Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

We won’t go back.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

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

I really should read my own blog.

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

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Maximum McMegan

Open Thread: Maximum McMegan

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I did not think we could achieve this in our lifetime, but here goes:

  • NPR’s Planet Money team,
  • interviewing Megan McArdle,
  • who sounds like a cheerleader on Quaalude,
  • on her failed love life,
  • and her take on the “sunk cost fallacy” and relationships,
  • for Valentine’s Day.

whispering It is glorious.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

137Comments

  3. 3.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    OT: I just installed the update to virtualbox, my Linux VM is alot faster. I’ll try the win10 vm tomorrow(eh, latter today).

    ETA: I lied, just booted up the win10 vm.

  4. 4.

    Crusty Dem

    Noooooooo. Noooo. No.

    No.

    No one with less value had ever had their inanity spread so far as Megan the Tall and Slow.

    Just no.

  5. 5.

    cmorenc

    There’s a wonderful spice shop near my house, carrying an enormous variety of items, most of which have samplers set up so you can sniff and taste before you buy. But I couldn’t help noticing one item they carried – pink Himalayan salt (!) Would McMegan love this place, or what?

  7. 7.

    JGabriel

    Zandar @ Top:

    … on her failed love life …

    Peter Suderman-McMegan and McCardle split? Or is it some other relationship that Megan is talking about?

  8. 8.

    bemused

    McArdle was on msnbc (?) in afternoons awhile back. This is shallow but every time I saw her, I wondered why in the world her hair was so stringy looking.

  15. 15.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    I woke up to that on my clock radio. It was, er, disconcerting. Not a good way to start the day, no matter what one thinks/knows about her “work”.

    I wonder about those Planet Money people, sometimes.

    “We all know that small investors investing in stupid things they don’t understand is stupid, but lets see how stupid. Let’s Short America!”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Maybe they’re just trolling us…)

  16. 16.

    RSA

    Oh, great. It’s not enought that libertarians want to screw up a political system with over-simplified economic principles; they want to see how well that works for being in love.

  18. 18.

    Ohio Mom

    @JGabriel: That was my first reaction but then I went to check out the link. The interview is less than four minutes so I sat through it while looking at decorating sites on another tab. It apparently was the boyfriend before hubby.

    Her big take-away was, don’t spend good effort after bad on a relationship that isn’t going anywhere, if somewhere is where you want to go. Hardly profound but not everything useful to consider is.

    Still don’t like or have any respect for her, still enjoy seeing her being made fun of. Maybe not my best feature but not my worse I suppose.

  19. 19.

    jibeaux

    I wonder if she and her ex ever yelled “It wasn’t a statistic it was a hypothetical!” at each other.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @Elizabelle: She was in the right place at the right time. She had a blog on which, as mikej noted above, she was saying what the powerful wanted to hear, and she was saying it at exactly the time the corporate media was looking for ways to engulf and devour a then-new medium.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    The clip tells you everything about McMegan. Ex-boyfriend says something devastating about the relationship, in McMegan’s presence, to someone they’ve just met.

    And McMegan STAYS.

    The ability to filter something inconvenient out** and live on hope, because he/it/the whole ideology is so great. That’s McMegan and your usual conservacon/glibertarian right there.

    ** that someone paying attention would recognize and act on, appropriately, way earlier

  22. 22.

    Doc Sportello

    The description of her sounding “like a cheerleader on Quaalude(s)” made me click.

    Exactly right.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty Cracker: Yeah. There seems to be no end to big media paying people to be fatuous.

    The NYTimes just lost David Carr, an actually talented journalist/columnist, to death.

    But they hired and retain David Brooks and Russ Douthat. Who make half-assed arguments and get clicked and debated all over the place, while good writers and straight thinkers at other media outlets lose their jobs or never get paid at all, or have the prominence.

  24. 24.

    jon

    I listened to it. Here’s the story: she thought she had a perfect person, but the guy never said he loved her. She even sat there as he told someone at a bar (SHE WAS RIGHT THERE) that he wouldn’t say he loved someone until he was sure. And she was planning to marry this guy. She was planning to marry a man who never said he loved her. He was just an ideal match in every way. Her family was planning a marriage. It was going to be perfect! (STARBURSTS! STARBURSTS! BIG FUCKING ERECT STARBURSTS!)

