Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I really should read my own blog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

We still have time to mess this up!

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans don’t trust women.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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101Comments

  1. 1.

    MikeJ

    True, false, who’s to say? the story is out there and it would be irresponsible not to talk about it.

  2. 2.

    Hill Dweller

    Are those mouth breathers any worse than the Village? Hell, the Village’s willful misrepresentation of the sequester and it’s effects is far more damning.

  5. 5.

    jl

    But its intertube search tagline is “Global Satirical Newspaper of Record” OF RECORD! That could have fooled anyone.

    And for anyone who had to slog through an Econ 101 textbook, these graphs scream authenticity:

    “The filing says that Krugman got into credit card trouble in 2004 after racking up $84,000 in a single month on his American Express black card in pursuit of rare Portuguese wines and 19th century English cloth”

    And

    “Through his lawyer, Bertil Ohlin, Krugman explains that despite his travails with spending and debt in his personal finances, he stands by his pseudo-Keynesian policies.”

    Anyone could have been fooled by that. Even a Woodward.

  7. 7.

    geg6

    @Hill Dweller:

    Yeah, but the Village’s Potemkin village of a sequester-is-a-bust meme is being shredded to pieces by local news. Fucking local news is showing the big money boyz (and grrrls) what the job of “journalist” really means.

    Even the stupid people I know are noticing and grumbling about the GOPers.

  8. 8.

    jl

    And Kthug says he said nothing until it hit some wingnut internet racket pub. So, it’s PK’s fault. Don’t blame the Sons and Daughters of the Holy Breitbart.

  10. 10.

    Comrade Dread

    I’ll give it another six months before Breitbart just up and posts whatever crazy Uncle Harry does in his Facebook forwards about FEMA camps, and the WH dog chief of staff and crap.

  11. 11.

    Warren Terra

    As the comments to the Krugman post note, bankruptcy filings are a matter of public record. Thus, any report this rumor (other than one that points and laughs at the rumormongers) is a de facto admission that the “reporter” has no regard for the truth, whatsoever. Not that this will change anyone’s view of the Breitbart Online Mausoleum And Tribute Act, of course.

  12. 12.

    MattF

    Now, having failed, they need to take Feces-Flinging 101 all over again. “OK, guys, it’s ‘ready, aim, fire,’ not ‘ready, aim, soil yourselves’.”

  13. 13.

    different-church-lady

    Jeez, what a thing to read just when I’m paying credit card bills. When you read about my bankruptcy filing it won’t be fake…

  14. 14.

    ranchandsyrup

    He should have stayed quiet until Scarborough picked it up as part of his anti-keynesian jihad.

    ‘Course Joe can speculate about Kthug’s BK, but no one can speculate about dead interns in Morning Joe’s congressional office.

  15. 15.

    Sloegin

    Those must be some really nice granite countertops to have gone bankrupt. Seriously though, once it’s out in the wingers world it never goes away. PK will always be bankrupt from now on. We still have people at work who believe we found WMDs in Iraq.

  18. 18.

    The Moar You Know

    We still have people at work who believe we found WMDs in Iraq.

    @Sloegin: So do I. You gotta wonder how that feature of the human brain came into existence. It can’t be good for survival:

    “Uggg, why are you standing by that dried-out pond?”

    “There’s water here”

    “Ummm, don’t know how to tell you this, Uggg, but the pond went dry a year and a half ago. We’re moving out tomorrow in search of water. Half the tribe has died and we can’t wait anymore.”

    “Huh, that’s interesting.”

    “No, it’s not, Uggg. It’s a fact. No more water. All gone.”

    “OK”

    “Why are you still standing there, Uggg?”

    “There’s water here.”

    Tell me how these people survive to breeding age. Anybody. I’d love to know.

  19. 19.

    Cacti

    Given that the right wing creates its own reality, Krugman’s “bankruptcy” will now become an article of faith to go with Obama’s Kenyan birth, and the murder of Vince Foster.

    None of them care what the liebrul New York Times has to say.

  20. 20.

