Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The revolution will be supervised.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

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

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Their shamelessness is their super power.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

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

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

We will not go back.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Second rate reporter says what?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Come on, man.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

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Archives for April 2014

Of Course They Did

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Surprising no one, the Republicans blocked a minimum wage increase:

As expected, Senate Republicans voted on Wednesday to block debate on legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

The procedural motion to begin debate received 54 votes for, and 42 against — short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.

The only Republican who voted with Democrats to begin debate on the bill was Sen. Bob Corker (TN). “While I think the underlying policy is problematic, I think we should always debate ways to help improve the standard of living of Americans,” he said in a statement sent to TPM.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) had expressed willingness to play ball on the minimum wage but decided that hike to $10.10 per hour — phased in over three years — was too high for her. Democrats, who are aggressively touting the issue on the 2014 campaign trail, declined to budge on the $10.10 figure.

“If we don’t succeed this time … we will bring this bill to the floor again and again and again,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said before the vote. “And just like unemployment insurance, sooner or later we will get it done.”

How do they plan to get this bill through the teahadist house, or did I miss something and it already passed.

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Thug Life

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Almost got into a fight today at the grocery store. I was walking through the parking lot in the pedestrian zone and this idiot in an SUV with a Don’t Tread on Me sticker (all I thought was “figures.”) almost ran over my foot in a rush to park illegally in the fire zone. I yelled at him “Watch where you are going, jackass!” Went in, got my cart and started to shop and this young meathead around 25 followed me and got in my face and said “You sure run your mouth, buddy” and I told him “I meant every word of it.” That seemed to piss him off more because I guess he is just used to intimidating people, so then he got like six inches away from me and started to say something and I cut him off and asked him if he was going to throw a punch, and he said “No, I just wanted to get in your face,” so I told him “Fine, then we’re done here.”

That really pissed him off, but since I already knew he was all talk, I just ignored him, when he yelled out “Fuck you, fat boy.” That just made me laugh (pissing him off more), and I immediately thought wow, he must not realize I own a mirror and know I am fat, and the boy part was equally funny because I had 20 years on the guy. I then blurted out “If I’m so fucking fat, how come your stupid ass didn’t see me in the crosswalk? Also kind of funny that the fat one manages to park his car in a spot rather than park illegally in the fire zone, but you probably didn’t think that through, either.”

His witty retort was “Go buy up the store, fat boy,” I responded “I can lose weight, but you’ll still be an asshole,” and started to walk away but he followed me and wasn’t paying attention to where he was going and walked into a vending machine. Which is what caused this problem in the first place- him not watching where the fuck he was going.

The whole thing was kind of funny, but there is just some sort of anger and manliness issue for all these teatards. Just a pent up hostility and a complete lack of recognition of cause and effect and the impact of their behavior on other people. The other thing is how these guys are all talk. You hunt me down in a grocery store to get in my face and call me fat? WOOOOO.

Actually thought about the fact that this clown is so lucky Shawn was not here, because Shawn is not a talker.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Meta

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Clickhole vs. Buzzfeed. As Dorothy Parker once quipped, how will you be able to tell?
***********
And what else is on the agenda for the evening?

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A (Not Very) Eternal Question

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Asked here.

Here’s the canonical video that’s the backstory for this question:

The problem, though, is the video doesn’t actually provide the crucial information, what would it take to achieve blubber rupture pressure (dubbed BLURP by one inquirer) thus invoking spontaneous cetacean detonation.
As usual, it’s Twitter to the rescue:

@slugnads @wslaton @rjallain so I analyzed the recent famous exploding sperm whale video & found that the water shoots out at about 17 m/s..— Aatish Bhatia (@aatishb) April 30, 2014

And there you have it.

Come to Balloon Juice for news you can use….and more open thread.

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Today in Rocket Surgery (Open Thread)

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Here’s a stupid question: I have a book of stamps I purchased a few years back when I had to mail a thing. Now I have to mail another thing, and I know the price of stamps has gone up at least once in the interim.

The stamps in my book don’t have a value printed on them. Will one stamp still work, or do I need to purchase a book of smaller-value stamps to augment the old stamp? I hope not, because that would necessitate a trip to the PO, and our Postmistress is a fearsome creature straight out of a Eudora Welty novel.

Another random thing: I’ve been reading comments around the web regarding the horrific botched execution in Oklahoma last night. Death penalty supporters seem to be laboring under the delusion that we death penalty opponents are weeping over the poor killers.

In their patronizing account, we’re supposed to think the killers could be rehabilitated and released into elementary school playgrounds with enough love, understanding and self esteem-building exercises.

Just for the record, that is a steaming crock of horseshit, and furthermore, you bastards who are making that argument know it is, which is why you start screeching “Kermit!-baybeees!-abortion!” when called on your gibberish.

I’m all for protecting society from mad-dog killers. I’d just rather my government not carry out barbaric torture in my name. It’s really not a difficult argument to grasp.

Final random thing: I had to replace, at great expense, my A/C unit last fall. Over the winter, the associated plumbing shit the bed.