    Why she would admit to being a complete fucking moron, do so for broadcast, and make a career of it is a question for the ages. How she does make a career of it is a question for our time. Definitely proof of some sort of moral decay, since she isn’t at least bordering on amusing like an Adam Sandler character.

  26. 26.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    This is just another reason why I stopped giving money to Totebagger Radio 15 years ago and completely stopped listening to any of their shows about 18 months ago. I occasionally fall off the wagon for a Car Talk rerun but any of their talk/news shows? I don’t miss em.

  27. 27.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    Failed relationship? Come on, Megan! Don’t you mean “failed to do fully disclose my relationship with the Koch Brothers”?

  28. 28.

    mikej

    @jon: I’d her plan was failing why didn’t she just commit more ground troops in a surge? That fixes everything, right?

  29. 29.

    jibeaux

    I’ll day this much for Planet Money, though: years ago they did a story explaining the real estate collapse in layman’s terms. It was better than anything else I encountered at breaking that down.

  34. 34.

    Crusty Dem

    Ok, curosity got the better of me. My first thought – how McMegan, to take a 3 year relationship and take it down to a single Econ 101 principle. As if that’s a learning experience.

    But then I realized it was even MORE McMegan, because she’s actually wrong about the sunk cost fallacy. At no point was she staying with him because she’d spent so much effort and time on the relationship. She never describes any of it in terms of cost. She just enjoyed his company and didn’t discuss the future.

    But in reality, she just made a broad, incorrect series of assumptions that caused her to make a serious error. And that is the MOST McMegan thing ever. Well, maybe there needs to be a broken calculator and 10X error, but it’s high on the list.

  35. 35.

    Buddy H

    I listen to NPR to get away from people like Megan. But more and more, I hear them. I have to leave the room when my wife puts on “Marketplace.” Something about their lip-smacking enthusiasm is a major turn off.

  36. 36.

    rikyrah

    incompetent boobs

    …………

    GOP infighting grows over Homeland Security funding

    By Cristina Marcos and Rebecca Shabad – 02/13/15 06:00 AM EST

    GOP infighting between the House and Senate is growing as Republicans work to prevent a partial shutdown of the Homeland Security Department at the end of the month.

    House conservatives on Thursday pointedly criticized Senate Republicans for saying a House-approved bill funding the agency and reversing President Obama’s executive actions on immigration was dead in the Senate.

    If we’re going to allow seven Democratic senators to decide what the agenda is of the House Republican conference, of the Senate Republican majority, then we might as well just give them the chairmanships, give them the leadership of the Senate,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) said at an event held with the Heritage Foundation.

    He and other conservatives called for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to gut the Senate’s filibuster if necessary to move the House bill to President Obama. With Democrats objecting to the immigration language, Republicans in the Senate are far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles.

    Senate Republicans quickly fired back at Labrador, arguing the suggestion was unrealistic.

    “We should change 200 years of precedent?” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The Hill. “No. If you change it for one issue, then you change it forever.”

    Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who previously served in the House, said the upper chamber shouldn’t change its rules because the move could backfire for the GOP.

    “Any time you start taking 51 votes and declaring 51 as 60, and use the nuclear option, you change the filibuster forever on it,” he said. “It’s one thing to change the filibuster on nominations, it’s another to change it on legislative action. The Senate should have a protection for the minority. Both parties will be in the minority at different points. We need to be able to protect the rights of the minority.”

    http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/232704-gop-infighting-grows-over-homeland-security-funding

  37. 37.

    Bobby B

    Why does my Google Chrome hate Balloon Juice? I’m on Explorer now and it makes black smoke come out the tailpipe.
    Oh yeah, fuck NPR, Exxon, Kochs, etc.

  38. 38.

    Joey Maloney

    @Crusty Dem: No one with less value had ever had their inanity spread so far as Megan the Tall and Slow.

    I’ll see your McMegan and raise you a MoDo.

    Edit: Curse you, Kathleen! *shakes fist*

  41. 41.

    MomSense

    Along the lines of Rolling Stone’s ranking of SNL Cast members, we should do our own ranking of worst pundits/journalists/thought leaders. For me it’s a toss up between Brooks and Friedman as the worst simply because they think they are oh so very smart and insightful and have no clue how bad they are. If you’re going to be smug at least back it up with the goods.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    Was anyone else pleased to hear (from excerpts of D. Axelrod’s new book) that President Obama utterly despises Maureen Dowd? Made me like him all the more…

  43. 43.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    @mikej:

    No but it’s rah rah school of Chicago economics reporting slant make it every bit as awful as anything churned about by NPR. “Public” radio might have different parent companies but they spew out the same mediocre product.

