Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

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

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

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Reader Interactions

83Comments

  3. 3.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Mark S.:

    Here’s a crazy fucking video of that fertilizer plant explosion in Texas.

    “No, don’t drive the fuck away from the huge potentially explosive fire. We can get this video on the evening BOOOM”

    Texas.

  4. 4.

    AHH onna Droid

    Like posting either bengaaaaaazi or droooooonez in response to #boston posts…. Fuck all yall. I love you but that shit ain’t cool.

  5. 5.

    YellowJournalism

    Things got heated during another debate of who was cooler: Potsie or Ralph Malph?

    (Hint: It’s a trick question! The answer is, “Mrs C.”)

  7. 7.

    Not Sure

    You obviously haven’t debated people on Yahoo!. Outside Free Republic, never has there been such a den of scum and villiany.

  8. 8.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    I enjoyed reading a couple of cousins arguing on Facebook about Margaret Thatcher earlier today.

  12. 12.

    Comrade Luke

    I’ve had several friends go on very public Facebook boycotts, or whatever they call it. A couple weeks ago I quietly just…stopped going there.

    I’m kind of surprised that my stress level has gone down a bit. It’s not like I was active there, or arguing with people. It’s just that not seeing any of the garbage to begin with makes life a little better.

    I look forward to the day Facebook goes the way of MySpace. Unfortunately, I fear that the only way that will happen is if it’s overtaken by something worse.

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    @Violet:

    Somebody was writing in a hurry:

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anhydrous ammonia is a pungent gas with suffocating fumes that is used as a fertilizer.

    When exposed to humans, it can cause serious problems.

    I think that last sentence is the most incoherent thing I’ve ever read on a supposedly major news site, and I’ve seen some doozies.

  14. 14.

    David Koch

    this week there’s been a shocking amount of Paultards saying Sandy Hook was a hoax.

    and then AqquaBudda says Sandy Hook parents are “props” and “sad”. That’s the guy our Progress Betters are lecturing us about

  16. 16.

    Face

    50-100 homes destroyed, per link. Seems like a big deal, especially if a Brown and/or Facial Hair American was seen running away from the blast.

  17. 17.

    Violet

    @Mnemosyne: The first sentence in your quote is crazy too:

    anhydrous ammonia is a pungent gas with suffocating fumes that is used as a fertilizer.

    The fumes is used as a fertilizer? Huh?

  18. 18.

    Comrade Luke

    @Mark S.: I’m torn between feeling really bad for them – especially the kid – and thinking about how idiotic the father was for doing that. That’s a Darwin Award in the making.

  20. 20.

    MattR

    @Comrade Luke: I find myself typing up long responses to the idiocy I see, but then deleting it so I don’t have to get worked up again by their attempts at a rebuttal.

  22. 22.

    Warren

    And on top of everything else, Scott Miller (of Game Theory and The Loud Family) is dead. Let’s just make this week as shitty as possible, shall we?

  23. 23.

    Violet

    @Mnemosyne: Maybe the Phillippines, like with that “local news reporting scandal” that happened a bit ago, where local newspapers had Filipinos write copy of local news, like city council meetings, from press releases. They used names like “Dave Miller” so they’d “sound American”.

  24. 24.

    Comrade Luke

    The West Fertilizer Plant is just north of Waco. A school and a nursing home are among the buildings near the plant, CNN affiliate KWTX reported.

    What could possibly go wrong.

  27. 27.

    Suzanne

    I made the mistake of getting embroiled in a Facebook argument today with the husband of a friend. I don’t mind when people disagree with my viewpoint, but I mind when people imply/state that my viewpoint is a result of my stupidity or lack of rationality. I can guarantee you that I would take this guy in any test of intelligence or logic known to heaven and earth, from the MCAT to Words With Friends.

    He’s totally nice and funny in real life, and just a raging dickhead online. So weird.

  29. 29.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Damn, Google Maps shows where that plant was in relation to the town. It’s about 500 feet away from the middle school and a nursing home that backs onto the small community hospital. So yeah, this is hardcore awful.

