Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

So many bastards, so little time.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

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

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

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

A consequence of cucumbers

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Democrats are back in array!

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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66Comments

  1. 1.

    Mnemosyne

    I wasn’t joking as much as I thought about my holiday craft sweatshop — I screwed up my lower back and aggravated an old sciatica injury just by sitting and knitting for way too long yesterday. I’m probably going to need to stand while I operate the Xyron to glue my tags together. Ouch.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    Now that yesterday is over, my weekend (such as it is), can begin. We had ~600 visitors at work yesterday, and I was chief volunteer-wrangler and principal photographer and…

    I was dead on my feet by about 7 PM. Still, no major catastrophes, so I’ll take that as a victory.

    ( For the vaguely curious: https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A3JtdOXmJfdURE . We’re a physics/chemistry department at the University of Chicago, and this is our annual Open House)

  3. 3.

    Linda Featheringill

    Nice fog.

    I’ve lived on the East Coast for about a month now and we’ve had some really nice fogs in the mornings. Love ’em. Soft, mysterious, romantic in the literary sense.

  5. 5.

    Xenos

    I lived in Northern Florida for a couple years way back in the early 90s. I really like the place, but moved on to colder and busier places. Winter was just weeks upon weeks of lovely weather.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @dmsilev: Wow, that looks like a very cool event! And fraught with opportunities for catastrophes, so you’re right to take their absence as a victory!

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Betty Cracker: We’re pretty careful about the physically-dangerous stuff. No visitors are allowed to play with high voltages or liquid nitrogen or vacuum pumps or whatever without close supervision. The usual catastrophes tend to be logistical (i.e. last year, we ran out of lunches for the volunteers. Tragedy. Horror. Hunger.)

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, though I will not claim to have the hippest taste in music, I’m really enjoying CeeLo Green’s Christmas album, CeeLo’s Magic Moment. How can you not love a Christmas album that includes classics (“Silent Night,” “The Christmas Song”), modern classics (“This Christmas,” “What Christmas Means to Me”) and the Muppets?

    You can’t. That’s what I’m saying, you just can’t.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    Liverpool have come back from being 2-1 down at West Ham with fifteen minutes left (no thanks to an own goal by captain Stevie Gerrard) to leading 2-3. Can they hold on and win?

  17. 17.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @dmsilev:
    Congratulations and thank you for the link to the pics. If just one of those youngsters takes up science then your very good deed will outlive us all.

  18. 18.

    Mandalay

    Well another black passenger has been killed by someone shooting into a car. This time a WalMart security guard shot and killed a female passenger who was fleeing after apparently being caught shoplifting.

    The usual phony justification: the security guard (killer) “feared for his safety and opened fire”.

    One news video is blatantly hostile to the shoplifters, and flippant about the incident: “Shopping – uh, I mean shoplifting – can be deadly”. The report fails to mention that there was no need to fire the gun, there were kids in the back of the car, and that the woman killed was a passenger rather than the fleeing driver. The video ends with the comment “Just a reminder: crime doesn’t pay”.

    http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Deputy-shoots-kills-suspected-shoplifter-4099921.php

    This country is so fucked up.

  19. 19.

    Schlemizel

    We have 4 inches of snow so far & it is still coming down pretty hard.

    Dragged my sick behind out & ran the snow blower up & down the driveway & sidewalk. I live in a neighborhood where a lot of people walk, I feel like making that easier is something I have to do. Got back in & had a hot drink, now I think I’ll go back to bed for a couple of hours

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: That’s the basic idea. We work with local schools and community groups and so forth and try to bring in as many kids as possible and do as much as we can to engage them. Takes a hell of a lot of effort to bring off, but hopefully it does some good.

  21. 21.

    Alison

    @Mandalay: Jesus fuck :/ And yeah, that is some bullshit. He was standing next to the open door of the car and she put it in reverse to “try to run him over”? How do you run over someone standing to the side of the car?