  44. 44.

    Mudge

    I wonder how much of her story is true, or has it been concocted/modified to emphasize the bad relationship/sunk cost brilliance. Republicans lie. We must also recognize that it apparently took 6 months of sulking in her cell to discover the sunk cost analogy. A quick mind.

  46. 46.

    Joey Maloney

    @rikyrah:

    “We should change 200 years of precedent?” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The Hill. “No. If you change it for one issue, then you change it forever.”

    There isn’t 200 years of precedent behind it, you moron. The first filibuster took place in 1837.

    Of course, this idiot also thinks that the institution of marriage has existed unchanged since the dawn of time (6000-odd years ago).

  47. 47.

    Spinwheel

    So Zandar is concerned that somebody is allowed to prattle on without consequences, all the while demonstrating time and time again how little they actually know about subject matter.

    The irony is precious.

    By the way, for someone who on his wildly infrequent podcast sounds like Tony Gwynn getting winded from the exertion of sitting up, you really should not be making fun of another person’s voice.

    Ever.

  56. 56.

    Buddy H

    @Mike J: Ah ha! Well, I’ve discovered the joys of talk-free radio, in the form of my local classical station or my college station. Music soothes the savage beast.

    My wife loves to listen to people yap on the radio. I’ve lost interest. Most of the radio talkers are egomaniacs in love with the sound of their own chair squeaks.

  57. 57.

    Dolly Llama

    @Michael Bersin: In cadence and general timbre, that is like the female version of Bobby Jindal’s disastrous response to the State of the Union address some years back.

  59. 59.

    rikyrah

    Social Security faces threat from ‘ideological war’

    02/12/15 12:36 PM—Updated 02/12/15 02:02 PM

    By Steve Benen

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a message to supporters yesterday, warning of a real threat to Social Security. By any fair measure, she’s right.

    “We’ve known for years that Social Security Disability Insurance is set to run low in 2016, and most people assumed that another bipartisan reallocation was coming,” the senator wrote. “But now, thanks to the Republican ideological war on our most important national safety net, disabled Americans could suddenly face a 20% cut in their Social Security checks next year.”

    Let’s recap for those just joining us. The Social Security system provides disability payments to Americans who want to work but can’t for health reasons. For generations, when the disability-insurance program runs short on funds, Congress transfers money from elsewhere in the Social Security system to prevent benefit cuts. The solution, sometimes called “reallocation,” has never been especially controversial – in fact, it’s been done 11 times over the last seven decades.

    But last month, congressional Republicans adopted a rule change that makes it almost impossible to approve the usual, straightforward fix. GOP lawmakers seem to want to create the conditions for a crisis.

    ………………………………………………………

    The Politico report added that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the Senate Budget Committee’s ranking member, “angrily accused the GOP of ‘manufacturing a crisis’ to hide its intent to resurrect past proposals to cut Social Security benefits and privatize the system.”

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/social-security-faces-threat-ideological-war

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    They’re so simple.
    They really do tickle me.

    ………………….

    Perry: US Wants More Than ‘Young, Attractive’ Orator Obama
    DOVER, N.H. — Feb 12, 2015, 9:16 PM ET
    By HOLLY RAMER Associated Press

    Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday that voters have had enough of a “young, attractive” and inexperienced president and will be looking for a proven leader in 2016.

    Perry, who is considering a second run for president, wrapped up a two-day trip to New Hampshire with a speech at the Strafford County Republican Committee’s Lincoln Day Dinner. While he repeated his warning that GOP voters shouldn’t nominate a “critic in chief,” he had plenty of criticism for President Barack Obama, saying his lack of executive experience before becoming president has hurt him and that he hasn’t picked up many management skills on the job. The nation is ready, he said, to move beyond “eight years of this years of this young, very attractive, amazing orator, junior U.S. senator.”

    “I don’t think they’re going to go there,” Perry said. “They’re going to go to a tested, results-oriented executive who has a record of accomplishment.”

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/perry-us-young-attractive-orator-obama-28935049

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    sigh

    sigh

    sigh

    Well, of course, the self-certifier would come up with this. It worked for him, why not corporations

    …………..

