Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

T R E 4 5 O N

This really is a full service blog.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Republicans don’t trust women.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Fight them, without becoming them!

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

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

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

He really is that stupid.

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150Comments

  11. 11.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Major Major Major Major: Chuck and Nancy said trump had agreed in principle to support a straight up vote unrelated to “the Wall”

    they’ve already sent Jethrene out to put out the fire

    Sarah Sanders‏Verified account PressSec
    While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Don’t know if this will post…

    Rick Wilson‏Verified account @ TheRickWilson 38m38 minutes ago
    ┳┻|
    ┻┳|
    ┳┻|
    ┻┳|
    ┳┻|
    ┻┳|
    ┳┻|
    ┻┳|
    ┳┻|
    ┻┳|
    ┳┻| _
    ┻┳| •.•) The Wall was
    ┳┻|⊂ﾉ always a lie, suckers.
    ┻┳|

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    What’s amazing is that it is fast approaching 50 years since the LP featuring the Nick Danger sketch (the complete B side!) was released.

    Summer of ’69. Some things truly do eclipse the ravages of time.

  18. 18.

    Hungry Joe

    Sometimes I forget that my heart has cockles. Then I read a headline that begins, “Martin Shkreli Is Jailed … ” and I feel an odd warmth in my chest. That’s them: the cockles of my heart, warm, glowing.

  22. 22.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Major Major Major Major:
    New news? I know Trump has been really pissing the GOP off lately but I’m sure many of them will welcome a positive development for Dreamers. Deporting them was always going to be a logistical and humanitarian nightmare.

  23. 23.

    Alain the site fixer

    @debbie: when I ask for more suggestions, submit it via the form

    ETA: I’ll be adding a link soon to the front page tos submit quotes and pie sayings to be included on the site.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    Have told the story before, so a truncated version.

    Friend (now deceased) who suffered from rather extreme mental issues (among other things*) was convinced that Firesign Theater was speaking and sending messages directly to him. He engaged in an extended written correspondence with them (which they answered in kind).

    Long story short, his surname was Reber and Firesign Theater ended up including a character named The Rebus on one of their platters, named for him.

    *The reasons for that and other parts of his life story are tales unto themselves, any of which alone a casual listener would dismiss as the stuff of fiction.

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I went a’foraging in the fever swamp, came back when I saw Ann Coulter’s eyes seeming to float on the surface of the clouded water, gazing hungrily at me

    Laura Ingraham‏Verified account @ IngrahamAngle 18m18 minutes ago
    THE ART OF THE STEAL: Let’s hope that Pelosi & Schumer misrepresented the #DACA deal. @ realDonaldTrump
    “BUILD THE WALL! BUILD THE WALL!”…or…maybe…not really.

    Steve King‏Verified account SteveKingIA
    @ RealDonaldTrump If AP is correct, Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.

  30. 30.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Steve King‏Verified account SteveKingIA
    @ RealDonaldTrump If AP is correct, Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.

    Fuck you Steve King! Your Furher is really just a failure. Hahaha!

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I’m sure he gave Senator Schumer and Congresswoman Pelosi assurances and they think they reached a deal. I’m also sure that the President will flip on this as soon as Stephen Miller and/or AG Sessions talk with him. Or he talks to Bannon on his phone after hours upstairs in the residence. Finally, neither Schumer nor Pelosi have the ability to bring legislation forward in either chamber. So it doesn’t matter what he negotiated with them and agreed to, unless Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan agree to it, there’s nothing here. What Pelosi and Schumer got from the President is vaporware.

  33. 33.

    Aleta

    More Equifax negligence. (For space, this quote skips many parts of the story that would make it more understandable.) The whole blog article is here.

    It took almost no time for them to discover that an online portal designed to let Equifax employees in Argentina manage credit report disputes from consumers in that country was wide open, protected by perhaps the most easy-to-guess password combination ever: “admin/admin.”
    …
    …
    However, all one needed to do in order to view said password was to right-click on the employee’s profile page and select “view source,” a function that displays the raw HTML code which makes up the Web site. Buried in that HTML code was the employee’s password in plain text.

    A review of those accounts shows all employee passwords were the same as each user’s username. Worse still, each employee’s username appears to be nothing more than their last name, or a combination of their first initial and last name. In other words, if you knew an Equifax Argentina employee’s last name, you also could work out their password for this credit dispute portal quite easily.

    But wait, it gets worse. From the main page of the Equifax.com.ar employee portal was a listing of some 715 pages worth of complaints and disputes filed by Argentinians who had at one point over the past decade contacted Equifax via fax, phone or email to dispute issues with their credit reports. The site also lists each person’s DNI — the Argentinian equivalent of the Social Security number — again, in plain text. All told, this section of the employee portal included more than 14,000 such records.

