Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

When we show up, we win.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

When I was faster i was always behind.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

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

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

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

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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73Comments

  2. 2.

    Linda Featheringill

    Nobody’s business is my first response. [This assumes that I’m not actually running around and feeling people up.]

    And who wants to discuss sexual fantasies with those clowns at Fox News?

  6. 6.

    Schlemizel

    I much prefer the English term “naughty bits”. Its just so much more poetic – plus it somehow feels dirtier!

    That said I think the real dividing line is how many times a day you actually touch other peoples naughty bits, or at least try to touch them. Simply thinking about touching someone else’s naughty bits is like “sinning in my heart”, a crime against nobody.

  8. 8.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Southern Beale: I think electronic voting machines is actually an industry that should be run by the government, if at all. I’ll be damned if I want shady private companies determining the vote. (Realizing, of course, that there’s no simple answer to the conspiracy theories such a system would raise)

  9. 9.

    Schlemizel

    @Linda Featheringill:

    Ah, Linda? I have a BillO on line two for you, something about a falafel.

    Sorry about that, had to go that way – hope you have some brain bleach to get that stain out. 8-{D

  13. 13.

    BGK

    I’m no fan of our kinda-sorta tin-pot sheriff (though he’s leagues better than the two previous head-cases), so I was wondering why in hell the departmental helicopter was hovering what seemed like about five feet outside my office window. It headed for the athletic field at the elementary school across the road, where I noticed what looked like most of the school sitting in the stands. It flew a backwards figure-eight around the field, then touched down on the fifty yard line. When the rotors stopped spinning, the teachers led the kids across the field, and the two crewmen are showing the kids around. As one might expect, the kids are going bananas.

    Given that the athletic field is surrounded by trees, light towers, and high-voltage power lines, that was quite the bad-ass display of rotary-wing piloting.

  15. 15.

    Schlemizel

    @Southern Beale:

    Years ago I had a neighbor who claimed to be recovering Mormon. He was at that time a born-again evangelical. Some of the things he talked about Mormonism seemed real and indicative of the bizarre rituals and beliefs that are odd to any non-believer (say the ritualistic eating the flesh and drinking the blood of your founder might appear odd to someone outside the cult). A lot of what he said was more just the pure hate that the fundies have for the Mormons.

    But one thing he hit on a lot was that the church was really a giant criminal operation & the higher ups had to “wet their beaks” in all the underlings profits just like the mob. He said the ruling class (his term) could and would direct capital into projects that might lose money if it made some other business more profitable or had some long-term benefit to their overall enterprise.

    I wonder if that was less fundie propaganda and more actual reality?

  16. 16.

    cmorenc

    @Schlemizel:

    Simply thinking about touching someone else’s naughty bits is like “sinning in my heart”, a crime against nobody.

    The extent to which this is true (or even deliciously, productively true) or false (or even dangerously, offensively false) is the extent to which particular others (especially those who are the target of your thoughts) are able to read from your eyes and body language that you’re thinking about another’s “naughty bits”. Thoughts like these in the right situation can get you laid. Thoughts like these truly kept purely to yourself can be delightful or frustrating. Thoughts like these in the wrong situation can get you shunned as an offensive lech.

    You do have to be a bit careful, or um…prudent when and how you think about other people’s bits for it to be harmless fun to your personal well-being, as well as your prospects for actually having consensual sex with another as opposed to merely thinking about it.

  17. 17.

    Schlemizel

    @Wag:

    I want to make some yellow wrist bands that say “DOPESTRONG” in honor of the events.

    Sadly, the Mrs. was a huge fan & refused to believe the stories. I was not allowed to even joke about it around the house. She is deeply hurt by his actions and has to admit she was taken in by this scum. Hope he invested wisely cuz the money hose has been turned off for him now.

  18. 18.

    Neddie Jingo

    “I think about touching other people’s private parts four times a day, Megyn: at 9 AM, 2:30 PM, 7:23 PM, and at midnight precisely. Then I repress those thoughts and move on to more healthy subject matter such as transubstantiation and the mysteries of the Trinity.”

    “Thank you, Mr. Douthat. Now on to other matters: How often do you touch your own genitals?”

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    @Schlemizel:

    I want to make some yellow wrist bands that say “DOPESTRONG” in honor of the events.

