Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Petty moves from a petty man.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

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

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Giving up is unforgivable.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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

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132Comments

  2. 2.

    PaulW

    Just remember this, always, this one thing:

    Don’t vote Republican.

    Not for the next ten generations.

    Just don’t.

    Maybe then we’ll save the world.

  10. 10.

    patroclus

    I’m watching the House oversight hearing on the Affordable Care Act and the Republicans are really coming off as churlish and infantile. They are honestly attempting to deny health insurance coverage to millions of Americans by pretending to care about made-up problems that they are basically lying about. It’s really quite despicable and mean-spirited.

  11. 11.

    PaulW

    @patroclus:

    I’m watching the House oversight hearing on the Affordable Care Act and the Republicans are really coming off as churlish and infantile. They are honestly attempting to deny health insurance coverage to millions of Americans by pretending to care about made-up problems that they are basically lying about. It’s really quite despicable and mean-spirited.

    If I were a Democratic congresscritter I’d be documenting their false statements and then file ethics charges against the lot. At some point they have to be held accountable for the lying.

  15. 15.

    The Dangerman

    @patroclus:

    It’s really quite despicable and mean-spirited.

    Cheer up; we only have a few more decades and several more election cycles of this nonsensical shit.

    ETA: Obamacare nonsensical shit, I mean; Republican despicability and mean spiritedness is herpetic level forever.

    ETA2: Shakes first at Sooner!

  16. 16.

    srv

    I’m just reeling that President McCain and Diane Feinstein have turned into such back-stabbing DFHs.

    Thank god the BJ Darrellites are here to defend our sacred institutions with their pragmatism.

  17. 17.

    Fuzzy

    Weird time of year for a sports nut. Pro football, basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer plus others (tennis, golf etc) all being played at the same time. Maybe ESPN will just swirl down the crapper.

  18. 18.

    Cassidy

    Someone released documents today that show that a car company, known for making cars, is actually making cars! Those sneaky bastards. Someone check on mix before he hyperventilate in fear.

  20. 20.

    ruemara

    I can’t tell if the dizziness is from meds, adopting a strict diet, going out for a run or knowing this is the last morning I get to have both my boys here. Two of the world’s most perfect kittens. The best kitty anywhere, Otajamakushi Taifu, moves to New Jersey tomorrow morning. I want to stay home and cuddle him all day.

  23. 23.

    Fair Economist

    Did you actually count the number of open threads? I’d actually expect more. 2 per day for 10 years would be over 7000.

  25. 25.

    patroclus

    @Soonergrunt: Marilyn Tavenner might as well not even be there – all the Republicans are doing is sliming her and “asking” nonsensical “questions” that are really rhetorical and based on lies. One of the slime artists even accused her of not even knowing what the ACA was about and the others are merely pretending to care about “problems” that they don’t want to fix but rather exploit for crass political purposes. This Republican performance is utterly shameful. Any citizen watching this has to be appalled at this embarrassment of self-government.

  26. 26.

    Steeplejack

    @Yatsuno:

    If you have to wait longer than 10 minutes let us know, so we can privatize the DMV. Or, better yet, just do away with driver’s licenses. Big government! Wolverines!

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    @Omnes Omnibus: @Soonergrunt:
    Of course, the Republicans are acting despicable and mean-spirited here in the USA, not in France or Germany, so it’s the fact that it’s a day ending in “day” here in the USA that matters. The French and Germans have cleverly avoided Republican mean-spiritedness by not ending any of their days in “day”.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @patroclus:

    Any citizen watching this has to be appalled at this embarrassment of self-government.

    Or excited to watch their compatriots show that you-know-what in the White House that they aren’t going to make things easy for him. Assholes will be assholes, and they’ll attract asshole fans, also, too.

  31. 31.

