Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

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

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

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

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

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Archives for January 2013

Eight ain’t enough

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Not sure it matters much what the Gang of Eight wants to do with immigration reform. Most of the House Republican caucus will oppose just about anything, so the real question is what happens with the ones who voted with Dems on the fiscal cliff and Sandy funding. This end game (from Steve M) sounds about right:

If I had to bet, I’d assume that nothing passes — that the House GOP will make the bill even tougher on immigrants, possibly even stripping out any path to citizenship, and it will still be deemed “amnesty” by most of them, while going too far to the right even for willing-to-compromise Democrats. Then the apparently pro-reform Republicans, Graham and McCain and Rubio and Boehner and the rest, can argue that Republicans really, really wanted reform, but Democrats insisted on “amnesty.” And those Republicans will get brownie points for trying, at least with the mainstream press (Hispanics won’t be fooled), while the crazy back-benchers will get credit with their base for stopping The Invasion Of America. And Rubio will be set up to run in 2016 as the guy who can really get this done.

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Chinga La Migra

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The bi-partisan immigration reform plan from the gang of 8 sounds like “amnesty” to me:

* While these security measures are being put into place, we will simultaneously require those who came or remained in the United States without our permission to register with the government. This will include passing a background check and settling their debt to society by paying a fine and back taxes, in order to earn probationary legal status, which will allow them to live and work legally in the United States. Individuals with a serious criminal background or others who pose a threat to our national security will be ineligible for legal status and subject to deportation. Illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes face immediate deportation.
[…] * Once the enforcement measures have been completed, individuals with probationary legal status will be required to go to the back of the line of prospective immigrants, pass an additional background check, pay taxes, learn English and civics, demonstrate a history of work in the United States, and current employment, among other requirements, in order to earn the opportunity to apply for lawful permanent residency. Those individuals who successfully complete these requirements can eventually earn a green card.

Minor children who entered the country with their parents won’t face those hurdles, so this essentially includes the DREAM act. Those who entered the country to work as migrant farm labor have a special agricultural worker program, which isn’t detailed in the proposal but is apparently less stringent.

The first participant to take a match to this thing in last year’s Republican Presidental Debates would have been given a ten minute standing ovation. It’s got a lot of tough enforcement talk, but as far as I can tell, it’s essentially what the Democrats have wanted all along. I can’t believe it will pass the House.

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Taylor Branch

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If you have some time today, I found James Fallows’ interview of Taylor Branch, Martin Luther King’s biographer, fascinating. He’s just released a book that picks out 18 key moments from his three-volume King biography, and it’s also been released in an e-book edition that includes audio and video content for each of those events. He traces the current Tea Party anti-government rhetoric back to the segregationist politicians of King’s era, talks about LBJ getting short shrift, especially about his reformation of the Democratic party and the kind of political courage it took to do that, and also a bit about college sports.

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Early Morning Open Thread: At Least We Have Cookies

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girl scout cookies fund the rbc
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Signs point to a less-than-enjoyable Monday.

On the other hand, annoying the sort of people who feel “teaching young girls to make their own choices” is a bad idea gives those of us in the Reality-Based Community even more reason to stock up on Girl Scout cookies.

Apart from rewriting all badge books to include radical activists and gay role models, what’s on the agenda today?

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: Concussive

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Chris Hughes, former Obama campaign staffer, and his chief editor Franklin Foer, used the relauch of TNR to score a 45-minute interview with President Obama. There will be much serious discussion of the results in the immediate future — if the President had not chosen to announce that “[U]p at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time”, I think there’d already be more grumbling about a judicious level of Both-sides-Do-It that could be construed as hippy-punching. But for an open thread at the end of the weekend, I’ll just put this quote out there:

FF: Sticking with the culture of violence, but on a much less dramatic scale: I’m wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players.

I’m a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much…

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Take the shine right off your shoes

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Same ol’ GOP:

[T]he party’s main problem, dozens of Republican National Committee members argued in interviews over three days this week, is who delivers its message and how, not the message itself. Overwhelmingly they insisted that substantive policy changes aren’t the answer to last year’s losses.

Moderation, at least at this stage, is no virtue at the RNC.

[….]

“We don’t need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes,” said West Virginia national committeewoman Melody Potter.

I agree with Atrios that the big question is whether they’ll moderate on immigration, and that it’s not clear that they will:

Opposition to this stuff (immigration reform) is in part racism, but it’s also based on the general belief in wingnuttia that the blahs and the brahs, even the illegal brahs, have access to some secret super generous welfare system that white people can’t get access to. As Craig T. Nelson said, “I have been on food stamps and welfare no one helped me out.”

The nut of this is the following: comprehensive immigration reform hurts Republicans in the short term (by increasing the number of Latino voters) but helps in the longterm (by blunting the Democratic advantage among Latino voters). If by “short term”, one means the 2014 election, then ramping ALL kinds of winger craziness (other than comments about rape and witches and the like) may help Republicans since it amps up turn-out among the old and crazy, and midterm elections are all about turn-out…but likewise, all this craziness turns off the next generation of voters.

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Dog Rescue Bleg – Central North Carolina

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sarahb 1
From reader SarahB:

My husband and I, and our pets, have a wonderful little stray dog staying with us, and we’re looking for a good home for her. She’s going to require some medical care (more on that below), but she’s very loving and smart and well-behaved, and is sure to be a rewarding pet to whomever adopts her.

The dog is a young adult (vet estimates 3 years old), 19-pound female jack russell, or possibly a jack russell/beagle mix. I met her on January 23rd at a crossroads gas station in a rural part of Marion County, South Carolina. She was presumably abandoned at the gas station — I don’t know what’s wrong with people who would dump a dog out on the highway in January (or any other time), but she’d been living outside the store for at least a week, through this awful cold weather. I visited three times that day, and each time, the dog was trying desperately to make friends with everyone who stopped for gas, and when I petted her she followed me to my car and tried to get in. The third time I visited it was nightfall and incredibly cold, and she was still there, so she came home to Durham with me.

She is a GREAT dog. She’s extremely affectionate and eager to please, and she seems to be very smart. For a jack russell she’s also really calm. Maybe it’s just that she’s in a new and confusing environment, but she has only barked once, and hasn’t had any of those jack russell running rampages yet. She and our dog (an 8-year-old golden retriever) like each other and have been playing nicely. She gets along okay with our cats too (she tries to play with them, an idea that they quickly squash). The gas station owner said that her children loved the dog, so it sounds like she’s good with kids.

Here’s the jackpot: she’s house-trained. She has not had any accidents in the house or car. (We will let potential adopters know if any of her behavior takes a turn for the worse, but so far so good!) She wags her tail constantly, and does endearingly silly things like falling over backwards when trying to kiss someone sitting behind her.

Now here’s the complicated bit. She had a checkup with our vet, and we learned that she has heartworms. I guess that’s not surprising for a dog who’s been living outside in a swampy part of South Carolina. It’s treatable, but will require careful attention. Our vet is going to give us an estimate of what full treatment is likely to cost, and we’ll let potential adopters know. She’s getting started on antibiotics today which will boost her immune system in preparation for heartworm treatment. When she starts the actual course of anti-worm medicine, she’s going to have to be kept calm for about eight weeks, with no exercise. One of our cats was successfully treated for heartworms more than a decade ago, and she’s now 17 and healthy; but it’s going to be an expense and a project that this dog’s future owner will need to consider.

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