  38. 38.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: she hasn’t tweeted, I was a bit surprised. But I’ve never looked directly at her twitter feed before. Good think I still had my eclipse glasses.

    @Major Major Major Major: I don’t for a moment doubt he said it, especially if Ryan and McConnell were in the room, just to spite them. Josh Barro posited, and I find it at least plausible, that trump is looking for a way to climb down from the “Wall”. I suspect he’s just trying to figure out who to blame.

  39. 39.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: They got Trumpkins whining about being sold out. That’s a small thing, but not nothing, especially if he keeps yoyoing around on all the alleged promises he made during the campaign.

  43. 43.

    clay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I went a’foraging in the fever swamp, came back when I saw Ann Coulter’s eyes seeming to float on the surface of the clouded water, gazing hungrily at me

    That reminds me… I plan to see It tomorrow afternoon.

  45. 45.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @dmsilev: And gets basically none of them done. Will his voters stick around when their lives don’t materially improve or even get worse? Yeah, I know, blame the Mesicans. But I can’t see that working forever if things got hairy enough.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: there are voters trump will never lose. But I think back to that woman who, IIRC right around this time of year in 2009, told Obama she was “exhausted” from defending him and why hadn’t he done anything. I don’t know how long those people who believed in crap like the Carrier deal (which has already fallen apart) and “he’s gonna reopen the plant” are gonna wait.

  48. 48.

    hueyplong

    I think blowing up the base is a great result, even if the deal fails. So, well done, Chuck and Nancy.
    Really looking forward to the next FTFNYT piece. They will again pretend Trump has a clue.

  53. 53.

    Amir Khalid

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Driving a wedge between President Trump and Republicans in Congress is certainly good strategy by the Democratic party, and one they know how to execute. I hope the Democrats are getting closer to solving another, bigger puzzle: how to drive a wedge between him and the Republican voters who put him in the Oval Office — and who in three years time might want to keep him there.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Amir Khalid: There is some question among both the professional polling types and the scholarly ones about what exactly is going on with Trump’s support, specifically his GOP base. While his overall numbers are down, those for his GOP base are stable within a percent or two. However, at the same time, month on month, there has been a drop in the number of self identified Republicans since the President’s inauguration. Some of the pollsters think what is happening is that the polling is capturing a statistical anomaly and obscuring that anomaly at the same time. The anomaly being that the President’s support among his GOP base is remarkably stable at the same time that we have a month on month reduction in self identified actual Republicans. The bottom line appears to be that because there are fewer self identified actual Republicans each month, that what is actually being captured in the President’s GOP support base is fewer and fewer supporters each month. What isn’t being presented in the reporting of the survey and polling data is that even as the President maintains 73 to 75%, give or take, support among Republicans this is 73% to 75% of a dwindling number of self identifying Republicans. Therefore his GOP base is actually shrinking if you’re paying attention to the different parts of the polling data.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Whatever the President promised is vaporware. That they were smart enough to weaponize it as a Psychological Operation against the Congressional Republicans and the President’s base is a separate, but equally important item.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Wag: I didn’t even notice that till you mentioned it. I’m going to go back and edit it for clarity. As telling M4 to piss off was not my intent.

  68. 68.

    joel hanes

    IMHO, “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus” is the highpoint,
    (Man, Woman, Child: All are up against The Wall Of Science!)
    and “Temporarily Humboldt County” is the most mordant
    (Domini domini domini — you’re all Catholic now)

    But I cherish “Everything You Know Is Wrong”,
    and the ultra-attractive mouse-blue uniforms.
    (You’ve been mossed.)

    And “In The Next World You’re On Your Own”
    is deeply strange, and yet a perfectly comprehensible LA Cop show.

  70. 70.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I guarantee you they know Trump’s word isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, so I’m sure they have another motivation. I’m wondering if they’re giving Ryan and McConnell cover to pass status-quo legislation. Just Trump for capitulating! Orangemandias is too damn stupid to know he’s being played.

  74. 74.

    patrick II

    A couple of weeks ago Senator Grassley said he would vote for (and presumably release with Democratic votes) the Steele Trump Dossier. I didn’t expect that he was telling the truth, but has anyone heard an update to this story?

  76. 76.

    Jacel

    @joel hanes: The FT made a film of “Everything You Know Is Wrong”. While the audio album is a complete experience in itself, the added visuals are a consistently interesting counterpoint.

    I still need to pick up the new DVD release, which includes a live performance by them before the screening at UC Santa Cruz that I attended.

