Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republicans in disarray!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Let there be snark.

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75Comments

  4. 4.

    AA+ Bonds

    Was reading Andrew Sullivan, and noticing that he still does what libertarians always do when others point out that their standard-bearer had to be politically pressured into supporting the Civil Rights Act in 2010: fall back on the drug war excuse.

    To me, it shows that Sullivan (and libertarians) never got past the Bell Curve phase of, “blacks are responsible for making me not racist.”

    There’s one thing I always come back with when I get this shit from white stoners who use the drug war to shift the focus away from Rand Paul’s support for the right of Woolworth’s management to kick black people off the lunch counter. . .

    . . . believe it or not, more black people eat at restaurants than get arrested for drug crimes.

  7. 7.

    Trollhattan

    @AA+ Bonds:

    Used to cut Sully some slack because of his position as a “conservative” who opposed torture, etc. but he’s jumped one too many sharks. I now apply the McMegan Rule and presume he’s always wrong. If he’s ever “right” it’s by accident.

  9. 9.

    some guy

    our brave allies in Al Qaeda are still sticking it to the man in Syria. and according to Treasury, your donations to Al Qaeda in Syria are not only legal, they are tax deductible.

  10. 10.

    shortstop

    @scav: One or two of those radically poor people-loving sistahs are friends of mine. They will not be pleased, not pleased at all. However, these girls are nothing if not resourceful.

    A little story. Canvassed in Toledo a couple of weeks before the 2012 election. There were a couple dozen women aged 60 and up listed at the same address on one of my walk sheets. I figured it was a retirement home, but it turned out to be a convent. Obviously I wasn’t going to be allowed to roam the halls there; an alternative strategy was called for. Went in and talked to the sister-sentry at the desk about leaving some literature. She politely said that as swing-state voters, they didn’t think they could stand seeing one more leaflet. Understandable in Ohio — we heard this a lot. But if I didn’t mark them down as solid to strong Obama or solid to strong Romney, I knew they’d get visited again and again.

    Playing her cards very close to the vest, this nun resisted all my conversational invites and said only that all the sisters were either planning to vote or had already done so, and that they “take their political and civic responsibilities very seriously.” I spotted a small opening and said something about it having been a good year for nuns’ political activism…how about those Nuns on the Bus, huh? She completely lit up and volunteered they had several sisters on the bus and that they’d hosted the bus riders overnight more than once. I thanked her and left, ticking “strong Obama” after every name on my list.

  12. 12.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @shortstop:

    Seemed to me that Ratzi wasn’t about to step down without a guarantee that his successor would continue the church’s relentless march back to the Middle Ages.

  15. 15.

    jibeaux

    So, Eden foods’ CEO is an asshole and they were basically the only people consistently using bpa-free cans. So, dried beans it is. There should be nothing easier than punishing right wing talibubbas who own natural food products. Fuck John Mackey too.

  16. 16.

    jibeaux

    @Hill Dweller: He’s such a dumb shit. On the twitter trying to figure out why polling says that a) you don’t need to pay more taxes than you’re legally obligated to, and b) taxes on the rich should be raised. Seriously, those seem like mutually exclusive beliefs to you?

  17. 17.

    the Conster

    @Trollhattan:

    Even when he’s right, he’s wrong, like his mea culpa on Iraq. His excuse for being wrong was because the lefty queers were mean to him and made him do it. The only reason to ever read him now is to watch him try to justify his petulant overreactions and his pathetic knee jerk defensive fetishizing of his favorite conservative icons.

  18. 18.

    scav

    @shortstop: @Higgs Boson’s Mate: I doubt the nuns or many of the rest of us really are that surprised. Thou Shalt Obey is the Big Invisible 0th commandment. Perhaps something might still be gained on other issues (they’ll clean up that financial mess first as it has real impacts) but even that new pope smell, PR window and new set of beanies advising him made it likely he was going to give a millimeter on the big 0th.

  19. 19.

    Trollhattan

    Some interesting bills popping up in the California legislature, blurring the definition of what the heck is a “doctor”? I can kind of see a couple of them, but some others are simply nuts.

    * Optometrists want to diagnose and treat all kinds of ailments related to the eye – even diabetes – not just test vision and prescribe glasses.

