Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republicans do not pay their debts.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

When we show up, we win.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

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

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

We won’t go back.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

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

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

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90Comments

  3. 3.

    Rose Weiss

    Yeah. no more teenage pseudo-libertarians please!  I’ll be interested to see what you choose to replace it with.

  5. 5.

    jackmac

    I never think to look at those tiny libraries but after Cole told of what he discovered I think I’ll have to start monitoring some of my local boxes.  I have no qualms about removing right wing crap and replacing it with something better.  The motto of some tiny libraries is “Take One, Leave One.” So my conscience will be clear.

  6. 6.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    You’re a mensch, John. I admit to having put a few books in the recycling bin when I discovered the authors were pieces of shit. Hopefully the books got turned into something more valuable, like, I don’t know…toilet paper.

  12. 12.

    Bokonon

    Stuffing the book in the trash was a superb demonstration of your superior will.  Ayn Rand would certainly approve … up until the moment she found out which book it was.  :-)

  13. 13.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    I recall a cartoon, I  think from Casey. Talking with an old guy,

    You read Nixon’s book?

    Yeah.

    I heard some people are protesting it.

    Yeah, they have a slogan, “don’t buy books from crooks. ” So I didn’t buy it. I stole it.

    You stole Nixon’s book? Why?

    They didn’t have anything by Machiavelli.

  17. 17.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @cain: are you kidding me? Cole should be getting some kind of award for not letting that garbage turn some bright young mind into another useless Paul Ryan.

  18. 18.

    Andrya

    @Xentik:  Second your suggestion.  One simply CANNOT have too much Lord of the Rings.  (This post was written wearing a JRRT tee shirt.)

  19. 19.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @HumboldtBlue: Tuckums will no doubt turn that into a ‘see, that proves that George Soros and the New Yawk globalists are anti-black’ on his next show.

  25. 25.

    Geoduck

    Just in case there’s someone who doesn’t know Xentik’s reference..

    “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

    Though I do say you should send the book to be recycled, rather than into a landfill, if only because it would probably annoy its author more.

  28. 28.

    James E Powell

    Since we’re recommending books, I am re-reading Zorba the Greek. It’s been a while and I’m happy to find I love just as much as I remembered.

    Something I think about as I’m reading: I wonder how I would visualize Alexis Zorba & how I would hear his voice if I hadn’t seen Anthony Quinn in the movie.

  30. 30.

    wmd

    @Eric NNY: ​
     

    There is something to be said about removing books from libraries, tiny or otherwise.

    Atlas Shrugged is garbage. I suspect the rabid right wing book removers feel similarly about the books they remove.

  31. 31.

    LeftCoastYankee

    “The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake” is a great collection by a tragically short-lived West Virginian.

    More life in one short collection than all the Russian heiress’ turgid doorstops combined….

  32. 32.

    sab

    Are little libraries aimed at children, adolescents or adults? Or a combanation? Our neighborhood one is in the little park next to the basketball court, and teens keep smashing out its window. Now it has a solid styrofoam window instead of the typical transparent plexiglas. Frustrating. This has been going on for about ten years.

  34. 34.

    SectionH

    @HumboldtBlue: Wow. I got very teary… I had 2 grandpuppies who were Huskys. Wonderful dogs, but High Maintenance to the nth degree. The first time I dogsat for the kids, my DiL was worried I couldn’t keep control on their leashes, because they do pull… I just smiled and said “I’ve been wrangling horses since I was 10, I think I can deal with 90 pound dogs.”  I was VERY careful with them anyway, because yeah. I still miss those dogs

    .

  36. 36.

    piratedan

    question of curiosity….. we understand/suspect that Trump was coordinating with Members of Congress, certain elements of his administration (and Secret Service) and a few select people in the military and suspect that they had Clarence Thomas and Alito standing by to give the “legal fig leaf” cover for their coup….

    If the J6 committee has laid the ground work for all of this, and offers testimony and evidence of this plan, will the DOJ go after the Members of Congress on these issues… we suspect that DJT is cooked, not just for his secure document transgressions but all of this treason crimes as well, will the DOJ follow thru?  Would they do it before the elections or wait till after or do you suspect that they will somehow skitter away….

