Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

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

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

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

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

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

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

We won’t go back.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Come on, man.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

This really is a full service blog.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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Reader Interactions

66Comments

  4. 4.

    furlyfly

    It’s been like 12 hours since a wr0ng w@y Cole posted about his stupid cat with the stupid name. Something must be wrong. Quick, someone call 911 if they know his address.

  6. 6.

    Violet

    @Redshirt: My friend who has chickens, and they’re all different breeds, gets about one egg a day from the younger hens and one every couple of days from the older hen. We can’t remember how old the older hen is, but we think she’s at lest five and maybe seven years or even older. Her hens wander their yard (a suburban yard, not that big) and get some chicken feed as supplement. They eat plenty of bus and worms and other things in the yard.

  7. 7.

    pacem appellant

    Betty, you’ve encoded GPS information in your photo again. Just an FYI in case you don’t want people to know where you live.

  8. 8.

    Betty Cracker

    @Redshirt: Way more than we can use! We average 3 dozen eggs a week (from 7 hens). We share with friends, family and neighbors.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    Ravenclaw, as I remember, is the bookish kid’s house that the Sorting Hat almost picked for Hermione. You probably don’t have a bookish hen, but at least the kids didn’t name her Slytherin.

    I might have Jon Stewartised the post headline a bit: Your Afternoon Moment of Hen …

  11. 11.

    ArchTeryx

    @ranchandsyrup: If your kind was basically in the catbird seat for the last 40 years, you’d be happier too.

    Plus, conservatives are ignorant about a whole lot of things – quite willfully so. Liberals take pains to be well read and have a broader knowledge of the world around them.

    Stereotypes? Damn skippy. But ones born from long experience.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    whose name is Ravenclaw (kids named her, so don’t bother),

    Hey, at least they didn’t name the hen Slytherin, or Tywinn.

    On edit: /shakefist at Amir

  14. 14.

    Butch

    @Redshirt: Good production hens lay an egg about every 26 hours; some of our exotic breeds don’t produce as well. We also share with folks in the area, because (for no good reason) we have about 30 hens.

  17. 17.

    pacem appellant

    @Betty Cracker: I tried contacting you via email before to warn you, but I didn’t get a reply. I don’t know any other way to contact you and warn you. I don’t necessarily want to post directions on how to read the metadata in the photo, but suffice to say, I can, and I can say this about where you live: there is a road near you named after a Greek god and on Google street view there is a VW parked in front of your house.

    You took the photo with an Apple iPhone 4 today at 8:13am.

    You should have a talk with your phone about telling too much information about yourself. And again, I tried emailing you. This is not the way I like to tell people about metadata in their photos.

    Two solutions: Tell your phone to not put your location data in the photo, or two, edit it out before posting in Photoshop or your photo editor of choice.

  18. 18.

    catclub

    @Betty Cracker: Pacem did this to the file: ( or something similar):
    and got the lat and lon and altitude! encoded in the header.

    [REDACTED]

    Any sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    Now how you go about excising that information when you post, I could figure out.
    I bet if you convert from jpeg to PNG and then back, that would do it (but I have not yet checked.)

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    VIDEO: Corporate CEOs admit pushing credit agencies to lower Illinois’s bond rating as part of attack on pensions

    Posted by GottaLaff

    · Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 at 4:33 pm

    Relevant segment at around the 47-minute mark.

    http://youtu.be/yJ7ejQoBoJc

    Via IllinoisChannelTV, Mar 8, 2013:

    From the Union League Club of Chicago: Former Attorney-General Ty Fahner, who now heads the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, talks about the urgent need to cut the cost of state pensions.

    H/t: @johnvmoore who said, “I believe corporations screwing a state’s bond rating is huge.” Why yes, yes it is.

    Via We Are One Illinois (bolding is mine) released the following statement. They are responding to Ty Fahner, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, who said that members of that committee lobbied major credit agencies to downgrade the bond ratings of Illinois:

    Coalition Calls for Investigation into Corporate CEOs Who Lobbied for Illinois Bond Downgrades

    “Ty Fahner and unnamed members of his corporate-backed committee have shown their true colors. Fahner bragged openly about joining members of the business-backed group, behind closed doors, in lobbying credit rating agencies to lower Illinois’ bond ratings in an irresponsible and unethical attempt to put the state in an even more difficult position. They show total contempt for the taxpaying public, total disregard for the difficult fiscal challenges the state faces, and total hypocrisy over their alleged care for the working families of Illinois.”

