Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Bark louder, little dog.

This fight is for everything.

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

Tick tock motherfuckers!

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Come on, man.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

T R E 4 5 O N

You cannot shame the shameless.

Let there be snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / When the light outside changes from red to blue

When the light outside changes from red to blue

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Two more seats flipped from red to blue in special elections this evening.

In New Hampshire:

Tonight’s win comes in the New Hampshire House, where Democrat Philip Spagnuolo won a special election in House District Belknap-3, 54-46 percent. This marks a 19-point swing from Trump’s performance in this district in 2016; he won this district by a 54-41 margin. This is the fifth seat Democrats have flipped in the New Hampshire House this cycle, and it’s Democrats’ ninth win of the state’s 11 special elections.

Also:

And in Connecticut House District 120, Democrats just flipped their 39th state legislative seat of the cycle in Tuesday’s second red-to-blue flip (the first came in the New Hampshire House.) Democrat Phil Young won this seat 51-49 percent.

Let’s raise a little more money for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is doing a great job helping Democratic candidates in all these state races.

Goal Thermometer

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  2. 2.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    I hope these stories are causing visceral misery to conservative politicians, pundits, and voters.

  6. 6.

    Doug R

    Politico is gaming a 9 point swing still allowing the Republicans to keep the house. Not gonna work with 21-28 point swings.

  9. 9.

    smike

    OT, but in Ben Carson news, Raw Story just ran a piece about Ben Carson spending over $31,000 to spruce up the dining room of his office while trying to cut the budget for the homeless and elderly HUD program. His spokesperson was quoted: “In general, the secretary does want to be as fiscally prudent as possible with the taxpayers’ money,” Williams added.

    Sounds like she wanted to add, “But, sometimes, you know, fuck a bunch of taxpayers.”

  11. 11.

    Mary G

    The Guardian says Ben Carson has just begun to spend:

    The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) has agreed to spend $165,000 on “lounge furniture” for its Washington headquarters, in addition to a $31,000 dining set purchased for housing secretary Ben Carson’s office.

    The revelations on Tuesday of Carson’s expensive decor spending come as Donald Trump’s administration has proposed a cut of $6.8bn to Hud’s annual budget, or roughly 14% of its total spending, which would lead to reductions in programs aimed at poor and homeless Americans.

    I guess the FTFNYT gets credit for breaking the table story, but WTF? Marie Antoinette has nothing on these people.

  12. 12.

    FlipYrWhig

    All news like this is good news but FYI there are about as many members of the New Hampshire state house as there are members of Congress.

  15. 15.

    John Revolta

    @smike: @Mary G:

    In a November 2017 complaint obtained by CNN, Helen Foster said she was told to “find money” beyond the legal $5,000 limit for redecorating. In one instance, she says a supervisor said that “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair.”

    Okaaaayyyy, then………..

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @Mary G:

    Williams, 29, is a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, where he served as a deputy to Sean Spicer, Trump’s former White House press secretary. Williams is the son of the Fox News presenter Juan Williams.

    When asked on Tuesday to explain his misleading statement, Williams falsely stated that he had been asked only about spending on improvements to Carson’s office from what he called “the decorating budget”.

    “That’s what you were asking about, was the decorating budget, and no table was bought with the decorating budget,” said Williams. He then claimed he had actually been unaware a table had even been bought. “I walked over there and there was no new table there, so I did not know,” he said. “I did not find out until much later.”

    Williams then said that he had another phone call coming in and terminated the interview.

    First off, apparently Fox News is breeding a new generation of shameless liars. Second, kudos to the Guardian for explicitly calling out the lies. Our domestic media should (but won’t) take this as an example. Third, the $165K for “lounge furniture” either is or is not egregious. If they’re in the middle of redecorating the entire (big) headquarters building, it’s not ridiculous. If, as is quite possible, this is just for Ben Carson’s office, then not so much. The story doesn’t say one way or the other.

    Edit: Fourth, if your mentor in press-flack-dom is Sean Spicer, you should re-evaluate the life choices that brought you to this juncture.

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike J: I see Molly Hatchet. I begin to worry.

    ETA: Some real dreck, but some wonderful stuff too. Big Star should be higher.

