Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

He really is that stupid.

“But what about the lurkers?”

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

Trump should be leading, not lying.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Open Thread

by | 89 Comments

This post is in: 

I’m not even sure I’m allowed to post open thread…. But well, I don’t follow rules well regardless.

Here is my dog. Admit he’s cute.

Also, feel free to follow my twitter feed @bernardfinel where I am currently talking Webster report with national treasure Marcy Wheeler @emptywheel.

UPDATE: Hmm, dog pic won’t post. Use thread to comment of my lack of technical skills.

UPDATE 2: Dog

20120721-153700.jpg

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  2. 2.

    West of the Cascades

    The imaginary dog IS cute, in my imagination. Or is this some sort of meta-joke about Romney withholding his tax returns?

  6. 6.

    Josie

    Hard to judge the dog’s cuteness. Don’t know you well enough to take your word for it.

  8. 8.

    Comrade Mary

    He had a dog before. He showed a picture. Maybe there is no dog. Maybe we’ve been had.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    Here is my dog. Admit he’s cute.

    Your dog is adorable. How many fingers am I holding up?

  12. 12.

    jimPortlandOR

    Bernard did a great job of training his dog to not be seen, nor heard.

    It does pose a problem of tripping over the poor dog while walking through the house.

  13. 13.

    robertdsc-iPhone 4

    I forgot to mention in Betty’s thread that the name Dorito cracks me up.

  16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    Congrats to the US under-19 men’s lacrosse team, which won the world championship today with a 10-8 win over Canada.

    It was great to see the lax community get behind the Iroquois Nationals, who had a great run, beating the US in pool play and finishing third in the tournament. It is, after all, their game, and their gift to us.

  20. 20.

    Randy P

    A little geekiness. I peeked into your HTML (sorry if that’s a little too personal) and found this where the link to the dog was probably intended to be:

    webkit-fake-url://56DF9F3D-E8D6-49F9-BB1C-945029735910/imagejpeg

    I’m reasonably sure that something beginning with “webkit-fake-url” is just a placeholder. Check your hyperlink.

  23. 23.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: True dat, and here’s my baby twins, who are now twice that size but evading camera capture. I have Mr. Q instructed to keep his ready at hand whilst I’m at the office. Lest they get too big to cuddle.

    Apologies to all who’ve had to look at them before, but they’re so cute when they’re wee. I’m off giggling at the twitter rules linked in Dorito’s thread.

  25. 25.

    Amir Khalid

    But seriously, maybe you could post the picture of your no doubt very handsome dog.

  34. 34.

    Gex

    Trying to figure out why my girlfriend thinks her new buddy is such a great guy. He both agrees that we should raise taxes to buy the Vikings a new stadium AND that jobless people should not be allowed to smoke cigarettes or drink a beer ever. He did ask for extra credit as a straight white Christian guy because, hey, he doesn’t hate gay, brown, atheist, women. So therefore I am supposed to just grant him that he is right that poor people should just huddle in corners, be miserable, and die. Just not too fast or they don’t provide downward pressure on wages and inflation and then our spending power diminishes. Die slow, assholes!

    So that’s her new best buddy. Great guy.

    ETA: He IS really nice to people who he doesn’t begrudge existence to.

  37. 37.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    ROFLMAO

    I was going to observe that to not have technical skills is to be not in danger of being labeled a nerd, or something like that.

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    This reminds me of something that was quite popular in World of Warcraft about two years ago.

    “If Arthas’ mount is Invincible, how come we can see it?”

  40. 40.

    dance around in your bones

    Is this dog in a box by any chance? How will we know if it is alive or dead?

    ETA: Naturally, too late by several posts. Damn, this is a tough crowd.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    Now the front paqe is funked up (recent posts and comments at the bottom). Bernard, are you twiddling the Balloon Juice dials? This just started when you came on the scene.

  44. 44.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jwb: I think she got banned and has not found a new incarnation. Or the police finally took her into custody. Sometimes, I miss the crazy little weirdo.

  45. 45.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    No. We’ve had entire discussions of the Middle East without my being informed that Muslims are better than Christians because they can’t be proselytized because Muslims are better than Christians. I haven’t heard evolution misrepresented or made up jargon presented as if they were scientific theories in ages. I threw away my blood pressure medication. For Celestia’s sake, don’t release the Kraken!

  46. 46.

    DMN

    “When students are taught they are no different from animals, they act like it.”
    Rick Warren, yesterday.

  50. 50.

    BGinCHI

    Dog pic now posted.

    It’s a nice dog, but I don’t know that it was worth the build-up.