    Rand Paul: What If Companies Could Create Their Own Currencies?

    Feb 12, 2015 12:36 PM CST

    When he travels to Silicon Valley, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has a libertarian posse. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel sunk seven figures into a super-PAC that supported the 2012 presidential bid of Paul’s father, Ron. In visits to tech companies, Paul has explained why the open-minded folks who become technologists should reject the leviathan grip of government. Last summer, Paul was the star of the conservative Lincoln Labs “2014: Reboot” conference, where he mused about how the crypto-currency Bitcoin could break up the money monopoly. It could lead to “Wal-Mart Coin, K-Mart Coin,” of companies building their own currencies, tied to stocks.

    “Because I’m sort of a believer in currency having value,” Paul said in a separate interview, “if you’re going to create a currency, have it backed up by—you know, Hayek used to talk about a basket of commodities? You could have a basket of stocks, and have some exchangeability, because it’s hard for people like me who are a bit tangible. But you could have an average of stocks. I’m wondering if that’s the next permutation.”

    Today, at another Lincoln Labs event—this one quartered at the Chamber of Commerce offices in Washington, and titled “Reboot Congress,” TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked Paul to expand on his view of Bitcoin.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-02-12/rand-paul-could-big-companies-grow-their-profits-by-creating-their-own-currencies-

    The Kentucky senator on a bright Bitcoin future.

  64. 64.

    Ryan

    Huh, it never occurred to me to think of a relationship as a sunk cost problem. Well, isn’t that special.

    …

    Come to think of it, that’s how work feels too.

  65. 65.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Actually the true economic effect at work in that piece is not sunk costs, but the market imperfections of asymmetric information and cognitive limitations. Rational economic actors are assumed to have perfect information and the ability to make fully informed, rational decisions. That’s the foundation on which Glibertarians build their free markets for everyone and everything ideology.

    McCardle just proved it doesn’t work in practice, because people/corporations withhold information necessary for making a fully informed purchasing decision and/or consumers/other people don’t always fully assimilate all relevant information into their decision making. She just disproved her whole ideological outlook by misapplying a principle of economics 101. It’s a perfect McCardlebargle fail.

  66. 66.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    I want to read anything concerning Megan McArdle even less that I want to watch the 50 Shades movie. When means I would pay not to have to endure either.
    I suppose it would be glorious in the way that the ending of Dr. Stangelove might be considered glorious.

    If anyone is looking for a poster child for the decline of meritocracy, point them toward McMegan.

  67. 67.

    gogol's wife

    @Betty Cracker:

    Thanks, I hadn’t seen that. It makes so much sense. She is so disrespectful, always calling him “Barry.” I used to send her an e-mail every time that read, “The first name of the President of the United States is Barack, not Barry.” Now I just don’t read her.

  68. 68.

    MomSense

    Quick pupdate. Vet does not think pup is border collie, chow and st bernard. He is convinced she is german shepherd labrador retriever. He doesn’t think the genetic tests are accurate enough to bother with and that we should just enjoy how much we lucked out with her.

  70. 70.

    buddy h

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: McCardle just proved it doesn’t work in practice, because people/corporations withhold information necessary for making a fully informed purchasing decision and/or consumers/other people don’t always fully assimilate all relevant information into their decision making.

    Or businesses throw up inky clouds of deception to mislead customers or investors. I was looking for an honest heating/plumbing business, and decided to check yelp. The amount of phony positive reviews for most places is staggering. You can spot the phony reviews because they appear in clusters, and are posted by people who have only one review. When I see phony yelp praise for a business, I question their honesty.

    Someone told me to pay angies list, but from what I understand that’s bullshit also. Plus, she donates money to wingnut causes.

  72. 72.

    Kathleen

    @Betty Cracker: YES! However, my glee was mitigated with his need to invite Babbling Brooks and Thomas FreedMarketMan to the White House. Bleh.

    If only he hand’t stood MoDo up on prom night…

  75. 75.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Buddy H: I listen to NPR for the BBC news. And Diane Rehm on Fridays because of the way her panels make my husband splutter.

  76. 76.

    Gex

    @Betty Cracker: And in a female package. They are are always looking for their Clarence Thomases and Bobby Jindals. See even this WOMAN says {insert horribly warped view on economics and how women are NOT disadvantaged in the marketplace} No one gives preferential treatment to minorities like the right wing looking for someone to “prove” that dominant culture is really the victim of minority interests.

