Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

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

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

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

In my day, never was longer.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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Reader Interactions

52Comments

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    Plan to spend most of the evening after dinner (which won’t be for several hours yet) baking stuff for tomorrow night’s regular gathering while some episodes yet unwatched of Not Going Out run in the background.

    Harmless Britcom with enough flashes of clever dialogue to keep it entertaining.

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    Okay, “Inside Llewyn Davis” was the wrong movie for me to watch. I was already depressed, and now I’m even more so. Thanks for nothing, Coen Bros!

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    Had an early St. Patrick’s Day party at work and ate way too many chips and pretzels, but haven’t had a real dinner yet. It was fun, but my boss got annoyed that we didn’t have enough ice to keep the beer cold. No, seriously.

    And for the non-drinkers, the Virgil’s root beer mini party keg was a huge hit as always.

  6. 6.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    If you want to see something melancholy that isn’t depressing in the end, I would recommend The Descendants if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s sad (and funny and tragic and farcical) but the family ends up stronger at the end (not a spoiler).

    Or just say, “Fuck it all” and watch a funny movie, preferably one your mom loved. My dad loved The Producers and Animal House.

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    I feel like a movie. Would I find August: Osage County too talky? Why is there no 3D version of Mr Peabody and Sherman playing in KL? How should I see the 300 sequel: in 3D to savour its high-testosterone low-accuracy ancient history, in 2D, or should I just skip it?

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    @MomSense: Will check it out. Thanks!

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks for the rec. My mom loved “Moonstruck.” We were always quoting it. “Old man, if you give those dogs another piece of my food, I’m gonna kick ya til yer dead!”

  11. 11.

    MomSense

    @Mnemosyne:

    The thread the other night was long dead before I got to it, but wanted to tell you Stitches is a great idea. I started designing my own things and now the ideas are coming faster than I can knit them!! I wish I had Mrs. Weasley’s knitting spells.

  14. 14.

    Mike in NC

    Dallas Buyers Club was terrible in every way imaginable. Dreary and depressing. Worst thing we’ve suffered through in years.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    Speaking of teebee, have found “Justified” to have lost a bit of its edge and coherence this season. Still glued to it for the parts that Just Work, but also think the spirit of Elmore Leonard has truly left the building.

    In other teebee news, “Louie” is returning. Time to vacuum out the spaces between sofa cushions, ’cause we’re going to be occupying them.

  16. 16.

    MomSense

    Oh why oh why would McConnell release a 2 1/2 minute video with no talking? Has he not heard about all the jackals on the internets?

    Someone set it to the song “I just had sex”.

  18. 18.

    Amir Khalid

    The Associated Press is quoting an unnamed Malaysian government official saying “investigators have concluded that one of the pilots or someone else with flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.”

    I call bullshit.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:
    Are you getting the news there of the possibility it was in the air three to four hours after contact was lost? (Based on the satellite pings) If that’s the case, equipment failure drops back in line as the likely cause and the human element comes forward. Additionally, it extends the search range more than a thousand miles, which….whew.

  22. 22.

    Keith P

    @Mnemosyne: Virgil’s is my favorite root beer, and I’ve had maybe 15 different brands. Save your money though if you see the Virgil’s special edition nutmeg version. I didn’t notice a difference.

    @Betty Cracker: “Moonstruck” is awesome. And it’s been on cable a lot the last week. Great acting all around.

  23. 23.

    PurpleGirl

    @Betty Cracker: As much as I loved the movie (saw it twice in the theater), I haven’t been able to watch it on TV. I start it and I can’t finish it. But yes, it was a good movie.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    @trollhattan:
    I think that was reported last night. The new search radius includes all of south-east Asia, most of China and India, quite a bit of Australia, and plenty of deep ocean. Maybe we do need that bomoh’s help after all.

  27. 27.

    MomSense

    @Amir Khalid:

    I can’t imagine what this ordeal must be like for the families and friends of the missing passengers. It is an agonizing situation.

  29. 29.

    RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual

    Getting back into Modern Warfare 3 on the Playstation. It’s better than most other games and has lots of variety in ways to play.

