Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

He really is that stupid.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

So many bastards, so little time.

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

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

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

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

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80Comments

  1. 1.

    dedc79

    This non-defense defense by Ben Carson nearly made me spit out my lunch:

    Carson on Thursday rejected the comparison between his research and what Planned Parenthood has been accused of doing.

    “You have to look at the intent,” Carson told The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel before he began a campaign swing through New Hampshire. “To willfully ignore evidence that you have for some ideological reason is wrong. If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it.”

    If you had to reread that once or twice, you’re not alone. It’s a very complex — and politically charged — issue.

  2. 2.

    tesslibrarian

    Well, lunch was just a grilled cheese sandwich and some pickled okra, but I’m reheating leftovers of Frogmore Stew from last night’s meal for dinner tonight. The greens won’t be fresh, and my bread will just be toasted, but damn it was good.

  3. 3.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    More swimming, in an hour. With luck the town’s outdoor pool will hold its temperature until it closes for the season.

  4. 4.

    Another Holocene Human

    @dedc79: Not really, it’s like questioning why the drug war doesn’t focus on the demand side and the wingnut turns that back around into talking about how eeeeEEEeeevil drug dealers are.

  8. 8.

    NonyNony

    @dedc79:

    This non-defense defense by Ben Carson nearly made me spit out my lunch

    Why? Carson’s rationale here sounds exactly like the kind of “it’s okay if you happen to be me” defenses of various things I hear from my right-wing family members.

    And Carson supporters probably won’t even blink here. They believe that Planned Parenthood is paying women to get pregnant so they can harvest their fetuses and sell them to mad scientists. Carson, on the other hand, bought fetal tissue through a reputable tissue dealer. And when he got it it was already dead – it isn’t like he was part of a Satanic baby-killing plot. He’s just a doctor.

    The point here is that what Carson was doing will be seen as perfectly reasonable, and what Planned Parenthood was doing was Satanic. The fact that they were all part of the same thing is something only we here in the real world who care about “facts” and “logic” believe. Carson’s supporters will not see the connection here, unless they somehow decide that Carson is himself tied into the Satanic conspiracy that is Planned Parenthood.

  9. 9.

    tesslibrarian

    @Another Holocene Human: My guess is the restaurant where the dish was created doesn’t actually use Old Bay, but their own mix. I wasn’t able to identify it as Old Bay until I found the recipe.

  10. 10.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    I’m trying to write letters asking for established authors to write endorsements of Becoming Phoebe. Needless to say, this is not easy for someone who is horribly afraid of asking people for favors. Is Frankensteinbeck around?

  11. 11.

    KG

    @dedc79: as I said elsewhere… his position is basically “I didn’t rob the bank, I just spent the money” or “I didn’t steal the TV, I just put it up in my house”

  12. 12.

    mai naem mobile

    They’ve got a left handers day hashtag going on on the Tweeter. I knew PBO,WJC and Sir Paul were lefties – did not know Bach,Beethoven,Mozart,Rachmaninoff and Paganini were lefties too. Also, Jimmy Hendrix. Where’s my musical talent?

  14. 14.

    flukebucket

    I read today that Debbie Schlussel had tweeted today that “a cancer has cancer” in reference to President Jimmy Carter. If that is true it is surely shitty.

  17. 17.

    Another Holocene Human

    @NonyNony:

    Carson’s rationale here sounds exactly like the kind of “it’s okay if you happen to be me” defenses of various things I hear from my right-wing family members.

    Oh yes, this.

    Is this a lunch thread? I had canned New Orleans cream beans with rice and they were delicious. I think they are designed to be eaten with a nice tart hot sauce. I also dolled it up with chopped onion and cheddar cheese.

  18. 18.

    Another Holocene Human

    @flukebucket: Debbie Schlussel is still around?

    I wonder if she cries every night when she looks upon Infinite Erick’s relative mainstream success. Debbie who?

  19. 19.

    dedc79

    @KG: I also love the “you have to look at the intent” defense. If only he and his buddies would take a step back every once in a while and consider people’s intent. But when you ban stuff, there’s no room for considering intent.

  20. 20.

    Redshift

    I called Mark Warner’s office today and talked to a staffer. (I just left a message last week.) He’s been a profile in courage (/snark) about the Iran deal like he is about nearly everything, never giving a peep about what he’s thinking until it’s time for the vote.

    I politely told them that I’d been a supporter and a campaign volunteer, but that I would not be either again if he votes against this deal.

  24. 24.

    Another Holocene Human

    @tesslibrarian: Ah.