  78. 78.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    What If Companies Could Create Their Own Currencies?

    @rikyrah: What’s really funny here is the staggering lack of historical knowledge. It would probably floor the good Senator to find out that this was common practice, both in England and here, up through the mid 1800s. Because there wasn’t any paper money!

    He’s probably lose his shit if he found out that one of the most valuable currencies around – for hundreds of years, until someone finally figured out how to automate the process – was nails. Portable, hard to make and incredibly valuable.

    Nail-based economy.

  79. 79.

    Mike J

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    He’s probably lose his shit if he found out that one of the most valuable currencies around – for hundreds of years, until someone finally figured out how to automate the process – was nails.

    Sailors quickly learned that on south seas islands where metal was rare to begin with, you could exchange a nail for sex. Or “nailing” someone, as it were. Captains had trouble hold ships together as the crews would pry so many nails out of the structure.

  81. 81.

    Mike J

    @WereBear: I don’t think that’s an origin, just a happy coincidence. Nailing almost certianly comes from the repeated pounding, not the trade for sex.

  84. 84.

    The Moar You Know

    @MomSense: If you like the pup that’s the only important thing.

    The DNA tests are reasonably accurate. Vets hate them for two reasons: one is that the results are fairly meaningless – there’s a tremendous variation in behavior even among purebreds, and when you mix them together you just don’t know what is going to happen.

    We knew our lab wasn’t purebred so we had her tested before she died. She was the right size and all black, but aside from that she really didn’t look like a lab (sure acted like one though – she’d play fetch until your arm fell off and never got tired of it!) and we were wondering what went into her. Everyone said it looked like she was part wolf. I though she looked like she was part dinosaur, had that predator skull shape. Turns out she was lab, German Shepherd and Afghan, the Afghan explained her weird head ridge. But, in the end, that was the only thing the DNA test could tell us. It could not tell us why she was such an awesome dog, or why she acted like she was a princess and all the neighbor dogs treated her like one, or why she loved bacon so much, or why she was scared of thunder…you get the idea.

    The other thing that vets are quite worried about, and that rescue people are even more worried about, is that huge numbers of dogs are going to be deemed unadoptable and unfit to live when it’s found out just how many of them have pit bull or other undesirable breed ancestries. And most mixed dogs do have some pit in ’em. Even the testing company (it’s just one now, Mars, they bought all the competition) won’t call them “pit bull terriers”, but rather something bland like “American terrier”, they’re worried about it as well.

    The DNA tests are good, and can be informative, but they do have their limits and those limits are substantial. Genetics are a part of our makeup, not a predetermined outcome.

  86. 86.

    Paul in KY

    @Mike J: Gen. James Wilkinson tirelessly worked to get Frankfort named the state capital of KY. One of his preferred methods was bribing the members of the commission that was choosing the capital. He bribed them with….nails.

    (among other things).

  87. 87.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @buddy h: Yes, that’s why information asymmetries are a market failure and why companies throw up those ink clouds, just like her former beau did. Granted, that no I love you was a major red flag that she ignored, but he did agree to move in with her. That signals a serious commitment. He even said he was ready to get married – probably not the first time he had sent signals that things were moving forward. Basically he kept her in the “deal” by withholding or obfuscating relevant information. It wasn’t sunk costs. She thought she was leasing with an opportunity to buy, but found out the fine print barred her from a right to purchase. Caveat Emptor, honey. Doesn’t feel so nice when you’re the victim of the same recipe you prescribe to others does it?

  89. 89.

    Paul in KY

    Cool fact about immense size of universe: The Andromeda galaxy is moving towards us at 250,000 mph. Thus every 4 hours it comes a million miles closer, every 24 hour period, 6 million miles closer.

    Do you know how long it will take it to get here? 2 billion years. Moving 6 million miles every day, it will take it 2 billion years to get here. Jeezus Christ!

  91. 91.

    bemused

    @gogol’s wife:

    I don’t read her so I didn’t know she had a thing for calling Obama Barry. The only people I know who love to call him Barry are old white guys that barely made it through high school.

  93. 93.

    Buddy H

    “Ashton Carter, a hard-charging intellectual known for blunt talk, was confirmed as US defense secretary Thursday, and he could soon find himself at odds with a White House that clashed with previous Pentagon chiefs.