  31. 31.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:

    Repeating what you posted earlier–suspected hijacking.

    Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday.

    No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory.

    “It is conclusive,” he said.

    He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane’s communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.

    http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2023125752_apxmalaysiaplane.html

    Suspect we’re in for two dozen more swell theories to surface, lacking any knowledge of where this plane actually is. In the meantime will make a gentle suggestion to the airlines that you eliminate the cockpit transponder on/off switch.

    Thank you,

    A customer

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    Skipping through the channels and got stuck on Ed Sullivan’s Rock ’n’ Roll Classics on PBS. Pledge drive fodder, ugh, yet I couldn’t turn away from the old ’60s performance clips. Somehow that led to going to YouTube and listening to every version of “Here Comes My Baby” I could find. And Dwight Yoakam’s “Guitars, Cadillacs.” Go figure.

    Now restabilizing with Craig Ferguson. I have really started liking his show since I discovered it a while back. He has crime novelists on; that’s rare. Denise Mina tonight.

  33. 33.

    MaryRC

    @Betty Cracker: Hah! So were we:

    “Don’t shit where you eat!”

    “I’ll come to your funeral in a red dress!”

    and our favorite:

    “Your life is going down the toilet!”

    Moonstruck had a quote for every occasion as long as the occasion required exclamation marks.

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    @MaryRC: “I’m confused!” Another favorite. Oh, and –smack– “Snap out of it!” So many quotes in that movie.

  35. 35.

    Steeplejack

    @trollhattan:

    Can’t disagree about Justified. It seems to be wobbling a bit. I hope it’s just a momentary gear change, not entropy setting in.

    Several of my junk-food, guilty-pleasure, sorta-watch-in-the-background shows have run off the rails. The Red John reveal on The Mentalist was awful, and this season is adrift. NCIS got rid of Ziva and replaced her with a really obnoxious blond databot. Grimm is becoming a soap opera. Elementary is phoning it in. Psych has flat out jumped the shark. Even Ripper Street has seemed a little slack so far this season.

    Person of Interest is hanging on, but I’m still trying to figure out why killing off Detective Carter was a good idea. I suppose it was some behind-the-camera thing. I saw Taraji P. Henson on a talk show, and she said her run on the show had always been intended to be limited, but I’m not sure I buy that.

  36. 36.

    ruemara

    @Amir Khalid: A lot of the technical stuff I’ve been listening to moves very sophisticated hijacking to a strong possibility. And trust me, the details of it make me prefer the idea of a tragic happenstance over a hijacking.

  37. 37.

    Ian

    @MomSense:
    Its so his friends that *He is in no way shape of form coordinating his campaign with* can have good video clips of McConnell to put into their own ads. The dude is 80 years old and doesn’t have the slightest idea that people on the internet would pick it up and mock him for it.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    @ruemara:
    I’m not ready to favour any theory myself. Hijackers want something. Hijackers would have started making demands once they had control of the aircraft. If I hijacked a plane and hid it, you would not know where to bring me what I wanted. If I hijacked a plane and crashed it, I wouldn’t get what I wanted. There are good reasons to think hijackers wouldn’t want the plane itself.

    When I last looked, no one in charge was ready to reach any conclusion about MH370. What’s known so far doesn’t quite add up in favour of any scenario, so it’s best to wait to know what’s going on.

  41. 41.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:
    For consideration, no further comment required.

    Commercial aviation pilots tell NPR that they would have no idea how to disable all the systems designed to automatically communicate with ground stations, though they could probably figure it out from checklists and other documentation available aboard an aircraft.

    Aircraft such as the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which disappeared over the Gulf of Thailand a week ago, are equipped with transponders that give their position to air traffic control. The transponders can be switched off with a flick of a switch. But modern planes like the 777 have two other systems as well: cockpit radios and a text-based system known as aircraft communications addressing and reporting system, or ACARS, which can be used to send messages or information about the plane.

    But the plane’s transponder appears to have been intentionally shut off and the ACARS may have been shut down as well.

