Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

People are weird.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

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

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

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72Comments

  2. 2.

    Lee

    OT: The Dallas Morning New’s business section has mentioned how income inequality is starting to impact the economy. The article is about how the recovery of new car sales in DFW is lagging behind the rest of the nation.

    Income inequality is probably a factor, too. While the economy has strengthened, incomes haven’t grown across the board, and the average selling price for a vehicle has climbed about $3,000 since 2007.

    The average selling price of a new vehicle was nearly $32,000 last year, compared with $18,000 for a used one.

    Texas has created a lot of low-paying jobs that don’t have benefits. Leisure and hospitality jobs, for instance, were among the fastest-growing in Dallas last year, and their average weekly wage was $489.

    In a special section on Sunday, my colleagues reported that Dallas ranked among the worst cities by a measure of income equality. The share of residents living in poverty also surged over the past decade.

    http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/mitchell-schnurman/20140616-new-car-sales-lag-pre-recession-peaks-in-dallas-fort-worth.ece

  4. 4.

    RSA

    If this were the 1980s I’d say the target audience was male preppies, but I don’t know if that’s a thing today.

  6. 6.

    rikyrah

    Republican Congressman Tells Right-Wing Radio Host That House Has Votes To Impeach Obama

    By: Justin Baragona
    Monday, June, 16th, 2014, 7:13 pm

    Here we go again. During an interview with local Pennsylvania radio host Gary Sutton, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) commented that House Republicans most likely have enough votes to impeach President Obama. In an audio clip posted by Buzzfeed, Barletta pointed out that the President is constantly ignoring the Constitution and constantly breaking the law. He then suggested that impeachment would “probably pass” if it came up for a vote. Of course, neither Barletta or the host specifically brought up which laws Obama’s breaking, or how he is ignoring the Constitution. Instead, it was mostly just a generalized discussion about how the President uses politics against poor, helpless Republicans.

    The money quote from Barletta is the following:

    “He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws, and ignoring the checks and balances. The problem is, you know, what do you do for those that say impeach him for breaking the laws or bypassing the laws. Could that pass in the House? It probably, it probably could.”

    This is more of the same old, same old from Republicans, who are merely trying to appeal to their base of angry, old, hardcore racists. Nary a week goes by where we don’t hear a Republican claim that Obama needs to be impeached, or that the House of Representatives has the votes to impeach the President. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has brought up impeachment a couple of times in the last month. Former Congressman Allen West seemingly spouts it daily. Fox News has made a cottage industry out of mentioning impeachment.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/16/republican-congressman-tells-right-wing-radio-host-house-votes-impeach-obama.html

  7. 7.

    SuperHrefna

    @RSA: Preppies have made a stealth comeback. Sad, but true. They seem to have interbred with the dudebro.

  9. 9.

    big ole hound

    Is this shorts addy for people who want to be told their fly is open. Maybe for flashers to make sure they are noticed.

  11. 11.

    big ole hound

    Any Democrat who campaigns on raising the minimum wage to $10.00 can win any election anywhere. Mobilize around this issue and watch the GOP tumble.

  12. 12.

    Donut

    @RSA:

    I had to look at the Chubbies web site. I’m guessing the most likely target buyer for them short pants’d be either gay gentlemen and/or younger fellas who (think they) can otherwise pull of kitschy. I can’t see too many straight guys over age 40 who could wear those without looking like a absolute dork. And for guys in their 20s, who were babies in the 90s, the look is total throwback thing, a costume, if you will – kind of like when kids my age wore the so-called hippie and disco-ish styles in the 80s and 90s. The more things change, kids these days, get offa my lawn, and so on…

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    @big ole hound

    Maybe for flashers to make sure they are noticed.

    Very old joke:

    Hear about the flasher who finally decided to retire?

    Turns out he found it so dull that he ended up sticking it out.

    (rimshot)

  19. 19.

    shelley

    The money quote from Barletta is the following:

    “He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws

    And let me guess, the Honorable Gentleman failed to give a single, actual example.

  20. 20.

    NonyNony

    @big ole hound:

    Any Democrat who campaigns on raising the minimum wage to $10.00 can win any election anywhere. Mobilize around this issue and watch the GOP tumble.

    You’d be surprised at how much hostility people who make more than the minimum wage have to the idea of raising the minimum wage (I know I always am when it comes up).

    So campaigning wouldn’t be enough – it would have to be combined with a huge GOTV effort to get people who would be in favor of it a) informed that it’s even an issue and b) get them to the polls.

    The media won’t help much with a), by the way – journalists seem to be among the class of people who despise the idea of raising the minimum wage these days.