    The Senate — by a vote of 93 to five — overwhelmingly approved Carter, an accomplished defense technocrat with degrees in Medieval history and theoretical physics.

    But at his confirmation hearing last week, Carter signaled an independent streak, venturing beyond the White House’s stated policy on Ukraine and promising a fresh look at troop withdrawal plans in Afghanistan.”

  96. 96.

    Buddy H

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Well, she’s happily married now to Peter Suderman. He works for “Reason” magazine. I can just imagine their dinner table conversations: “Once the government gets into the business of providing our health care, the government gets into the business of deciding whose life matters, and how much!”

  97. 97.

    Suzanne

    @The Moar You Know: Word. I have had three purebred Siberian Huskies. The most beautiful dogs on Earth, IMHO. Two of them loved, LOVED to run, while one hated it. One chased and killed birds. One was protective and guard-dog like. One was borderline hyperactive. One died young. Breed is part of the story, but personality, and training, and how they are treated say so much more.

  98. 98.

    MomSense

    @The Moar You Know:

    That is helpful information. Thank you. My pup’s mom was a wandering bitch (I mean that in the best possible way) so who knows what her composition was even. It seems like a lot of the lab mix puppies I see on pet finder look like pitbull with a sprinkling of lab so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she has some pitbull. I will probably go ahead with the test as I was thinking it would be an interesting educational opportunity as well as useful information.

    Our observations so far are that she is highly intelligent and very food motivated. She does have shepherd markings and does have a lab shaped body so I can see that combo. Her paws are really webbed–all the way to the tips of her toes. She is nipping at my youngest son especially if we are out walking she wants to chase and nip–and that could mean any number of herding dogs.

    Anyway, she is ours and we love her and will make sure to train her as well as possible so she will have a happy life. We go to a class on Saturday and found someone who will work with us at the house starting next week. I think my youngest needs to learn from someone other than Mom how to handle the dog. I’m sure I sound like the Charlie Brown adults to him most of the time.

  99. 99.

    Couldn't Stand the Weather

    I am surprised that Obama showed his displeasure to Dowd. If he can withhold it when dealing with the ego-maniacal House and Senate g00pers (people whose combined common sense allotment would not fill a thimble), he should be able to keep that (deserved) vitriol in his back pocket when talking to this poor excuse for a columnist.

    That aside, dealing with the Times Op-Ed writers would test the patience of Job.

  104. 104.

    Amir Khalid

    @Couldn’t Stand the Weather:
    I haven’t read MoDo in years myself, not since the paywall went up in earnest, and I don’t miss her one bit. That thing she does, looking at everything in terms of personalities and clashes between them, has always seemed to me to trivialise politics, to bring it down to mere gossip-rag fodder. But maybe it’s her calling him Barry that rankles. She’s certainly never bothered to hide her own disdain for him.

  105. 105.

    Ohio Mom

    @buddy h: We belonged to Angie’s List for a while. One of the limitations of this approach is, someone comes into your house to fix something. They are reasonably priced & personable, clean up after themselves, and stuff looks good when they leave. You write them a glowing report, thinking, Wow, Finally, a trustworthy, competent tradesperson, it’s a joy to write about them.

    Eighteen months later, whatever they did unravels. That’s what never makes it back into the Angie’s reviews.

  106. 106.

    kbuttle

    Look at everyone, all worked up over some obvious trolling.

    The truth is, she misses DougJ as much as the rest of us do, and with that radio spot the other day, figured he was on the cusp of reengaging and all it would take was a nice fat piece of low-hanging fruit too sweet to resist . . .

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @jon:
    Why she would admit to being a complete fucking moron, do so for broadcast, and make a career of it is a question for the ages.

    Well….. If one were, and in this case is, a complete fucking moron, then the answer is obvious. She is, therefore she does.

  111. 111.

    Buddy H

    @Ohio Mom: That’s pretty much been my experience. Someone will come and do what I thought was a good job. Someone else will come a few years later and say it was done improperly. I’m always polite to contractors, but some of them have attitude problems that get worse with each visit.

    I just want the number of a good plumber, good electrician, and good carpenter that I can put on my refrigerator in case of disaster. I worry about my wife being cheated after I’m pushing up daisies.

    I would actually love to see an entire thread devoted to this subject.