  38. 38.

    sab

    @Geoduck: Early Covid before vaccine ours switched from books to food: canned food, boxed pasta, snacks and cookies. Snacks and cookies vanished immediately. The rest just sat there.

    ETA I sound negative. I’m not. Worth trying to see what is needed or wanted.

  41. 41.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Tune in to our next episode:

    Wild Geese land at Dodger Stadium (video) – Coup under way (link)??

    OR

    San Diego pitcher Goose Gossage aged poorly (photo)

  43. 43.

    opiejeanne

    @HumboldtBlue: My niece and her husband have a husky named Sherman. People will come up to them in stores or when they’re out for a walk and try to get him to howl. It seems to be A Thing and he usually obliges.

    He’s a hilarious animal.

  44. 44.

    opiejeanne

    @Yutsano: Lankford’s “reasoning” about why they’re doing this makes no sense. He says drug prices are too high, so… let’s not do anything about it?

  46. 46.

    RaflW

    Doesn’t answer John’s question, but I did some political research in Sweden this week.

    I talked with three of my cousins about their recent elections. They’re all concerned that the far right is surging there. But they might not be able to form a coalition government. One of the parties, the most Nazi-ish, doesn’t really want to have formal power, because of course they can then get blamed if (when) their bullshit policies don’t fix people’s lives. Seems like being a fascist isn’t that different from the US.

    I’d been concerned about my second cousin, he’s in his late 20s and posts stuff that looks cut and pasted from hard right rhetoric. He wasn’t home when I visited that 1st cousin, but his older brother (age 30) is pissed at him over this. The 30y.o. said he also tries to talk with his friends at the Toyota factory that voting right will screw their benefits and services.

    He says they know it could, but “ehh, it won’t happen to us for a long time” he said while ruefully shaking his head. He tries to tell them that 4 years could make Swedish insurance and unemployment like the (shitty!) US system. I’m thankful that most all of my many Swedish relatives seem liberal and thoughtful!

  47. 47.

    RaflW

    @wmd: The best thing I’ve ever seen in a little free library was during the toilet paper ‘crisis’, some folx a couple blocks from home had free rolls among the books behind the glass door.

  49. 49.

    Antonius

    Yeah, gee John, maybe someone else can trash LGBTQ+ books as well, so kids don’t run into other “harmful” ideas. Because censoring books is always a great idea whenever, wherever you can when you don’t agree with their content.

    I can’t believe people here are supportive of removing any books from any library for ideological or quality reasons. Are you listening to yourselves?

  50. 50.

    AlaskaReader

    @Antonius: Almost 50 comments in before anyone happens to mention the paradox.

    Thanks Antonius.  Censorship should never be called a solution.

  52. 52.

    Antonius

    @J R in WV: Yes. I don’t agree with its ideological position, but I don’t agree with book banning or, essentially, burning in this case, in any way, shape or form.

  53. 53.

    Nukular Biskits

    On one hand, I applaud John.  Atlas is trash.

    On the other, I have to agree with @Antonius.  How is this any different from the “conservatives” who are harassing public and school librarians to remove books that “expose” children to the reality of LGBTQ folks and the struggles of people of color?

    Perhaps the “middle ground solution” (and FSM knows I hate TF out of “bothsiderism”) would have been to stick a warning label on it?

  54. 54.

    Antonius

    Adding:
    One is an opinion, the other is a principle. I want to live in a free society where opinions can be freely expressed and independently evaluated without some arbitrary authority deciding for me what ideas are fit for me to encounter, even if it’s some random person with a differing opinion acting opportunistically.

  56. 56.

    Nicole

    Speaking as someone who (due to a crush on a boy) read way too much of Ayn Rand when I was a teenager, and yet had it not change my political feelings one whit, I think she gets a lot of hate, some of which, frankly, is rooted in misogyny, that neither her (stilted, English was her 2nd language which she learned as an adult) writing nor her actual influence on GOP politicians (nil) warrants.  Don’t get me wrong, her actual life was a shit-ton more interesting (and crazy) than any of her books, but as mean as Atlas Shrugged is, the main bad guy in it is a crony capitalist.  Maybe that’s where Paul Ryan got confused; he thought James Taggart was the hero.

