Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

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

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

T R E 4 5 O N

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

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

This really is a full service blog.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

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

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

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71Comments

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    We exercise him by carrying him

    While wearing one of those lower back support wraps, one hopes?

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Repeating from way down below, just because.

    Beginning in about 2005, the CIA began secretly developing a custom-made Osama bin Laden action figure, according to people familiar with the project. The faces of the figures were painted with a heat-dissolving material, designed to peel off and reveal a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a demon, with piercing green eyes and black facial markings.
     
    The goal of the short-lived project was simple: spook children and their parents, causing them to turn away from the actual bin Laden. Source

  11. 11.

    SectionH

    My mom and I had a cat we exercised for a while by carrying her “uphill” to the farthest corner of our yard, whence she’d run right back to our back door. Because we were worried about her weight.

    Miss Q, her name was. She was overweight for about 15 of the 22 years of her life. Tsk, tsk.

  12. 12.

    MattR

    @NotMax: Notice it is “we” doing the carrying. Of course lower back support may be still be required even if two people are splitting the weight.

  13. 13.

    SectionH

    Otoh, Steve might, maybe, possibly benefit from another cat in the house? I mean, the canines do have him outnumbered.

  15. 15.

    mai naem

    If you want to exercise a cat, get a kitten. Same with a puppy for a dog. Our fat chihuahua mix lost a few pounds when we got our pups.

  17. 17.

    fleeting expletive

    Is there a real-time count of who is watching what network or cable tv show at any moment? I watch some obscure movies on tv and have no idea whether 200 or 200 thousand people are also watching the same thing. I think it would be something I’d like to know.

  19. 19.

    Tommy

    @Older: My cat is smart. She knows she has it good in my house. I can say to her “you want to go outside, want to go outside?” She looks at me and says nope. It is good in here. Heck the little lady will guilty me maybe the next couple hours to give her some love. When she wants attention she will push my hands off my keyboard. I love her for that.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    @fleeting expletive

    Obscure, you say?

    For those who crave watching Hitler and Mussolini engage in a pillow fight with an orangutan, TCM is airing the fulsomely silly wartime propaganda comedy quickie The Devil With Hitler this coming Monday at 9:45 a.m. Eastern time.

  23. 23.

    Tommy

    @p.a.: I don’t have a kid myself. I am a tech nerd. How I make my living. My brother is a huge tech nerd. Makes his living doing Cisco installs. I don’t have a kid. My brother has this wonderful little girl. Five. He can read the trade pubs the way I do, there are not a lot of women around.

    He thinks as I do this is fucked up …

    So for X-mas last year she got a top of the line computer. She will be on it 24/7 and being taught. When I visit her I am told to not talk down to her. She will be smarter then all of us …..

  24. 24.

    LT

    I thought he was an outdoor cat. Or went outdoors a lot anyway. Never seen an outdoor cat need human-inspired exercise!

  25. 25.

    srv

    So you have let all those people blame those earthquakes on frackers when it was really your own backyard work out sessions.

    Shame!

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    David Brooks:

    The Iraqi state is much weaker than the Rwandan one, but, even so, this quick survey underlines the wisdom of the approach the Obama administration is gesturing toward in Iraq …

    Uh oh. David Brooks is agreeing with the President.

    That can’t be good.

  28. 28.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @JGabriel: “Even the conservative David Brooks thinks that boots on the ground again in Iraq is a bad idea.” Spin it our way.

  29. 29.

    FlyingToaster

    @Tommy: I feel your pain. I have a six year old who explains to her 77-year-old grandmother how to do stuff ALL THE TIME.

    I just give her my old laptop if one of us doesn’t manage to kill it first. She HATES me for whitelisting stuff, but I told her flat out that it’s necessary until she’s 8. Whereupon she’lll figure out the workaround(s) and be done with Ma for all time. Well, until she wants me to add a smartphone to the family account. Heh.

    All of the 4/5/6 graders at her school use tablets all the time; something to look forward to in 4 more years (WarriorGirl finished Kindergarten last week).

    Note: I killed my previous MacBookPro two weeks ago, am still harvesting parts from the remains. I have a HD in an enclosure and will get an adapter next week for the DVD burner to fit into the optical drive enclosure I already bought. How many versions of plugs can the SATA folks devise, anyway?

  31. 31.

    MattR

    @FlyingToaster: I was betting on my 8 month old niece being able to operate a smart phone before my 70 year old mom, but mom surprised me a few months ago by getting an iPhone AND posting pictures to facebook.

