Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

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68Comments

  2. 2.

    Bart

    John Kelly is out.

    https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1071479914115854339

    White House chief of staff John Kelly joins the long list of officials to leave the Trump administration. Here’s a look back at all the key staffers who have left so far.

    https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1071479777184399361

    Reminder: Less than 5 months ago, John Kelly said Trump asked him to stay on as chief of staff until at least 2020, and he agreed to do so. *something* changed … (by which I mean, John Kelly sat for an interview with Mueller’s team as part of the obstruction probe).

  5. 5.

    Thomas Levenson

    If I’m John Kelly, I’m talking to very good lawyers right now to assess his level of jeopardy. He surely knows by now that Trump is not someone to fall on a grenade for.

  6. 6.

    Thomas Levenson

    If I’m John Kelly, I’m talking to very good lawyers right now to assess my level of jeopardy. He surely knows by now that Trump is not someone to fall on a grenade for.

  7. 7.

    germy

    Someone at The Root said the list of people who’ve left the PEETUS administration is longer than a CVS receipt.

  17. 17.

    germy

    Providing care for patients with dementia is challenging. Medication doesn’t always ease their agitation and restlessness. Artificial intelligence is helping.

    Most afternoons, you’ll find 81-year-old Tom Clark snoozing with his pet cat, Aspen, on his lap. However, this cat doesn’t need to be fed or let outside. Aspen, the name of a cat he once had, isn’t real – but he just loves it.

    Aspen is a robotic cat with artificial intelligence built in — designed to do normal cat stuff like stretch, purr and roll on its back.

    “Sometimes, they’ll even ignore you the way a cat might, typically,” explained Psychologist Dr. Caitlin Holly.

    She started using these robotic pets about two months ago with dementia patients at the Stratton VA Medical Center Nursing Home.

    Nice, but there are so many affectionate, homeless cats who could be pressed into service.

    Automation is taking cats’ jobs now.

  19. 19.

    MattF

    @Thomas Levenson: Yeah, I think Kelly realizes that he has a big problem– he’s just been too close to Trump for too long. And Kelly knows better than to think that Trump will help, given that they despise each other.

    Trump will pardon anyone in his immediate family– but I think that’s as far as he’ll go.

  21. 21.

    LesGS

    They always look like they’re enjoying their jaunts. I’d like to take my cat for garden walks, but he’s allergic to fleas and getting bitten sends his immune system haywire. So he has to enjoy the outdoors through a window.

  22. 22.

    Corner Stone

    @MattF: Don’t give that motherfucker John Kelly an inch. He knows who he is and he knows what he did. Fuck him.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bart:

    I will repeat myself: I predict that Nielsen will also leave, whether by resigning or being fired, within two weeks.

    She will follow her man out of the White House.

    ETA: Autocorrect never works when you need it to. ?

  27. 27.

    Redshift

    Not-good pet news around our house lately. I’m at the vet with our bunny Buster, who stopped eating last night. (Not good for a ruminant.) The blood work shows kidney problems, which means she either got a bit blocked up and then got dehydrated, throwing off her kidney values, or her kidneys aren’t doing well and that caused the whole problem (which would be much worse.) She gets to stay at the emergency vet overnight; we’ll know more tomorrow.

    Two weeks ago her sister, at her checkup, showed signs of a possible cancer of the thymus gland. I get to take her to a specialist on Wednesday and then again for tests later. There’s still a possibility it will turn out to be nothing, but if not, we may have some hard decisions.

  28. 28.

    Platonailedit

    Hard not to see all of these White House personnel changes over the past couple days as somewhat of an attempt to distract from the Mueller/SDNY News.

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 8, 2018

    Yup. The turd’s usual tactics.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @germy:

    Depending on how severe the patient’s dementia is, it may be best for everyone’s safety that it be a robotic cat. You don’t want a cat being injured or a human being bitten because the human is unable to read the cat’s signals or has a sudden fit of rage.

  32. 32.

    germy

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Do you suppose there’s life out there?

    I sort of do, though I doubt we’ll see evidence in my lifetime. I mean advanced life, like extraterrestrial octopuses or something.

  36. 36.

    Mike in NC

    Right after the 2018 midterms there was a lot of speculation on how many people would try to escape the sinking of SS “Trumptanic”, so there could very well be a mass exodus of cabinet members and senior staff (Huckabee Sanders is supposed to be leaving, too).

  39. 39.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Doug R: Cats can get out of anything they can put their head through, and the vests are no exception. The trick is to stay behind the cats and keep tension pulling back. If you pull from the front, they’ll slip out.

    The vests are flat, with velcro at the neck and belly closures. So I slip the vest on the cat’s back, secure it around the neck, then the belly. If necessary, I go back to redo the neck closure. I try to leave a finger or two of extra room, particularly on the neck closure. The vests are called Kitty Holsters if you’re looking to buy them. I’m not crazy about that name though.