    Hill Dweller

    @geg6: The Obama admin has been going around the Village(hence the whining) and courting local media for months. I think that is partly the reason for their more honest coverage.

    The wingnuts, who are utterly detached from anything happening outside the Beltway, are walking into a buzzsaw. The Village has been trying to mitigate any potential damage to Republicans by blaming it on Obama, but I don’t think it will ultimately work.

  21. 21.

    bemused

    @Sloegin:

    This. It never changes.

    This is new to me. Rightwingers repeat some bs from Fox/teaparty/ wingnut media. I say, I suppose you heard that whopper from Fox, etc. Oh heavens no, we never listen to Fox, etc. Somehow, they independently came up with the same exact spin all by themselves. It’s kind of interesting that they are pretending not to follow rightwing world even though it’s obvious they are.

  24. 24.

    Petorado

    What’s even funnier about the Daily Currant post is googling the other names it mentions to complete the farce.

    Herman (Hyman) Minskey is an economist who theorized about speculative borrowing bubbles. Died 1996.

    Bertil Ohlin, Nobel prize winning Swedish economist. Died 1979.

    Brilliant sense of irony Daily Currant!

  28. 28.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Just turned on MSNBC in time to hear Tweety call Paul Ryan “a killer rabbit, if you will”.

    I will.

  29. 29.

    scav

    I like the detail that the Boston.com or whatever it was./s just piped the story through from a source and is blaming them. Undoubtedly, like most online papers, they spend far more effort, sweat, tears and money on vetting comments than their actual stories.

  30. 30.

    schrodinger's cat

    Does it mean, what I think it means?
    DougJ is a friend of Hamas, Krugman is a friend of Hamas, therefore DougJ=Paul Krugman?

  32. 32.

    Trollhattan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I can tolerate Tweety when he’s landing the zingers. I guess I can’t help myself, but somebody’s got to do it and if it’s Tweety, then so be it.

    Of course, Paul Ryan would so not get the reference, which makes it all the better.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @Warren Terra:

    As the comments to the Krugman post note, bankruptcy filings are a matter of public record. Thus, any report this rumor (other than one that points and laughs at the rumormongers) is a de facto admission that the “reporter” has no regard for the truth, whatsoever.

    That’s not quite true. They could simply be incompetent enough not to know that bankruptcies are public records, so that they honestly believe that repeating rumors is the best they can do. I’m willing to believe either theory for why the Breitbrats are doing what they’re doing.

  39. 39.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Roger Moore:

    As has been said, bankruptcy filings are public records and can easily be accessed. The fact that the so called “reporters” at breitbart didn’t even bother checking is all we need to know. Say what you will about “both sides do it” but I don’t see someone like JC, Doug, Mistermix or any of the other front pagers here make that kind of mistake and they aren’t journalists per se, they are just bloggers. Can you imagine someone like Ezra Klein committing that kind of journalistic malpractice and the fallout that would ensue?

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @kc: Scav mentioned that in a comment above and Breitbart mentions boston.com so most of us aren’t morons.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @Yutsano:

    Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.

    I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with that. Stupidity is probably a better default assumption than malice, but the Breitbrats have enough of a track record that we don’t have to rely on default assumptions. They’ve been malicious enough times that it’s reasonably safe to assume malice, though it’s almost always aided and abetted by stupidity, ignorance, and/or laziness.

  43. 43.

    ranchandsyrup

    @kc: Boston.com sez that it ain’t their fault. Prolly Obama’s fault, then.

    Brian McGrory, the Globe’s editor, explains that no editorial official at his paper ever made a decision to post the piece. “The story arrived deep within our site from a third party vendor who partners on some finance and market pages on our site,” says McGrory. It was never on the Boston.com homepage, says McGrory. “We never knew it was there till we heard about it from outside.” Since the posting went up, McGrory attests to having done “urgent work to get it the hell down,” something that appears to have happened, though not as quickly as McGrory would have liked. “The idea that we’d have a partner on our site is actually news to me,” says McGrory, who vows to “address our relationship with that vendor.”

  45. 45.

    kc

    @JPL:

    Scav mentioned that in a comment above and Breitbart mentions boston.com so most of us aren’t morons.

