Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The willow is too close to the house.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

This really is a full service blog.

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

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

No one could have predicted…

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Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    condorcet runner-up

    Marco did not handle it well at all. Also, this kid who asked Marco to declare that he wouldn’t accept donations from the NRA just put all the beltway reporters to shame.

  4. 4.

    Suzanne

    @condorcet runner-up:

    Marco did not handle it well at all.

    Li’l Marco chokes under pressure. He repeats his crappy rehearsed lines, grabs for water, and just cannot handle himself when not in a highly controlled environment,

  6. 6.

    RPh

    Yes …. but do your pets miss you?

    Steve : DIAF after what you did
    Rosie: meh
    Thurston: who? That Bunraku puppet who yells at me?
    Lily: Waaaaah/whiiiine

    All in all, you may be gong 1/4 tonight … not horrible …. pretty much what’s expected of the Pirate’s starting 8 this year.

  9. 9.

    cain

    Clearly, Rubio would be useless in a school shooting. He’d be running for the water fountain instead of you know trying to get kids into a room.

    I’m still imagining what it would be like for those kids watching one of their teachers getting shot while he’s trying to get them into his classroom (the story by Bill two threads back) I can’t imagine.. It would stick with me for all my days.

  11. 11.

    cain

    I don’t remember much mass shootings in school in the 80s.. it just seems like it became a thing starting with Columbine.

  12. 12.

    rk

    I hope not taking money from the NRA becomes a litmus test. I got a notice from someone taking on Brian Fitzpatrick in our district, Scott Wallace, who has pledged not to take money from the NRA. His grandfather was vice president under Roosevelt (according to his bio). I hope we get rid of Fitzpatrick, but it’ll be hard. We had a very good guy running against Fitzpatrick last time, but no luck. Here’s hoping things change.

  15. 15.

    CarolDuhart2

    My theory/ies: The drug war and the wars down in Columbia. It was not until crack/drugs became big business that we started having these guns in common use. Cocaine was once thousands of dollars per ounce, so the spread was limited as well as the profits. Crack, highly addictive created mass profits and bigger demand. The boomlet in drug money meant that many felt they had to defend against rival gangs instead of individuals. Also when you are carrying hundreds/thousands in illegal cash, the only security you had was either your mob/gang/or yourself. The wars in Central America flooded that area with high-powered weapons that were even easier to sell.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    When Dolt 45 said, and I quote, “it’s called concealed carry” that’s a tell; he was first exposed to the term, if not today, then very, very, very recently.

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: I’d bet money he heard it from DJTJ, speaking of people desperate to use weapons to compensate for short-comings.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @CarolDuhart2: The unforeseen consequence of breaking up the mafia was deregulating organized crime and the drug trade. As with everything else we’ve deregulated, the results have not been optimal.

  27. 27.

    khead

    “I was involved in basketball operations, but other than getting the financials and reports, I was not involved in the day to day [of the business side] at all….That’s why I just deferred. I let people do their jobs. And if there were anything like this at all I was supposed to be made aware, obviously I was not.” – Mark Cuban

    If this was something uttered on an episode of Shark Tank, I do hope ABC at least had the good taste to add a laugh track.

  31. 31.

    Steeplejack

    This town hall is what I thought Trump’s “listening session” was going to be earlier. Apparently I was confused. I won’t be tuning in, because my outrage glands are depleted from the listening session and the aftermath, to the point that I had to turn off MSNBC for the night. Don’t even know if I can summon the energy for the usually palate-cleansing and restorative Colbert monologue and Perry Mason before I pack it in.

  38. 38.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    Remember when Trump invented the phrase “priming the pump”?

    Now he has given us a useful phrase for when you’re toting a gun that no one can see. Genius! Stable genius.

  40. 40.

    GregB

    Looking at the numbers in the Quinnipiac poll, it is almost as if the majority of people’s actual will was thwarted during the last election.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    A-feared that Erik Prince is already salivating profusely over armed personnel in the schools as a business opportunity.

  46. 46.

    condorcet runner-up

    @NotMax: yup. it is no accident that this proposed (and preposterous) “solution” doubles as a great opportunity for grift.

  47. 47.

    HumboldtBlue

    USA women’s hockey took a 1-0 lead into the locker room end of One. This is gonna be good.

    Oh, they are leading Canada.

  49. 49.

    GregB

    From Quinnipiac:

    That Russian Thing

    American voters think 76 – 18 percent, including 55 – 35 percent among Republicans, that the Russian government did try to influence the 2016 presidential election, the highest number so far for this question.