    Also, I give you her position on abortion: “An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn). Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?” (notice no, saying “a woman and a doctor” here.  Only the woman. And she was saying this in 1968.  How many pro-choice Democrats are saying that, even today?)

    She wasn’t a particularly gifted writer, and she had plenty of stupid ideas, but she was no worse than a lot of other middle-brow 1940s-1950s writers, and, for all of her mid-20th century perspectives on men and women, still a lot more feminist than they were (although I’m sure she would have thrown a brick at anyone calling her that).  But talk about someone who was shouting the alarm in the late 1970s about the GOP getting in bed with the religious right (she HATED Ronald Reagan).  She went through the Russian Revolution, but, as a Jew, she was just as hated under the Tsar as she was by the Bolsheviks.  I can see why someone who grew up under that might not have a lot of faith in governments, no matter which side is in charge.  I think it you regard her as someone who probably suffered PTSD the rest of her life, her work makes more sense.

    Which is not to say I think she’s worth reading, but I think the vitriol comes from a place other than a legitimate grievance with her work.  Her biographies, though- HIGHLY recommend.  Spicy!

    (Also the boy and I never worked out.  Which, in the end, was for the best.)

  57. 57.

    rivers

    @Nukular Biskits: I think it’s different in this sense. Tiny libraries are places where people place books they don’t want anymore and are free to take any books there (and it’s always a good idea to put another book in place of the one you take if you can do so.) Tiny libraries don’t have librarians and therefore someone can easily place a pornographic book in there or Mein Kampf or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Also whether John removes Atlas Shrugged in order to read it or to put it in the trash is not really the point – he has a right to take it like any other member of the public. How is this different from him going into a bookstore and buying all the copies of Atlas Shrugged and then throwing them in the trash?

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @Nicole:

    Only the woman. And she was saying this in the 1968.  How many pro-choice Democrats are saying that, even today?)

     
    All of them?

  62. 62.

    Nukular Biskits

    @rivers:

    I don’t necessarily disagree and I’m tempted to say I’d probably do the same as our Blogmaster.  I am no Rand fan and, notwithstanding the excellent post by @Nicole about Rand’s personal life, am of the opinion that Atlas intentionally and with malice aforethought poisoned the well, so to speak, with respect to how so many view civic responsibility, the role(s) of government and the social contract.

    Having said that, however, I do agree with Antonius that I would resent the actions of others who would appoint themselves the arbiters of what information should and should not be available to me.  He asks a very simple question:  How is this any different than the “righteous” indignation of conservative busybodies (read that “white conservative evangelicals”) who endeavor to remove from libraries publications they believe are “trash”?

    The distinction you are making here (tiny library maintained ostensibly for the public good by private individuals as opposed to a pubicly-funded library) is one with little to no difference, I would argue, in that their respective missions are one and the same.

    I’m not sure what the correct answer is here but (admittedly going the literary equivalent of a full Godwin here), would the removal of pornographic magazine from a tiny library been any more or less correct?

  63. 63.

    Nicole

    @Baud:

    All of them?

    You’re going to have to show your work.  Most of the ones I have heard include “and her doctor,” “and her family.”  That was the drum beat even just a few years ago, “a decision between a woman and her doctor.”  Gotta give old Ayn credit for taking the MD out of the equation.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Nukular Biskits:

    would the removal of pornographic magazine from a tiny library been any more or less correct?

    That raises an interesting question. How are porn mags still in business in the Internet age?

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @Nicole:

    You didn’t show your work, I’m not going to show mine.  Do you really believe the Dems are saying the doctor gets to make the choice on whether a woman gets an abortion apart from medical safety concerns?  I’ve never heard any Dem suggest this. We have enough difficulty dealing with GOP misrepresentations of us, that we shouldn’t add on.