  30. 30.

    MattR

    @Suzanne:

    I don’t mind when people disagree with my viewpoint, but I mind when people imply/state that my viewpoint is a result of my stupidity or lack of rationality.

    This is the one rule I try to maintain on facebook, though it can be hard. Just stick to the facts and let the other persons stupidity speak for itself.

  31. 31.

    Violet

    @Suzanne: If the other person wants to imply you’re stupid, that’s their problem. Anyone with half a brain has to know you’re not.

    Bizarre how someone can be so different online from who they are in RL. Makes you wonder what else he’s hiding.

  32. 32.

    Yutsano

    @MattR: I don’t talk politics at all on Facebook. The last thing I need is a Hatch Act accusation thrown in my face.

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:
    At least they got the basic facts right. Anhydrous ammonia is a pungent gas with nasty fumes, and it is used as a fertilizer. Human exposure can be nasty. They may have needed some help from a copy editor, but they’re still miles ahead of CNN on the factual accuracy scale.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    @Violet: Oh, I know. Believe me, I have many character flaws, but stupidity is not one.

    I don’t know if he’s really hiding anything. He’s another white dude who thinks he was born a small black child. And during our debate, he kept blathering about how “criminals are going to get guns. PERIOD.” As if those who commit crimes were a monolithic mass with exactly the same motivations, morality, and social circumstances.

  36. 36.

    MattR

    @Yutsano: A wise course of action. And its not like you would gain anything from that participation.

    I try to resist, and usually take the rant and delete approach, but occassionally there is something that just demands a response. Like the girl who was blaming Obama for raising taxes when the temporary payroll tax holiday ended.

  37. 37.

    max

    @Comrade Luke: What could possibly go wrong.

    Bill here agrees with you:

    Everything around the plant had been blown apart or collapsed, including a nearby apartment complex that had been destroyed. “That whole side of town looks like a disaster,” Bill Manolakis said. “Who in their right mind sticks a damn plant next to houses?”

    Paul Manigrasso, a gulf war veteran, felt the blast in Waxahachie. “Based on my naval experience … we knew immediately what it was but cannot believe it occurred 40 miles away,” he told KWTX-TV. Andy Bartee of Dallas was driving home from Austin when he stopped at a convenience store about five miles from the explosion. Suddenly the lights went out and the explosion rocked the building. “You could feel it in your chest and ears,” he said. Ceiling tiles fell and pictures on the wall broke. “It was pretty nuts,” he said. “It looked like a mushroom cloud. It looked like an atom bomb had been dropped,” Bartee said. “I’ve never seen or felt anything like that.”

    No doubt. The only upside is that West is a small town. I’ve been there (I’ve been too many small Texas towns) but damned if I remember the place.

    max
    [‘It might be outside of city limits, or it might just have been there for a long long time. Nobody thought about it exploding.’]

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    Anhydrous ammonia is a pungent gas with nasty fumes, and it is used as a fertilizer.

    Yes, but that’s not what the original sentence says, because it’s lacking the comma and conjunction that you added. Punctuation matters.

    What the original sentence has is a cloud of poison gas that somehow fertilizes the ground. I wasn’t very good at chemistry, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.

  41. 41.

    RaflW

    @max: I used to stop for kolaches and beer in West, on my way between TCU and Houston.

    You could drink and drive back then, as long as you weren’t drunk. Yep, beer to the lips as you drove past a cop. Just don’t weave!
    Texas: what could go wrong? should be the state slogan.

    Anyway, the kolaches were good, seemed like many small TX towns but holding lots of old Czeck identity. I’m sorry for this unfolding trauma.

  42. 42.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @max:

    “Who in their right mind sticks a damn plant next to houses?”

    The same reason they put millworkers’ cottages next to the mill. Small town, stick the things that need large spaces (schools, nursing homes, fertilizer plants) on the outskirts, but not too far out. All too common.

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    And during our debate, he kept blathering about how “criminals are going to get guns. PERIOD.”

    And?

