*** Update ***
Take it away, Emily. It sure is nice to see that she has a bigger platform now.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.
Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
This really is a full service blog.
Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.
The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
He really is that stupid.
You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.
A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.
Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.
We won’t go back.
Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.
A consequence of cucumbers
We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”
Pogonip
How is your dog? Any better?
raven
Is he the wrestler that played for Georgia?
Comrade Jake
I generally like the folks over at The Atlantic, but they do seem to have more than their fair share of dickheads.
geg6
Of the day? I thought that was what he was every day.
I wish all these AIPAC fellators would just move to Israel and leave the rest of us alone. I don’t understand why they don’t since they obviously care more about what they perceive to be Israel’s best interests and not that of the country of which they are ostensibly citizens. And the saddest thing is that what they think is good for Israel is what is most likely to destroy Israel.
the Conster
People are showing their ass, and it’s not the critics of Israel. I have a huge problem with people who want to manipulate US policy and the political discourse having dual loyalties based on first century nonsense. It’s the same with the neo-confederates working against the interests of the rest of us non-“Christian” Americans. They’re not to be trusted in high level political or policy positions, because they’re anti-American. Fuck them all.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@geg6:
Not a chance in hell. First, they don’t want their kids serving in the IDF.
Second, remember that scene in “Annie Hall” when Alvy brings Marshall McLuhan on screen to tell the poseur he’s full of shit? That would be a daily experience for them there.
Punchy
Whoa…that link. Longest. Blogpost. Evah.
yet another jeff
Of the day…meaning every day that ends in the letter Y.
BBA
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor: Goldberg did in fact serve in the IDF, and has tepidly endorsed the Iran agreement as the “least-worst option” instead of ranting about Munich like Kristol and co.
He’s still an asshole, but a different type of asshole.
Now back to your two minutes’ hate.
Botsplainer
Can anybody explain to me just how Eretz Israel is America’s bestest friend and ally ever? It always seemed to me that it was a one way deal, not unlike having a psycho, demanding, high maintenance girlfriend who goes apeshit when you greet a female co-worker that you happen to run into at the grocery store.
LanceThruster
@geg6:
I think they have the attitude of the Romney spawn (i.e. serving the greater good by their fealty to Chosanistan).
yet another jeff
@Botsplainer:
Bibi wants you to think bomby thoughts or he’ll send you to the cornfield.
Aji
Here’s the thing about Goldberg: He’s just an asshole, period. The screaming about BenAmi is only one facet of it, and it’s not in any way some sort of identifier – it’s just who he is and what he does. Everyone seizes on his nasty little habit of accusing fellow Jews of anti-Semitism, but he’s an equal-opportunity asshole. IOW, the quintessential Villager. That’s his identifier.
Botsplainer
@yet another jeff:
One of the greatest Twilight Zones ever.
Tim F.
The Yiddish term is schmuck.
Comrade Jake
David “Axis of Evil” Frum has also been losing his shit over Iran the past couple of days.
fka AWS
@Punchy: Relax, Punchy, it’s CrookedTimberTown.
? Martin
@Comrade Jake: Cowards are cowardly.
Chris
@Botsplainer:
That’s exactly what it is.
I can’t remember the last time any nation had so many people willing to outsource policy completely for absolutely zero gain to another one (client states historically are either being forced at gunpoint or are getting something worthwhile out of the deal). The Israel love affair’s been slowly destroying our Middle East policy for decades. Thank God the current president at least isn’t part of their groupies’ network.
Botsplainer
In the past 50 years, which nation has maintained the longest occupation in which the rights of the occupied to participate in a representative government have been systematically denied?
Which nation in the past 50 years gained territory by waging aggressive war?
Which nation still profits segments of its society through the maintenance of an official, ethnically based system of rewards and exclusions?
Botsplainer
In the past 50 years, which nation has maintained the longest occupation in which the rights of the occupied to participate in a representative government have been systematically denied?
Which nation in the past 50 years gained territory by waging aggressive war?
Which nation still profits segments of its society through the maintenance of an official, ethnically based system of rewards and exclusions?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Botsplainer: Thought you were going Godwin, then reread the part about the last 50 years. Does that make me a bad person?
Comrade Jake
It’s been interesting speaking to some Iranian graduate students about this – they’re very happy about the events of the past few days. Of course, they’re basically kids, and most of them aren’t all that religious. They also think the Ayatollah is batshit fucking crazy.