  19. 19.

    John Revolta

    @Omnes Omnibus: @Mnemosyne: I was sitting around my friend’s house back when this record came out, watching TV and burning one, when outta nowhere Elvis Costello was on the tube, on a local UHF station no less, dressed and acting like a used car salesman………………

    “LOOK at these hits, ladies and gentlemen!! 20 Hits!! TWENTY!! You can’t go wrong with such a deal etc.etc.etc.”

    Then, just as suddenly, he was gone. I never saw it again.

  23. 23.

    GregB

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Republican hold a 216-173 advantage in the House, according to the latest update from the House speaker’s office.

    WMUR.

    This is the 5th Rep. to Dem. flip since the Trumpocalypse.

  25. 25.

    smike

    @John Revolta: To be fair, they have to eat while sitting in those chairs. Their sensibilities will NOT be ravaged by crappy government standards. Imagine eating steak and lobster at a $5,000 dollar dining room set. What would people say?

  26. 26.

    FlipYrWhig

    @LurkerNoLonger: And that’s the thing that not-particularly-political people really, really, REALLY hate. And it was what Trump, assisted by the media and the Russians and a big boost from the Sage of Burlington, successfully attached to Hillary Clinton like the world’s heaviest anchor: corruption. IMHO as a big-picture theme it tends to make a big difference, and could again.

  29. 29.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Plus (as usual) they are hyping the horse-race aspect—“Seriously, it could be close!”—to keep reader interest up. More clicks than eight months of “Yep, they’re gonna get slaughtered.”

    (Not that we should become complacent.)

  30. 30.

    efgoldman

    @dmsilev:

    If, as is quite possible, this is just for Ben Carson’s office, then not so much. The story doesn’t say one way or the other.

    Daddy Juan must be SO proud.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    @FlipYrWhig:

    It’s pretty much the only way to make a film of that book, and the style is similar to 24 Hour Party People, which is one of my favorite unreliable narrator movies. Those are very hard to do.

  36. 36.

    hitchhiker

    I looked at that google doc the daily kos has been running about these off year races. By my rough count, the numbers so far are something like we’ve kept almost 90% of the seats we held and they’ve kept just over half of the ones they held.

    I wish it were more, and I hate it that they have so many seats to begin with, but I’d rather be us than them right now.

    I’m somehow on the R mailing list, so I get a lot of emails these days demanding $$$ to stop Nancy Pelosi. They’re going to run against her all year long.

  40. 40.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dmsilev:

    Williams then said that he had another phone call coming in and terminated the interview.

    I’m about to go to bed and can’t be arsed to look for it, but I think this is almost word-for-word what Ivanka said to Teen Vogue a year or so ago when it dawned on her that the phone interview wasn’t going her way.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    The Costello theme of this post just brought to mind the perfect EC song for our time. How To Be Dumb.*

    It is EC’s dis of his former bassist, Bruce Thomas, but it works, mate.

  48. 48.

    Washburn

    The Earth cannot sustain 8 or 10 billion people. It’s impossible.

    Yes, it could if everyone was vegetarian and lived in high rise clusters in urban centers. But, guess, what, that is IMPOSSIBLE. You can’t change the behavior of 1/2 of the people with the best of intentions, and nobody else is going to change and there are far more assholes than people with the best of intentions. Hey, Balloon Juice folks, raise your hands: How many vegetarians who have given up air travel and live within walking distance of work? C’mon, how many. I am going to guess about 20 to 25% – tops.

    So, with any luck, there will be some kind of plague or asteroid to get the human population down to a non-destructive level. Yeah, it would be “bad” for 5 billion people to die suddenly. You know what is worse, having 9 billion people live in straightened circumstances, and then panic and desperation as most of them dies slowly over a few years and the survivors get to live out the decades of their life in desperation.

    What you are seeing now with the rocketing polar temps are the simple inevitable result of the billions of people living a conventional, industrial lifestyle that they will never give up. Never, never, never. If the population were 1/4 of what it is, people could all drive Escalades Would they be stupid and wasteful and killing the planet? Nope, they would not because their behavior wouldn’t be destroying the planet.