    I meant that the Boston Globe people are morons, not y’all. Though if the shoe fits . . . :D

  46. 46.

    burnspbesq

    @jl:

    Anyone could have been fooled by that

    Not anyone who ever studied international economics. Bertil Ohlin was one of the developers of the Hecksher-Ohlin Theorem, most of which was blown to bits by Krugman’s Nobel-winning work in international.

    It’s cute. Too clever by half.

  48. 48.

    Trollhattan

    McMegan Alert! Somebody tie DougJ and TomL to the mast, stat.

    Also, too, when the hell did she slither over to Daily Beast? Was it before Sully decamped? Anyway, here’s the punchline: she’s “writing” a financial advice column. Her blurb sayeth this:

    Megan McArdle is a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast covering business, economics, and public policy. A former senior editor at The Atlantic and writer for The Economist, Megan has a diverse work history including three small startups and a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero.

    And she’s saying things like this:

    Dear KFOO:

    First things first: will you adopt me? My husband and I don’t eat much, and we come with an adorable puppy. Plus, I enjoy saying “KFoo”.

    Yes, Dad, just kidding. We already have marvelous parents that we’re very fond of, and who did much the same as you are: plowing as much as possible into their kids education. For which we are very grateful, as well as very fond.

    Even so, let me suggest that you have it a tiny bit backwards. When it comes to savings, you should follow what I like to call the RC COLA principle:

    1. RETIREMENT first
    2. CHILDREN second
    3. COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENTS last

    Which is to say that you first save for your future, then their education, and only then—if there is anything left over—do you upgrade your lifestyle.

    Get it? Blenderella didn’t buy that Thermomix until her retirement was all squared away, and as to kidz being #2….

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/11/first-world-financial-problems.html

  49. 49.

    Soonergrunt

    @Yutsano: Are you kidding? With the Breitbrats, “both” usually IS the answer. Stupid and malicious are not mutually exclusive, but for them, only a way of doing business.

  51. 51.

    JPL

    Earlier this morning I tried to search on Boston.com for the article and couldn’t find it. I looked under the business section and blogs. You could link to it from business insider but it wasn’t that easy to find without the link.
    That’s not an excuse and I do think that the front page of the site should have an apology.

  52. 52.

    Soonergrunt

    @Trollhattan: Yeah–she got there for a couple of months before Sully decided to run his own shop. I think that her arrival was one of the precipitating factors. When you think of how much damage she did to his (and all the other Atlantic writers’) reputations, what the hell else could he do?
    Only though self employment could he guarantee that the editor would never again damage his ‘reputation’ by proximity to hers.

  56. 56.

    Face

    Im pretty sure nobody there at the anti-feminist hatec#nt site cares about accuracy/honesty. The “story” is “out”, PK is BK, and always will be.

  58. 58.

    Trollhattan

    @ranchandsyrup:
    So in this case, “running advice” is an instruction to any unfortunate readers. “Run, she’s hit the ‘send” key!”

    Aren’t you in San Diego? WTF is with the local paper ‘o record? This here is some pernicious bullshit.

    In denouncing fracking, critics invent straw men and pretend they are noble fighters wielding irrefutable facts against corporate greedheads. But in depicting fracking as evil, they never admit their real argument is with the Obama administration.

    And then there’s this delicious irony: Allegedly evil fracking has done far more to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions than the renewable sources of energy that environmentalists so admire. Such emissions hit a 20-year low in the U.S. in 2012 – because of the giant recent shift from coal to natural gas.

    Which brings us back to California, home to the nation’s largest shale resource and the nation’s most fervent environmentalists. Here the question is whom our leaders will heed: the Obama administration or the green true believers.

    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/10/tp-fracking-evil-or-just-another-heavy-industry/?page=1#article-copy

  59. 59.

    dmsilev

    @Trollhattan: Does that woman understand that there are people who have incomes less than $100K per year? Of the three letters she responded to, one was paying down their house at $50K/year on top of regular living expenses and retirement, one explicitly had a $240K/year income, and one was a couple who had $1 million in assets at age 30. Definitely a representative slice of America.