  21. 21.

    aimai

    @rikyrah: This reflects no more than that the Obamahaters are the heroin of the GOP junkies. They have to keep offering bigger and bigger hits of stronger stuff to keep their junkies buying that shit. After all, once you get accustomed to a regular dose it stops affecting you. After every middle east incident they will bang the Benghazi/Bergdahl/Bagdhad drum. After every huge storm they will accuse Obama of orchestrating the weather to hurt the heartland. After every disasterous drought they will accuse him of “using” the weather to blah blah blah. After every mass shooting they will accuse him of being behind it in order to take their guns. They have to ramp up every three months or so or their voters can’t jiddle their tiny pendulums.

  22. 22.

    RSA

    @SuperHrefna:

    [Preppies] seem to have interbred with the dudebro.

    This sounds like a good idea for a horror movie.

    @Donut:

    I can’t see too many straight guys over age 40 who could wear those without looking like a absolute dork.

    Yeah–and I don’t really need the help of brightly colored shorts to look like a dork.

  23. 23.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Where’s the thermos full of vodka? I don’t see any liquor anywhere in this. This can’t have anything to do with Noonan at all.

  24. 24.

    Marc

    From now on I’m going to end all arguments by saying NOONAN. Kind of like how George Costanza says JERK STORE.

  25. 25.

    Comrade Dread

    @rikyrah: I wish they would impeach the President. Just stick their freak flag out for all of the country to see front and center and try to convince the American public that the President deserves it. Let’s see how many of the voters would really appreciate their habit of impeaching a Democratic president for acting like a centrist Democrat.

  27. 27.

    Mike in NC

    Can we now start to call baggy granny underpants “Noonans”? It should catch on quickly.

  28. 28.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    The media won’t help much with a), by the way – journalists seem to be among the class of people who despise the idea of raising the minimum wage these days.

    @NonyNony: Of course they are. Class envy. Most of these “self-employed” independently wealthy dilettantes are making far less writing their one article a week than someone who works forty honest hours a week over a fryer for those $7.25/hr fat paychecks.

    And they seethe with hatred over the fact that an uneducated immigrant from some Central American hellhole can make more money than they can, despite the fact that the immigrant spends his days doing something useful to society while they, journalist scum, spend their lives doing nothing useful for anyone.

  30. 30.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    It does seem to be gay preppiewear. But I dunno – I kinda want a pair of Ishmaels now.

  31. 31.

    Iowa Old Lady

    If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016, Republicans will call for impeachment in week one. They really don’t believe in people voting for their own government. (A theme that also shows up in their demand we intervene to change the govt in Iraq)

  33. 33.

    Ash Can

    @rikyrah: Of course they have the votes to impeach. The teahadi loons will vote for it because it’s the main reason they went to Congress in the first place, and the rest of the GOP congresscritters will go along with it because that’s what Republicans do. I wonder only what they’re waiting for.

  36. 36.

    lamh36

    Wow…really Nugent…really! Da cojones on this fucker…

    “@timothywjohnson: Actual lyrics from Ted Nugent’s new single: And I got a dream/Like Martin Luther King … So I climb up his mountain/and I shout it out loud”

  37. 37.

    rikyrah

    NC GOP Senate candidate: Blacks, Hispanics overtaking ‘traditional population’

    By David Edwards
    Tuesday, June 17, 2014 8:32 EDT

    Republican U.S. Senate candidate from North Carolina Thom Tillis complained in 2012 that the “traditional” population in his state was not growing, unlike African-American and Hispanic populations.

    During a 2012 interview that was uncovered by Talking Points Memo this week, Carolina Business Review host Chris William asked Tillis why Hispanics that voted for President George W. Bush were not supporting then-nominee Mitt Romney.

    Tillis argued that the change was less about the GOP message, and more about shifting demographics in the United States.

    Republican U.S. Senate candidate from North Carolina Thom Tillis complained in 2012 that the “traditional” population in his state was not growing, unlike African-American and Hispanic populations.

    During a 2012 interview that was uncovered by Talking Points Memo this week, Carolina Business Review host Chris William asked Tillis why Hispanics that voted for President George W. Bush were not supporting then-nominee Mitt Romney.

    Tillis argued that the change was less about the GOP message, and more about shifting demographics in the United States.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/17/nc-gop-senate-candidate-blacks-hispanics-overtaking-traditional-population/

  38. 38.

    dmsilev

    Obama has officially reached the “baiting wingnuts for fun and profit” stage of his Presidency. Via Booman, this is an actual headline in The Hill: WH to honor young illegal immigrants:

    The White House will honor 10 young adults on Tuesday who came to the United States illegally and qualified for the president’s program to defer deportation actions.