    Fucking trigger happy bastards. They think absolutely nothing of killing a person over any tiny thing. Shoplifting?? And you’re going to shoot to kill? What the fuck :(

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mandalay:
    Last I heard, shoplifting wasn’t a capital crime anywhere in America. And store security guards weren’t empowered to mete out vigilante justice. That guy should be looking at a manslaughter charge.

  24. 24.

    Corner Stone

    @Ben Franklin: I never get tired of reading this story. One of the better parts, IMO:
    “Although a number of bankers fled the country to avoid prosecution”

  28. 28.

    Mandalay

    @Alison:

    How do you run over someone standing to the side of the car?

    Good question. Looks like the cops need to sort out their lies on this pretty quickly:

    Instead of stopping the car, the woman put it in drive, revving forward and dragging the deputy.

    http://houston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/07/suspected-walmart-shoplifter-fatally-shot/

    “She threw it in reverse and tried to run over the deputy,” said Thomas Gilliland, a Harris County sheriff’s spokesman.

    http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Deputy-shoots-kills-suspected-shoplifter-4099921.php

    So was the cop dragged forward, or was he run over when the driver reversed? How about neither?

    And I bet the woman the cop murdered is hindering the investigation by refusing to answer their questions.

  29. 29.

    Alison

    @Mandalay: Well, obviously the woman was a magical wizard, and was doing both at once, and therefore was clearly a threat to the poor Muggle cop.

    Grrrrrrr.

    And who has two stupid thumbs and made the mistake of reading comments at the Chron link? THIS LADY. Ugh. Humanity sucks.

  30. 30.

    Mandalay

    @Corner Stone:

    Where did you find the info about kids in the car?

    Here:

    Though Wilkerson said there were two young children in the car during the shooting, she said they were not her daughter’s children.

    http://www.khou.com/news/local/Walmart-shooting-victim-was-a-mother-of-two-182626411.html

    The murdered mom had two kids, including a two year old daughter with sickle cell anemia. But looking on the bright side, Walmart always has low prices.

    I’ll say it again: this country is massively fucked up. It is sick.

  31. 31.

    MikeJ

    @Corner Stone:

    The surviving suspects are not being charged with shoplifting.

    As soon as a civil suit is filed against WalMart the criminal charges against the victims will pop up.

  32. 32.

    bemused

    Tom Coburn told George Snuffle today that SS/Medicare are not absolutely necessary. Some group should send every one of his constituents especially the seniors a transcript of that gem.

  33. 33.

    Mandalay

    @MikeJ:

    As soon as a civil suit is filed against WalMart the criminal charges against the victims will pop up.

    But surely there is some time limit on the authorities deciding to file or not file charges?

    My guess would be that Walmart would want to pay off the victim’s family pretty quickly, and end the matter. However, I doubt that the cops will be so willing to overlook the driver allegedly attempting to run over the cop.

  35. 35.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @Ben Franklin: @Corner Stone:

    I couldn’t agree more with both of you. The argument that no laws were broken in our financial meltdown has always suggested to me that no one seriously looked to see if there were (cough, Geithner, cough). It warms my cinder of a heart to think that at least some bankers somewhere had to flee to avoid prosecution.

  36. 36.

    Mandalay

    And here is another example of Walmart’s ruthless devotion to always having low prices:

    According to the DeKalb County police report, a man stole two DVD players from the Walmart on Fairington Road in Lithonia. The report said two Walmart employees and a security officer caught him in the parking lot. During a scuffle, the report said, it appears the man was placed in a choke hold.

    When police arrived, the man was unresponsive and bleeding from the nose and mouth.

    http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/security-expert-discusses-alleged-shoplifting-deat/nTHsZ/

    Walmart loves its customers to death.

    This country is sick and fucked up.

  37. 37.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: The question isn’t whether laws were broken; some were, though fewer than a lot of people seem to think. It’s whether it’s possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a specific person broke a specific law. The DoJ did prosecute some people. They lost in court.

    It is very difficult to get convictions on financial crimes. In one case, for fraud in putting together a CDO, the prosecution had emails in which the defendants bragged to each other about how they were putting one over on the buyers. The jury acquitted. Henry Samueli was acquitted of options backdating despite basically admitting what was done.

