Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

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

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Giving up is unforgivable. ~Joe Biden

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

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

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

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

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70Comments

  3. 3.

    lamh36

    Ok, it is officially time for me to get off these internets. I understand Kelly Osborne is grieving, but a change.org petition for an official Joan Rivers Day…really…really!

    We all grieve in different ways, but still…REALLY?

    https://twitter.com/KellyOsbourne/status/507677539293097984

    I feel the most for her daughter Melissa and her only grandson. 81 is a ripe age, but a sudden death is just worse.

    This just seems completely inappropiate, but meh, that’s just me.

  6. 6.

    West of the Cascades

    Asking help for the clueless … I get a “warning: unresponsive script” message on this website and only on this website. Any suggestions for what I can do to fix this? I use Firefox as my browser. Full message is:

    A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, open the script in the debugger, or let the script continue.

    Script: http://cloudfront.assets.stitcher.com/webapp/splayer/dist/release/require.js?v=1408749023:1

    Greatly appreciate any help!

  7. 7.

    K488

    My kitties have educated me over the years that those extended arms are a symbol of ownership. That combined with a full flop-sleep declares a level of feline dominance (over the slept-upon, as well as other cats in the area) that is beyond argument. Or so I have been led to believe…

  8. 8.

    Violet

    That second picture is hilarious. Steve looks like he’s doing Downward Dog in yoga. I guess it would be Downward Cat.

  10. 10.

    katie5

    “Former Twitter Chief Scientist Launches Steven, An Emoji-Based Social App“. Steven is a cat, albeit a ginger tabby. So I think your Steve is ready for appification. Not sure what a Steve-based app would do. Chirp a lot and sprawl all over laps (a lap-based app)?

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    DVR Alerts for TCM’s Pre-Code Festival
    (I want to make sure I catch people before tomorrow)

    Definite YESes
    Night Nurse (4:00 pm ET)
    Baby Face (8:00 pm ET)
    The Divorcee (9:30 pm ET)
    Gold Diggers of 1933 (1:00 am ET)

    Good bets (that I haven’t seen)
    Wild Boys of the Road (11:00 am ET)
    Safe in Hell (12:15 pm ET)
    Female (2:45 pm)

    Also, if you catch the opening of Taxi! (4:15 am ET), you ca see James Cagney speaking Yiddish like a native (which he pretty much was, since he picked it up from the other kids in the tenements of New York).

    Edited to add my blog URL back in — click on my name to view, though it won’t be updated for another couple of hours or so.

  12. 12.

    hilts

    A fitting tribute from Louis C.K.-

    “I feel very lucky that I knew Joan Rivers and I feel very sad that she’s gone. She was a great comedian and a wonderful person. I never saw someone attack a stage with so much energy. She was a controlled lightning bolt. She was a prolific and unpredictable, joyful joke writer. She loved comedy. She loved the audience. She was a great actress and should have done that more. She loved living and working. She was kind. She was real. She was brave. She was funny and you just wanted to be around her. I looked up to her. I learned from her. I loved her. I liked her. And I already miss her very much. It really fucking sucks that she had to die all of a sudden.”

    h/t http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/joan-rivers-dies-hollywood-reacts-1201297941

  13. 13.

    lamh36

    I can’t remember who I saw Horrible Bosses with either apparently, there’s a sequel. I thought the first movie was actually ok, I do love Jason Bateman.

    The sequel could be promising, if there is more than just what’s in the trailer.
    http://youtu.be/VDqmhPBf424

  14. 14.

    KG

    Is this an aberration tonight, or is the NFC North going to be as abysmal as everyone thought the NFC East is going to be?

  16. 16.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @KG: Green Bay was not at its best, but I think most of what you saw tonight was how good Seattle is.

    ETA: I don’t think that you can tell much about a team or a division until at least four games into the season.

  17. 17.

    lamh36

    Still stuck on 2014 Kennedy Center Honoree Al Green.

    Been watching YouTubes all night.

    I’ve probably said it before, but I’ll say it again, my fav LIVE Soul Train performance by Al Green has to be “Love and Happiness”.

    The singing, the showmanship, the charisma was everything, but my fav bit is when he finished his acapella intro and stomps his feet to introduce the beginning of the guitar and music.

    Love it.

    Al Green – Love and Happiness, Soul Train (LIVE)

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @lamh36: The dude dancing close to the camera with the tank top (0.38-0.46) is pretty cool in an early 70s sort of way.

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    That’s not dominance, that’s trust!

    Is Richard Sherman still with the Seattle Seahawks? Didn’t I see that he got hurt in the last game last year? Is he healthy now?

  24. 24.

    MattR

    @lamh36: Had a chance to say “hi” to him waiting for the same flight several years ago and ended up a few rows behind him on the plane. Got to watch a bit of that charisma and showmanship as he messed with another fan who came up to shake his hand by pretending the handshake painfully crushed his hand :)

    Unfortunately, the brush with fame was wasted on me as I am not a fan. I know some of his stuff but I only recognized him because he was the only black man in the Winnipeg airport and I knew he had played the night before (which I had noted because I wanted to go see the Dirty Dozen Brass Band open for him but was stuck going to a family wedding instead) so I was able to put 2+2 together and did some stealth googling from my phone to pull up an image that confirmed the answer was 4.