    In addition, a serious conflict of interest may exist if either these unnamed CEOs or the big corporations they control profited in any way from lobbying to make Illinois pay more interest on its bonds — bonds which they or their corporations may hold. […]

    Yesterday, Capitol Fax shared a video of Fahner speaking before the Union League Club, where he said, “Me and some of the people that make up the Civic Committee…did meet with and call…Moody’s and Fitch [Ratings] and Standard and Poor’s…and say, ‘How in the hell can you guys do this [maintain the state’s credit rating]? You know, you are an enabler to let the state continue. You keep threatening more and more and more.’”

    Fahner then took credit for the subsequent downgrades to Illinois’ credit ratings, stating, “But if you watch what happened in the last few years, it’s been steadily down. Before that, it’s been the blind eye.”

    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/07/24/corporate-ceos-admit-they-pushed-credit-agencies-to-lower-illinoiss-bond-rating-as-part-of-attack-on-pensions/

  22. 22.

    gene108

    I went to an OfA meeting last night. Their top priority is getting the current Senate immigration bill passed.

    I think the bad in that bill outweighs the good.

    Anyway, I think some of their other issues look interesting, though I’ll be low key on the immigration effort.

  27. 27.

    cckids

    The featured hen, whose name is Ravenclaw (kids named her, so don’t bother),

    This is how I have a Pomeranian named Vulpix. Found him during the height of Pokemon furor.

    At least he doesn’t shoot flames out of his tail, unless he gets liver flavored dog food. And, 14 years on & he still hasn’t evolved.

  28. 28.

    Gin & Tonic

    @pacem appellant: I’m sure you know this, but for Betty, there is a wide variety of free programs for viewing and editing the EXIF data of your photos if that’s all you want to do. Photoshop or equivalent is not necessary.

  31. 31.

    pacem appellant

    @Gin & Tonic: Was trying to keep it simple. Based on the metadata, Betty likely has Photo shop already. I have linux command-line tools for editing it out, but that’s not for everyone.

  32. 32.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @dmsilev: Pretty sure there’s a couple of wordpress plugins that will do it automatically. Also a very active debate about whether you should.

    Note to self: remember to mention the bluidy footwear next time I want something to end up in moderation.

  34. 34.

    Tone in DC

    @rikyrah:

    The greedy bastards just keep on running their neverending race to the bottom. And there’s no end in sight.

    And what about the retired people who are actually depending on said pensions?

  35. 35.

    Gin & Tonic

    @pacem appellant: I understand. I didn’t look at the metadata myself, but was just presenting another set of options. I’m a command-line and batch-mode type myself, but agree that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    @pacem appellant: I’m pretty sure I told that goddamned phone not to tag photos, but I had to reset it recently when my router shit the bed and I was using it for a hotspot. Thanks again for the heads-up!

  38. 38.

    Yatsuno

    Ravenclaw will clean her beak in her own good time, so don’t worry about her mess.

    I tried to get out of my garage to go to work today and remote isn’t working. I checked the battery but it was fine so I ran upstairs to check if the code had changed. No e-mail about that. I only managed to solve the mystery when one of my neighbours told me the code had changed and let me know what it was. Needless to say I’m PISSED.

  40. 40.

    pacem appellant

    @dexwood: Only one way to find out. Take a picture then use exiftool (or equivalent) to see what metadata has been encoded.

  41. 41.

    TG Chicago

    @ranchandsyrup: I’m not going to bother reading the article, but it doesn’t surprise me. Conservatives tend to be more Manichean — believing the world to be black and white with no grey areas. I can easily see why that would lead to more personal happiness (though less societal happiness).

  43. 43.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @dmsilev: The debate centers around establishing copyright. People who really don’t want an extra 300kb of data in their photos vs people who don’t want their photos stolen, last I looked in on it.