    So, before complaining, incorrectly, that no one was prosecuted, explain *who* should be prosecuted, on *what* specific charges, and *how* the crime would be proved to a jury.

  38. 38.

    scav

    re: WalMart. For many, it’s not the infant in the manger they worship in practice but the proverbial dog.

  40. 40.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @J. Michael Neal:

    So, before complaining, incorrectly, that no one was prosecuted, explain who should be prosecuted, on what specific charges, and how the crime would be proved to a jury.

    Well, J. Michael, other than the inhibiting factor of pursuing a career on the ocean (And not being omniscient) rather than in corporate law, I don’t have the answers to your questions. Non-lawyer, even non-sea lawyer that I am, I would suggest that fraud may have been involved.

    I would add that your demand to know who (And I’ll leave out your bold bolding as well as the notion that it should be “whom will be prosecuted”) should be prosecuted is evocative of the joke that has St. Peter asking one aspirant to entry into heaven to name the greatest maritime disaster of all time and then asking the next to name all of those who were lost.

  41. 41.

    Msskwesq

    Hey everyone: I love reading your posts about your local comings and goings, the weather, etc. but sometimes I cannot figure out where you are generally. It would be great to give a location in your posts so I can know where it’s snowing and where photos are taken and so on. Thank you for all the interesting posts!

  42. 42.

    gbear

    @Mnemosyne:

    CeeLo Green’s Christmas album, CeeLo’s Magic Moment.

    Does it have a song called ‘Fuck Snow’? I would have that song on non-stop repeat today. We’re getting hammered in the Twin Cities. (well, not so much hammered as blanketed. no high winds yet).

  43. 43.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: In other words, you don’t have a clue. As I said, the DoJ has prosecuted for fraud and the defendants walked. So your vague statement that fraud may have been involved is worthless. You can’t prosecute the passive voice.

  44. 44.

    gene108

    @bemused:

    Coburn isn’t seeking re-election.

    He’s sticking to whatever term limits were set down in the Contract on America he signed onto in 1994.

    He’s served 3 terms in the House. This is his second term in the Senate, after which per the Contract’s terms he should not seek re-election.

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: Nobody ditched a bunch of visitors in a tunnel in some building somewhere?

    Apologies if my recollection of details from last year is completely wrong.

  47. 47.

    dmsilev

    @WaterGirl: Good memory! It wasn’t strictly speaking a tunnel, but it was the subbasement. And no, we didn’t have a repeat of that particular oopsie.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: It’s really best if all the screw-ups are new each year. Helps keep the whole thing fresh!

    The university of illinois used to do an engineering open house and an agricultural open house. The engineering one was pretty cool, with some kind of robot competition. They stopped doing the agricultural one – to save money and all that time and effort. I thought that was a very short-sighted decision. Hoping engineering didn’t ditch theirs, too, but too lazy to google.

    Anyway, that’s probably why I recall your open house so vividly, because I can relate.

  52. 52.

    dmsilev

    @Corner Stone: We didn’t get any complaints along those lines, so as far as I’m concerned, any such events didn’t happen. Even if they did actually happen. Which they didn’t.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: Not sure if you saw it, but I left a comment for you on the marauding hens thread from this morning (#129).

    @J. Michael Neal: I saw a comment from you in the past week or so about another job interview. Last thing I saw was “I want this job”. Any activity on that front?

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    @J. Michael Neal: Crossing my fingers. Seems like it would be really great if you could get this job.

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: @J. Michael Neal: If this argument is a good outlet for job-seeking stress & stress of a loved one with serious health issues (respectively), more power to you, carry on. If it’s adding to the stress for either or both of you, I hope you’ll walk away.

  62. 62.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: I never said that, either. What I said is that prosecuting financial crimes is a lot harder than you seem to think that it is and that if you have no idea what’s involved, bitching about the DoJ not engaging in prosecutions that have little chance of success is pretty damned pointless and also a good example of blaming entirely the wrong people.