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @lamh36: A couple of youtube clicks from from that led back to this classic. Not the Rev. Al, but IIRC this version was from WATTSTAX.

    @MattR: He is a fantastic singer, but I like my old school soul singers to be a little rougher sounding. Otis Redding, for example. Even Sam Cooke for all his smoothness could get a bit sandpapery at times. I can’t recall not hearing Al Green sound perfect.

  26. 26.

    Hal

    Watching Rachel Maddow’s Bob McDonnell’s coverage. Doubly glad this anti-gay bigot who couldn’t do better than Pat Robertson’s fake law college went down. Shame on his kids for supporting the vilification of their mother for this sleaze bag. And damn that parted hair to the fiery depths of hell.

  28. 28.

    PurpleGirl

    @lamh36: I will agree that Joan Rivers was a great comedian. But I grew very tired of her and Melissa’s thing of red carpet reviews of dresses and the celebrities. Often she just seemed mean. I stopped watching those shows years ago. lamh36, I agree with you that a Joan Rivers day seems over-the-top.

    I thought that she would be declared dead when the doctors at Mt. Sinai put her into a medical coma. To me it said, “yes, they want to time to see what has happened to her brain function but they also aren’t sure about what is left.” Also, when they moved her from the ICU to a private room — so the family had private space and it said she couldn’t benefit from the ICU. A sad turn of events.

    ***************************************************************

    Steve is a wonderful critter and he so trusts Shawn. In picture #2, Shawn seems to be a bit confuzzled (confused and puzzled) as to what to do about the cat keeping from getting up. Those pictures are great JC. Thanks for them.

  29. 29.

    StringOnAStick

    Steve is such a gorgeous cat; I’m a total sucker for long haired gray/torbie tabbies. Steve’s size still blows me away – that is a HUGE cat!

    Mine does that “full arm coverage” thing when she doesn’t want me to get up in the morning because my crotch is providing such a nice place to lounge from. Yeah, I know; TMI, but cat owners know what I’m talking about, and now that it is getting cooler there are more times when I wake up pinned in place.

    We got some news on my BIL’s lymphoma today; it is a rare kind but hopefully it is limited to just his feet and can be addressed with aggressive radiation therapy. We won’t know for sure though about how limited it really is until the PET scan next week; if that turns up clean everywhere else then his odds are good. If it has spread to other parts of his lymphatic system then things will be much more complicated. All in all though, what I heard about today’s first meeting with the radiation oncologist seems positive. Hopefully there will be more of the same after next week.

  30. 30.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Hal:

    And damn that parted hair to the fiery depths of hell.

    That seems like an awful lot of vitriol to expend on a bad haircut,

  32. 32.

    max

    @West of the Cascades: I get a “warning: unresponsive script” message on this website and only on this website.

    That means a script that got loaded is waiting on a response from a server somewhere and isn’t getting it, possibly due to a dropped packet or a non-response to a DNS query, so it just sits (and the little circle keeps going ’round and ’round long after the rest of the page has loaded) – which causes Firefox to eventually call the script hung and offer to terminate. This can happen a lot on an error-prone connection or a slow connection (such as DSL). Noscript will work, but it asks a lot of questions – I’d try AdBlock Plus first.

    (I have noticed that a lot of commercial companies have started offering soundalike addons named AdBlock – use the one that comes from adblock.org and turn on all the defenses and crank up the filters. Then add noscript if needed.)

    max
    [‘Blah.’]

  34. 34.

    mai naem mobile

    Theres a sweet piece on vulture by a woman who worked writing jokes for Joan Rivers. Two of my sisters went to see Joan Rivers pre-Johnny Carson break up and did not really enjpy the show. They found her jokes to be too nasty. She never was my cuppa tea but it seems like she was a genuinely nice person who was involved in a lot of charity work.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @lamh36: Damn, I knew I recognized it from somewhere.

    ETA: I was 8 when Love Train came out. I probably watched that episode of Soul Train. It came on in the Chicago area at the end of Saturday morning cartoons.

  38. 38.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @PurpleGirl: He’s a great dog. But puppies are exhausting. All my other Danes were adults or at least close to adults when I rescued them. I never really understood why people got a Dane and then complained that it was too big.

    After having a puppy, I really don’t understand how they lived through puppy-hood and THEN gave up the dog. But thanks, because then I got four amazing Great Danes that came fully housebroken and pretty well trained.

    Bixby much more work. LOL.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    I know I watched that show every week — I can probably still whistle the theme song to this day — but for some reason the only episode I remember is the one where they get caught trying to bootleg a recording at a Doobie Brothers concert. Probably because, even at my tender age in my all-white suburb, I was thinking, Why the heck would these guys even want to go to a Doobie Brothers concert?

    ETA: “That show” being “What’s Happening!!” Just to be clear.