    Turning off the radios and ACARS would be more difficult. NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel spoke with commercial pilots, including two who have flown Boeing 777s similar to the jet that vanished with 239 people aboard. He says the pilots tell him that those systems are “pretty hard-wired into a modern aircraft.

    “They said you’d have to go through big checklists, you’d have to possibly pull circuit breakers if you wanted to deactivate [all the communications equipment],”

    “So, to do this, you’d have to have some degree of premeditation and a lot of knowledge of the aircraft,” he says.

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/14/290255899/boeing-777-pilots-its-not-easy-to-disable-onboard-communications

    Might have mentioned last weekend I know a triple-seven pilot, but don’t see her often so haven’t had a opportunity to ask for her thoughts. Am confident their network is abuzz with this utterly vexing mystery.

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack

    @JoyfulA:

    Really good segment with her tonight. Turns out that they have known each other for a long time, and they got into a funny digression about some day trip in a car they took 20 years ago.

    He had Jo Nesbø on a few months ago, but I missed that.

    Lately I have been noticing that each night there is a different book on the table with Geoff (the robot). Tonight it was an Ian Rankin title, but I couldn’t make out which one.

  45. 45.

    ruemara

    @Amir Khalid: sometimes, the goals of nihilist defy sanity. In this case, if what I’m looking at is at all correct, it’s to gain knowledge and to put it into practice. Remotely controlling the flight systems of planes would be an interesting weapon, no?

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    @MomSense:

    Yay! You’ll come back exhausted, especially if you decide to do all of the dinners and activities, but it’s really fun to be around other knitters in a huge group like that. Most people bring a knitting friend or group of friends, but since I’m a loner by nature, I went by myself and just barged in on other people at the banquets and such (because most people go in pairs or small groups, they expect to socialize with strangers, so it wasn’t as weird as it sounds). I got to have some interesting conversations that way.

    The marketplace is a danger zone, though. Every time I go to one of those, I end up having to mail things back home because there’s too much to fit in my suitcase.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Someone at work asked me if I’d seen 300 yet and my reply was “I know I’m old but I’m not that old.” Caught him by surprise.

  48. 48.

    Bonnie

    @Steeplejack: She had also said she would not have taken the job if it had been for the full series. So, that could be the behind the camera reason.

  49. 49.

    Cervantes

    @trollhattan:

    Might have mentioned last weekend I know a triple-seven pilot, but don’t see her often so haven’t had a opportunity to ask for her thoughts. Am confident their network is abuzz with this utterly vexing mystery.

    One such network.

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steeplejack: The currently running show that most consistently amazes and enthralls me week after week… is… Adventure Time on Cartoon Network.

    I hadn’t been watching it for most of its run, but my daughter got old enough to be into it recently. The first couple of seasons were amusing adventures set in a breezily surreal world, but once the writers got used to the characters and the universe, the writers started building in a remarkable degree of depth, with sly satire and genuine pathos. Every so often they do an episode focusing on a tertiary or guest character that manages to compress an insightful and touching character arc into 12 minutes. Season 5 has twice as many episodes as the previous ones, and I honestly don’t know how they managed to churn so many out without the quality flagging.

  51. 51.

    Montysano

    I’m a huge Coen Bros. fanboy, so I went to see Llewyn Davis as soon as I could. I left terribly disappointed. The Coens have often made films about unpleasant people and pulled it off. Not this time. A really dreary film with none of the usual Coen flair.

  52. 52.

    mclaren

    I’m astounded. The superwealthy one-percenter helath insurance CEO Richard Mayhew doesn’t have any medical scam spam on the front page of Balloon Juice today.

    What’s wrong?

    Why hasn’t Mayhew bombarded us with yet another 2 or 3 stories per day about how allegedly wonderful America’s broken medical-crony-capitalist system is?

    Why hasn’t Mayhew vomited out more smarmy dishonest arguments for paying America’s already scandalously-overpaid doctors more money?

    Somebody check on Mayhew. If he’s not lying publicly on the front page of Balloon Juice, he may be ill.

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