    On the other hand, if you can point to an instance of financial crime that should be prosecuted because a conviction is likely, I’m all ears.

  63. 63.

    J. Michael Neal

    @WaterGirl: Having people blame the administration for a lack of prosecutions when they don’t understand what it takes to actually secure a conviction is one of my big pet peeves. Pursuing cases in which a conviction is unlikely is both a waste of resources and deeply unethical on the part of the DoJ.

    If you want to change this, then what you need to do is to tell your congressman to change the laws as to what constitutes a financial crime. If you do that, though, then you need to make sure you understand the legislation that gets passed. The hyperventilating on the part of much of the left that Dodd-Frank didn’t do things that it really did do was embarrassing.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @J. Michael Neal: JUMP! You fuckers pretty much describes where I stand on the bankers, but I am not getting into the discussion.

    It’s stressful enough for me to just watch it. Since you are still at it, I am closing this tab. :-)

  66. 66.

    nellcote

    What’s the DoJ Fraud Division been up to lately? Let’s see:

    http://www.stopfraud.gov//news-index.html

    News for December, 2012

    Former Rochdale Securities Trader Arrested in Connecticut

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    Department of Justice Announces $15 Million Settlement with Delaware Bank Accused of Consumer Fraud

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    Rhode Island Estate Planning CEO & Employee Plead Guilty to Obtaining Millions in Death Benefits and Investments in the Names of Terminally Ill Individuals

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    Justice Department Announces Sweep of Criminal and Civil Business Opportunity Cases

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    November 8, 2012 | External Link

    Former Vice President of Investor Relations for a Georgia Company Indicted in Long-Running Insider Trading Schemes

    November 7, 2012 | External Link

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    November 1, 2012 | External Link

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    Former Chairman Of Consulting Firm And Board Director, Rajat Gupta, Sentenced In Manhattan Federal Court To Two Years In Prison For Insider Trading

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    Seventeen Members of a North Carolina Racketeering Enterprise Indicted on Investment Fraud, Mortgage Fraud and Related Charges

    October 24, 2012 | External Link

    Bank of America Sued in New York for Over $1 Billion for Multi-year Mortgage Fraud Against Government Sponsored Entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

    October 24, 2012 | External Link

    President of Costa Rican Company Sentenced to 60 Years in Prison for Half-Billion Dollar Fraud Scheme with Thousands of Victims Worldwide

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    Former Officers of American Mortgage Specialists Inc. Plead Guilty in North Dakota to Conspiracy in $27 Million Fraud Against Bnc National Bank

    October 19, 2012 | External Link

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    October 18, 2012 | External Link

    Connecticut Man Sentenced to Serve Two Years in Prison for Running Investment Fraud Scheme

    October 16, 2012 | External Link

    Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the Southeastern Regional Investor Fraud Summit

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    Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Members Reveal Results of Distressed Homeowner Initiative

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    Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the Distressed Homeowner Initiative Press Conference

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    Arrests Announced of Two Sales Brokers in Broker-dealer Mark-up Scheme

    October 5, 2012 | External Link

    Ponzi Schemer Sentenced to More Than Eight Years in Federal Prison

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    Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group Members Announce First Legal Action

    October 2, 2012 | External Link

    U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado John Walsh Speaks at the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group Press Conference

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    Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West Speaks at the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group Press Conference

    October 2, 2012 | External Link

    Florida Businessman Pleads Guilty in Connection with $13 Million Fraud Scheme Involving Phony Shares of Facebook and Groupon Stock

    October 2, 2012 | External Link

    Investor Fraud Summits Across the Country Arm Consumers with Information to Protect Retirement Funds and Life Savings

    October 1, 2012 | External Link

    Additional Charges Filed Against Former Employees of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC

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    Pennsylvania Foreclosure Rescue Scammers Sentenced to Serve Time in Prison

    October 1, 2012 | External Link

    Indictment Filed Charging Financial Executives with Fraudulent Schemes

    October 1, 2012 | External Link

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