    Jose Arcadio Buendía

    @Cassidy: Being surprised that a car company making cars just means “shut up.” It’s not that everyone knows that car companies make cars or that the cars being made were also making cars or that the surprise was for consumption of the cars who got pwned. It’s shut up, so shut up back at you doodie head.

  35. 35.

    ericblair

    @Roger Moore:

    No, but FYWP automatically counted the ones that are just named “Open Thread” and appended the 1723 so it could tell them apart.

    Yeah, I miss 1714. And 1332 was a good one too, eh?

    Too bad 1143 sucked.

  36. 36.

    Tractarian

    Did you know that everything you post online is available online to people who go online to look at stuff?

    Scary, when you think about it.

  42. 42.

    Jose Arcadio Buendía

    @maya: I’m still trying to get the image out of my brain that Bush gave her the shoulder massage because he knew she liked that from his late night reading sessions of Angie’s sexts.

  45. 45.

    kindness

    All the fuss over the NSA listening in to all our allies phone calls. I mean, it isn’t as if they are pranking them by covertly adding extra anchovies to all their pizza orders…..But I sure wish they would do that to Republicans here in the good ole US of A.

  49. 49.

    Hill Dweller

    The Twitter machine is telling me Barbara Walters brought Betsy McCaughey(torpedoed Clinton’s attempt to get healthcare and invented the death panel lie) on The View to discuss Obamacare.

  52. 52.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    Just watched the next X men trailer. It looks stunning.

    ETA: just watched it a second time.

  53. 53.

    PaulW

    @Hill Dweller:

    The Twitter machine is telling me Barbara Walters brought Betsy McCaughey(torpedoed Clinton’s attempt to get healthcare and invented the death panel lie) on The View to discuss Obamacare.

    We need to have a self-regulating certification system for media guest panelists. They’re letting a lot of unqualified people on these shows.

  54. 54.

    srv

    Digging deeper:

    Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.

    Going to be a problem trying to run over entire agencies with that bus.

  55. 55.

    kindness

    @srv: Those poor poor NSA scoundrels. They should use that intelligence of their’s and have thought ahead. It was inevitable that the world would learn the NSA taps everyone’s communications and that when they found out they’d be pissed. That the NSA didn’t think that one that far out says more about the NSA than all the politicians who are now distancing themselves from the NSA’s over-reach. What did they really expect would happen?

  56. 56.

    chopper

    @Steeplejack:

    lol. hey, if you think the obamacare website isn’t so hot, try contacting the ny DMV by phone. I spent literally 2months trying to get ahold of a person in the title bureau. still trying in fact.

  57. 57.

    Karen in GA

    Well, that about wraps it up for my family. One sister trashed our relationship with passive-aggressive bullshit about 12 years ago — we talk if we’re in the same room, but that hardly ever happens. My other sister posted on FB yesterday about some celebrity who got in trouble for wearing blackface as part of a costume. Not to get into the celebrity’s motives because fuck whoever it was, I don’t care — but I did ask my sister if she was seriously defending blackface. Which turned into a back-and-forth in which I pointed out that it’s hateful and disrespectful. (The person originally doing it might just have been dumb as a bag of hammers, but trying to defend it after it’s pointed out that it’s offensive? Now you’re purposely being nasty and ignorant.) Which turned into my sister going to everyone else and complaining about how victimized she was because she voiced an opinion just like everyone else does, but “I guess I can’t, I’m going to just stop,” poor me, blah blah.

    Which led to me finally snapping after 45 years of dealing with a family full of Livia Sopranos with their meanness, self-centeredness, and their “poor me” bullshit, and cutting her off.

    I’m sure she’s saying her sister won’t speak to her because of a Facebook post about a celebrity. She’s clueless that way.

    Anyway. Haven’t even seen the family in three years. My mother and I get along now, but when I was growing up our relationship sucked royally and let’s face it, the damage is done. And I have no relationship with one sister and just cut off the other. After the initial “holy shit, I just did that” wears off, it actually won’t make any real difference in my life, which is a shame. (My father died in ’97 — he confused fear with respect, and I don’t miss him.)