Botsplainer
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Clearly, you’re ready to fire up ovens, or something.
It’s going to be interesting to see how those dogmatically rigid West Bank land thieves conduct themselves when they wind up subjected to Arab occupying forces.
? Martin
@Comrade Jake:
I’ve yet to meet someone from Iran that disagrees with that view. Of course, they all left Iran, so hardly a representative sample.
KG
@raven: nah, that was Bill Goldberg… He was much more articulate and open minded
DH
Since I am Jewish, I can say this:
Go fuck yourself Goldberg.
This is the guy who rooted us into Iraq. Fuck him.
As for Iran, you have to negotiate. Even the Mustache of Understanding realized this in his last column. What is Israel going to do? Bomb Iran every 2 years? I don’t think so.
raven
@KG: just foolin around
BBA
@Aji: This. He’s hippie-punching to burnish his Villager cred, after his latest column put him on the far left of acceptable discourse by suggesting this may not in fact be the end of the world. I don’t know if he’s seen the “MUNICH!!!” columns, but if he did, his reaction would be “both sides do it.”
Comrade Jake
@DH: well according to Bolton, now is the perfect time for Israel to strike!
Botsplainer
@DH:
This is the part where the nutters act goofiest. Even back when I was wingnut curious, I looked at that large country and 70+ million inhabitants as an impossible nut to just “bomb”. Given the professionalism of their military, it would be Vietnam X 5.
Ruckus
@Tim F.:
The concept is correct but the level given by schmuck is not quite enough in this case.
So maybe, fucking schmuck.
Or the yiddish equivalent of fuck.
Ash Can
@Comrade Jake: I’m sure he’s desperate for something, anything, to derail the negotiations, so I’m sure he’d love to see that.
Cassidy
Just got a chuckle. If we really lived in an Obama police state with a Stasi style secret police, like some knuckleheads have expressed, we’d have no villagers to call assholes or mock as needed.
MikeJ
@Cassidy: They keep promising me FEMA camps and Obama never delivers.
Cassidy
@MikeJ: Blame the website.
sharl
Jeffrey Goldberg has been something of an asshole on this subject for a long time.
It’s a damn shame that he cannot spend more time doing excellent writing on other topics where he isn’t blinded by his own biases. Case in point: in his guise as a columnist with Bloomberg View,* he wrote a very good (and very sobering) article, Drowning Kiribati, on what rising ocean levels are already doing to that small mid-Pacific** archipelago.
[**A lot of miles roughly due south of Hawaii, fwiw]
*I couldn’t believe it was the same guy as the hyper-Zionist columnist for the Atlantic, but his Twitter bio would seem to support the fact that, yep, probably the same guy.
Botsplainer
@MikeJ:
Barry is just shiftless and lazy, you know. He can’t even do persecution right.
It was always to be expected of his kind.
Aji
@BBA: Bingo. I was actually looking for the “both sides do it” phrase at the link.
GregB
@MikeJ:
Unfortunately their construction has been outsourced to the same Canadian company that fucked up the ACA website.
We may not have the FEMA cams online until after Obama’s 3rd term begins.
beltane
Who will be the asshole of tomorrow?
? Martin
@Botsplainer: Hardly impossible. Do you realize how many nukes we have? Ok, sure, you wipe out a few million Iraqis and Afghans, and a few million more are impacted by the fallout, but why have a thousand nukes if you aren’t willing to use a few hundred?
Jay
Friend of Balloon Juice Emily Hauser has a great piece on Goldberg’s behavior.
? Martin
@beltane: I don’t think we’ve heard from President McCain yet.
Yatsuno
@? Martin: It wouldn’t even take that many. 20 or so would decimate the Iranian population (literally) and some conventional bombs would take care of the rest. You’d destroy Afghanistan, Pakistan, and part of India, but hey, omelettes, eggs.
Aji
@beltane: Well, Goldberg will still be an asshole tomorrow. But who gets the title? Personally, my money’s on the Dick Whisperer. We’ve managed to go . . .what? a day, at least, without some obscenely stupid utterance from him making headlines, right? He’s way overdue, and this is right up his alley.
? Martin
@Yatsuno: Brown eggs, no less.
beltane
@? Martin: Admit it. Times like this make us miss Joe Lieberman being in the Senate. John McCain is strangely incomplete without him.