    Here’s the earlier VHS release.

  78. 78.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Noisy little bastards. But they seem to be trying to keep them separated from us adults.

    I was invited to an early morning yoga class, but I’m having second thoughts. It finally cooled off this evening, which means it’s going to be in the low 40s. And the yoga class is outdoors. ?

  82. 82.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: Dear god, you have been in southern CA too long. That’s “is it a sweater is enough or should I wimp out and bring a jacket too?” weather. Or, if you play rugby, the best you can expect. OTOH, I jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, so my judgment on these things may be suspect.

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s the swing that does it. If it was 20 degrees yesterday and 40 degrees today, it’s practically shorts weather. But it was 70 degrees today and will be 40 degrees tomorrow, so it’s arctic.

    Also, I don’t have the right pants with me, though I suppose I could wear my Batgirl pajama pants and no one will care.

    ETA: Fixed the temperature — it was 80 yesterday, 70 today.

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s a big state. Up here in the mountains, they get all four seasons, including snow deep enough to have to plow.

    It’s not for me, but the people who live up here seem to like it.

  95. 95.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Major Major Major Major: An hour? What is that, like 12 miles or something?

    This state is fucking crazy. If I can drive the 8 miles from work to my hotel in under 45 minutes, that’s considered good. Oh, and if I wanted to live here, I could buy a 1,200 sf 3-bedroom house on an 8,000 sf lot for only a million dollars. Hello?

  100. 100.

    Millard Filmore

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    All due respect and all that, but I could never live there. I need the change of seasons.

    Southern California has seasons! There is a month of summer, a month of autumn, and 10 months of spring.

    But I understand your view. When the boss says the project deadline is April, for instance, my first thought is “Crap! What month is it now?”

  103. 103.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Major Major Major Major: Local news story here the last couple of days was about a house that sold for $782,000 over its asking price. No, that’s not a typo, and I don’t mean it sold for $782,000. It was listed at $1.6M or something, got 20 offers, all over that price, and sold for $2.5M. A completely undistinguished, 4-bed, 2-bath, 2,000 sf house. Fuck that noise.

  107. 107.

    Aleta

    Winter
    Frozen mud
    Blowing grit
    Three nice days
    Black flies
    Paradise
    Paradise leaving
    Fall
    Early winter

  112. 112.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: Late Golden Age/early Silver Age Barbara Gordon. Was checking to see if it was one of the others: Helena Bertinelli, Cassandra Cain, or Stephanie Brown.

  118. 118.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Major Major Major Major: Not just the housing is insane. Next town over is Apple’s new headquarters. $5 billion to build. That’s about $417,000 per employee. Super “green” and eco-friendly building. So green that it’s surrounded by 11,000 parking spaces. Sure, let’s all commute at one person per car on roads that were designed and built a half-century ago. You people are fucking nuts.

  122. 122.

    Fair Economist

    @Millard Filmore: After I lived in Socal a few years, I was about to take a business trip to DC in November. The secretary asked me if I had packed a coat for the trip. I started to say “it’s only November, what do I need a coat for?” before I realized the rest of the country has this thing called “weather” and stopped myself. It’s a good thing she said that because otherwise I’d probably have forgotten.

  123. 123.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Some may. Others may not. Mnem moved there from Chicago and was happy. I couldn’t do it. You should also notice that my previous comment prominently featured the word “I” . I wasn’t speaking for others. I need four seasons.

  126. 126.

    Achrachno

    @Millard Filmore: You guys are giving the outsiders the wrong idea about seasons in lowland southern CA. Looked at the the perspective of the wild plants growing untended in the hills, we have the same four seasons as the rest of the temperate zone, the labels are just a bit scrambled.

    Spring is the season when plants in the hills begin to dry up and die
    Summer is the dormant season when not much grows
    Fall is the season when new life begins to sprout and the hills begin to turn green
    Winter is the season of growth and vivid green everywhere

    Of course, in irrigated places things are a bit different.

  128. 128.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Major Major Major Major: Well, originally from NYC. Which has, as I have pointed out, 4x the population density of SF, and where people (generally) don’t drive to work. Because you’d have to pay $50/day to park your car, among other reasons.

  133. 133.

    Fair Economist

    I’ve long said Southern California has two seasons, and they’re both mild. There’s summer, when it’s warm and dry, and spring, when it’s chilly and rains occasionally. I’m quite irritated with how global warming is heating up our summers, though. They’ve gone from warm and dry to hot and dry.

  135. 135.