  45. 45.

    pacem appellant

    @dexwood: You just reminded me to test my new Android OS, and if it properly disabled geo-tagging. I just took a photo, mounted my phone to my laptop via USB, and ran exiftool on the photo. Geo-tagging is off. I am pleased. (I use exiftool on the command line, but there are lots of ways to extract the metadata.)

  46. 46.

    dexwood

    @pacem appellant:

    Cool download. I’ve had the camera’s GPS info turned off since I bought my Galaxy S3 last summer. Just tested a photo and it really is disabled.

  48. 48.

    Arclite

    @Betty Cracker:

    Here’s a simple way to do it.

    1. Take the photo
    2. Load it onto the computer.
    3. Show it on screen.
    4. Take a screenshot.
    5. Crop the screenshot and save.
    Viola, no coords embedded.

  49. 49.

    The Red Pen

    “This is why we can’t have nice things” of the day:

    There is an article about Mark Zuckerberg saying that America needs to produce more engineers. This elicited the following Freeper response:

    “Why does Facebook need to recruit engineers? Isn’t that just a website?”

  50. 50.

    JScott

    Sent me into a right PANIC! to check that location was still turned off on my iPhone…

    Aaaanyway. Thanx for the chickens update/open thread.

    (This blog is going to give me a cardiac event one of these days.)

  51. 51.

    burnspbesq

    To disable tagging in iOS6, go to Settings/Privacy/Location Services and set “Camera” to OFF>

  52. 52.

    rikyrah

    STAND YOUR GROUND

    Joy-Ann Reid: No Florida trip for me

    BY JOY-ANN REID

    [email protected]

    I’m supposed to be in Florida next week. There’s a media convention in town, and I have friends who live nearby in Orlando. In fact, my closest friends live in Florida. Two of my three children were born in Miami, and my husband and I spent our honeymoon, bought our first home and raised the kids there during some of the most significant times in their lives. They still talk to their South Florida friends almost daily on Facebook.

    Florida for us was soccer practice and games on Saturdays, trips to the pool and the beach. (Though not as often as you’d think because, man, is it hot!)

    I started my career in news there, and it was where I worked on my first campaign, and my second — the whirlwind weeks I spent as a press aide to Barack Obama’s history-making 2008 campaign. People often forget that I’m Brooklyn-born and Denver-raised. “You’re from Florida, right?” is as common a question for me as “is it Joy or Joy-Ann?”

    But right now, I’m giving Florida a rest. I’m not joining a mass boycott, just a personal one. And it’s not because I simply don’t like the outcome of a particular second-degree murder trial. Like Stevie Wonder, I’m making a decision for me.

    I’m quitting Florida tourism for now, because my conscience won’t let me travel to a state that I love, but where it’s not safe for my sons to walk the streets. In Florida, and 22 other states with similar laws, but particularly in Florida because of how Stand Your Ground was written, anyone who finds you threatening has a license to shoot you, based solely on the perception in their mind that you were threatening to hurt them. You don’t even have to actually hurt them. As long as a jury of as few as six people believe it was reasonable for them to fear you, they will walk.

    Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/24/3519323/joy-ann-reid-no-florida-trip-for.html#storylink=cpy

  53. 53.

    burnspbesq

    @Betty:

    You say “Drawing a map to my house for every psycho on the Internet” like it’s a bad thing.

  54. 54.

    The Red Pen

    @pacem appellant:

    but suffice to say, I can, and I can say this about where you live: there is a road near you named after a Greek god and on Google street view there is a VW parked in front of your house.

    Since the photo was taken on an iPhone, I checked this information with Apple Maps. It shows that the photo was taken in Belgium.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    Lufkin man’s ‘I am Trayvon Martin’ photo goes viral
    Posted: Jul 23, 2013 3:44 PM CDT Updated: Jul 23, 2013 3:59 PM CDT

    By Jeff Awtrey – email

    A Lufkin man’s photo which he posted on Facebook which shows him from four years ago and now has gone viral.

    Corey Shy, 21, posted the photo to show how four years ago, he could have been labeled as a thug, like Trayvon Martin may have been portrayed when he was killed. However, Shy explains that he is now on his way to Texas A&M’s Health Science College of Medicine to become a doctor.