    Opthamologists, maybe, but optometrists? WTF?

    * Pharmacists want to give more shots and write some prescriptions.

    Prescriptions? Where does the diagnosis take place, on the condom aisle?

    * Chiropractors want to do medical exams required for commercial driver’s licenses.

    This really crosses into WTF-territory. I want a chiro approving a school bus driver’s medical soundness? GTFO.

    * Physical therapists want to treat injuries without a doctor’s referral.

    Maybe. I wouldn’t mind being able to go to a therapist directly, presuming it was insurance-coverable. And there’s the rub.

    * Advanced nurses want permission to perform abortions.

    Sound the alarms! Ah-oooga!

    * while midwives want to bill insurance for delivering babies at home.

    Meh.

    * Practitioners of traumatology – a branch of traditional Chinese medicine – are pushing a bill that would license their specialty, the first step toward being covered by insurance.

    Uh, what?

    * Midwives are lobbying for a bill that would allow them to bill Medi-Cal for delivering babies in homes and birthing centers.

    Luck with that.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/15/5341769/with-federal-health-law-medical.html#storylink=cpy

  21. 21.

    Scamp Dog

    @Trollhattan: The thing to realize about Andrew Sullivan is that he is trained in debate, the old fashioned formal debate-as-a-contest, and that’s what he lives for.

    When he decides to be on one side of a discussion, he knows how to come up with an argument. If it’s torture, he can come up with some excellent historical points and a cogent discussion. If it’s nonsense like the Bell Curve, he’ll find some smoke to blow, some semi-plausible word strings that sound very educated and impressive, as long as you don’t think about them carefully.

    So you should never read Sully to learn anything about the world and how it works, but only to see if he has some arguments worth borrowing. I have no idea how he chooses what side to come down on, and gave up reading him a few years ago.

  22. 22.

    Trollhattan

    @the Conster:

    Have to admit, Sully after the first Obama-Romney debate was good theater. My only disappointment was his inability to levitate. That would have been cool.

  23. 23.

    Mike G

    Gold has dropped $200 an ounce since Thursday.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GLD&t=5d&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=

    If you had bought gold a couple of years ago when Glenn Beck was pimping it on Fox, you would now have lost 30% of your money. To put it another way, gold has dropped 30% against evil worthless certificates-of-confiscation Federal Reserve Obamabux.

    Schadenfreude: tastes better than Swiss chocolate.
    A fool and his money watch Fox News and CNBC.

  24. 24.

    scav

    @Trollhattan: The prescriptions for pharmacists one might not be as daft as it sounds. Pharmacists in Europe seem to work entirely differently with a lot more freedom of judgement. Hacking myself to death in Sweden a trip it was certainly the pharmacist I went to for diagnosis, meaning I went to a drug store to buy something OTC (I thought) and was hustled upstairs for a largely charades based evaluation surrounded by other people. Would be rather nice to wander into the local drugstore and the pharmacist can look at you and hand out at least some of the locked up good stuff without the holy MD-scribbled writ.

  26. 26.

    sb

    @Hill Dweller: Doesn’t the word ‘bankrupt’ imply there was intellectual curiousity to begin with?

    /I’m picking nits that don’t need picking because I’m watching students take standardized tests right now. I’m not sure how they’re maintaining their sanity.

  27. 27.

    Trollhattan

    @Scamp Dog:

    A helpful insight. I do recall my brief HS debate team stint and the challenge of being ready to debate either side of the year’s issue. Later, I dated somebody with a rhetoric degree and wow, I never won an argument with her. Even when she let me think I had, I’d later realize, “Wait a minute….”

    But I never had Oakeshott-Widener succor, not once.

  28. 28.

    Another Halocene Human

    @jibeaux: Don’t you know, Tonal Crow in the other thread said it’s Brooksism to assert that left wing and right wing people have crossover behaviors in the health sector?

  29. 29.

    Michele C

    @scav: I’ve been wondering about that too as regards Clarinex, which works better for my seasonal allergies than anything else. Why does it take a holy writ from an MD to give me some Clarinex from a pharmacist? I think it’s because that way the MD and the insurance companies both get to charge me more.