  40. 40.

    germy

    @Cheryl Rofer: Do they make cat vests that fit like a diaper? I tried a regular vest on a cat I loved many decades ago, and it was like watching Houdini. A diaper design might be more difficult to slide out of.

  42. 42.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @germy:
    Probably. There’s probably some under the ice of Europa. Intelligent life? That’s much rarer, I suspect. Technologically advanced life even more so. It’s possible humanity is the most advanced species in the universe. Isn’t that a depressing and ego-boosting thought, all at the same time lol?

  44. 44.

    germy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    It’s possible humanity is the most advanced species in the universe. Isn’t that a depressing and ego-boosting thought, all at the same time

    Yes, it’s a weird combination. I look at my neighbor with his “BITE ME” t-shirt and bad haircut (or my own less than impressive reflection in the mirror) and I think “This can’t be the apogee of life.”

  46. 46.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: I would (probably) never leave the house in a “BITE ME” t-shirt, but my attitude is (silently) wearing one every day.

    And I have a bad haircut, but at this point I think it’s just bad hair

  47. 47.

    JanieM

    @germy:

    Someone at The Root said the list of people who’ve left the PEETUS administration is longer than a CVS receipt.

    LOL.

    Receipts as long as novellas, and upselling: these things will be banned when I’m in charge. “It’s only thirty cents more for a grande……” Yeah, no, and I don’t want a cookie, either. Nor do I want you to waste paper printing me a buy one cookie, get one free coupon. If I don’t want one cookie, I double dog don’t want two.

    Yelling at clouds……..

  48. 48.

    mad citizen

    @Redshift: Sorry to hear that Redshift, hoping for the best. How old are they? We lost sister-littermates over the last couple of years.

  49. 49.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Bart:
    This has been a long time coming. I’m not sure how it happened at all. We may find out that it was Kelly who decided he’d had enough. Trump is such a coward about firing people, and Kelly obviously scares him.

    @Mnemosyne:
    If so, it will be very strong evidence for your theory.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    I don’t have any real proof, so it’s still possible that I’m wrong and their relationship is a totally innocent one between a professional mentor and his protegee.

    But another factor that I’ve been thinking about is that Kelly always had a reputation as a guy who was very rigid about sticking to the straight and narrow. For a lot of people like that, if they break one rule (like having an affair), it can start a slide down into worse and worse behavior because they figure they have nothing to lose since they already broke one of their own major moral rules.

  53. 53.

    A Ghost To Most

    My cats would cut me if I tried to put them on a leash. One went off on me this morning because I let the other cat out, and made cat1 give up her blockade of the door.

  54. 54.

    Fair Economist

    @germy: Actual trilobites would freak out the scientific community. Creationists would not care. What they say doesn’t make a lick of sense anyway.

  55. 55.

    ixnay

    @Mnemosyne: Not to mention that caregivers are already overworked, and should not have feeding and poop-scooping added to their chores. There have been plenty of times I have wished for foodless, scoopless cats.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    @Fair Economist

    Actual trilobites would freak out the scientific community.

    Especially when they open up a Mars trilobite and discover it has a creamy nougat center.

  59. 59.

    eemom

    @Redshift:

    I’m so sorry about the bunnies. Hoping for the best.

    No matter how many animals one has loved, this never gets any easier.

  61. 61.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: I’m gonna make “Trilobite Me” tee-shirts and make a fortune selling them at paleontology conferences!

    I am the very model of a modern stable genius!

  64. 64.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I would (probably) never leave the house in a “BITE ME” t-shirt, but my attitude is (silently) wearing one every day.

    Heh. I don’t have (nor would I wear) a “BITE ME” t-shirt, but I do own and cheerfully wear one that proclaims “I AM SILENTLY CORRECTING YOUR GRAMMAR.”

  66. 66.

    germy

    Gary Cohen, former CEO Goldman Sachs addressing new members of Congress today: "You guys are way over your head, you don't know how the game is played."

    No Gary, YOU don't know what's coming – a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits. https://t.co/ZLML2qzAW6

    — Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) December 6, 2018

  67. 67.

    Yarrow

    @Mnemosyne:

    But another factor that I’ve been thinking about is that Kelly always had a reputation as a guy who was very rigid about sticking to the straight and narrow. For a lot of people like that, if they break one rule (like having an affair), it can start a slide down into worse and worse behavior because they figure they have nothing to lose since they already broke one of their own major moral rules.

    I tend to agree. It’s clear that John Kelly is behaving very differently from what people who know/knew him expected. We’ve heard several reports along those lines. For someone who is very rigid, if they break one rule they may not have capacity to adjust and get back equilibrium. It might be like jumping off a cliff. Break one rule, you’re all the way in. Might as well break all the rules.

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