    Shy explains on his Facebook post, which as of Tuesday afternoon had netted more than 71,000 shares, that at age 17 he did not appear to have a promising future. But two months later, he began college at Prairie View A&M and began to study harder and eventually graduated Magna Cum Laude.

    “The reason I am sharing this with you is because I COULD HAVE BEEN TRAYVON MARTIN!!! The defense team could have gone onto the Internet and found pictures of me that were similar to Trayvon’s pictures and characterized me as a thug,” Shy wrote on his Facebook post. “I could have been portrayed an aggressor and it may have lead to my death. If that would have happened, then I would not have had the opportunity to reach my true calling, which is to become a medical doctor.”

    Shy explains that Martin could have gone on to the a doctor, lawyer or engineer and that he wants people to be more conscious of their racial profiling.

    “Everyone has the potential, as long as they are alive, to achieve greatness and make a positive impact on this world,” Shy wrote.

    http://www.ktre.com/story/22913425/lufkin-mans#.Ue_Ymb6RYJM.twitter

  58. 58.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    [PICTURE REMOVED UNTIL I CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO POST PHOTOS WITHOUT DRAWING A MAP TO MY HOUSE FOR EVERY PSYCHO ON THE INTERNET]

    Oh, Betty, you don’t have to draw a map for *every* pyscho, just for one, and post it, and all the rest will download it individually.

    (I’m sorry, I thought it would be fun to mix cluelessness and mansplaining.)

  60. 60.

    Lee

    Betty:

    Here are some instructions I found:

    If the photographs are in one folder, you can easily remove the EXIF data from one or more of these photographs using Windows Explorer itself without requiring any additional software.

    Select all the images files, right click and choose Properties. Now hit the Details tab and click on the “Remove Properties and Personal Information” link. The next screen will give you an option to remove the various metadata that is embedded inside the pictures. Simple.

  61. 61.

    kwAwk

    @LongHairedWeirdo:

    lol I was thinking along the same lines. I know this site is popular, but to thing EVERY psycho on the internet comes here is rather presumptuous, don’t you think?

  62. 62.

    Jebediah

    I see the picture is back, but removing the EXIF schmutz seems to have altered the picture itself.

  63. 63.

    catclub

    @rikyrah: I love the Grand Canyon, but no Grand Canyon for me since SB1070. Haven’t been to Florida in many moons.

  64. 64.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @kwAwk:

    Well, most of them are at places like FreeRepublic, Newsmax, RedState, and similar cesspools of reactionary “thought”, but we do have Special Timmeh, Derp, and the cat hating lurkers.

  65. 65.

    Felonius Monk

    Speaking of untidy beaks —- how much longer must we endure the Anthony Wiener “wiener-thon”? Unfortunately, I think the person who is going to be hurt the worst by Wiener’s behavior (besides, obviously, his wife) is Eliot Spitzer. People tend to paint with a broad brush. So, I think people will judge these two collectively and not as individuals. We will see.

  66. 66.

    rikyrah

    Employee: Paula Deen wanted black staffers to dress in ‘Aunt Jemima outfit’
    By David Edwards
    Thursday, July 25, 2013 14:33 EDT

    Paula Deen ordered African-American workers to “dress in an old-style Aunt Jemima outfit” and ring a dinner bell, according to a woman who is still employed at the disgraced cook’s Georgia restaurant.

    Following Deen’s dramatic fall from grace after her admission that she had used racial slurs, The New York Times‘ Kim Severson went to Savannah to check out the former food network host’s crumbling empire. Severson spoke to Dora Charles, a black cook who helped Deen open her Lady & Sons restaurant over 20 years ago.

    “She said, ‘Stick with me, one day if I get rich, you’ll get rich,’” Charles explained. “It just passed me by. You know, I’m not going to run behind her and say, ‘You promised me, you promised me. Where my half? Where my part?’ You know? It wasn’t all about that. Actually, all I was looking for was a good salary.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/25/employee-paula-deen-wanted-black-staffers-to-dress-in-aunt-jemima-outfit/

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