  32. 32.

    sb

    @Trollhattan: As a CA resident, I’m with you on all of those. I get my flu shots from the pharmacy but as for the pharms writing scrip? Like you wrote, who is doing the diagnosis? And I’d support the one about physical therapists, provided it’s got the stipulation you included.

  34. 34.

    jibeaux

    @scav: I liked that in Europe too. Although I think it’s just the reality that America is a little bit different. As someone was telling me while showing me pictures of the giant floating staircase in Brazil’s capitol building, which has no handrails or walls whatsoever, they just have a very different attitude vis a vis litigation.

  36. 36.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jibeaux: I gather Scarborough went off on Obama for paying too low a tax rate when he advocates a higher tax rate

    Bless Zbignew Brezinski for calling him IIRC breathtakingly shallow

  37. 37.

    jibeaux

    Also, I have heard people warned off from pharmacy school with, you’re smart as hell and your program is going to be very tough, you’re going to learn a hell of a lot and go into a fair bit of debt. And then you’re going to fucking count p1lls for the rest of your life. The point being, I think, that’s a very constrained role for a highly educated person.

  38. 38.

    jibeaux

    Also, I have heard people warned off from pharmacy school with, you’re smart as hell and your program is going to be very tough, you’re going to learn a hell of a lot and go into a fair bit of debt. And then you’re going to fucking count p1lls for the rest of your life. The point being, I think, that’s a very constrained role for a highly educated person.

  39. 39.

    Trollhattan

    @scav:

    It’s certainly the case California pharmicists have advanced degrees (especially the PharmDs) and importantly, take far more pharmacology than most M.D.s. Ideally, they should be consulting with doctors in making prescriptions rather than parsing badly scribbled scrips post-diagnosis. But I’m having a hard time envisioning how they could conduct a consulatation-examination, make a diagnosis and prescribe medication, autonomously.

    Might be a lack of imagination on my part.

  41. 41.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Trollhattan: Chiropractors want to do medical exams required for commercial driver’s licenses.

    If Cali has any sense they will dismiss this shit with great prejudice.

    Yeah, it SEEMS like you just do some bullshit tests, tick off the box, and get paid. NO. MDs are trained to look for exactly the kinds of diseases that will make you no longer be safe to drive a commercial vehicle. Chiros are trained in convincing suckers that they need to have their back cracked as “maintenance”.

  43. 43.

    scav

    @jibeaux: Litigation might play some role in it, but I’m wondering more if we’ve fossilized into too few gatekeepers and increasing number of things being monitored. We should still be able to track the danger danger cold medication without dragging in a fully qualified MD’s blessing.

  44. 44.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Trollhattan: Medicaid makes them go to the hospital specifically because it’s going to cost them more when the child has serious birth injuries or the mother is in the ICU and nearly dies due to complications from a home birth.

    I’m really tired of the self-righteous midwife/doula advocacy, let’s just sweep away all the states about mortality and morbidity and use a bunch of nice-sounding language about freedom and feminism and shit. Fuck right off, baby killers.

    Here’s a good example of the consequences of not having obstetric care, this in the good ault Pagan Celtic days of midwifery and wymmyn wysdym.

  46. 46.

    Trollhattan

    Busy day on the Left Coast.

    COSTA MESA, Calif. — A man was blown up in his California home and at least 16 neighbors were evacuated as authorities found and destroyed other homemade explosive devices, police said Monday.

    A bomb squad descended on the quiet street of ranch homes in the Orange County city of Costa Mesa after the 52-year-old man died in the Sunday night blast.
    About 90 minutes earlier, neighbors reported seeing the man lying on his front lawn but said he refused offers of help and went inside his home.

    Police were called about 7:30 p.m. after neighbors heard the explosion, and the man was found dead.

    Police suspect he was killed by some sort of homemade explosive, but investigators had not determined whether the blast was suicide or an accident.

    At least two other explosive devices were later found at the home, police Sgt. Jerry Hildeman said.

    Neighbors from surrounding homes remained evacuated until the house was declared safe, police said.

    The FBI, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad and other agencies responded to the scene.

    Big Wingnut Media have prepared two sets of talking points–which is released depends on whether the exploded person is surnamed Al’something, or Smith.
    http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/15/5343027/explosion-kills-calif-man-neighbors.html#storylink=cpy

  48. 48.