    I’ve come to find the taste of Old Bay on seafood somewhat depressing. It’s actually good in crab cakes, although crab cakes can be plenty good without it, too.

    Maryland Eastern Shore. That’s Old Bay to me.

  25. 25.

    Linda Featheringill

    @flukebucket:

    Jimmy Carter:

    I googled JC and found that he made a statement that he had developed liver cancer but it has now spread to other parts of his body.

    He is 90 years old.

    This is very sad.

  27. 27.

    boatboy_srq

    @dedc79: Carson is implying that there is an entire industry dedicated to the pursuit of impregating women specifically to terminate those pregnancies and supply the medical research industry with foetal tissue. Falls under what I call the Recreational Abortionist Fallacy: the anti-choice presumption that pro-choice directly translates as “physicians/women aborting pregnancies for fun and profit”. It’s a common misconception on the Right. Key example: the total confusion they exhibited when they learned Chelsea Clinton (a pro-choice woman) was [gasp] having a baby and not automatically terminating her pregnancy based on her pro-choice philosophy.

  28. 28.

    NonyNony

    @dedc79:

    They’ve built Planned Parenthood up into such a Satanic boogeyman that I think it’s so disconnected from reality that it will be easy for them to ignore the association.

    Seriously – if you listen to my right-wing relatives Planned Parenthood is some combination of HYDRA, LexCorp and the Satanic Temple. It is up to some severe supervillainy in their minds. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carson gets a pass just because the stuff he did doesn’t match up with the EVIL EVILNESS that they associate with the “Satanic Abortion Industry” in their fevered imaginations.

  31. 31.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Another Holocene Human: I don’t do Twitter and I am not actually at all familiar with other books in this one’s category. Everything else I write, and all of the authors I know, are fantasy/science fiction. I read a few things more akin to it, though I’ve had trouble findings one that I like. (I don’t doubt that there are plenty that I would like; I’ve just been incapable of finding a way to distinguish those from ones I don’t like without reading the first third of them.) I did read The Goldfinch and ended up wondering how the hell that could have been published without an editor insisting that it get pared down to half it’s length, let alone win a Pulitzer.

    So I’m engaged in trying to find authors I could query within that genre, and identifying authors I know outside the genre who would still be appropriate.

  32. 32.

    Another Holocene Human

    How did Elon’s thread magically appear in between threads like that? This is an open thread so it isn’t off topic to discuss blog workings, I trust.

  33. 33.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Iowa Old Lady: As for that, it depends upon what “someone in women’s hockey” means. I don’t know any of the players, and here it’s not just a matter of being scared of asking people; I really think that breaking the wall between fans and players is not a good idea, especially given my semi-official position within Minnesota women’s hockey. (I’m the treasurer of the booster club, and the coach is, quite validly in my mind, determined to keep members from crossing that line.)

    I know some of the parents of players. The problem there is finding someone who wants to read it. Actually, that’s might not be a bad idea, to try to get one of them, and I have a couple of possibilities. I’ll ask the person who is helping/consulting with me if she thinks that would help. (Not coincidentally, I know her because she’s also a Gopher women’s hockey season ticket holder.)

  34. 34.

    dedc79

    @boatboy_srq:

    Falls under what I call the Recreational Abortionist Fallacy

    And then there’s the Recreational Welfare Recipient Fallacy, the Recreational Food Stamp Recipient Fallacy, the Recreational Unemployment Recipient Fallacy, etc…

  36. 36.

    Amir Khalid

    There’s a big row going on in the English Premier League right now. Chelsea FC manager Jose Mourinho has had the first team doctor and physiotherapist banished from the team bench after they went on the pitch to treat an injured Chelsea player, at the referee’s summons but apparently against Mourinho’s wishes. Mourinho’s action has been denounced by the Premier League Doctors Group as “unjust in the extreme”, as well as by Chelsea fans and most of the football world.

    Jose Mourinho is a blight on football, and Chelsea should sack him instead of punishing innocent people at his whim.

  38. 38.

    boatboy_srq

    @dedc79: More like the Recreational Voter Impersonation Fraud Fallacy. These two are actual malicious efforts to kill millions of helpless protocitizens for the sweet sweet joy in their demise and the precious medical-research lucre, or subvert God’s Greatest Republic through stuffing ballot boxes: the others are just individual moochers swollen from feeding off the public teat and sucking Righteous Xtian Hetero Patriotic Real Ahmurrcans’ bank accounts dry through Evil Taxation.