    Each person has qualified for the government’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, which delays removal proceedings against them as long as they meet certain guidelines.

    They will be honored as “Champions of Change,” the White House said in a statement Monday because they “serve as success stories and role models in their academic and professional spheres.”

  39. 39.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    They really don’t believe in people voting for their own government. (A theme that also shows up in their demand we intervene to change the govt in Iraq)

    And the demands that the 17th Amendment be repealed, also, too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    srv

    @RSA:

    @Donut: They’re just short shorts, like OP’s from the 70’s and 80’s. That wasn’t really preppie, other than short shorts with designs were preppie.

    Interesting how board shorts became the ‘proper’ shorts length, except how board/khaki/cargos/bball shorts originally only went 2/3rds the way to the knee and now they seem to go half-way to the ankle.

    When I was Europe, pools had signs banning board shorts. Real men there.

    I, for one, welcome the return of short shorts because the chicks are wearing them also, too.

  42. 42.

    Belafon

    @dmsilev: He should also honor some of the original children on the Mayflower, who, even though they weren’t invited by the Indians, stayed in the country and contributed to it’s growth as a nation.

  43. 43.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @big ole hound:
    Raising the minimum wage is a commendable idea. It does, to me, deflect from inquiring why our economy seems to be incapable of generating adequate numbers of decently paid jobs. Minimum wage jobs used to be a stepping stone, now they’re careers. Why is that? What’s changed?

  44. 44.

    burnspbesq

    Hipster irony: a brand called Chubbies doesn’t sell anything with more than a 38 waist.

  45. 45.

    Corner Stone

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    Raising the minimum wage is a commendable idea. It does, to me, deflect from inquiring why our economy seems to be incapable of generating adequate numbers of decently paid jobs.

    Politically impossible, of course, but we should raise the minimum wage and cut back the hours in a work week to something closer to 30.
    More positions to cover different hours/days each week, some amount of income for more people. Gives people a place to be, a purpose or responsibility, even if not a glamorous one. And it provides more time to spend with family, study some new subject, create new ideas/things, or just ponder what that puffy cloud over there looks like.

  46. 46.

    dmsilev

    @beth: It’s been said before, but Obama really needs to announce a public-service campaign centered around the message of “don’t drink bleach and lick live power outlets”. Even better if Michelle joins him in the PSA. The wingnut problem would solve itself overnight.

  48. 48.

    Corner Stone

    MSNBC saying we have a suspect captured who is believed to have been in the attack on Benghazi.
    Captured in Libya over the weekend.

    I’m not sure capturing this guy is a good thing. I mean, Obama had to destabilize and lose Iraq just to get BENGHAZI!! off the front page headlines the first time around.
    Now what’s he going to have to do to bury it another time?

  50. 50.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: @Higgs Boson’s Mate: What changed? The institutionalization of excessively-high unemployment policies.

    DeLong has a good thread on it – see the comments, too.

    As long as we aren’t at full employment, and as long as there is little if any pressure for corporate boards to return a reasonable share of profits to workers as increased wages, and as long as corporate and high-income taxes are too low, then wages for most people will stay depressed. And more people will be stuck in minimum wage (and lower – e.g. waiters) jobs.

    It’s part of the crab-bucket theory of economics: They don’t care if the economy will grow faster, social unrest will be reduced, and they personally will do better with more progressive policies – they would rather rule a junk pile than share with others.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Belafon

    @srv: Tants! Pants that are also a table. (If you don’t want to watch the episode, google the word. It’s from Cartoon Network’s Regular Show).

  56. 56.

    srv

    @Belafon: I like how all the good comedy shows like Archer are apparently all written by angry late 40-yr olds.

    Half the dialog goes completely over the youngin’s heads. As Rocky & Bullwinkle went over ours.

  57. 57.

    Morzer

    For all your GOP head-exploding needs:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27893831

    A suspect in the September 2012 raid on a US diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead has been captured, the Pentagon has said.

    Ahmed Abu Khatallah was taken into custody in a secret raid in Libya on 15 June.

    He is now being held in a secure location outside Libya, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed.

    A US ambassador and three others were killed in the attack.

    “There were no civilian casualties related to this operation, and all US personnel involved in the operation have safely departed Libya,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm John Kirby wrote in a statement.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @dmsilev:

    I still honestly don’t get the conservative opposition to things like the DREAM Act. You have smart, ambitious, hard-working people who want to stay here and become contributing citizens, and your instinct is to turn them away?