    I’m told that ‘Liestrong’ wrist bands are available for purchase.

  22. 22.

    Z. Mulls

    I am at the point where I want Obama to be the one that brings up Bengazi, and want him to go on the offensive.

    Now that there are news reports and CIA reports that support the cautious “changing story” (reports were conflicting and murky and they put out the best information they had at the time, carefully qualifying), and Issa has endangered the lives of civilians by releasing unredacted named, there’s a case to be made against Romney and the Republicans.

    Romney and the Rs are reckless and too quick to jump to conclusions. Obama is patient, careful and waits to get all the facts before plotting out strategy. He can tie Romney’s leap in front of the camera’s, his debate flub and Issa’s egregious lapse of judgement all together.

  24. 24.

    Raven

    @BGK: About 20 years ago there was a fire in a warehouse-condo renovation site in Atlanta. There was a big crave on top of the building and a guy was trapped. A chopper came in and hovered and a fireman hoisted down and save the guy. A news reporter was heaping praise on the pilot, an Nam rotor head, and the guy kind of laughed and said “hovering over a building with no one shooting at you is no big deal”!

    ooo, film at 11
    youtube.com/watch?v=ZR0pi07FIeo

  25. 25.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    My middle son had a robotics competition this weekend. For all of you about my age – 42 – get a load of this: I had to wear earplugs, and not for the robots. Three of the schools had kids from their bands (lots of percussion, some brass and woodwinds), two of the schools had cheering sections, and there were cheerleaders.

  27. 27.

    Wag

    @Schlemizel:

    I like the idea of a dopestrong bracelet. My favorite bike jersey these days is black and says Liveclean running vertically down the front, in opposition to the Livestrong jerseys where the text runs across the front

    Too bad about your wife and her inability to joke about this for so long. In my experience, the fiercest defenders are often those with the most fiercely denied doubts. Hopefully she will accept the Armstrong was just another hero with feet of clay.

  29. 29.

    Ash Can

    @BGK: This little story was an excellent antidote to the press perfidy of this and the previous thread. Having helped chaperone grade-school outings such as this, I can easily imagine the energy and excitement of all the kids watching the flight and getting to look at a helicopter up close. The kids will never forget it, and there could even be a budding ace pilot or two among that throng. Those were a few local tax dollars well spent. :)

  32. 32.

    mai naem

    Chuck Todd is becoming quite insufferable. Dan Senor has a very punchable face. I think I am going to rate Republicans and Pundits on punchability.

    Also too, Lindsay Graham probably touches himself quite a bit being that he’s from South Carolina and gay and unmarried. Also too, double wetsuits and dildos.

  33. 33.

    cmorenc

    @Schlemizel:

    Years ago I had a neighbor who claimed to be recovering Mormon. He was at that time a born-again evangelical. Some of the things he talked about Mormonism seemed real and indicative of the bizarre rituals and beliefs that are odd to any non-believer (say the ritualistic eating the flesh and drinking the blood of your founder might appear odd to someone outside the cult). A lot of what he said was more just the pure hate that the fundies have for the Mormons.
    But one thing he hit on a lot was that the church was really a giant criminal operation & the higher ups had to “wet their beaks” in all the underlings profits just like the mob. He said the ruling class (his term) could and would direct capital into projects that might lose money if it made some other business more profitable or had some long-term benefit to their overall enterprise.

    This view of the LDS church as simply a cult with bizarre beliefs and a giant criminal business operation is a wild caricature that misses the more important aspects of its nature. OK, some of the LDS church’s fundamental beliefs are on the bizarre side, in part because the church’s founder Joseph Smith was a charismatic charlatan who managed to convince followers to believe in a wildly improbable and counter-historical fairy tale about golden tablets only he could read through a hat with seer stones and a lost tribe of Israel who by God’s direction migrated on a ship from the Middle East to America but eventually got wiped out by other heretical tribes. And some of the church’s theology only gets more far-out from there, but I digress.

