Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

In after Baud. Damn.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  5. 5.

    ruemara

    Poor fuzzy baby. And you, too, JC. Got a file dump of info from the new boss. I can’t figure out if I’m working when I’m working on it. But it will have to wait for real solutions in the morning, I’m going to bed.

  6. 6.

    Mj_Oregon

    Steve needs extra loving with the Furminator no matter how under the weather you are. Shedding is hard work and you should help him out!

  8. 8.

    phantomist

    New Patten Oswald special on comedy central, apparently he found it very necessary to let us know he fucked a chick. He has a daughter, really, he keeps telling me.
    Over compensate much.

  11. 11.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @phantomist: If your career seems to be stalling because people think you might be, um something other than straight, career self defense might indicate noting evidence of heterosexuality. I ain’t saying it’s right, but it is probably good sense in our world.

  14. 14.

    JaneE

    It’s fur ball season. Brushing will help, but probably not eliminate fur balls during the shedding season. All of that extra thick winter fur has to go somewhere.

  21. 21.

    Mnemosyne

    @something fabulous:

    Yes, I’ll be there! They reminded us that it’s at the new WGA Theater on Doheny, not at the main WGA building. I was wondering why they needed food trucks since the main WGA is across from the Farmer’s Market, so now I get it.

  22. 22.

    max

    Actually, kittens, from a sheer musicality perspective, Jett was a great fucking choice. You think Joan Jett is a megastar sellout and Nirvana was the real deal? Fuck you. Jett had to fucking SELF-RELEASE her first record, because no label wanted to sign a lady rocker. Joan Jett stepped in to pay tribute to murdered Seattle rock icon Mia Zapata from The Gits, fronting Evil Stig just to raise money to find Zapata’s murderer. Jett’s rock cred is not in doubt, and she tore the roof off the sucker.

    They bitched about Nirvana fronted by Joan Jett?! People suck, man.

    max
    [‘I’d pay actual money to see an entire Nirvana show with Jett as frontwoman.’]

  23. 23.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    Hard for me to overcome my career-long aversion to Harry Chapin because of “Taxi.” Second only to Rod Stewart’s “Maggie Mae” and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” Songs that rubbed me the wrong way and were impossible to escape because they were ubiquitous for certain periods of time.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @max:

    I followed links and didn’t realize that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon had broken up because he was cheating on her. What. An. Ass.

    Weird as this is going to sound, I really hope Gordon’s mother passed away before that happened, because Mrs. Gordon used to come into the bookstore I worked at in West LA and talk about how Moore was the best son-in-law a woman could ever have. She just adored him. So I hope she never had to find out what an ass he really is.

    (Yes, the above is a true story. Movie director Robert Wise’s wife used to shop there, too.)

  28. 28.

    ? Martin

    @max: I can’t imagine Cobain wouldn’t have thought Joan Jett up there as anything other than awesome. Nobody has earned that spot more than Joan.

    I mean, if you want to get your hate on, Hall and fucking Oates inducted? Pretty big target right there.

  31. 31.

    Steeplejack

    Also, is there such a thing as post-traumatic seasonal affective disorder? I ran into a small but murky cloud of depression this week just as the weather definitively turned warm. Not so much black thoughts as extreme physical lassitude and great difficulty accomplishing even the simplest thing. Weird that it happened after we finally got through this wretched winter.

  38. 38.

    Eric S.

    I could use some French fried “don’t answer your phone after 6PM” rules right now.

    I’ve been logged on to work for the last 90 minutes. What should have been a 15 minute fix is being SEVERELY complicated by the fact this weekend – this very night in fact – we are moving offices and my work PC and everyone else’s work PC is not active. We are logging on to a server with limited access to applications and trying to figure out how to solve a problem that happens once every 6 months. The fix would be easy if I had normal access. I’d have been passed out drunk an hour ago. Instead me, a DBA, and a manager are trying to work this out adhoc.

    Eric S. + a lot

  41. 41.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack:

    I ran into a small but murky cloud of depression this week just as the weather definitively turned warm. Not so much black thoughts as extreme physical lassitude and great difficulty accomplishing even the simplest thing.

    Could be an allergic reaction, y’know (histamine overload makes one stupid & achy). Probably tree pollen, IIRC your area — maybe those famous cherry trees are toxic for you?