  40. 40.

    West of the Cascades

    Thanks to everyone for the replies! I understand better what is happening … I installed the Noscript add-on and it seems to working and not worrying me too much.

  42. 42.

    Comrade Luke

    That second picture is the hardest I’ve laughed at anything on this blog. He looks like he’s saying “We’re not worthy”.

  43. 43.

    PurpleGirl

    I googled Great Danes and found out that the dog in Oregon who had eaten the socks was a Great Dane. I don’t think I’d seen that in any stories about the doggie. Somehow knowing that it was a Great Dane seems right and appropriate for the sock eating action.

  46. 46.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Mnemosyne: Fine. Maybe the producers knew but they weren’t willing to bet that the general (white) public did. Look, I am stretching for a possible explanation – it makes no real sense to me in terms of the internal logic of the show. It has to be something outside. Clueless studio execs get blamed for other stuff; why not this?

    ETA: Weirdly, I have never been to a show at Ravinia.

  50. 50.

    Mandalay

    The Guardian is reporting this:

    Police have shot dead a man who was threatening a woman with a knife at a house in London.
    A number of shots were fired during the incident at Shepperton Road in Islington at around 1am and the 40-year-old died 20 minutes later while being taken to hospital, Scotland Yard said.

    Notable enough given the rarity of police shooting anyone in Britain, but this is the kicker….

    The Metropolitan police said in a statement: “As in any shooting, officers from the Met’s directorate of professional standards have been informed and this incident has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.”

    Think of that: whenever someone dies in any incident involving the police the incident is automatically referred to Independent Police Complaints Commission even if there has been no complaint!

    We’ll go through a couple of ice ages and thousands more killings by cops before that ever happens here.

  51. 51.

    ruemara

    Hush, y’all. I saw that episode & I loved the Doobie Brothers. Or as I knew them, the backup band for the guy who mumble sings.

  52. 52.

    Mike J

    @Mandalay: I think Seattle does that now, but only because the Feds came in and told them how shitty the whole department was and pretty much threatened to shut them down.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Mandalay:

    We’ll go through a couple of ice ages and thousands more killings by cops before that ever happens here.

    In Madison, there is a “Solidarity with Ferguson” event scheduled for Sunday. I intend to be there and do whatever they need me to do to help. You can have the attitude in the quote or you can do something to try to change things.

  54. 54.

    John Revolta

    Ah, the Aragon Ballroom, God yes. Saw many and many a great show there all throughout the 70s, including the first goddamn rock concert I ever went to (Byrds, Al Kooper). In the mid/late 70s I was going out with a girl who was doing the books for JAM productions and we pretty much had the run of the place, and the Uptown as well. Saw Costello tear the roof off the place a couple of times, Kinks, Little Feat, J.Geils, Southside Johnny……………..

    bliss it was just to be alive in those times; but to be young was very heaven!

  56. 56.

    John Revolta

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): First time was one of the great shows of my life……….Costello, Edmunds & Lowe, and Mink Deville. The Armed Forces album was just out……they opened with “Accidents Will Happen” and basically never gave you a chance to even breathe. Then again the next year. Have never seen him live since, sadly, but I don’t really feel like I missed much either.

  59. 59.

    John Revolta

    Yeah, that’s them. I think he went to France the next year.

    Thing was, Costello really came out like he had something to prove. I remember, at the time, the way it worked was, the house lights would go down, then maybe a minute later, the band would stroll on, tune up, futz around some and then play. When the Attractions played that night, the lights went down and EC was singing like 5 seconds later. I’m still not sure how they did it, but they never fucking let up from then on. Pure adrenaline. Rockpile were great too. It was quite an evening……………

  60. 60.

    Suffern ACE

    Sigh. Since Joan won’t be needing them any longer, I wonder if the Packers could buy some of her more offensive lines. It couldn’t hurt. Maybe Aaron Rogers could work some anal sex and Hitler references into his snap count.

  61. 61.

    Montarvillois

    Can we trade pussy cats? My boy wants to be outside 24/7, weather permitting. A former stray, he doesn’t know the meaning of affection. Lucky you.

  63. 63.

    raven

    Oh no, Morning Joe thinks it’s OUTRAGEOUS that the federal government brought these charges!!!!!!!

    eta He knows that it’s wrong but it’s overreach!

  67. 67.

    MikeInSewickley

    I’ve got a semi-feral Main Coon. Feed him on the front porch and he always jumps up with me on the hanging rocker for some petting and scratching. Big brute lays on me and demands tone scratched and rams his head into my chin.

    Never had another cat breed so affectionate.

    Steve is the same. When they’re happy, you know it.

  69. 69.

    Patricia Kayden

    @raven: That just shows you how irrelevant Morning Joe’s opinions really are. The jury thought differently and hence Ol McDonnell and wife are on their way to jail.

  70. 70.

    Pococurante

    Both our Maine coons sprawl asleep all legs akimbo on their (not insubstantial) stomachs. They like to sleep length ways on my thigh the same way. Both weigh between 22-25lbs… :P

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