    Calouste

    It’s funny to see how Americans are so surprised to find out that Maggie Thatcher is so reviled in the UK that people partied in the streets and a song celebrating her death made the top of the iTunes chart.

    Of course anyone who had spend more than a few weeks in the UK in the 1980s or had access to British TV news and newspapers, like say all the American correspondents in London, could have told you that. Yet the American correspondents decided, to a man/woman, to shape the image of Maggie in the US in a way that didn’t match with reality. What other news do you think the American news organizations have misrepresented in the last 3 decades or so?

  49. 49.

    Another Halocene Human

    @some guy: some pretty deadly toddlers you got up there

    Only four days ago, right in the next farmhouse to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right—it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of.

  51. 51.

    Trollhattan

    @Another Halocene Human:
    Wife.gov had a verrrrry lengthy, induced labor overseen by a wonderful OB/GYN. Even though she rather liked the idea of going some magical hippie route, she knew better and frankly it would bave been impossible at home. There would have been an ambulance ride to who knows what hospital and intervention and delivery by the attenging staff, not by somebody with whom she had a trusting, multi-year patient-doctor relationship.

    i.e., What you said.

  53. 53.

    scav

    @Trollhattan: Maybe this might help. We’re generally talking basic garden level illnesses here, not the tricky ones, and it’d be really nice to have someone that knows which of the confusingly named bottles a) is most likely to deal with my symptoms and b) won’t interact with any other drugs I might be taking. Help with a) would be nice, help with b) might be critically important. This might be the medical niche some tiny clinics in the US are trying to move into. Pharmacists seem to filling at least some of it elsewhere.

  57. 57.

    Kyle

    @mouse tolliver:

    ‘The incident happened “in or around a pickup truck.”‘

    At a NASCAR event, no less. Mr. Journalist, you’ll need to be a little more descriptive…

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jibeaux: I have never understood those arguments. It is perfectly rational to use the requirements of current law in one’s decision making process while simultaneously advocating a change to that law.

  59. 59.

    rikyrah

    @AA+ Bonds:

    Was reading Andrew Sullivan, and noticing that he still does what libertarians always do when others point out that their standard-bearer had to be politically pressured into supporting the Civil Rights Act in 2010: fall back on the drug war excuse.

    To me, it shows that Sullivan (and libertarians) never got past the Bell Curve phase of, “blacks are responsible for making me not racist.”

    There’s one thing I always come back with when I get this shit from white stoners who use the drug war to shift the focus away from Rand Paul’s support for the right of Woolworth’s management to kick black people off the lunch counter. . .

    . . . believe it or not, more black people eat at restaurants than get arrested for drug crimes.

    If you’re SERIOUS about the drug war…

    Point to me Rand Paul’s speeches about the Prison Industrial Complex….

    You can also leave the links for Rand Paul’s writings against Prison Slave Labor….

    And don’t forget to drop the links for Rand Paul’s speeches against Police Brutality towards Black and Brown people, exhibit A being Stop and Frisk…

    Just leave the links…I’ll read up on them.

    But, until you leave those links?

    You can go somewhere and sit down pushing Rand Paul as some great ‘freedom fighter’, just so you can smoke your dope in peace.

    The mofo STILL wants into my uterus…

    and wouldn’t have told my ancestors suffering under the Police State of Jim Crow, that it wasn’t his place…cause STATE’S RIGHTS..and all that.

    So truly…fuck all the Rand Paul defenders.

    He’s every bit the racist ass grifter as his Daddy.

  60. 60.

    Trollhattan

    @scav:

    I think I get what you’re saying. My concern is the blurry line of what is a minor illness or injury and how much diagnostic competence is required to recognize that line with high certainty. Guy A has bronchitis; Guy B has pneumonia. Can they tell them apart?

    I’d love to see the 24-hour urgent-care clinic model expanded and become more common and complete, with a pharmacy component included. We’re ridiculous today. Routine medical care is mostly M-F, 9-5 and illness/injury tends to occur outside those times. I’d love to be able to haul myself or my child somewhere that’s not the emergency room, receive care and a prescription, and go home. A licenced pharmacist would be a member of the team and be able to fill common scrips on site.

    This is what we have locally for our dog, FWIW, 24/7.