    (More likely birch, maple or poplar, which are making us miserable in the Boston area, too.)

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    @Anne Laurie: I’ve been feeling like crap for the past 24 too, but it never occurred to me the trees could be at fault. But maybe so! Pollen is so thick here we’ve been hosing a yellow film off the vehicles…

  44. 44.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @raven: Yup. Oak blooms at the same time as pine and is a much finer pollen. It’s usually the culprit, though I have known people who tested positive for pine pollen allergies via the scratch test.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: We’re currently bombarded with oak pollen.

    In other news, I turned CNN on at 6 AM. Between 6 and 6:50, they devoted 40 minutes to the missing plane. Bread and circuses.

  46. 46.

    gelfling545

    @Steeplejack: A formerly well known phenomenon called spring fever, celebrated in song & story. You don’t hear much about it these days.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Once again everybody blames the trees just so they can justify the mass murder that is uncontrolled logging.

  50. 50.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Keep eye on his fur. It is spring. You must aggressively keep up with his shedding, else you will start getting blots and knots of fur so bad that in the end, all you can do is cut them out with scissors. Which neither he nor you will enjoy.

    This is one of the joys of living with a long haired Maine Coon cat. I started the daily combine process with Buckaroo yesterday, when I discovered he was already getting some knots of fur on one rear haunch. He was NOT pleased. By the time we were through, he was ready to take my fingers off.

  51. 51.

    Poopyman

    Steve has been hacking up furballs for two days:

    Molting season with a Maine Coon. Get used to it.

  53. 53.

    Ben Cisco

    So Olympia Snowe came to town to advise the wimmens to vote for people willing to…wait for it…compromise and reach across the aisle and so forth:

    Former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe received a standing ovation from about 400 women at a Charlotte summit Friday when she urged them to support candidates for elected office who favor collaboration and compromise instead of political gridlock.

    “You need to reward those who are willing to cross the political aisle,” said Snowe, a Maine Republican. “You have the power of social media to create online communities. Use it.

    “The forces of division are well organized. …But the majority of Americans want their government to work. It needs to work for all of us.…We have to restore the integrity of the process in Washington.”

    Pretty sure I know who she thinks should do the compromising – what an utterly useless git.

  55. 55.

    ET

    Spring + long haired cat = FURBALLS. GALORE.

    I have tan colored fur on the stairs and corners and my kitty is a short hair.

  56. 56.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ben Cisco: There’s exactly one thing I unreservedly love about Olympia Snowe: her name! Honestly, “Olympia Snowe” is one of the coolest names ever.

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    @Ben Cisco:

    Well, actually, Olympia was behaving herself somewhat:

    To improve things, Snowe suggested having open primaries that would give independent voters a say in choosing candidates for general elections, and allowing independent redistricting commissions, instead of state legislatures, to set boundaries for political districts and avoid the gerrymandering that gives many legislators “safe” less competitive districts.

    Snowe recalled working across the aisle with Congressional Democrats to pass laws, including one that prohibits discrimination against patients who get genetic testing and another that requires the National Institutes of Health to include women in research trials. “We had to build alliances and coalitions,” she said. “That’s the way it used to work.”

    Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/11/4834879/former-sen-olympia-snowe-urges.html#storylink=cpy

    I didn’t see anything in the story that expressly let Republicans off the hook. She implies what a mess Senate rules are.

    Plus, she’s speaking in North Carolina, which suffers from severely conservative politicking by Art Pope and those he enables.

    More Olympia:

    “When I started, it was important to have credible information and data..…It was all about teamwork and collaboration… But in today’s environment, you don’t have that kind of process. They’re not talking about facts. They’re talking about messaging and political talking points.…We’re on the road to nowhere these days.”

    Hmmm. One of the parties is more prone to wild misinformation, and she knows it.

    She actually softpedaled her usual message to this group of women and girls, which is concerned with domestic violence, poverty, homelessness, disparity in pay for women, issues her mostly white and male GOP colleagues do their best to ignore or deflect.

  59. 59.

    Ben Cisco

    @Elizabelle: All true, but she also has a book to sell:

    She also signed copies of her book, “Fighting for Common Ground: How We Can Fix the Stalemate in Congress,” which outlines how things worked when she was first elected to Congress, in 1978 at 31, compared to today.