    I think I’m unhappy about the fact that I’m not unhappy.

    Eh. Just had to vent. Got a good husband, a new job I don’t hate yet, a happy dog, and four soft, purring cats. All I need now is pizza, which I don’t yet have, but which is easily attainable.

    By the way:

    Maybe ESPN will just swirl down the crapper.

    Too late.

  59. 59.

    Hill Dweller

    @srv: PO defended the NSA on Charlie Rose earlier this year, but virtually everything he said was undermined by the subsequent leaks. Did they think PO was going to continue publicly defending them after it became apparent Snowden and Greenwald knew more about NSA activities than he did?

  60. 60.

    JPL

    @Karen in GA: Biology doesn’t always make a family. I stay out of the family dynamics by choice but I guess one brother is not speaking to another cuz Texas won’t fire their coach.

  64. 64.

    raven

    @Karen in GA: I went to a family reunion in Central Va (my wife’s family) and not only were politics not discussed but a family member and her African-American husband and kids were welcomed and seemed totally at home. I really liked it.

  67. 67.

    elmo

    Late to the Open Thready goodness, but if anyone is interested in doing a puppy transport between Knoxville TN and Atco NJ this weekend, here’s the scoop:
    Drivers Needed for Beagle Puppy Transport

    For those of you who haven’t done a transport before, it’s about the easiest way to help homeless animals that there is, and incredibly rewarding. You pick up the animal(s) at a rest stop or Cracker Barrel parking lot or whatever, you get kisses and loves for an hour’s drive, and you hand off the animal(s) to the next driver. My partner wife and I have done dozens of them. We are taking the Alexandria to Baltimore leg, I think; haven’t confirmed with the wife yet. (God bless Maryland, that I can call her that now)

  68. 68.

    Pogonip

    @raven: Yeah, but it must be a darn big bush to hold him and all those critters! Hee. I envision the giant hedge that the prince struggles through in “Sleeping Beauty,” with little cat and dog doors in it.

  72. 72.

    Chyron HR

    @srv:

    I for one, am shocked, shocked to learn that your problem is not, in fact with the NSA but is entirely on the dastardly N. Hussein Obama. Shocked.

  73. 73.

    Yatsuno

    @SiubhanDuinne: Well the licence renewal was completely undramatic. Ten minutes, three questions, $45 later it was done. My new pic looks deliciously ebil though. My mom’s gonna hate it. :P

  77. 77.

    The Red Pen

    @srv:

    Going to be a problem trying to run over entire agencies with that bus.

    Especially an agency that can’t even explain where its budget comes from.

    I’ve worked with NSA people and throwing the under the bus endangers the drive train of a perfectly good bus.

  81. 81.

    JPL

    @elmo: The first time I found out about the dog caravan was when I was approached in a rest area off of 85 at the border of GA/SC. I was approached because they assumed the former Miss Moxie was needing a ride north. haha

  83. 83.

    burnspbesq

    @kindness:

    and that when they found out they’d be pissed

    You’re assuming a fact not in evidence, i.e., that the French and German governments really are pissed. It is equally plausible that they are simply making the right noises for domestic consumption.

  88. 88.

    Anoniminous

    @jeffreyw:

    …fifth kitteh was the seventh in a litter.

    5 of 7, huh?

    Teh kitties are Borg. They are everywhere. You will be assimilated.

    (I blame Obama.)

  89. 89.

    jeffreyw

    @schrodinger’s cat: Ginger (the new boy) is so far confined to a large cage in the laundry. The door to the room is left open and Homer has been interested. Mrs J is in charge of merger activities. He sits on my lap but hasn’t been allowed to poke about on his own yet. No mixing yet.

  90. 90.

    Elizabelle

    @elmo:

    I wants me a beagle puppy. Or just a beagle. One day soon.