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @dmsilev:

    Does that woman understand that there are people who have incomes less than $100K per year?

    Maybe the questions from people earning less than that are just incomprehensible to her, so she refused to answer. Or maybe people earning less than $100K are smart enough to know better than to go to her for advice.

  62. 62.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Face: Is “hatecunt” a new term? I don’t keep up with all the lingo, but I’m seeing that a lot lately. Twice in this thread.

    Yes, I’m old, in case it matters. Kids, lawn, &c.

  64. 64.

    johnny aquitard

    Brietbart is a truth laundering operation for the right wing. They take lies, rumors, gossip, obvious satire and cycle it through the rightwing media. When it gets in turn picked up by Politico et al and mentioned by some teabagging congress assholes, it loses some of its taint. Voila! Dirty lies become truth, or truth clean enough, and when it changes hands enough times it becomes accepted as the real article.

    Brietbart.com is an essential mechanism to mainstream the rightwing fringe. It’s not going to go out of business due to tarnished credibility.

  66. 66.

    Mike Furlan

    How is this a fail? At least 27% of the population now has proof that Krugman has gone bankrupt.

    And there is nothing anyone can do that can possibly change their mind.

    And, the more we talk about it, the high that number will go. If you had enough money to fund a series of stories “Did Krugman really go Bankrupt?” we could easily get that number up over 50% in the red states.

  67. 67.

    minutemaid

    So kinda like when Wr0ng Aga1n Cole thought the human with wings flying video was real.

  68. 68.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Factual reporting is not going to make Breitbart the Huffpo of wingnuttia, is it?

  69. 69.

    David Hunt

    @JPL:

    Sure wish the Friends of Hamas would pay me to speak.

    Let me tell you that it’s a great gig. When they had me speak, I had to cover my own travel and lodging, but I’ll be set as soon as there check for 50,000 Ameroes clears…

  72. 72.

    Mike Furlan

    @johnny aquitard: This Krugman story has increased Breitbart’s credibility. It got quoted more than it has in a long time, and a lot of people will take away the idea the Krugman is a bankrupt hypocrite.

    Let’s put it this way, there are a lot more people who think Krugman went bankrupt today than there was yesterday.

    They are winning.

  74. 74.

    Calouste

    @dmsilev:

    Does that woman understand that there are people who have incomes less than $100K per year?

    Maybe she does, but they are not people one wants to be associated with. I’m fairly sure she understands that her maid doesn’t make $100K per year.

  76. 76.

    Trollhattan

    @ranchandsyrup:

    Uggggh. That explains it but wow, SD is a big metro area and deserves a decent paper. Can’t these assholes be satisfied with their GVs and their megayachts and leave important things alone? If ever there were a reason to soak the rich, this is it.

  77. 77.

    Morzer

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/11/how-an-austrian-bloggers-report-that-paul-krugm/193006

    The bogus story that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had filed for bankruptcy appeared on Boston.com, the sister website of The Boston Globe, through a third-party content provider that posts content without editorial approval and provides such content to more than 200 web outlets.
    That provider, meanwhile, took the story from an Austrian-based blog without any editorial review or fact-checking of its own, a practice that is becoming more and more common in the Internet content sharing world. The blog has since deleted its post and all posts from the author appear to have been removed from Boston.com.

  78. 78.

    MikeJ

    @piratedan:

    might as well be error 405: Facts not in evidence

    405 is Method Not Allowed. This was absolutely 406 Not Acceptable.

    Although to be less humorous the proper code is actually 410 Gone, but nobody actually uses the right codes anyway. I can’t remember the last time I saw something other than 200, 403, 404, or 500.

  80. 80.

    taylormattd

    John.

    I know you don’t have control over which ads are placed on your site. And I further know you hate complaints about said ads.

    But dear lord jesus, for the love of all that is holy, please please do everything in your power to get rid of that fucking “Power Companies Hate This” ad.

    It looks like somebody is frantically decorating a strange dildo over and over and over, and it’s kind of giving me a seizure.