    As to the church as enterprise, the best example is the church’s investment in the new City Creek Mall in downtown Salt Lake City, near Temple Square. Mormons do tend to do business with other Mormons in Mormon-dominated areas, though this is only different in degree rather than kind to the way Protestant church membership in small southern towns tends to foster an interconnected business network; the difference is that local Baptist or Methodist churches don’t get directly involved with certain business enterprises to the extent the LDS church does. But it’s not a criminal or predatory enterprise in the sense your friend claimed it is.

    The biggest influence the LDS church has is the tight control of the social morays of its adherents, but this too is only different in degrees, not really kind, to the way fundamentalist Christian churches exert strong influence over members. One of the hardest things for folks who haven’t spent considerable time in Salt Lake City is that it is not at all an oppressive place for non-Mormons to live, thought this is in part because the city is now 50% populated by relatively secular non-Mormons and has a very lively, cosmopolitan civic and cultural life, and the LDS Church itself has lightened up a bit on some of the drinking laws, etc that formerly inhibited non-Mormons from coming.

    Among the LDS Church’s strongest tenets is that they WANT to positively attract others to join them and have mastered the art of presenting an invitingly comforting, welcoming, attractive image of themselves in a way that other actively proselytizing sects such as Jehovah’s Witnesses get so badly wrong. The LDS Church could never convince me to join them; I could never buy into their theological belief-set or conservative social mores, but I do understand why it’s attractive. They have indeed succeeded in making what was originally a rather forbiddingly hostile landscape into one of the most attractive places in the U.S. to live in Salt Lake City, even for non-Mormons. When you’re in SLC, it’s easy to forget just how doggone far you are from the nearest substantial city outside the Wasatch Front; Denver is over 400 miles away to the east, Reno over 500 miles away to the west, Las Vegas nearly 400 miles to the southwest.

  34. 34.

    Original Lee

    I am at the point of wanting to punch undecided voters in the neck. CNN interviewed six undecided voters, three of whom said they had voted for Obama in 2008.

    One of them worked in a frigging food bank and was on Medicaid for her health issues, and was so disappointed that the hopey-changey thing hadn’t magically fixed everything that she couldn’t decide whether or not to vote for Obama again. Gah!

    One of them was a 25-year-old scion of a well-to-do family (judging from the size of his parents’ house). He was working three part-time jobs and living in his parents’ basement and just couldn’t figure out which candidate would be likely to give him a real, well-compensated full-time job.j Grrr.

    One of them was a 50-ish lady on medical retirement, going on and on about Medicaid cuts as if they were Obama’s fault and praising Romney’s family values. UFB.

    Etc. If I try to remember any more of them, I’ll bust a gasket, these people are so fucking stupid.

  36. 36.

    BGK

    @Ash Can: As the field is about 250 feet away, I can clearly hear the kids shrieking, even over traffic noise and through double-pane glass.

    I’ll admit, even at the risk of seeming like a totally low-rent scrounge, that my attention is held rather more by the parade of lady teachers than the static aircraft display. Great Christ, but they didn’t make ’em like that when I was in elementary school. Which, I suppose, dovetails rather neatly into the putative theme of this thread…

  37. 37.

    SFAW

    Since I wanted to get first-hand (so to speak) data, I asked Mrs. SFAW the subject question.

    She got this faraway, dreamlike look in her eyes, sighed, and said “All the time, Sven.”

    When I reminded her that my name is not Sven – not even close – she kinda snapped back to the here-and-now, gave me a strange look, and said “Did you mean YOU? Eeeeewwwww!” and left the room.

  39. 39.

    ericblair

    @Original Lee:

    I am at the point of wanting to punch undecided voters in the neck. CNN interviewed six undecided voters, three of whom said they had voted for Obama in 2008.

    There are enough people who can’t decide what to have for breakfast unless somebody tells them, but I think a lot of it at this point is Reality TV. These gomers now have a schtick, and it gets them on the teevee, and reporters ask them all sorts of questions about themselves, and if they suddenly make up their minds then everybody gets bored and goes away.

  40. 40.

    different-church-lady

    It really rather depends on which other person we’re talking about, doesn’t it?

  41. 41.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Ash Can: What really floored me was that when I was a kid, the only people who went to these science related things were: The kids, the judges, and sometimes a parent of each kid. What I saw was sports level enthusiasm.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    @ericblair:

    These gomers now have a schtick, and it gets them on the teevee, and reporters ask them all sorts of questions about themselves, and if they suddenly make up their minds then everybody gets bored and goes away.