    Can’t drive this this weekend, but please let me know next time they need help. For beagles or any pets in transit.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack

    @Karen in GA:

    Condolences. Family bullshit is the worst kind. I’m having dinner later this week with my brother to talk him down off the ledge after his recent visit to the crazy side of the family (mother and gun-nut teabagger other brother).

  93. 93.

    Roger Moore

    @Yatsuno:

    My new pic looks deliciously ebil though.

    I doubt it’s as bad as mine. My current drivers license photo makes me look like an axe murderer. Nor is this just my imagination and the general dislike of official photographs; other people who see it agree.

  101. 101.

    Trollhattan

    @elmo:

    I have never heard of this neat thing, until now. Very cool, and possibly ‘splains how it was we came to adopt our currrent doggeh from a Denny’s parking lot. I did not know it’s an established thing, and not merely the invention of Crazy Dalmatian Rescue Lady. Either way, it still makes for a good story, “Yeah, we picked her out at a Denny’s lot off I-5.” (It’s how we explain away certain of her bizarre behaviors.)

  102. 102.

    rikyrah

    Democratic Congressman Blows Up At GOP During Obamacare Hearing: ‘Are You Really Serious?’
    BY IGOR VOLSKY ON OCTOBER 29, 2013 AT 12:36 PM

    Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) slammed Republicans for failing to support the Affordable Care Act once it became law, challenging them to go back to their districts and tell their constituents that they’ll be taking away their coverage.

    http://youtu.be/9owwg1LALxk

  104. 104.

    rikyrah

    Who’s Really Behind Campbell Brown’s Sneaky Education Outfit?

    The former CNN anchor says her nonprofit seeks to protect kids from predators in the classroom. Its real agenda may be union-busting.
    —By Andy Kroll| Tue Oct. 29, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

    Early one morning in July, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, pen in hand, notes fanned out in front of her. Viewers might have mistaken her as a fill-in host, but Brown had swung by 30 Rock in her new role as a self-styled education reformer, a crusader against sexual deviants in New York City public schools and the backward unions and bureaucrats getting in the way of firing them. “In many cases, we have teachers who were found guilty of inappropriate touching, sexual banter with kids, who weren’t fired from their jobs, who were given very light sentences and sent back to the classroom,” Brown, the mother of two young sons, explained.

    Brown was there to plug her new venture, the Parents’ Transparency Project, a nonprofit “watchdog group” that “favors no party, candidate, or incumbent.” Though its larger aim is to “bring transparency” to how contracts are negotiated with teachers’ unions, PTP’s most prominent campaign is to fix how New York City handles cases of sexual misconduct involving teachers and school employees—namely by giving the city’s schools chancellor, a political appointee, ultimate authority in the process.

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/campbell-brown-new-york-schools-rhee

  105. 105.

    rikyrah

    Morning Plum: Why normal debate about Obamacare is impossible
    By Greg Sargent
    October 29 at 9:01 am

    Foes of Obamacare are excitedly citing a rash of new stories claiming untold Americans are “losing” their insurance, as CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell puts it. One of them is this NBC News story, which reports that “millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.”

    Critics of the law are right to ask whether it is having an adverse impact on these millions of Americans. And the White House could have been clearer in laying the groundwork for this political argument: It wasn’t sufficient to say people who like their plans will be able to keep it, which is narrowly untrue.

    But the GOP outrage about Americans supposedly “losing” coverage is largely just more of the same old misdirection. It’s a subset of a larger Republican refusal to have an actual debate about the law’s tradeoffs — one in which the law’s benefits for millions of Americans are also reckoned with in a serious way.