    A total of 68 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” that the Russian government might try to interfere in the 2018 elections.

  52. 52.

    Steeplejack

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I don’t know why, but I have not been able to get into these Olympics. Every time I’ve tried to watch I’ve been put off by NBC’s chaotic coverage, and I always seem to tune into an event right at the worst time, e.g., the apparently mandatory slow, dying swan bit in the women’s figure skating/​ice dancing (whichever).

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    @Major Major Major Major:

    God, it is a testament to the fire hose of Trump bullshit this last year that I actually had to get on the Google to remind myself of exactly what was the phrase that he invented. Could not think of it to save my life. And yet in the “Hillary won” time line that would be worth six months of outrage and another item added to the articles of impeachment.

  54. 54.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Adam L Silverman: I agree. The old mobs kept internal order and the trade low-key, due to older members being in charge. Also the incentive was too that if you kept your nose clean, you could lead a comfortable middle-class life as a member. The emphasis was on middle class and low-key, especially after Prohibition ended. The breakup denuded the adult leadership that could contain hot-heasd, and put thousands into the hands of angry teenagers who didn’t see themselves living until 21, much less buying a house and living until 30.

  56. 56.

    efgoldman

    @CarolDuhart2:

    The old mobs kept internal order The old mobs kept internal order

    The widespread urban legend held that mob-controlled neighborhoods were the safest in any city. Helped along by Mario Puzo

  60. 60.

    CarolDuhart2

    @efgoldman: What I meant was that the mob policed itself so not to disturb the neighborhood too much. They killed each other, not bystanders and rogue elements quickly got squashed. And if you were out of control, they quickly made an example out of your. Once they went away, it was a free-for all, with drive-by-shootings and the like,fueled by adolescent hormones and fatalism and too much money in too young hands.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    That better be a pair of 2s, a 5, and a game misconduct! If Poulin is allowed to stay in this game, there is a serious officiating problem.

  63. 63.

    different-church-lady

    @GregB: yeah, but of that republican 55%, 50 percent of them probably believe they tried to influence it for Hillary.

  65. 65.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Adam L Silverman:

    As with everything else we’ve deregulated, the results have not been optimal.

    You should see the people they let on airplanes these days. [shudder]

  71. 71.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @CarolDuhart2: Was Mueller part of legal team that brought down Gotti? By following process similar to way he’s proceeding here? Did I read that on this blog?

  72. 72.

    Zinsky

    @randy khan: Twitter means less than nothing. It is vaporous and unimportant, we need to get our asses off the couch and out talking to people the way humans have for thousands of years. God, I hate how people think a few LCD images on their iPhone actually have any importance in the real world…

  73. 73.

    Gvg

    @Zinsky: actually those kids have been using pics of their slain friends saved on their phones to win arguments in the real world. That’s pretty important and real.
    Twitter is more of a mixed bag but you can’t dismiss it completely. It’s part of reality now, just not the whole thing.
    Right wingers are so used to just living in a world where their talking points are accepted wisdom, they aren’t understanding why the kids don’t say oh you are right. The dead friends pics show why. Don’t care about stupid 2nd amendment. Stop killing us.

  74. 74.

    randy khan

    @Zinsky:

    I think Twitter’s a pretty good way to gauge immediate reaction to things. I won’t ascribe any particular power to that.

    Also, when a troll like her gets crushed, it’s kind of fun.

  75. 75.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @cain Shootings at schools in the U.S. are and have been, unfortunately more common than people think, most of them seemed to be personal vendetta’s and the shooter had one specific target in mind (and up until the 20th century weapons that could kill large number of people rapidly were not available). Many of them seem to have happened because both students and teachers came to school armed or had easy access to guns and arguments escalated to shootings.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States#cite_note-23

    Resulting in incidents like this one from April 9th 1891 Newburgh NY:

    “70-year-old James Foster, fired a shotgun at a group of students in the playground of St. Mary’s Parochial School, causing minor injuries to several of the students”

    or this from March 26 1893 in Plain Dealing, LA:

    “During an evening school dance at Plain Dealing High School, a fight broke out. When the smoke cleared, two students were killed, two more were fatally wounded, and the high school’s Professor Johnson was wounded in the arm”

  76. 76.

    Older

    @Major Major Major Major: After the Columbine events, Marilyn Manson was asked what he would say to the students. He said “I wouldn’t *say* anything to them. I would *listen* to them.” Looks like maybe that will happen, at last.
    I

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