Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

This really is a full service blog.

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

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

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

Let there be snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You cannot shame the shameless.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The words do not have to be perfect.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Infrastructure week. at last.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

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Open Thread

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Not dead, just otherwise occupied. Yesterday was pretty much a total loss as I accidentally took a tylenol PM at 10 am thinking I was taking a regular tylenol (pro-tip: Wear your glasses when taking pills out of the cabinet). I was just dragging all day.

Had some other personal stuff to deal with today, so that is why I disappeared for 48 hours.

Looking like we are going to do the site rebuild the second week of February, FYI. Also, I have a special treat coming to the front page shortly.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  6. 6.

    handy

    At least it will be the weekend AFTER Superbowl Sunday. Can’t come in here and gloat when my Niners when if the site’s broken.

  10. 10.

    Brachiator

    Not dead, just otherwise occupied. Yesterday was pretty much a total loss as I accidentally took a tylenol PM at 10 am thinking I was taking a regular tylenol (pro-tip: Wear your glasses when taking pills out of the cabinet). I was just dragging all day.

    Wow. You are worse than Mister Magoo.

    Take care of yourself, man. I can just see a news story of Lily trying to drag your ass out of the house after you have got yourself into some jam. And Tunch laughing, just laughing.

  13. 13.

    Spaghetti Lee

    I accidentally took a tylenol PM at 10 am thinking I was taking a regular tylenol

    *wacky sitcom music*

    I have a special treat coming to the front page shortly.

    “Ladies and gentlemen, your new front-page poster…ex-congressman Allen West.”

  14. 14.

    UncommonSense

    There’s a story on Salon about these three neo-Nazis who killed some guy in Boone County, KY.

    One of the suspects listed on a forum the things he hates:

    “race traders [sic], greed, ignorance, drugs, jews, niggers, spikes, gooks and chinks and anybody that hates National Socialism.”

    “Spikes.” He hates spikes.

    Neo-Nazis are so smart. I guess that’s why they become neo-Nazis.

  24. 24.

    SFAW

    Also, I have a special treat coming to the front page shortly.

    I hope the special treat isn’t Ted & Hellen.

    Nah, it’ll be “Political Observer” in one of his innumerable personae.

    Suck it, libtards!

  27. 27.

    John

    Ha! I went for a ride with a new friend last week, he crashed, and when we got home I gave him what I thought was an Aleve. I didn’t figure out until close to midnight that I had actually given him a combination Aleve/sleeping pill.

    How do you tell someone you just met that you accidentally drugged him? I chose to lie.

  30. 30.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Once I got the cups in the wrong order, and ended up taking my breakfast pills at bedtime.

    They make helpful items for problems like that. Maybe you already use one, but the “cups” comment made me think “maybe not.”

    Diuretic before bed would definitely bite. My sympathies.

  34. 34.

    SFAW

    I second (or “twelfth” by now) the wish for TBogg as an FP’er.

    Perhaps if you offered him a lifetime supply of pink Himalayan salt?

    hilzoy would be good, too.

  35. 35.

    Valdivia

    @efgoldman:

    oh I am, totally. And he could tell because my husband (I was married at the time) was super religious and wearing a kippah (yarmulke) and he heard me speaking spanish. A lot of people down south (where I was living at the time) couldn’t quite make up their minds about the whole jewish latino thing. Hard to pick on what they wanted to be racist about.

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Valdivia:

    ok I can tell you I was called a spike once (spic and kike, voila).

    Before this thread, I have only ever come across “spike” as a slightly derogatory, but also kind of affectionate, term for Anglo Catholics or very very high-church Episcopalians.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    Also, I have a special treat coming to the front page shortly.

    Folding the blog into the Sully web empire?

  38. 38.

    SFAW

    @Raven:

    Don’t forget Jonze.

    Jones is difficult to appreciate, unless Cole turns his FP into a mini-YouTube. Actually, that’s probably true for all three of them.

  39. 39.

    muddy

    @efgoldman: Even taking the diuretics in the morning can be problematic. “You want me to show up where? At what time? No, sorry, I will be peeing then. Yes, for some hours, thanks.”

  41. 41.

    Valdivia

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I have to confess that when I heard it I thought the guy had just made it up on the spot (so what you are both a spic and a kike? a Spike!) so when I read it now it sort of blew my mind. I am not sure the jewish hispanic version is a widely used derogatory term.