    Too true, unfortunately. Would be good if their parents could give them a “consequence” for bad/stupid behavior.

  44. 44.

    dr. bloor

    @Wag: Of course, the reason they’re vacating the titles is because they’d look silly dropping down to 37th place to give the wins to a clean rider. And by “clean,” I mean one that hadn’t actually been caught.

    They all doped, they all lied. BFD

  45. 45.

    mai naem

    @cmorenc: Living in AZ, I am around a lot of Mormons. First, they are not all conservatives. Second, I would never ever join the LDS church but they have a lot of good stuff to offer. Weekly family nights, the kids being in boy scouts/girl scouts, no drinking/smoking/caffeine, saving up essentials for six months , the social welfare stuff for the poorer members of the church, volunteers helping the elderly and infirm within the church. I don’t like the position of women, the anti-gay stuff and the having fifty kids stuff but there’s lot of other stuff which is positive. It’s quite similar to the old time catholic church.

  47. 47.

    Ash Can

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    What I saw was sports level enthusiasm.

    I think there’s more and more of this, and it’s a joy to see. These non-sports competitions are now seen not as nerd events per se (as was the case when you and I were that age) but as school events, and there’s real excitement. Which is the way it should be. :)

  48. 48.

    cmorenc

    @mai naem: I think you and I are on the same wave-length in our experience as outsiders with the LDS church. Lots of bona fide attractive things about the kinds of community, family, and personal values the LDS church promotes and fosters. However, at the end of the day, it’s still not a good enough fit for us to ever consider joining, in part because of some of the deeply regressive things about the church.

  49. 49.

    Ash Can

    @BGK: Cute! You know, if the school keeps some kind of scrapbook or events file, they’d probably like to have a copy of that picture.

  50. 50.

    catclub

    @cmorenc: “The biggest influence the LDS church has is the tight control of the social morays of its adherents”

    Pun intended?

    Anti-social eels are harder to herd than cats.

  52. 52.

    Cassidy

    It’s been a little over a week, so I’m going to do some light spamming again. On Feb 2, 2013 I’ll be taking part in the Fight for Air Climb in Jacksonville, FL. My Firefighting class is required by our Chief to do a community service project to remind and reinforce the idea that Firefighters are public servants and role models; personally, I agree with that sentiment. I don’t have a eprsonal connection to lung cancer, or any cancer really, either than my continual struggle to quit smoking.

    So, your donation, if you’re willing, either contributes money to that particular cause or buys you a small piece of my misery. I’ll be climbing 42 stories up in full bunker gear and air pack (roughly 30lbs). If you can or feel like it, please donate. I’ve already met my goal thanks to two very generous individuals. At this point it’s become a bit of a competition between classmates (I’m 3rd place) and to see if we can get our team into 1st (currently 2nd).

  53. 53.

    WereBear

    @Schlemizel: But one thing he hit on a lot was that the church was really a giant criminal operation & the higher ups had to “wet their beaks” in all the underlings profits just like the mob. He said the ruling class (his term) could and would direct capital into projects that might lose money if it made some other business more profitable or had some long-term benefit to their overall enterprise.
    I wonder if that was less fundie propaganda and more actual reality?

    Yes. I have also heard this from many sources.

    The Salamander Letter was, to me, one such “tell” but it is admitted they are probably no worse than the Vatican.

  54. 54.

    eyelessgame

    My random LDS factoid: Back in the early 90s I met (and LARPed with) one of the developers of the game _Doom_, who happened to be Mormon.

    My feeling about the Mormons in general is that they’ve got a hundred years on the Scientologists, but the two are otherwise pretty much the same.

  55. 55.

    BGK

    @Ash Can: I saw multiple DSLRs in action, so I think they’ve got it covered. As a single man, and the hair-trigger hysteria one sees these days, the last thing I’d want to do is send an elementary school pictures I took from my office window of children.

    Also three, it just now left.

  56. 56.

    1badbaba3

    If it’s Pox Nooze, shouldn’t they have asked how often you think about touching the private parts of the OPPOSITE SEX?

    Strangely enough, they did not do that. Hmmmmm…

  57. 57.