    Now, if it was juggling….

  55. 55.

    jwb

    @Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for the info. I miss her sometimes as well, as she was always one of the more entertaining trolls. But she really did not know when to stop.

  60. 60.

    wrb

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    We’ve had entire discussions of the Middle East without my being informed that Muslims are better than Christians because they can’t be proselytized because Muslims are better than Christians. I haven’t heard evolution misrepresented or made up jargon presented as if they were scientific theories in ages. I threw away my blood pressure medication.

    Yes, that certain magic is gone.

  64. 64.

    dance around in your bones

    I think that folks get nostalgic about certain trolls until they come back, at which point you remember why you loathed them so much.

    I must say m_c coined a few good words, tho.

    BOB was just quirky/weird and sometimes really racist.

    mclaren vacillates between once in a while spot on but most of the time wall of text tl;dr.

    I should shut up now, I guess.

    Oh wait – who misses the UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH dude?

  66. 66.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @dance around in your bones:
    Mclaren’s sentiments are fine and liberal, he/she/it just accepts whatever the craziest, most awful sounding rumor is that’s going around as true. Garbage in, garbage out. If you accept that we’re stuck in ‘3-4 permanent, unwinnable wars’ then the rant based around that made-up fact was reasonable.

  69. 69.

    Yutsano

    PUPPEH!!
    @dance around in your bones: My favourite thing about m_c was how she just couldn’t tolerate a non-Muslim actually knowing a wee bit about the Middle East and Islam. Then she’d get even more incorrect. It was kinda fun.

  71. 71.

    jwb

    @dance around in your bones: I’ve noticed a lack of strong trolling in these parts recently. Makes me wonder if the wingnut machine is low on cash or something and so not paying for the trolling. CAZ made an appearance last night, but in general not as much as usual. Maybe conservatives have reallocated resources to buying twitter followers for Mittbot.

  72. 72.

    dance around in your bones

    @Yutsano:

    Oh Holy Ramen, I know. Nothing like the fervor of a convert.

    ETA: excuse-moi!! A “revert” !

  74. 74.

    Violet

    Your dog is cute. He looks quite serene. I imagine he’s not quite as serene if someone walks through that door.

  77. 77.

    jwb

    Something’s afoot in the Murdoch empire.

    Companies House filings show that Mr Murdoch stepped down from the boards of the NI Group, Times Newspaper Holdings and News Corp Investments in the UK last week. He also quit a number of News Corp’s US boards, the details of which have yet to be disclosed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
    __
    News Corporation played down the significance of the resignations as “nothing more than a corporate housecleaning exercise prior to the company split”.
    __
    The media giant took a similar line when James Murdoch resigned a string of directorships at News International last November, pouring cold water on suggestions that he was walking away from the UK newspaper arm. He quit as chairman three months later.

  78. 78.

    dance around in your bones

    @jwb:

    Yeah, I’ve been kinda hungry for pie lately.

    It’s weird, there are certain people that I simply have to pie for my own sanity and others that I just automatically skip over when I see their names – like CAZ. I just scroll on by when I see his(her/it’s) name but have never felt the urge to pie him(her/it).

  79. 79.

    Comrade Mary

    DOG! Very cute, indeed. Also, dignified, so he obviously doesn’t belong here. Shoo, noble beast! Shoo!

  81. 81.

    Jebediah

    @Yutsano:
    I think my “favorite” thing was when she would take the time to explicitly tell someone “I am calling you stupid” or sme variation thereof.
    The endless jargon/acronymia was something, too. IMO it was unparodizable.

  82. 82.

    dance around in your bones

    @jwb:

    I know….despite his invaluable contribution to blog societystan, he is scarce.

    BTW, if you have any cool pie filter text you can submit it here.

    However, I note the last submission was in 2011, so perhaps I am sadly behind the times. Or cleek is sick of us.

  85. 85.

    JGabriel

    Dog looks frowny and authoritarian, as if, looking upon you, he thinks you’re simultaneously beneath his notice and a danger to whatever he’s guarding.

    But in a cute way.

    .

  87. 87.

    Jebediah

    Lovely dog, too, by the way. I tried to edit my earlier comment to say so but FYWP et it. I am glad you let him take off his Cloak of Invisibility.

  88. 88.

    red dog

    That pale dog in the doorway is the ghost of trolls past. I wonder if that doggy smell is all that’s left?

  89. 89.

    maya

    Labs are the tops. yellow ones score extra points. Chocolate labs are more expensive, but, I had a white chocolate lab once and he was free. Best dog ever.

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