    Aleta

    I love skiing in the woods and freshwater swimming everywhere, and boy do I also miss California so much it hurts. Filling the gas tank on the motorcycle, bike lanes, hot eucalyptus in the air, camping on beaches, eating plums right off the tree first thing in the morning, jobs, fresh lemons and artichokes, California food and movies, the Sierras. Hot springs. The light on the dry hills.

  136. 136.

    Fair Economist

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I’d still call the summers “dry” even though as you say they are more humid than they used to be. It still compares favorably to the South and Midwest. Now it rains sometimes in the summer, which it never used to do. Inland they’re starting to get a second rainy season in the summer like Arizona.

  137. 137.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Aleta:

    It must have been something when there were orchards from what, Menlo Park to Sunnyvale?

    I moved to San Francisco in 1989, and there were still lots of orchards in that area – certainly not continuous, but enough that businesses named “Pruneyard” or “Orchard Supply” didn’t seem improbable. Are there any left? I can’t remember the last time I saw trees that hadn’t been planted as landscaping.

    As for seasons: Faugh. I moved here after college in Philadelphia and several years in DC, and had spent my childhood zigzagging between New England, Hawai’i, and Northern and Southern California, thanks to being a Navy brat. I’ve experienced plenty of seasons and never miss them at all. The four years we spent in Paris were culturally wonderful and climatically horrible, as far as I’m concerned.

  140. 140.

    Origuy

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I moved from Illinois to Sunnyvale in 1978. There were cherry orchards scattered all over the place. Only one or two left. I could walk out onto my second story patio and pick cherries off the tree in the patio below. My office building was surrounded by empty fields. It isn’t just NYMBYism that has kept housing in short supply. It’s easier for developers to build office buildings and let them sit empty than build affordable housing. Plus there’s only so much land. Environmental restrictions prevent the kind of land reclamation in the bay that was done for Foster City, and you can only build so much in the mountains.

  142. 142.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Gin & Tonic: Welcome to California, now go home. And please do tell all the people back home what a horrible, horrible place it is and how no one should ever move here and under no circumstances. //

    (Hey, we need all the help we can get keeping housing prices down.)

    @Gin & Tonic: Actually not many residents of SF drive to work within SF either. A but part of traffic congestion is the 45,000 Uber/Lyft drivers (who commute to work there from other areas) who account for an estimated 20% of overall SF traffic. And being the tip of a peninsula causes obvious choke-points a la Manhattan (vs. most other cities).

    The Peninsula/San Jose traffic problems are more due to locals getting to one part to another, but much more it’s people commuting in from the East Bay suburbs and beyond. It’s compounded because the 101 is near the edge of the bay/marsh lands, so there’s limited non-freeway alternatives for northbound traffic. When I was in LA, there’s enough streets paralleling the freeways that you could bail onto them when there was SigAlert. Here, no such luck. Especially because Foster City has inadequate roads in and out of it, which causes huge northbound back-ups on the 101.

  143. 143.

    Tehanu

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    No, no, the four seasons of L.A. are fire, mudslide, the Oscars, and escrow!

    https://balloon-juice.com/2017/09/13/open-thread-now-with-more-nick-danger-third-eye/#comment-6554400
    “Welcome to California, now go home. And please do tell all the people back home what a horrible, horrible place it is and how no one should ever move here and under no circumstances.”

    Which is why every Jan. 1 I look out the window at the sunshine and clear skies and curse the Rose Parade for attracting everyone back East who’s looking at 12 feet of snow and thinks, “Hey, let’s move to California and escape winter!”

  144. 144.

    joel hanes

    Are there any left?

    Only symbolic ones.
    Sunnyvale maintains a working cherry orchard on the west side of Mathilda just south of El Camino, a tiny remnant of the former Olson operation. Saratoga has some orchard on the site of the former Paul Masson sparkling winery.

    And Apple’s apparently despicable new campus has a good-sized wedge of either prune or cherry orchard inside the ring of the spaceship building, which I think they’ll hire someone to work.

    ETA : You can see it here :
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSGPjE3fhKA

  146. 146.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    On the other hand, I firmly believe that Minnesota should have at least one week every year where the temperature doesn’t get above 0 Fahrenheit in order to make sure that Californians don’t start moving here.

  149. 149.

    low-tech cyclist

    “What about my pickle?”
    “You’re lucky you still have your brown paper bag, small change!”

    “Defoliating a Victory Garden sure is tough work. If I can get some work out of that boy of yours, I can have the bunker finished by Election Day.”

  150. 150.

    Jacel

    @Origuy: I remember Congress of Wonders. My favorite sketch was their Russian novel parody, which doesn’t seem to be online. “Is not fit night out for man nor beast. Ha! Ha! Ha!” “Aw, mom…” And the frisky samovars.

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