    Wag

    @dr. bloor:

    They all doped, they all lied

    And confession is good for the soul. Armstrong’s holier than thou attitude and his capo behavior in enforcing the silence of the pelaton is the real crime here, and for that he deserves our scorn.

  58. 58.

    Schlemizel

    @Cassidy:

    MAN! 42 floors! I remember one drill we did on a commercial building where we laddered 3 levels. I carried the third ladder up the first two in full gear. It was August & about 98 degrees with equal humidity. I seriously thought I might pass out half way up the second ladder and wanted to toss lunch over the side after making it up the third. Couldn’t do that in front of the other though! I’d rather lead an attack crew than do that again.

    Great to see you have exceeded your fund raising goals – hope I can help you do even better!

  59. 59.

    Cassidy

    @Schlemizel: Damn. Just carrying the roof ladder up one floor was enough of a pain in the ass. I can’t imagine that. We’ve been doing 7 floors as part of our PT, but we haven’t had a chance to really go to town on the 42 yet.

    One person from here donated a c-note on the first day. I was floored. So whoever you are, if you come across this, thank you again.

  61. 61.

    Cassidy

    @Raven: Thank you, and I think any SEC fan can find common ground as long as we keep the PAC-10 Pop Warner League from winning anything important.

  62. 62.

    Rex Everything

    Just wanted to use the open thread to point out something we’d do well to bear in mind, and share with our friends and acquaintances, as we endure the next few weeks of conservative hyperbole.

    Krugman, yesterday: “[D]uring the Hofstra debate, in which questions were posed by members of the public rather than the Beltway elite, there wasn’t a single question about the deficit. Not one. The public really doesn’t care.”

  63. 63.

    Raven

    @Cassidy: I played Pop Warner my freshman year because on my late birthday and my skinny little ass. My old man wanted me to play and that was the best chance I had.

  64. 64.

    Ash Can

    @BGK: Heh. That occurred to me as well, but I think that if you were to just explain that you worked across the street and were wondering what all the commotion was, and since you just got group shots from a distance — and especially if you were to print the pics out and walk them over to the school in person — you’d preclude any suspicion. Just resist the urge to ask for teachers’ phone numbers (lol!).

    But that’s all neither here nor there if folks on the scene got pics. As you say, they’re covered.

  65. 65.

    Cassidy

    @Raven: I never played football. I do think there are tougher Pop Warner Leagues in LA and other big cities than the PAC-10. :D

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @mai naem

    the old time catholic church.

    1) Crusades

    2) active anti-Semitism as doctrine: acting against and/or exiling Jews for the ‘racial animus blame’ of Jesus’ death

    3) rampant child abuse

    4) proscribed second-class status of women

    5) gays? Fuhgeddaboutit

    6) purposeful dismantling and destruction of indigenous cultures

    7) quashing of scientific advancement

    7) (lots, lots more, but you get the drift)

    Yeah, the old-time Catholic church was a laff riot.

  67. 67.

    Another Halocene Human

    @NotMax: Right, and this differs from the Old Tymie Mormon Church of Jesus Christ un-de-Brigham Young’d how, exactly?

  68. 68.

    NotMax

    @ Another Halocene Human

    Totally not the gist of the post (was rebutting the implication of a kinder, gentler old-time Catholic – not Mormon – church, as is what my reading of the comment responded to seemed to say), and would require more space than is usual here to respond, but let’s just say that the Crusades and the Inquisition have a definite patrimony, for starters.

    Mormon and Protestant churches most certainly have (no pun intended) their own crosses to bear, but my not mentioning them totally misses the point of the response.

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    @Rex Everything:

    Krugman, yesterday: “[D]uring the Hofstra debate, in which questions were posed by members of the public rather than the Beltway elite, there wasn’t a single question about the deficit. Not one. The public really doesn’t care.”

    The deficit is abstract. Lack of a job is much more concrete.

  71. 71.

    cckids

    @Original Lee:

    This. I saw a short interview with one of the undecideds from the last debate; he asked the Libya question. He was “disappointed” that neither Romney or Obama answered his question “fully”, and even though President Obama sought him out after the debate & gave him a personal, more detailed answer, he still can’t make up his mind.

    WTF does he want, the second coming? These people are certifiable.

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