  42. 42.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    I would LOVE to see Emily Hauser return to Balloon Juice. As a front-pager would be wonderful, but I’d be thrilled just to see her come back as a commenter.

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Valdivia:

    Well, just knowing that it has the alternative, really offensive portmanteau meaning, will ensure that I never use it again to refer to a human being. Although back in the day when I was a practicing Anglican I was pretty high-church and often referred to myself as a “spike.”

  49. 49.

    Raven

    @SFAW:

    Now me and my mate were back at the shack
    We had Spike Jones on the box
    She said, “I can’t take the way he sings
    But I love to hear him talk”
    Now that just gave my heart a throb
    To the bottom of my feet
    And I swore as I took another pull
    My Bessie can’t be beat

  55. 55.

    Valdivia

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I have to say that I thought it was interesting how this guy was trying to square the circle of his own racial prejudices. I had a laugh at it at the time but yes, like you, I find it representative of a truly ugly feeling so can’t hear the word without cringing.

    @efgoldman:
    I know, jewish migration because of persecution, how does it work?

  56. 56.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax: I think that’s reserved for the Church of Rome exclusively. But I’m no expert. Charlie Pierce would probably know.

  57. 57.

    max

    Also, I have a special treat coming to the front page shortly.

    You’re going to manfully and valiantly step in and save Ted Tancredo’s bacon by flying to Colorado and smoking the joint Tancredo bailed on inhaling. Thus sparing Tancredo from being relentlessly derided as a chickenshit whose word is utterly worthless, like most Republicans/”conservatives”. Because you’re a good guy like that.

    Yesterday was pretty much a total loss as I accidentally took a tylenol PM at 10 am thinking I was taking a regular tylenol

    Are you sick? (I just finished up 2 months of all kinds of exciting respiratory illnesses!) You really need to get like a giant-sized label maker for almost blind people because you’re going to kill yourself with the bizarro medication mixups you’re prone to.

    max
    [‘No, wait! I know! You’ve joined Al-Queda, because, eh, why not?’]

  61. 61.

    muddy

    @efgoldman: That’s great! I’ve always had low blood pressure (basement low) and got CHF as a result of a winter virus. I just recently got a defibrillator installed in my chest, now I’m paranoid about when it’s going to shock me.

    I said to the doc, what if it goes off when I’m driving? He said, what if your heart stopped while you are driving? allrightythen

  62. 62.

    eemom

    @Raven:

    Interesting, because that song always reminds me of a Vietnam vet my husband (actually, then still my bf) and I met in a bar in Portland, Maine, on a rainy day during a vacation in a summer back before time began (1990).

    He was a heavily tattooed, kind of scary looking guy, and we
    –being strangers — were standing around drinking beers watching, a little intimidatedly, while he and his buds played pool. I put some tunes on the jukebox, including that one, and he started singing along to it, so then eebf whispered, “Well, at least they like your music.”

    A few beers later, eebf got into the game…..and the outcome was the Vietnam vet took us on the ferry to this totally cool place called Chebeague Island where he lived, which had a lovely inn on it where we spent the night….the experience of which was vastly enhanced by a killer joint he shared with us during the ferry ride.

    There was a dark side to that though, we later learned, when he told us about his PTSD and some of the experiences underlying it. He said he got suicidal without the weed.

    Have always wondered what happened to him.

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    Blargh. Spike started out cool, but he went into classic villain decay until he was a total joke.

    Classic villain decay. Is that anything like nuclear decay, and would that make Spike a beta particle?

    I don’t agree that Spike ended up a total joke, but agree that he was a lesser baddie than he was in the beginning. But this may be the nature of tv, all characters tend to have their edge blunted as their tenure on a show lengthens, especially if audiences like them. Or, as you note, they become less dangerous and more ridiculous.

    And as a matter of practical dramatics, view actors want to play a total baddie for the entire long run of a show. They want to find and to be able to show, a softer side of the villain.

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I can’t tell if you’re playin’ with me, or really need more of a hint.

    [In case it’s the latter: it all ties into the music Raven was mentioning.]

  80. 80.

    Raven

    @SFAW: Wow, I’d never heard about this and they are local boys!