  42. 42.

    dedc79

    @boatboy_srq: Whenever I hear wingers complain about voter fraud, my response is something along the lines of “This is a country where we struggle to get 60% of eligible voters to cast one ballot even during a presidential election year, and you’re worried that there are people out there finding ways to vote twice or three times?” Well, that, and that actual voter fraud basically doesn’t exist.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    @Another Holocene Human: In the back room, you can specify the publishing time in a draft so that it appears before an already published post. I’m not sure why EJW does that — maybe he doesn’t want to fuck around with trying not to bigfoot other people, which can be a hassle — but it’s not unusual for him to use that technique.

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    Now that’s what I call an optimistic man: Mike Huckabee won’t denounce Donald Trump; you never know, he might just want Trump’s support if he, Huckabee, is nominated next year.

  46. 46.

    tybee

    old bay is good on crabs.

    zatarain’s is good for shrimp dishes like that low country boil.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym:

    I did read The Goldfinch and ended up wondering how the hell that could have been published without an editor insisting that it get pared down to half it’s length, let alone win a Pulitzer.

    Thank you! Everyone else I know, even people whose opinions on books usual track with mine, thought The Goldfinch was pretty good if not great. I thought it was a rambling mess.

  51. 51.

    zmulls

    @Betty Cracker: “Great” is a tough word to toss around — “The Secret History,” I think, was great.

    But I enjoyed “The Goldfinch” immensely and the length and picaresque-ness of it were entirely the point, I thought. It was self-consciously “Dickensian” — orphan boy stumbles through one socio-economic milieu after another, interacting with strange and striking characters, with the events and settings commenting on various parts of America. The isolated Vegas housing development, the claustrophobic and wondrous antique restoration shop, the emotionally dessicated rich family’s apartment — it was a great ride. The McGuffin of the painting was just a way in to the story. If it had been shorter — or if an editor had pushed for the plot to be less baroque — it wouldn’t have been the book it was trying to be.

    My opinion, of course, among many others — but it was one of the most fun (in a literary way) things I’ve read in a while. I devoured it in a couple of days.

  52. 52.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Betty Cracker: I thought that there was a very good story trying to get out, but it had two desperate problems that should have been addressed in the editing stage:

    1) Too fucking long. There are whole sections that are just numbingly repetitive. Several chapters could have been killed wholesale, and the rest should have been weeded extensively;

    2) The protagonist is so bloody passive and there are never consequences for anything he does, either internally or externally. He takes heroic amounts of drugs and alcohol, then just gives them up once he feels like it. He commits wholesale fraud and everyone who finds out about it just kinds of shrugs. And he’s involved in a murder that just disappears after it happens.

    I extensively rewrote the second half of Becoming Phoebe because my editor pointed out, correctly, that Phoebe was way too passive and stopped growing. So it was frustrating to pick up a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that suffers from the same flaw, except on a massive scale.

  53. 53.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Another Holocene Human: That’s an interesting idea. I actually know the Toronto Globe and Mail’s primary hockey writer, James Mirtle, from the days when he was just a blogger, though we haven’t communicated in a few years.

  56. 56.

    gbear

    Lunch today was a cafeteria grilled cheese sandwich and chicken/shell pasta salad, with an Abdallah Green Angel Mint candy bar for desert.

    I’m 10 days in to quitting Diet Coke and I’m getting used to water but still trying to find a good flavored soda water without aspartame. The cafeteria has Dasani (still an evil Coke product) and the berry and black cherry flavors aren’t bad. I only have one of those a day, and I still have my Mocha Frappucino in the morning (I’m less worried about caffeine than all the other crap in DC). I marked the start date on my calendar so I can already think of it as an anniversary if I stay with it. The headaches have been minor but still a daily thing, but my body feels like someone has been hammering me with a 2×4.

  57. 57.

    Debbie

    @Betty Cracker:
    I’ve read plenty of books I thought were too long (looking at you, Franzen), but Goldfinch isn’t one of them. Different strokes, as they say.

  59. 59.

    Betty Cracker

    @Debbie: Different strokes, indeed: I thought Freedom was great and not at all too long! Many people disagreed, some of whom raved about Goldfinch!

  60. 60.

    SFAW

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I could not read that book. The pace was glacial.

    I heard its original title (en francais) was “A la Recherche du Oiseaux Perdu,” but that may just be folklore.

  61. 61.

    boatboy_srq

    @dedc79: 60% electoral participation is feature-not-bug for them: in fact for Those People that ratio is in its way enshrined in the Constitution. The Reichwing is still POd that Some People have more than 3/5 vote and they’re doing their d#mndest to ensure that if they can’t have that then they can at least ensure that only 3/5 of Those People exercise the franchise. It’s one facet of the ugly side of Tentherism that they refuse to talk about.