Yatsuno
@beltane: Not true. He has his new boytoy Huckleberry Closetcase to make up for Droopy’s absence.
Mike E
@beltane: Ugh, I just pictured Dr. Evil and Mini Me when I read that.
Mike E
@Yatsuno: An elderly coworker said, “Nuke Iran!” and I had to explain the physics of this to him. Worked. Not.
Villago Delenda Est
Iran is mountainous, perfect country for a guerrilla insurgency that will last for decades.
Sure, let’s invade Iran. It wasn’t enough for us to wreck our Army in fucking Iraq and Afghanistan? Let’s fucking triple down!
Matt McIrvin
@? Martin: I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.
Mike E
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, and then, let’s all enjoy their mining the Strait of Hormuz… quadruple down! Thank gawd Curtis LeMay ain’t around to see this through.
sharl
OT,
Whooo boy, just started paying attention to my radio sound box, and Warren Olney (link – scroll down) has on Richard “EconoWizard” Yeselson vs. Megan “Mathlete”* McArdle, talking about Wal-Mart’s latest transgression – in this case, apparently, not giving employees the day off on Thanksgiving. [No fan of Wal-Mart here, but they ain’t alone in this.]
Talk about an intellectual mis-match!
*h/t @ranchandsyrup
Villago Delenda Est
@DH:
Obviously to the likes of Jeffrey Goldberg, you’re a self hating Jew.
I, on the other hand, thing you’re a mensch.
KG
@raven: oh, I know, but it was my way of taking a shot at Jeffrey
DH
@Villago Delenda Est:
LOL..yeah to Goldberg I may be, but I look at it this way. The real problem Israel faces is demographics. In fact, I will be so bold as to suggest that by fixating on Iran, Goldberg is allowing day by day the destruction of the state of Israel by ignoring the South Africanization of Israel. Who, then, is really anti-semitic?
Thank You for the compliment.
Villago Delenda Est
@DH:
Actually, I think your a mensch. Stupid fingers on keyboard
Totally OT, from Noisemax:
Mark Halperin: Obamacare Includes ‘Death Panels’
FSM, I hope so. With any luck, Halperin will be one of the first to stand before one.
Villago Delenda Est
EVENTUALLY I’ll write a grammatically correct sentence. Someday.
Joel
@sharl: Goldberg was also good on Walmart. In this post, he practically sounds like a pinko commie. He also called them out for sexism, and pointed out that the genuinely mean “people of Walmart” website was just fucking stupid. Among conservative columnists, Goldberg is one of the ones I can most tolerate. He seems like a genuinely okay human being with an unfortunately terrible neoconservative streak.
sharl
@Joel:
Thanks. Outside of his neocon proclivities, he does seem to be decent on a number of topics.
Apparently John Podhoretz finds far-away environmental disasters very amusing, much like Jonah Goldberg got his yucks from people suffering and dying in post-Katrina New Orleans; both well-connected privileged children… who woulda thunk it?
At least Goldberg called him out on that:
I found the final bit of that exchange mysterious, but clearly THEY know what is meant by “everything” in this back-and-forth.
Cervantes
@DH: Since I am Jewish, I can say this:
Actually, no. Think again.
One doesn’t have to be Jewish to say it — or anything else, for that matter.
Cervantes
@Yatsuno: 20 or so would decimate the Iranian population (literally)
Literally, “decimate” means “reduce by 10%.”
So either you did not mean “decimate” literally or you did not mean “literally” literally.
(Apologies in advance if the pedantry offends.)
Ken
@Yatsuno: You’d destroy Afghanistan, Pakistan, and part of India, but hey, omelettes, eggs.
I see two nuclear-armed eggs, and one egg that is famous both for holding grudges since the late Neolithic and destroying every empire that’s touched it, so what could possibly go wrong?
chopper
oh, gai kachen afenyam, goldberg. you putz.
chopper
@Cervantes:
actually it also means to ‘destroy a whole bunch of’.
Paul in KY
@DH: I’m not Jewish & I can still say: ‘Go fuck yourself, Goldberg’.
America! Is this a great country or what?
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: It took Hulagu Khan 10 years or so to get rid of the Hashish Assasins guild. That was with total control of the rest of the country.
Cervantes
@chopper: Sure, but not “literally.”
chopper
@Cervantes:
it’s an actual definition of the word, so yes. ‘literally’.