    @JGabriel: Stopped clock?

  32. 32.

    Tommy

    @JGabriel: I was talking to a client today. The dude is so successful. Went to war as a grunt in Iraq the first time around. He is not remotely a liberal. Actual mocks me that I am. I mock him right back. He is confused by our desire to start wars. I am like so am I. I am like folks forget you fought a war. It could not have been “fun.” He said it wasn’t.

  33. 33.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @FlyingToaster:

    How many versions of plugs can the SATA folks devise, anyway?

    Only a dozen less than the makers of cell phones and tablets.

  34. 34.

    Tommy

    @MattR: The three of the best games I play on my phone my five year old niece turned me on to. It is funny, but I am like “what are you playing?” I mean she is five.

  36. 36.

    burnspbesq

    I’m in a mood. Somebody please say something nice about Greenie, the Yankees, or the Grateful Dead, so I can over-react and get it out of my system.

  37. 37.

    The Dangerman

    @JGabriel:

    The Iraqi state…

    State, as in singular? Sounds like there’s at least 3 now. We should tell Turkey to get bent and form Kurdistan and whatever the other 2 states want to call themselves.

  38. 38.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @The Dangerman:

    We should tell Turkey to get bent and form Kurdistan and whatever the other 2 states want to call themselves.

    Never the fuck mind the fact Turkey is a NATO member, right?

  43. 43.

    burnspbesq

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

    Can’t really argue with either of those. Gehrig was a gamer, and “American Beauty” is the only listenable Dead album (mostly because of “Box of Rain”).

    Maybe I just need some chocolate. And some Richard Thompson.

  44. 44.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @burnspbesq: If the Iraqi Kurds form a state, the Turkish Kurds will want in. I don’t think that Erdogan will buy it.

    @The Dangerman: I don’t know. I tend to want to avoid fucking over allies. If you do it too much, no one ever trusts you. I am not really a fan of unnecessary asshole moves.

  46. 46.

    The Dangerman

    @⚽️ Martin:

    The Kurds may not be satisfied with just a region in Iraq.

    Almost surely wouldn’t be but Iraq appears to be failed state at this point. At some point, putting Humpty Dumpty back together again isn’t happening.

  50. 50.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @burnspbesq: The Turkish Kurds tend to think of their current land as home and as part of a future Kurdistan. Their willingness to just pick up and leave is, shall we say, doubtful.

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    And although the political differences separating the two main factions of Kurdish populace within Iraqi borders have been more recently (recent as in an historical sense) expediently papered over, the gaping unpatched crack is still there just under the surface.

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @p.a.: Yeah, the US has moved its ethnic minorities around too (Trail of Tears, anyone?). Is it workable now? I have to say no, from both moral and a political realist point of view.

  58. 58.

    p.a.

    US immigrant detention/deportation centers operate as we speak. If it can happen here, with our supposed safeguards, it can happen (again) in Turkey. Secession attempts don’t generally go as Slovakia’s did. Iraqi Kurdistan has been defacto independent for years, but I don’t know its effect on Kurds in Turkey, Iran, or anywhere else. I do know people in general don’t like to have their nation dissected.

  59. 59.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @p.a.: Are you advocating that Turkey deport its Turkish population? If so, do you have any idea how large it is?

  60. 60.

    burnspbesq

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):

    That depends. It helps if the ethnic minority looks sorta like the majority, or has marketable skills. Seen any “No Irish Need Apply” signs recently? And I haven’t noticed too many Germans having trouble rooting for Sami Khedira or Mesut Ozil–or even Jerome Boateng.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @burnspbesq: Yeah, like that’s the same thing I was talking about.. If you are looking to start a fight because you are “in a mood,” you need to do better.

  62. 62.

    p.a.

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I assume you mean deport its Kurds, and of course I’m not. But if Turkish Kurds seek to carve an independent country out of Turkey, I can see a situation where the Turkish army will make Turkish Kurdistan a very uncomfortable place to be.
    I reread my comments and can’t really see how they can be read as advocating forced removals.

  63. 63.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @p.a.: You brought up the idea of the Turks encouraging its minorities to leave.

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    @⚽️ Martin:

    No, I’m almost certain that Iraq is going to split apart…

    So the timing of this is really just 11-dimensional chess on Obama’s part to promote Biden as the next president, because Biden was right about Iraq?

  71. 71.

    lukeallen1

    When he isn’t spending his time trying to bum people out with his “we are all screwed forever because this happened” posts, wr0ng way Cole apparently spends his time productively trying to herd cats.

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