    I just wrote this up a few minutes ago:

    Impressive words. I’d have been more impressed had she done the responsible thing and point out it was her own party that lost the plot. She could also have mentioned her own role in the mess, but hey, books aren’t going to sell themselves…

    Some of those sales, no doubt, will come from those who are still convinced she’s on the side of the angels…

  60. 60.

    MikeJ

    @Elizabelle: (quoting the story on Snowe)

    To improve things, Snowe suggested having open primaries that would give independent voters a say in choosing candidates for general elections,

    I constantly hear people bring up this stupid idea. I’m a Democrat. The Democratic party is my party. I am a member of it. Why would I want somebody who isn’t a member of my party to decide who is going to represent us? If you want to have a say in who the Democrats run, join the Democratic party. If you want a say in who the republicans run, join the Republican party. If you can’t be arsed to participate, stop whining that other people don’t let you decide who will represent them.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @Ben Cisco:

    Did you comment on the Observer story? No comments up yet on that one (at least that I can see).

    Your link does not work for me.

  63. 63.

    Ben Cisco

    @MikeJ: Proponents of this idea know that you can get nutballs in office is you can muddy the waters, and in red or red-leaning states, this is a tactic that can, and has, worked.

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @MikeJ:

    You have a point. Although:

    I volunteered in Delaware’s 2008 primary, on behalf of candidate Obama. We found so many people who were disappointed to find they could not vote in the Democratic primary, because they were registered as independents. These were Obama supporters, who felt shut out. They had no idea they would not be able to vote.

    It’s a lot to ask people to register as party members in time for the deadline. It’s great enough to have them turn out for primaries and off-year elections.

    Yeah, you might get some Limbaugh-heads who get dispatched to vote for the perceived weakest Democrat. In which case, they should not get to vote in the GOP primary too. Choose your primary, and vote in it.

    I like getting more people involved in the process.

    And, sadly, too many who give up on Republicans won’t make it over the Democratic party. They just won’t do it.

  67. 67.

    Schlemizel

    @MikeJ:
    We have open primaries here in Minnesota, I have seen the GOP undermine the general election by voting on the DFL side when they have the chance to do so. Open primaries solve nothing mainly because open or closed it is still just a tiny percentage of the few who will even bother to show up for the general who will vote.

  68. 68.

    MikeJ

    @Elizabelle: I welcome their support in the general election, but I have no problem with them not voting in the primary. If they want to vote in the next primary, they should become Democrats now. It’s not as if we ask a lot of our members. No required meetings, no dues. All you have to do is to state in public, “I am a Democrat.” If you’re unwilling to do that, I don’t want you to pick our party’s leaders.

  69. 69.

    Elizabelle

    @MikeJ:

    I dunno Mike.

    Purity ain’t helping the Republicans none. I think it’s better to allow some fluidity.

    But it’s a good topic for further discussion.

  70. 70.

    JAFD

    Hello, Mr. Cole !
    To cheer you up a bit, herewith an old but seasonal joke:

    Q – Why don’t cats play basketball ?

    A – Because they can’t stand it when the crowd yells
    “Hairrrbaaawll ! Hairrrrbaaawll !”.

  71. 71.

    Percysowner

    I have a shorthaired black cat and a Maine Coon. Hill’s Science Diet Hairball Control has really helped my boys with hairballs. This time of year you will get some no matter what, but it’s really less when I use the Hairball Control cat food. Other brands didn’t do as good a job. You still need to Furminate Steve, or as others have mentioned, he will mat like crazy, but switching up food won’t hurt. If you don’t want to change brands add small amounts of oil (olive, corn oil, safflower) to his food. It helps them pass the hairball through his digestive tract instead of hacking it up.

  72. 72.

    kindness

    All my critters are blowing their winter coats. I can use the Defurberator on the dogs but the kitties say no way Jose.

  73. 73.

    Kerry Reid

    @max: If you don’t have it already, “Evil Stig,” the record Jett did with the surviving members of the Gits, is pretty great.

  74. 74.

    Mark B.

    Petromalt works great for hairballs, used in conjunction with brushing. It’s basically meat-flavored grease, and my cats will beg for it when they see it. It helps things pass through painlessly.

Comments are closed.