oppo research on that? If it hasn’t been done, then we deserve to lose, because I can’t imagine a more effective ad than one that says “$50 million (or $20 million, or whatever) of Mitt Romney’s fortune came from pension funds that Bain Capital looted when shutting down companies, and the rest of us picked up the tab so workers would get the retirement benefits they were legally entitled to collect. You helped pay for Mitt Romney’s car elevator in his $11 million California mansion and his wife’s fancy dancing horses with your taxes. Now Mitt Romney is promising to bring his expertise at helping himself to your money to the presidency.”

    Or something to similar effect. Something that draws the line between who lost and who won, and exactly what Romney “produced” that made him stinking rich.

  32. 32.

    Jennifer

    @Cassidy: If you’re concerned about pesticides, you really should look into the parasitic nematodes. It’s a species that only attacks fleas and flea eggs, and you don’t have to re-apply after rain.

  33. 33.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Cassidy: #9

    Fleas:

    Ohio seems to have some very resistant fleas this year. Apparently they like cats and dogs. Don’t know what’s happening.

    But I do the medications from the vet plus anti-itch spray, plus the occasional antihistamine, plus spraying my house with some nasty stuff, plus grooming with a comb.

    I can claim only moderate success.

  34. 34.

    Valdivia

    very powerful ad. I hope they put it on rotation heavily.
    Have you guys seen the piece about how many of the big money people on the left are not giving to this SuperPac because they feel it’s dirty to give to a SuperPac somehow? Can we please just for once not fight with our hands tied behind our backs?

  35. 35.

    Martin

    If Rmoney didn’t destroy all of those businesses he couldn’t have afforded his fancy Team USA olympic horses.

    Why does that man in Indiana hate horses? Why does he hate Team USA?

  36. 36.

    cat48

    @Valdivia:

    But, Valdivia, their Pony has not arrived & they’re too good to give to a Superpac. Sad.

    Also, the only way Mitt can win is to spend Obama Dry. They’re gleeful b/c he spent more last month than he raised.

  40. 40.

    jl

    Looks like a good commercial to me.

    The WsPo’s wooden dummy fact checker hair splitter will spend the summer choking on gnats and swallowing camels, seems to me.

    Shell games are rigged, and you lose if you accept the premises. The evolution of what we call today private equity firms started back before I paid much attention to this kind of stuff.

    But I do have vague memories of something called leveraged buyout firms. There was a a public controversy back in the 80s and 90s about whether leverage buyouts were productive enterprises or corporate schemes (or limited partnership versions of the same thing) that played shell games. Some rich bigshots take on huge amounts of debt and using that buy companies who were financially vulnerable in our system of capital allocation (even though many of them were perfectly profitable) and then using the borrowed money to play financial and legal liability shell games. The goal was to mine the victim, target, (sorry, I meant valuable acquisition) for the parts that would yield cash, while avoiding the liabilities.

    I remember a debate about whether leveraged buyouts was a clever way to increase the productivity of firms by injecting better management, or a way to privatize profits and socialize losses. That was back when you would hear actual attempts at reporting in the big media, and seems long ago.

    I have been trying to catch up, and doing some reading. The Wikipedia machine says that the term ‘private equity’ covers a wide range of firms: leveraged buyouts, venture capital and growth capital. The last two seem to do something useful for the most part, from what I have read so far. The leveraged buyout, that was the controversial business model.

    What did Bain capital do? Was it mainly venture capital? How many brave innovative entrepreneurial ventures did it risk money on? Was it mainly growth capital? How many established companies invited it in to reshape their business models?

    Or is Bain just one of the old leveraged buyout type companies, hiding under a nicer name?

    I say, full steam ahead. Good time to have the leveraged buyout debate again.

    And if Romney decided that leveraged buyouts were his professional life calling, that should part of the debate about whether his attitude and viewpoint is the better one for a president.

    Anyone have some info or links, let me know. I just started with ‘private equity’ on the Wiki and followed the links.

  41. 41.

    Shinobi

    I was seeing some comments by republicans on twitter yesterday about how if Obama was so opposed to “outsourcing” he should just abandon all our free trade acts. And how the democrats opposed free trade.

    Which just goes to show that the Republicans really don’t get it. It’s not that free trade is wrong. It’s that this guy didn’t care about american workers when he was ruining running businesses. Why would he start to care about them now? He sold out hundreds of americans just to make himself slightly more obscenely rich, and now he wants to run the country?

  42. 42.

    Marc

    @Violet: But the man is clearly not dead, so the analogy of building his own coffin is inflammatory and uncivil. We rate this ad Three Pinocchios!