    No, seriously, this is one of the stupidest arguments against gun control of all time. (His, I mean.) We shouldn’t make it more difficult for criminals to get guns because some small percentage of them will still manage it? Would he also like to repeal the laws against murder because we’ve outlawed it for centuries and yet criminals keep murdering people anyway?

  44. 44.

    SatanicPanic

    @Suzanne: I don’t want to get all Slate- counterintutive-y but if career criminals were the only people who had guns, that would actually be an improvement. Right now we have professional and amateur criminals with guns. And it’s really the dumbass amateurs that I worry about.

    In Japan only criminals have guns- and they don’t shoot non-criminals too often because they don’t need the heat. I never once worried about getting shot while I lived there.

  45. 45.

    trollhattan

    @Violet:

    Reaching back to my chemistry & botany, they inject ammonia gas into the soil as a cheap, easy nitrogen source (ammonia>nitrite>nitrate). Something like that. Live in an ag area and see ammonia tankers on the interstates all the time. And more problematically, tanker cars on freight trains half a mile from my house. [gulp]

    Anyway, this was one (or more) huge fucking explosion.

  46. 46.

    Dexter's new approach

    The always awful Piers Morgan being ghoulish tonight, is he getting paid by the death count tonight? He’s probably right though, I suspect a big number of deaths.

  48. 48.

    RaflW

    @SatanicPanic: Its really the accidental shootings (and suicides by gun) that I worry about. We’re a very long way away from really dealing with those.

    I was at a party in H.S. where a kid found a gun in a bedside table, it discharged, no one was hit. It happens all to fucking often, but with the last phrase altered to “someone was kit/killed.”

    On that less than cheer note, good night. I have a lot to do tomorrow.

  49. 49.

    MattR

    @trollhattan: I work for a company that does frozen/refrigerated warehousing, which requires quite a bit of ammonia. The warehouse workers may be lackadaisical when they hear the fire alarm, but if the ammonia siren ever sounds they move their asses.

  51. 51.

    mai naem

    @David Koch: Rand Paul comes across as a spoiled privileged pompous little prick who has never had to worry about providing himself or his loved ones with basic life needs. The only way Rand Paul would understand anything about gun control is if one of his loved ones was shot dead by some nut/felon who got hold of a gun at a gun show or whatever. I am not wishing it on him or anything but it’s just like how his daddy went to the UN to get his Ron Paul.com website back.

  52. 52.

    The Dangerman

    @max:

    Who in their right mind sticks a damn plant next to houses?

    It’s Texas, for fucks sake; they don’t believe in regulations and liberal shit like that.

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    @Mnemosyne:

    Aah, that makes sense. Thanks!

    (Also, too, a source of nitrates in drinking water, leading to blue baby syndrome along with good soybean yields. Win!)

  54. 54.

    MattR

    @RaflW: Pretty sure I have mentioned it here before, but in 2006 the Israeli Army changed their policy and asked soldiers not to bring their weapons when they go home for weekend leave. The result was that weekend suicides dropped roughly 40% while weekday suicides were largely unchanged.

  55. 55.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    What the original sentence has is a cloud of poison gas that somehow fertilizes the ground. I wasn’t very good at chemistry, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.

    Actually, it is. Anhydrous ammonia can be and sometimes is used directly as a fertilizer, though it’s more commonly processed further into ammonium nitrate or urea, which are much easier to work with. And technically, their sentence made sense. They said “that is used” rather than “that are used”; so “that” must be referencing singular “ammonia” rather than plural “fumes”.

  56. 56.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Not Sure: I’m surprised you got out with some brain cells intact.

    I was already fed up with Yahoo sucking (I used to use groups a lot, hell, I used to use their mail but it got drenched in spamspamspamspam) but that “How is babby formed?” thing on Ask Yahoo scared me away from the site for good.

    I wonder when the Yahoo death watch will start in earnest.

  58. 58.

    trollhattan

    @MattR:

    Have also read there are similar outcomes for U.S. armed forces stationed in countries with strong restrictions on private gun possession–significantly lower suicide rates.