  67. 67.

    Baud

    BTW, to the extent Dems focus on the doctors, it’s because a lot of the new restrictions only apply to doctors.  The GOP then says we’re not punishing women for abortions.

  71. 71.

    Nukular Biskits

    @RSA:

    I suppose it could be boiled down to that.

    At the risk of raising the specter of “moral relativism”, removing Atlas (or The Turner Diaries, Hustler magazine, etc) from a tiny library would be an example of intolerance for the public good.

  72. 72.

    Starfish

    @sab: They target whoever is in the area. A friend has taken them on as an art project.

    You know the old metal magazine cases that have no more magazines because print is dead? A friend is taking those, cleaning them, touching up the paint, adding stickers, and turning them into little free libraries. She has volunteers who take care of keeping them stocked. There are certain areas where children’s books are more popular. There are certain garbage books that take up space that no one really wants, that she removes.

    She may do seasonal themes sometimes.

  73. 73.

    J R in WV

    @Nicole: ​

    Gotta give old Ayn credit for taking the MD out of the equation.

    Most women are going to need a doc in the equation, no matter what the woman decides to do.

    And I believe most docs would prefer that the decision be up to the woman. I don’t have data on hand to support that belief, but will assert it anyway based upon the docs I know.

  75. 75.

    Starfish

    @sab: Did you make sure that the canned food had pop tops?

    I did not consider that some people do not have access to can openers, but it is true.

    Also, one day when we were giving out snacks to the homeless, there were definitely a few people who asked for soft snacks because they had issues with their teeth.

  76. 76.

    Antonius

    @RSA: Yes. This is always a danger. However, infringing on the rights of others is the line of tolerance is where I stand athwart and say “Stop!”. It’s not up to me what books other people read. Is it up to me to defend their right to read what they want to read.

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: Cream of chicken soup is a good option for people with teeth problems. I’ve been working around a loosened tooth and cream of chicken is one of my staples right now. Costs 68 cents a can at Walmart, comes with pop tops.

  78. 78.

    Starfish

    @Antonius: Libraries. Little free ones and otherwise have limited shelf space, so there are people in charge of maintaining the collections.

    If someone fills your library with pop-Christian literature that no one in the community is interested in, you throw those things away and get things that people like.

    Depriving people of a free garbage book does not take away meaningful access, and it is not comparable to communities and school districts culling the collections of the libraries that tax dollars pay for.

  79. 79.

    Ohio Mom

    Eh, the free libraries are for people to take a book. Cole took a book. It’s not like it was a rare book, out of print, and Cole was destroying an important piece of history.

    There are plenty more copies to be found, a free library is not representing any sort of canon. It’s not a curated collection, it’s completely random. A school or public library in contrast, is a collection that a group of authorities has decided is worthwhile and fitting for their patrons.

    Let’s not confuse a symbolic action with censorship.

  80. 80.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I helped talented new writers overcome the flaws (like starting with an exposition dump) that would have dragged them down.  Super encouraging results.  The future is full of good fiction.

    In the process I confirmed that everybody loves Hodir Deathshriek Thorvaldsen, 13 year old chaos mage and son of hardcore death metal fans.

  89. 89.

    cliosfanboy

    fuck This “what about THEIR rights?” Bullshit. We’re in a fight with fascists. They’re campaigning to deny the rest of us our rights. Fuck them. Those who are campaigning to end democracy can’t hide behind democratic norms.​

  90. 90.

    Art

    Most of you know this, there are wealthy individuals and organizations that donate Ayn Rand books to school systems. In my old HS, ~1975, the everyone in our AP class got a brand new copy of Atlas Shrugged. The idea seems to be to be that if you warp their minds when they are young they will be Libertarians and self-centered sociopaths when it comes time to vote. High school teachers, lacking other suitable books, tend to accept the donations and try to make sure the kids get exposed, immunized, to sociopathy without becoming sociopaths.

    I always thought it might be a good idea to do the same thing, but with more liberal, life enhancing, Humanistic reading materials.

    Start them off early with The Hobbit and the whole trilogy in HS.

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