    Also, too, isn’t Walmart fiddling with this concept? My Costco has an in-house optometrist and I thought I read WalMart was going to have medical clinics in house.

  61. 61.

    Trollhattan

    @scav:

    [Crap, I triggered FYWP, but I think I know the Bad Words.]

    I think I get what you’re saying. My concern is the blurry line of what is a minor illness or injury and how much diagnostic competence is required to recognize that line with high certainty. Guy A has bronchitis; Guy B has pneumonia. Can they tell them apart?

    I’d love to see the 24-hour urgent-care clinic model expanded and become more common and complete, with a “Far macy” component included. We’re ridiculous today. Routine medical care is mostly M-F, 9-5 and illness/injury tends to occur outside those times. I’d love to be able to haul myself or my child somewhere that’s not the emergency room, receive care and a “scrip,” and go home. A licenced pharmacist would be a member of the team and be able to fill common scrips on site.

    This is what we have locally for our dog, FWIW, 24/7.

    Also, too, isn’t Walmart fiddling with this concept? My Costco has an in-house optometrist and I thought I read WalMart was going to have medical clinics in house.

  63. 63.

    The Moar You Know

    @Trollhattan: Well, that’s the problem with a wholly one-party state. Which California now is. Now, so far as I know California has never had a sane Republican, but let’s just hypothesize that they did. Said mythical sane Republicans could go “oh wait that’s horseshit” and such measure would die on the vine.

    Well, that “check and balance” is now gone, and you are going to see some legislative freak flags fly.

    Now, we’re OK in Cali because we have, as out last line of defense against batshittery, Jerry Brown’s veto. I sure hope the rumors I’m hearing of him going for another term are true. We need him. I know he’s old and sick and would probably really rather be doing something else, but we need him. He has a way of putting a stop to this kind of horseshit that doesn’t burn bridges.

  66. 66.

    Trollhattan

    @The Moar You Know:

    Am not overly concerned. These folks have long pushed their pet bills–most never get out of committee and Jerry has a very free veto pen for any that might make it through the full legislature. I don’t think he’s beholden to Big Chiropracty. Big Traumatology, though…after the China trade mission?

  67. 67.

    scav

    @Trollhattan: Oh yeah, it’s a blurry issue and neither system is perfect. I just don’t think it’s immediately and necessarily to be assumed that pharmacists can’t have a front end role here, given they serve at least a part of that role elsewhere. Currently it could be argued that the front-line person deciding between A and B is Mom or the person with A or B, wandering among the aisles of OTC jumbospeak drugs before dragging themselves off to the ER. It’s a line of qualification that would be investigated, right along side EMT script (etc) for certain things. Certainly studies as to where to draw the line on their level,of competence would be involved.

  69. 69.

    DankNuggets_420weed_guy

    @rikyrah:

    Hello, I am a socially conservative/fiscally conservative Libertarian and supporter of Rand Paul and am quite surprised by your vitriol towards teh Senator.

    I guess it’s a testament to the fact that you live in a liberal bubble, you don’t know how bad things are.It is obvious we need a change:

    Ten years ago we had Jobs, Hope and Cash. These days we have NO JObs, No Hope and No Cash.

  72. 72.

    The Moar You Know

    Ten years ago we had Jobs, Hope and Cash. These days we have NO JObs, No Hope and No Cash

    .

    @DankNuggets_420weed_guy: Wow, never heard that one before. And it’s “Hope and Change”, not “Hope and Cash”. You’re supposed to say “how’s that Hope and Change working out for you libtards?”

    If you’re as stoned and stupid as you sound, you might want to put the bong down for a couple of years.

  73. 73.

    EriktheRed

    I’ve often wondered how big Marc Bolan would have become if he hadn’t died so tragically.

  74. 74.

    AnotherBruce

    @EriktheRed: I’ve heard one theory that the punk era was not his time. But he may have been able to re-invent himself in the post-punk era. I think there’s a lot to this. Of course in England he was the biggest thing since the Beatles for awhile. America didn’t know what to make of the guy who practically invented glam rock.

  75. 75.

    AA+ Bonds

    @rikyrah:

    You can go somewhere and sit down pushing Rand Paul as some great ‘freedom fighter’

    I assume this wasn’t directed at me but at Sullivan?

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