    The Drive-By Truckers’ song “Danko/Manuel” was released on their album The Dirty South in 2004. “Originally [guitarist/vocalist Jason] Isbell tried to tell the story of Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and The Band’s demise, but found the scope of the concept too difficult to actually do justice to their story, and instead shifted the concept to a telling of life of a musician through the eyes and actions of Danko and Manuel. Isbell stated that the horn parts for the song came to him in a dream.”

  87. 87.

    TaMara (BHF)

    Also, I have a special treat coming to the front page shortly.

    Is this some ploy to keep us coming back over and over tonight? Listen, have a life to live here buddy. It’s Saturday night. Got a hot date. Places to go, people to see.

    Yeah, right. I’ll see everyone back here in an hour.

  90. 90.

    SFAW

    @Raven:

    Looks like they’re in NOLA tomorrow. Don’t know how far you are from there. If you’re in northern Alabama, might be a tad far.

    Or are you in GA? (I can never remember, sorry.) If so, they’re in Asheville in 3 weeks. Road trip!

  92. 92.

    General Stuck

    @hilzoy:

    Well drat, back to the drawing board. I been a fan since you broke Greenwald’s proggy little heart after throwing in with the Obots. Oh well.

    irresponsible to not speculate further. Such as Maybe Cole and Carrie announce their engagement. Beauty and the Beast retold. Fuckhead as best man, cough cough.

  96. 96.

    hilzoy

    Did you know that not only Nancy Sinatra but *Davy Jones* covered that song? The things one finds while googling. Mercy prevents me from linking.

  97. 97.

    Ash Can

    Re the site rebuild, I have a suggestion. Charles Johnson has a “new comments” button at the end of his comment threads that reveals new comments without having to refresh the page — just hit the button and they pop down into view. I don’t know if that would be feasible on this system, but it sure is handy.

  98. 98.

    General Stuck

    @Raven:

    I don’t think he ever forgave a Canadian writing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” Even after Levon went with Robbie to the library for some Civil War lessons, to make sure Robertson did right by General Lee. They been at war against each other ever since, with Levon claiming credits for part of the lyrics. I suspect the world view friction was what you’d expect between a Canadian lad , and an Alabama native.

  99. 99.

    Evolving Deep Southerner

    If Cole’s surprise is TBogg, it will shake the girders of bloggerdom.

    Or not. But God damn, it would be sweet.

  101. 101.

    eemom

    dunno, guess I’m the only one who thinks of Erik the whoever, Freddie de boob and Bernard Finel and gets something less than all goose-bumply with anticipation when Cole promises a FP surprise.

    ETA: I’ll be the first to admit I’m wrong if Cole somehow proves capable of prying TBogg’s head out of Hamsher’s ass. Not gonna hold my breath, tho.

  103. 103.

    The Sailor

    @SFAW: “Diuretic before bed would definitely bite.”

    One of my BP meds contains a diuretic. It took one night, combined with a sleeping pill, to realize this is not a good combination.

  107. 107.

    mclaren

    A special treat coming to the front page, huh?

    What, editorials by Antonin Scalia? You’ll replace Anti-Liberal Black Lady with posts by her handler and paymaster, Karl Rove?

    Or maybe you’ll just replace Soonergrunt with Jeb Bush?

    Can’t wait.

  108. 108.

    Johannes

    @NotMax: I’m an Anglican, and am pretty high church (I run a blog called Anglocat on the Prowl). Well, there’s a magnificent old bookshop in Hoosick, NY called Dog Ears Books, run by a retired philosophy jock (Jeffery) in a two story barn. He greets customers by showing them to their areas of interest. On the day he had treed a long lusted after copy of Lux Mundi (the manifesto of liberal Anglo-Catholicism) for me, he greeted me, “You’re a mackerel snapper. Or near enough. This interest yeh?”

    It did. Yes, Jeffrey is about 80.

  114. 114.

    Raven

    @handy: I’m from Champaign-Urbana via LA and have lived in Athens longer than most of the dopes on this blog have been alive!

  115. 115.

    The Sailor

    @Raven:

    have lived in Athens longer than most of the dopes on this blog have been alive!

    So, do you get a lot of REM sleep?

  121. 121.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    Looking like we are going to do the site rebuild the second week of February, FYI.

    Please in the name of all that’s good get this fucking thing off WordPress and onto vBulletin or some other similar platform that actually works and has useful user features.

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