    Freaking out about the coming global inferno is absolutely pointless. You cannot change it. It’s like complaining about the rain. Nothing you can do will change it.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @Washburn:

    You know what would work to get the population to manageable levels? Women having equal rights, with full access to abortion and birth control that they decide on.

    It’s been proven over and over again that if women are allowed to decide for themselves how many children to have, the vast majority will choose 2 or fewer, and many women will choose to have none at all.

    Your best bet for population control is women’s rights. So hop to it.

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He’s been here before. More of a one-note crank than a true troll.

    But it is true that anyone who’s serious about population control needs to support full equality for all women worldwide. Women in developing countries aren’t having 6 or 8 kids because they want that many. They don’t have any other choice.

  56. 56.

    Washburn

    @Mnemosyne:

    Sure that’s true. It would also solve global warming if every industrialized country devoted most of their budgets to carbon sequestration. Oh, and giving everybody cupcakes, too.

    About the same chance of those two things happening.

    They’re both very laudable goals, though, from the perspective of doing what is morally right.

  57. 57.

    Washburn

    @MobiusKlein:
    Knock yourself out.

    Look, here is the thing. You are going to die. Everybody is going to die. The planet is going to undergo cataclysmic changes and nothing will stop that. The earth will survive Life, in some form will carry on. Humans just probably won’t be part of it. That’s fine, too.

    Nothing you can do is going to change that. Some things – like biking to work – don’t increase the load on the earth and more importantly here make you feel better. That is an undiluted good.

  59. 59.

    Glenn

    It is so weird to see my home district in a post like this. There hasn’t been a Dem in the CT state house in my district since ten years before I was born, and the guy who won today did it by fifty votes.

  60. 60.

    Washburn

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m sorry, I was talking to that other guy. You are going to go live at Grandma’s place in the country where the bacon is so pure that it doesn’t hurt your heart and the bourbon doesn’t hurt your liver. Say a prayer for those other folks though.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Washburn: You are a very cheerful person. I shall mention to everyone else that we are going to die. I ask you how we should handle this?

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    @Washburn:

    It would also solve global warming if every industrialized country devoted most of their budgets to carbon sequestration. Oh, and giving everybody cupcakes, too.

    Well, let’s see — you can sit around and wait for the meteor strike you dream of to magically occur, or you can get up off your ass and actually take action towards mitigating the upcoming catastrophe.

    Not surprisingly, you’re choosing to sit on your ass and lecture other people rather than working towards an end result that would actually make a difference.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I especially love the part where solving the problem by making billions of people’s lives better is actually less attractive to him than mass genocide.

    He’s actively unwilling to take steps to change the things he’s complaining about but thinks he’s morally superior because he’d rather stroke off to the thought of mass extinctions than take effective action.

  64. 64.

    Mnemosyne

    Funny how the troll just up and vanishes as soon as I point out that there is an actual, real-world way to solve his pet issue that he refuses to take action on. ?

  65. 65.

    frosty

    @Washburn: One of the commenters on the now-defunct Oil Drum blog had a sig that stuck with me: “Is mankind smarter than yeast?”

    My take:
    Beer: yeast consume all the sugar, die. Peak Oil.
    Wine: yeast consume all the sugar they can, die in their own waste alcohol. Climate Change.

    Answer: No.

  66. 66.

    frosty

    @frosty: Hmm. Probably shouldn’t have responded to the troll. Nevertheless, I’ve always thought the yeast comparison was useful. Run out of fuel or poison ourselves in our own waste?

    Or hey, porque no los dos?

  68. 68.

    Chet Murthy

    @Mnemosyne: Well, to be fair to him, the argument that change is useless, is a great one, if you’re trying to prevent change. It’s a great rhetorical tactic, eh?

  70. 70.

    Dave

    @Mnemosyne: What gets me about that type is why waste time with the doomsaying and whining. If we are inevitably screwed unless there is mass die off catastrophe (which is kinda a form of being screwed) why waste anyone’s time on it? What’s the point?

  71. 71.

    MobiusKlein

    @Dave: Because if we are doomed, no point in trying to stave it off. So long as the meteor hits when I’m already 6 feet under, no skin off my back.

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