    On the substance of this argument, Igor Volsky has a good response, noting that these Americans aren’t “losing” coverage at all:

  106. 106.

    rikyrah

    Why Losing Your Junk Insurance is a Good Thing

    Tuesday, October 29, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 11:42 AM

    For the past week or so, the media has been replete with stories about people getting letters from their insurance companies that cancel their current coverage and replace it with a more expensive health insurance plan, providing the insured the option to look into their state’s exchange for coverage. Insurance companies are doing their damnest to blame the Affordable Care Act and President Obama for this, but the truth is that the policies that are being canceled are being canceled for one reason and one reason alone: they do not meet the minimum coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act.

    So what are these minimum coverage requirements? They are simple and essential:

    http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/10/why-losing-your-junk-insurance-is-good.html

  107. 107.

    scav

    @rikyrah: Similarly, will no one think of the millions of parents that lost the ability and freedom!! to feed their children because of the heavy intruding hand of the govt insisting the free market not sell rotting infected food?

  108. 108.

    RaflW

    New poll, via Wapo, sez that Glibertarians are 68% male. Why am I not at all surprised.

    Also, overwhelmingly white. And stupid.

    (Ok, that last bit wasn’t polled).

  111. 111.

    JPL

    @raven: The food bank near me has drivers that go to area stores to pick up leftover bread from the local stores. The facility is not large enough to to include other perishable items.

  113. 113.

    elmo

    @Trollhattan:
    It is neat, isn’t it? We used to do tons of them because we lived very near the intersection of I-40 and I-75 in the Knoxville area, which is also near the intersection of I-81 and I-40. So dogs coming from west or south, heading north (and they are usually heading north) would go right by our house. We’ve done fewer since moving to the DC area. But for us it’s a way of helping out rescues even when we are maxed out on foster space in our own home (currently have seven dogs, which is about average for us, and having recently lost one, I’m just waiting for the wife to pop up with another “must foster naow naow naow”).

  116. 116.

    raven

    @elmo: We got lost leaving the Blue Ridge Parkway Friday. We were going north and learned that there was a closure just north of Boone so we got off about 50 miles north of Ashville and ended up in Johnson City and then Kingsport to go to Blacksburg!

  117. 117.

    fidelio

    @elmo: Maybe if we ask nicely one of the front pagers can promote such requests to their own post, the next time one comes up.

  122. 122.

    shelly

    Foes of Obamacare are excitedly citing a rash of new stories claiming untold Americans are “losing” their insurance

    It has less to do with attacking the ACA, they see this as finally their ace-in-the-hole for the 2014 elections. So count on them flogging this endlessly for all the political juice they can squeeze out of it.

  125. 125.

    Soonergrunt

    @burnspbesq: “It is equally plausible that they are simply making the right noises for domestic consumption.”
    Truer or more accurate words about this subject were never written.

  126. 126.

    scav

    @raven: Yeah, the aesthetics v. edible issue is an interesting one. because middle class aesthetics is driving so much of the pretty pretty food demand and that’s what’s getting catered to. Sneaking in at the distribution level would be good — wonder if they can somehow connect in with the mobile distribution being tried out in a few cities to help with food deserts.

  128. 128.

    cckids

    @ruemara: Sending some care your way, from what you’ve said, this decision has been so hard for you. I don’t know what to say, but know that people care.

  129. 129.

    Trollhattan

    @elmo:

    I’m just waiting for the wife to pop up with another “must foster naow naow naow”).
    Heh! Would certainly keep my on my toes. “Lets see, how many did we have yesterday and how many, today? Do I know you?”

  131. 131.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Yatsuno:

    This can’t possibly be right. It’s a gummint agency, amirite? You are supposed to have to stand in one line for an hour (where it says “start here”), only to be told when you finally get to the snarling clerk that you’re in the wrong line, you have to go to station C-2. No, of course you can’t cut, take your place behind that woman eating a burrito with a crying baby in her arms. Now take a number, have a seat, and wait until your number flashes on the monitor over in the corner. What’s that? You can’t see the monitor from the only available seat? Sir, that is hardly our problem. No, of course we can’t honour your number, you will have to start again. NO, not from the “take a number” line. You have to go back to the “start here” line….

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