    We’d better not study that, lest we learn something uncomfortable for Wayne LaPoodle.

  59. 59.

    Violet

    @Roger Moore: If you have to go hunting for the noun to match the verb because the preceding noun (in this case ‘fumes’) doesn’t match, then the sentence isn’t written very well.

  60. 60.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Suzanne: Not being F2F seems to make a lot of people act out.

    I know I acted shitty on the internet when I was a kid and figured out how to be semi-anon.

    What I understand less is how people get so polarized and escalating with their real identities when they back off IRL (usually).

    Maybe being behind the keyboard gives cowards false courage.

  61. 61.

    Another Halocene Human

    @trollhattan: Best not repeat that, some fb friend of a friend who commented today that gun control failing is no big deal because “suicide is the biggest killer” might feel like a jackass. :P

    I’m not sorry I got on FB the last two days but yeah. The stupid. Runs deep. Might be hiding a few relatives soon. And at least one friend. Too many emo purity prog posts that make my blood boil.

  62. 62.

    Another Halocene Human

    @SatanicPanic: To be fair, Japan has had a very low GINI index in the post-war period, which is a lot of the reason their violent crime rate is so low (except between yakuza).

  63. 63.

    ? Martin

    @The Dangerman:

    It’s Texas, for fucks sake; they don’t believe in regulations and liberal shit like that.

    Well, Texas was one of the first states to regulate their engineering profession following the New London School explosion.

    But yeah, pretty conservative part of Texas. Who needs zoning and shit?

    Let’s not take the whole state down though – Austin is booming. Go Austin!

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @SatanicPanic: Concur. It’s the impulsive criminals and suicides that can be reduced in number. Yes, someone who is determined to kill will do so, regardless of any law.

    Wow. It’s almost like people aren’t all the same.

  66. 66.

    mclaren

    Debating people on Facebook is like reading Aeschylus to a cage full of hyenas. It insults the memory of Aeschylus, and enrages the hyenas.

  67. 67.

    The Other Bob

    For some sadistic reason, I manage to get myself worked up debating fools on facebook who are defending the right of felons to own guns. It keeps me up at night.

    What the heck is wrong with me?

  71. 71.

    Dexter's new approach

    @Hill Dweller: When are they going to pull the plug on that shitbird’s show?

    Has do be soon, I mean the Venn diagram overlap of viewers that enjoy his disdain for the US and his empty-headied British pompous has to be tiny. I’m told by my Brit friends that they don’t want him back.

  74. 74.

    Kris Collins

    To get back to the original topic, I agree with Cole, Facebook wars are the worst. As another chronic insomniac, I have been sucked into some epically stupid FB arguments at around 3 am or so. Luckily, I manage to limit these to friends of friends of friends i.e. people I don’t actually know and don’t care about.

  78. 78.

    Joseph Nobles

    I just avoided one. I posted about not wanting to hear any more rank paranoid bullshit about the government coming to get anybody’s guns after yesterday, and damned if some rank paranoid nutcase didn’t cite me an Infowars article. I just deleted it and blocked him.

  79. 79.

    Dan

    I reply to Rightwingers on Facebook with “Oh, you’re just being silly” then I counter with some facts. I am keeping the heat down, with the added benefit of imagining their blood pressure spiking for being called “silly.” Cause they are SO serious. And stupid.

  80. 80.

    Helmut Monotreme

    @nellcote: They’re certainly going to have to reset the counter on the ”X’ days since a lost time accident’ poster.

  82. 82.

    Linus Pickle

    I got into it with some folks about water fluoridation- it’s an issue in Portland because the city council wants to add it to the water, and the tinfoil beanie brigade screamed bloody murder, circulated a petition, and now it’s up for a vote. I got tired of the fear and lies so I wrote a post to start a debate.

    And you know what? Aside from a couple of dumb comments that were easily debunked, it was a civil, informed discussion that forced me (and others, I hope) to really examine the facts in the case. Much better than I expected.

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