Now I’ve got men crawling all over my attic and yard trying to fix it, and of course, it’s 90 degrees. Fuckity fuck.

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Viva Wisconsin

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Kevin Drum has a really good overview of why Wisconsin’s voter id law was struck down yesterday.

Judge Lynn Adelman, a federal district judge in Wisconsin, struck down that state’s voter ID law today. This was despite the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Crawford v. Marion County that Indiana’s voter ID law was justified. So what was different this time?

In a word, better arguments from one side. In Crawford, the state presented virtually no evidence that in-person voter fraud was a problem in Indiana—but neither did the plaintiffs provide much evidence that a voter ID law presented a serious obstacle to voting. Given this, the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud—even if that interest was more speculative than real—carried the day.

This time, the state once again produced virtually no evidence that in-person voter fraud was even a potential problem. But the judge was presented with loads of evidence that the burden of obtaining a photo ID was, in fact, quite high for low-income voters in particular. Since Crawford mandated the use of a balancing test to assess whether a photo ID law was justified, that made the difference and Wisconsin’s law was struck down.

Kevin’s excerpts from Adelman’s opinion are worth reading to see the complete vacuity of the case for voter impersonation, and the burden id laws place on the poor. The Roberts court will have to come up with a work of sophistry far beyond their usual stellar efforts to reverse this ruling.

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Score One for “The Olds”

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FL Governor Rick Scott has a double-digit deficit in the polls against presumptive Democratic nominee Charlie Crist. This is no doubt due in part to the fact that Scott is a comically obvious super-villain with a well-documented career as a shady grifter.

But Crist’s polling advantage may also be partly attributable to the completely unprecedented, shocking and outlandish new strategy he’s adopted to try to win back his old job in a state that elected President Obama twice: Crist is unabashedly defending the president and Obamacare against lies from unpopular tea party extremists like Rick Scott:

Some Democrats are running away from Obamacare, but not Charlie Crist. The Democrat candidate for Florida governor is embracing the Affordable Care Act.

“I think it’s been great. The roll-out was difficult. I’m sure the president feels that way, too,” Crist said Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Crist noted that he had seen Obama in Miami on Friday.

“I know that he has a compassionate heart, he cares about people,” Crist told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “People getting health care is like a civil right.”

Crist dismissed concerns that seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their doctors and said that issue was a fear tactic by Obamacare’s opponents.

“At the end of the day, this is going to be a very popular program because it’s doing the right thing for the people of our country and my state,” Crist predicted.

That’s crazy talk! As any major media figure can tell you, this sort of campaign won’t work because the tea party is a very powerful force. Hell, just this morning in Slate, Reihan Salam noted the following:

If the Tea Party were to fight crony capitalism as hard as it fights wasteful spending, and if its members were to train their anger on the Wall Street-Washington axis that deserves so much of the blame for our stagnant economy, it would be the most constructive and powerful political force of our time.

And if my granny had wheels, she’d be a go-cart. But Scott knew what to do when tacking into such headwinds: Go on a MediScare tour and rile up the millions of selfish old buzzards who are content to let anyone under 65 die in a gutter since they’ve got theirs. Didn’t quite work out for him (via the Florida Sun Sentinel):

“As I travel the state and I listen to seniors they tell me stories about how their plans are being changed, how they are losing their doctors, the coverage is changing, and so what I’m here to do is just hear your stories,” [Scott] said.

Their stories didn’t jibe with the governor’s view. When Scott asked one woman if she’d seen any changes in her Medicare Advantage coverage. “Not really,” she responded. A man said he was “very happy” with his coverage. Another woman said she and her husband are “very pleased.” Another man reported “no problems.”

Sonia Azam, 73, of Coconut Creek, told Scott she found orthopedic surgeons weren’t taking Medicare anymore. Scott asked the group if others were finding physicians were opting out of Medicare, and the response was a chorus of “no”s.

“I’m completely satisfied,” Harvey Eisen, 92, a West Boca resident, told Scott.” Eisen told the governor he wasn’t sure “if, as you say,” there are Obamacare-inspired cuts to Medicare. But even if there are, that would be OK. “I can’t expect that me as a senior citizen are going to get preferential treatment when other programs are also being cut.”

Ruthlyn Rubin, 66, of Boca Raton, told the governor that people who are too young for Medicare need the health coverage they get from Obamacare. If young people don’t have insurance, she said, everyone else ends up paying for their care when they get sick or injured and end up in the hospital.

Eventually, Rubin said, Obamacare will become more popular. “People were appalled at Social Security. They were appalled at Medicare when it came out. I think these major changes take some people aback. But I think we have to be careful not to just rely on the fact that we’re seniors and have an entitlement to certain things,” she said.

“We’re all just sitting here taking it for granted that because we have Medicare we don’t want to lose one part of it. That’s wrong to me. I think we have to spread it around. This is the United States of America. It’s not the United States of senior citizens,” Rubin said from her spot two seats away from the governor.

Okay, it was just one group of seniors, and maybe it was infiltrated by the local chapter of the Silver Alinskys. But when you’ve lost Del Boca Vista, you’ve lost Florida.

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