  112. 112.

    lethargytartare

    @cmorenc:

    There’s a wonderful spice shop near my house, carrying an enormous variety of items, most of which have samplers set up so you can sniff and taste before you buy. But I couldn’t help noticing one item they carried – pink Himalayan salt (!) Would McMegan love this place, or what?

    you don’t live in Evanston, IL, by any chance, do you? That’s where I get my Pink Himalayan Salt, and I’m fresh out right now.

  115. 115.

    Bob In Portland

    This.

    Ukraine’s Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh said his radical movement rejects the Minsk peace deal and that their paramilitary units in eastern Ukraine will continue “active fighting” according to their “own plans.”

    The notorious ultranationalist leader published a statement on his Facebook page Friday, saying that his radical Right Sector movement doesn’t recognize the peace deal, signed by the so-called ‘contact group’ on Thursday and agreed upon by Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia after epic 16-hour talks.

    Yarosh claimed that any agreement with the eastern militia, whom he calls “terrorists,” has no legal force.

    In his statement, Yarosh claimed that that the Minsk deal is contrary to Ukraine’s constitution, so Ukrainian citizens are not obliged to abide by it. Thus if the army receives orders to cease military activity and withdraw heavy weaponry from the eastern regions, the Right Sector paramilitaries, who are also fighting there “reserve the right” to continue the war, he said.

    The Right Sector paramilitary organization continues to deploy its combat and reserve units, to train and logistically support personnel, while coordinating its activities with the military command of the Ukrainian army, paramilitary units of the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry, he said.

    Here’s what Wiki says about Yarosh, but I’ll need confirmation from Nipple Rings or Mnem whether or not Yarosh is a fascist. I’d hate to suggest that all leaders in the Kiev coup government are fascist/Nazi. What think you, Mnem, Nipple?

    Dmytro Yarosh (Ukrainian: Дмитро Ярош; born 30 September 1971)[3] is a Ukrainian nationalist activist and politician. He is the leader of the far-right Right Sector organization which played an important role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.[4][5]

    In the May 25, 2014 presidential election he received 127,772 votes (0.7% of the total).[6] He was elected to the Ukrainian parliament during the October 26, 2014 election from a single-seat constituency in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast by winning 29.76% of the votes.[7][1]

    On July 25 Yarosh was placed by Interpol on its international wanted list at the request of Russian authorities,[8] which made him the only person wanted internationally after the beginning of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 2014.

  116. 116.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @buddy h: I’m doing a combination of Angie’s List and recommendations from a friend who works in property management in our search for someone to cut down some trees. The discount some of them offer to AL members will more than pay for the membership fee.

  118. 118.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike J: Sailors did that in1849 when they arrived in SF, not just abandoning ships in the harbor but taking away too many of the bits that held them together, as the crews were overcome by gold fever.

  120. 120.

    Jamey

    Ever hear that old game/conundrum, “if you could push a button to earn a million dollars, but if you do, you also will kill a random person”? If I could game the game and learn that it was McMegan who would die, I’d push the button over and over and over … and donate the $1 million to worthy charities.

  122. 122.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: Meanwhile, in other reactions to the Minsk 2 agreement, Vladimir Zhirinovsky (a member of Russia’s Duma, or parliament, in case you’ve forgotten) called for the bombing of Germany and France. Sorry, Bob, the linked article is in Russian. But I’m sure you’ll find an accurate account in TASS or RT soon enough.

    From Wikipedia, which you like to cite:

    Zhirinovsky has expressed admiration for the 1996 United States presidential election contender Pat Buchanan, referring positively to a comment in which Buchanan labeled the United States Congress “Israeli-occupied territory” and said that both countries were “under occupation” and that “to survive, we could set aside places on U.S. and Russian territories to deport this small but troublesome tribe.”

  125. 125.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Buddy H: Yeah I know who she’s married too, and I unfortunately live in the same metropolitan area. Whenever my wife and I bore each other I blame it on our proximity to the first couple of Glibertarianism.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Bob In Portland:

    Bob, do you understand what a “paramilitary” is? Is it generally part of the government, or is it a bunch of jackasses with guns who decided to get together?

    And I’m pretty sure the country that sent Louie Gohmert and his pals to Congress doesn’t get to complain that a Ukrainian Nazi won his seat in parliament with 30 percent of the vote. Clearly, that 0.7 percent of the vote he got for his presidential run proves the Ukrainians love their Nazis, which is why Jill Stein — who got 0.36 percent of the vote in the last US election — clearly represents the will of the majority in the US.