    …what do you mean, there was an actual plant that actually closed? We’re in the business of ruling whether discourse is appropriate, not whether it’s true.

  44. 44.

    Valdivia

    @cat48:

    What cracks me out about them being gleeful is that Obama is spending all that money on his ground operation, while these guys are busy carpet bombing the air and not very much engaged with what happens on the ground.

  45. 45.

    jl

    @Shinobi:

    That is a good point, but I think more complicated than at first glance. Problem is that much of the recent so-called free trade acts are not about trade at all. There is usually a couple lines about tariffs or barriers to trade someplace in the agreement.

    But most of these recent agreements (CAFTA is an example) are bout expanding corporation’s rights, giving them quasi sovereign status, protecting any type of intellectual property that corporations own, and making it easier to appropriate intellectual capital than they do not currently own, and making leveraged buyout type shell games easier to perform on an international stage.

    They should be called ‘mystery meat trade agreements’ not ‘free trade agreements’.

    Or maybe they should be called the United State East India Company Modernization Act.

  46. 46.

    jl

    @Valdivia:

    If the GOP GOTV operation is mainly voter suppression and riling up their base, they just need to cover the polling places. And where the local government is corrupt enough, a few police actions for some obscure semi emergency or other in certain sorts of neighborhoods.

  47. 47.

    Valdivia

    @jl:

    I think they truly believe they don’t have to do any work on the ground, it’s the kind of Romney entitlement vibe I get aside from the tilt the balance of voters by repression tactics you mention. They think Obama is going to let them get away with it, as we see that’s not the case.

  48. 48.

    cat48

    @Valdivia:

    I read last winter that the Kochs were going to have a new techy info system w/wingnut’s locations & a gotv ground system that would cost $2B. That sounded unbelievable to me & I haven’t heard anymore about it. Now there are people campaining for Americans for Prosperity. Cain is doing 20 Seminars for them on “policy” which I can’t imagine. Don’t know. I’m going look more later.

  49. 49.

    cat48

    @jl:

    I read yesterday that Obama’s Election Atty has that covered. There’s 25 attorneys in the process checking polling places, etc. right now. No wonder Obama is broke!

  50. 50.

    Valdivia

    @cat48:

    yeah I remember something too. I take comfort in the fact that Kay once mentioned that outsorcing GOTV operations (Kerry did this in Ohio in 2004) was a total mess. Since they can’t coordinate with the campaign. I think registration drives, etc can be useful but on the day of it’s the campaign that needs to be on top of everything and if the Romney team is just thinking ads will do the trick, oh well better for us.

  51. 51.

    jl

    @Valdivia: Ha! That would be interesting if they think they can just blow through a couple of billion and ‘have someone’ do their election week GOTV for them. That would be good news too, I think.

  52. 52.

    gbear

    I took a look at some of the other ads that that pac has produced, and I just went to their site and donated $30. I know it’s not much given the millions that are being thrown around, but some of those ads they’ve produced are great, and it’s all I can afford.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    this ad is BRUTAL.

    BRUTAL.

    And, what it says about the fuckers at Bain…

    well, it says just about everything that people like me think is wrong with Willard, and why he should NEVER be President.

  60. 60.

    gbear

    @jl: Yep. Not a big Maher fan here either, but I can sure stand behind videos like the one at the top. I hope they get a shitload of views.

  63. 63.

    celticdragonchick

    Maybe the stage should have burned that night along with all the company buildings. It’s time for workers to start going old school. It was the only way they got shit changed back in the 19th century.

    Burn the place and/or dump as much nasty toxic shit you can find all over to make it an EPA issue superfund issue.

  64. 64.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    On the subject of fleas:

    When I was a kid, our cat was being eaten alive by fleas—they ate a pound of meat out of his back where he couldn’t reach, seriously. On a friend’s recommendation, we bought a Shell No-Pest Strip and hung it up, and the fleas deserted the house that day. We didn’t vacuum up their dead bodies, they just…left. Immediately.

    I’m sure whatever was in No-Pest Strips 45 years ago was banned or something, because I tried the same thing 20 years later and it didn’t work. So do I have anything to contribute to the discussion? No…except that there used to be something that worked!

  65. 65.

    becca

    @Cassidy: If your dogs hang out in a yard, treat the lawn. My vast experience with flea infestation leads me to the conclusion they can only be eradicated by bombing and treating everything and every place the dogs inhabit for any length of time.

    After that it’s a fairer fight.

Comments are closed.