  82. 82.

    ranchandsyrup

    @Trollhattan: Poppa Doug’s politics underlie the real motivation–to get the rest of the development rights for the embarcadero and waterfront. He groomed a young gay republican through the city council and had him run for mayor. It was pretty close. Bob Filner quit his position in Congress in DC to run. Filner even had the Big Dog himself come and campaign. The stakes were high.

    Lots of people in SD county subscribe to the LA Times. I used to get the N. County Times until the UT bought it. Most locals “get” that the UT’s editorial page is a pathetic joke.

  84. 84.

    Yutsano

    @Roger Moore: Durf thinks if he keeps criticising the FPers that they’ll shut up and listen to his divine wisdom. Protip: he’s not even an American citizen. That makes me larf even harder at him.

    I kinda miss makoto too. She and I had some real tussles but she was at the very least entertaining.

  85. 85.

    Roger Moore

    @Yutsano:

    I kinda miss makoto too. She and I had some real tussles but she was at the very least entertaining.

    She was at least trying to contribute to the blog rather than derail it. She didn’t always succeed, but at least when she blogstalked a FPer he deserved it.

  86. 86.

    Kay S

    The Breitbart piece is only the most obvious thing here…what is left of most newspapers is a rag full of ” content” provided by ” vendors,” not actual news reported by, you know, reporters. For The Globe to get all whiny that they never saw it or authorized it, isn’t it time to call bullshlt?

  87. 87.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Roger Moore:
    I completely disagree. MC’s entire schtick was based around gloating about how much smarter she thought she was than us, usually by saying very obvious things using words she made up herself and pretending that was a brilliant insight no one else has ever had. She was a libertarian with different mottos.

    EDIT – Okay, after further thought, that STILL is more useful than our current trolls. They’re just conversation derailers.

  88. 88.

    Funkula

    @Yutsano

    Probably better to amend that when dealing with Breitbartlets: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity and malice.

  89. 89.

    cokane

    really embarassing episode for the boston globe. sheesh.

    even more embarassing when you go to read the story that was posted on boston.com and see what a huge axe the writer had to grind. embarassing that there was no one there to filter a story like that. I mean if Krugman really did go bankrupt, and youre the major paper of record for really all of New England… the first story you run about it, shouldn’t be a spittle-flecked hatchet job. Just out and out embarassing lack of professionalism.

  90. 90.

    cokane

    furthermore… it just raises troubling concerns about this practice normally. How much false journalism is flying at boston.com that doesn’t delete with high profile celebrities? How much shit has already been fed dumped out by this “vendor”?

    Goddamn this is aggravating

  91. 91.

    mouse tolliver

    @Warren Terra:

    Not that this will change anyone’s view of the Breitbart Online Mausoleum And Tribute Act, of course.

    They lost Tweety at least. He used to be one of Breitbart’s worst enablers.

  94. 94.

    Joshua Norton

    @Roger Moore:

    OMG! BOB! Talk about a blast from the past. I had the pie filter working overtime on his postings.

    Who would have thought those were the good old days?

  95. 95.

    MaxxLange

    Well, Robert Nozick lived in a rent-controlled Cambridge apartment. So, balance requires that one of our guys be a hypocrite too.

  97. 97.

    Yutsano

    @Svensker: OMG Michael Gass!! I’m not sure if he qualified as a troll because he was a one and done, but that one thread supplied us with so many memes that I think we still use. A classic, that one is. I wonder if it’s easily searchable.

  99. 99.

    Yutsano

    @Mnemosyne: That never works. Then he pees on the rug and eats all the food, all the while whining about mean libz in the interim.

  100. 100.

    gnomedad

    @johnny aquitard:

    Brietbart is a truth laundering operation for the right wing.

    I like this concept but, if you’ll forgive me, “lie laundering” is perhaps more precise.

  101. 101.

    Digital Amish

    Following the Krugman story links I ended up on a John Nolte story at Brietbart.com. His lead paragraph had this little gem of inadvertent but piquant truth:

    “Late last week, many of the same elite media members who attempt to falsely link conservatives to every imaginable tragedy (most notably, Sarah Palin),”

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