    Your misconception seems to be that we’re saying there are no Nazis in Ukraine. What we’re pointing out to you is that the pathetic electoral numbers those guys are pulling in Ukraine proves they have about as much pull as the Constitution Party does in the US.

    By the way, the Constitution Party’s candidate did even better in the US election than the Ukrainian Nazi did in his — got 0.9 percent of the vote. Obviously, that means the Constitution Party is secretly controlling our politics just like Mr. 0.7 Percent in Ukraine.

  127. 127.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Ohio Mom: Well, in my defense I am an actual economist rather than a former English major who parlayed a couple of undergrad courses into covering “economics” and “finance” for our nations “premier news outlets” – the problem with the way finance and economics is covered in the news is that everyone thinks having a bank account means they’re qualified to report on those topics, and so do their bosses.

  129. 129.

    Turgidson

    @comrade scott’s agenda of rage:

    and it seems like every time I watch PBS or listen to NPR, I have to hear about how the programming was made possible by generous donations from the Koch foundation.

    It’s no secret why the product has devolved into the politely-explained apologist-for-corporatocracy claptrap so much of it is.

  130. 130.

    buddy h

    @Turgidson: Bill Moyers has said that PBS is becoming wall-to-wall “Antiques Roadshow” broadcasts.

    I like Frontline and a few other shows. I can do without the snakeoil salesmen during pledge drives.

    There’s the one “doctor” with his brain scans: Dr. Amen.

    And I’m seeing more and more commercials on public television, for local accountants and insurance companies. Would have been unthinkable years ago.

  131. 131.

    Turgidson

    @rikyrah:

    Having lived in SF and the Bay Area for over a decade, I can confirm that, while the area is indeed more liberal and generally more socially tolerant than most, a whole fucking lot of the rising tech sector moneybags who are turning SF into a douchey bro-playground block by block are incredibly narrow-minded selfish fuckers who think they built the internets with their bare hands, and support similarly daffy politicians like the Pauls.

  136. 136.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Amir Khalid: Dowd lost her touch years ago, if she ever had it.

    She called Obama “O-bambi”, implying he was a political babe in the woods. Well, that was total bullshit but didn’t seem that way to a NYC snarktist whose view of the world is pretty much like that New Yorker cover that places Illinois approximately in “here there be dragons” territory.

    Obama has proceeded to kick five kinds of political ass and we haven’t heard much from MoDo lately, I mean aside from a column that was either a put on or a rank admission that she’s too arrogant and ignorant to navigate pot edibles without getting sick. (Didn’t know where she was going and wouldn’t ask directions. #winning)

    In. Com. Pe. Tant.

  137. 137.

    Ivan X

    @buddy h:

    I was looking for an honest heating/plumbing business, and decided to check yelp. The amount of phony positive reviews for most places is staggering. You can spot the phony reviews because they appear in clusters, and are posted by people who have only one review. When I see phony yelp praise for a business.

    Speaking as a business owner who insists on integrity in my company, and who has many satisfied clients, we were approached by Yelp about paying for premium placement (much as Google does with AdWords). They talked us into it. Because we only had four reviews to date, which didn’t seem like enough to be persuasive, we reached out to our clients that we have good relationships with and asked if they would write a review for us, because if we have good reviews, it will make people more likely to call us, which would help offset the cost of whatever it was were paying Yelp for.

    We didn’t tell our clients what to write, nor did we incentivize them. We just asked if they’d do it for us as a favor because they liked us and we’d appreciate it. I don’t see anything “phony” about this, because there was nothing dishonest in any of their statements (and nor would I have wanted there to be), and they had no relationship with our company besides having used our services. Do you see an issue with this?

    Anyway, and this is neither here nor there, but Yelp’s algorithm decided that these people met the profile you described — clustered, non-regular, positive reviewers — and deleted all their comments, plus some comments that had previously existed for some time. We called, explained the situation, and they said tough shit, and refused to refund our money, either. I get why they did it — to protect against the shills you describe and undoubtedly exist — but you’d think they could have given us a heads up to NOT do what we did and thereby expend good will that could have been used to more strategic benefit. We also probably would have decided not to make the investment if we knew that we didn’t have the opportunity to help it pay off by requesting more positive testmonials. Which is probably why they didn’t tell us. So now I hate Yelp.

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