    (Of course, I think the instinct is more, I don’t want my little Madison to be shown up by that annoying Pilar who thinks she’s so much smarter than my special snowflake than anything logical.)

  60. 60.

    Phil Perspective

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: It’s part of the crab-bucket theory of economics: They don’t care if the economy will grow faster, social unrest will be reduced, and they personally will do better with more progressive policies – they would rather rule a junk pile than share with others.

    Isn’t that a take-off from the iron law of institutions?

  62. 62.

    Belafon

    @srv: I make my kids watch a number of movies from my younger years (Ferris Bueller, Better Off Dead, Breakfast Club, Groundhog Day, Bill & Ted, etc) specifically so that they get some of the references in current culture.

  65. 65.

    Death Panel Truck

    Our corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world!

    And yet, somehow, General Electric finds a way to make their income tax bill equal the grand total of $0.

  66. 66.

    Belafon

    @Corner Stone:

    Our corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world!

    Our effective corporate tax rate is so low that billion dollar companies get refunds.

    It’s the reason businesses keep doing tax inversions, can’t hire more people or raise wages.

    No, the reason that won’t raise wages is because they can get away with it (because there are some companies, like CostCo, that have). The reason they won’t hire more people is because if people aren’t buying, there’s no reason to hire anyone.

  67. 67.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    One of the largest recipients of federal government contracts paid nothing in taxes last year, according to an analysis from the Center for Effective Government, a left-leaning think tank.

    Boeing reported an $82 million tax refund last year, but made $5.9 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits during the same period, the analysis of the company’s recent government filings found. That means Boeing paid a federal tax rate of -1.4 percent. At the same time, the company won 4.4 percent of all federal contracts last year, according to the report.

    Willie Sutton, you’ve been outdone.

  69. 69.

    burnspbesq

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    Boeing’s not a representative case. Because they enter into contracts that take more than a year to perform, they are permitted to use a funky accounting construct called the percentage-of-completion method to compute taxable income (they may use an even funkier accounting construct, the completed-contract method, for financial reporting purposes, although I can’t say for certain whether they do because I haven’t looked at their SEC filings). Over the length of a contract, they will have significant taxable income, but it won’t roll in ratably. As a result, a one-year snapshot isn’t likely to be meaningful–and I have no doubt that a “left-leaning” NGO would cherry-pick an especially funky year in order to make a point.

  70. 70.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Corner Stone: The top line rate is high, sure. But of course, hardly any corporation pays that high rate, and it obscures the real issues anyway (as I’m sure you know).

    http://fortune.com/2012/02/23/why-lower-corporate-tax-rates-wont-help-the-u-s/

    There appears to be little evidence that the U.S.’s relatively high corporate tax rate is holding the economy back. Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal leaning think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, points out that the stated corporate tax rate has mostly been the same as it was since the early 1990s. In fact, due to recent temporary tax cuts, the effective corporate U.S. rate is considerably lower today than it was in the late 1990s, when the economy was growing much faster.

    One common argument is that high tax rates cause companies, both U.S. and foreign, to invest elsewhere. But in a 2010 study Steve Fazzari of Washington University looked at thousands of companies and found that taxes really don’t have that much impact on corporate investment. What matters most to companies is the cost of capital, which dictates how large a return companies will make when they, for example, open up a new plant. Taxes make up a very small portion of that. “GE would be happy, but whether it actually does more investing, I don’t think so,” says Fazzari. He says having a lower tax rate than other countries might drive some companies to invest in the U.S. rather than elsewhere, but Fazzari thinks even that effect would be small.

    (Emphasis added.)

    But of course, cutting taxes is part of the Teabagger Catechism, so the facts don’t matter. We didn’t really need to be reminded me of that. ;-)

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    burnspbesq

    @Belafon:

    Our effective corporate tax rate is so low that billion dollar companies get refunds.

    Because of the way we incentivize certain activities, and because of the pervasive effect of international issues, effective tax rates vary widely across industries. Retailers and service providers who have to be face-to-face with their clients tend to have effective rates close to the statutory rate. Technology and pharma tend to have low effective rates because they can take advantage of anomalies between different countries’ tax systems and aggressively transfer-price to migrate the non-US rights to their IP to places like Luxembourg.

    Which is why companies like Amazon and Nordstrom, whose corporate headquarters are a ten-minute walk from each other, have vastly different agendas where taxes are concerned.

  72. 72.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Corner Stone: I don’t claim it’s original. I probably stole the “crab bucket” phrasing from someone here back in the mists of time…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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