  62. 62.

    Debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    That is funny. For me, I could relate to NYC, art, antiques, etc., so the length wasn’t an issue. On the other side, I found Franzen’s characters too self-centered to care about.

  65. 65.

    shell

    LOVED this. Women tweeting on hashtag periodsarenotaninsult in reaction to Trumps charming “from her whatever” insult

    @realDonaldTrump — on the third day of my period AND still a functioning member of society! Who knew?!”
    @realDonaldTrump Just finished menstruating. I still don’t like you. Guess it had nothing to do w/ my period,”

    @realDonaldTrump I’m getting my period this week. I’ll make sure to keep you updated,

    @realDonaldTrump Its called a vagina and you came out of one, thanks to her period! #periodsarenotaninsult oops!

  66. 66.

    Amir Khalid

    @scav:
    According to employment lawyers quoted by The Guardian and The Daily Mail, Mourinho has exposed Chelsea FC to a risk of being sued for constructive dismissal by Dr Carneiro and first-team physio Jon Fearn. Given that their actions have been defended in the strongest terms by their professional peers, it would seem they have an iron-clad case against the club and Mourinho.

  67. 67.

    No One of Consequence

    Been trying to read a lot since yesterday, when foolishly, I posted about the Seattle disruption from (maybe?) BLM protestor, and how I thought it was an unsound tactic.

    Shortly thereafter, I was lovingly educated by a few patient and kind BJ souls (whose permission to post I did not seek today before putting this here).

    Today, I think I have a much better understanding, though I am sure it is just my privilege feeding my ego a false narrative.

    So, rather than attempt to engage, I thought I might post a thank you.

    Thank you Mrs. Connor for educating me in the 4th and 5th grade. You were my first African American teacher. At first, you thought I was questioning your authority as heading the class, when I was just bored. Then, you took a different tack, and gave me the normal tests in advance, and had me study other things. The one I will forever remember and be thankful for was for Black History Month. As a young No One, I had no idea about the people and trials and tribulations that my background left me sadly ignorant of.

    Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, and on and on.

    You opened my eyes Mrs. Connor, and they might never have been, were it not for you. I am glad we became good friends, and I am glad that you gave me a chance to prove to you that I just wanted to learn. I want you to know that I value that time, and those lessons deeply.

    It is my sincere wish that others get to experience something similar to what I had. That some greater understanding can be achieved when we look past what might otherwise prevent contact. I have tried to learn from that lesson. And I am still learning.

    Peace,

    – NOoC

  69. 69.

    Calouste

    @boatboy_srq: The right-wing seems to have the same problems with the concept of “choice” as they seem to have with the concept of “consent”. Most likely they being the authoritarians that they are, have a problem with the whole concept of “free will”, specially when it applies to others.

  70. 70.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @lymie: Not yet. I’m hoping by the end of the year, though my editor has gone awfully damned quiet on when I’ll get the latest draft back from her. The first half is close to done. The second half needs at least a line editing pass. Then I need to polish the whole thing and have it copy edited.

    I’m working on various marketing things while I’m waiting to get it back. That mostly involves trying to line up some endorsements and finding places that will review it. A lot of review bloggers won’t work with anything except a finished ebook version and insist on having an Amazon page, which pretty much means only post-publication reviews. I’m really looking for some places that might do something as soon as I have the manuscript ready so that I can have reviews when it comes out.

    And I’ve heard nothing but good things about Hillary Knight, but, you know, I’m a Gopher fan.

  71. 71.

    boatboy_srq

    @Calouste: True. But in the anti-choice sphere it seems somehow different. There’s a binary nature to the argument: “pro-life” wants to prohibit abortions, therefore to them “pro-choice” is an effort to mandate aborting all pregnancies. The idea that pro-choice is merely making the option available, and that birth is the norm rather than a prohibited outcome, simply does not occur to (at least some of) them. It does play to the “women submit to your husbands” stance, and it clearly does not allow for a woman’s free will or ability to make rational decisions for her own best interest, which is I think where you’re going with this; but the construct required to maintain that – namely the humongous “abortion industry” they are persuaded exists – is one of the biggest hugely-impractical constructs required to support Reichwing social theory.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    The fellating begins: NY Times website, front page: Kasich’s Moderation Draws Support in New Hampshire

    Not linking. Le sigh.

  78. 78.

    bystander

    What was for lunch? Shake shack’s new (at least to me) Roadside Shack burger. Melted cheese and carmelized onions. It was great! Thanks for asking.

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