Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

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

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The revolution will be supervised.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

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

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“But what about the lurkers?”

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You are here: Home / Archives for Betty Cracker

Florida woman, boxer wrangler and football hooligan currently deep-fat frying something in a humid swamp somewhere.

Betty Cracker has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2012.

Early Morning Open Thread — Artsy Fartsy Edition

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Artists tend to use the materials close at hand to create their masterworks, which explains all those lovely Italian Renaissance sculptures carved in Carrara marble.

At my backyard tiki bar, the abundant resource is wine foil — you know, that heavy foil that must be removed from the top of the bottle to expose the cork prior to decanting. Here’s a wine foil sculpture of a chicken:

And here’s a foil art tribute to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” which recently sold for $120 million. (The original, not the tribute, for which bids are currently being entertained.)

Bonus wino points to whoever can name the winery that produced “The Scream” foil. Please discuss whatever.

PS: If you’re in North Carolina, vote NO.

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Help Take Amendment 1 Down

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Assorted ninnies and white supremacists are attempting to deface the North Carolina Constitution with anti-gay graffiti via Amendment 1. There’s already no marriage equality in NC, but Amendment 1 is designed to keep same-sex couples in the back of the bus.

Here’s Balloon Juice commenter Jibeaux:

I assume if you’re reading B-J and live in NC that you know about Amendment One. If you’re reading B-J and do not live in NC but know anyone there, please nag them to vote against A1 or dialogue with them about it if they are on the fence. We could be—but are not poised to be—the first in the nation to reject an anti-gay marriage amendment. This amendment would go further than our current statutes and would prohibit recognition of any domestic union other than marriage. If passed, it will throw partner benefits and domestic abuse law into uncertain territory. We need to pull out all the stops on this, if you have any NC stops please get in touch. Thanks for listening.

Also via Jibeaux, a link to an organization that is leading the charge: Protect All NC Families.

Maggie Gallagher’s NOM outfit likes to brag that the anti-gay bigots always win on ballot measures (neglecting to add that many state voters would re-segregate schools if given the opportunity), and the polls don’t look good. But a big turnout by marriage equality supporters could send a huge message. Please do what you can to help.

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Are there no workhouses, etc.

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I know less about economics than I do about fashion, which is to say, nothing. But I can usually spot a bamboozle in the hatching phase. Here are two items on the economy that appeared within the last week. First up from a Reuters business piece:

Disability rolls may be holding economy back
Those receiving benefits now account for 5.6 percent of working age population

Since the recession began, the share of Americans actively looking for work, known as the labor participation rate, has fallen to 63.6 percent from 66 percent in 2007.

Some people give up looking for work temporarily, but the size of the decline has perplexed economists and disability is clearly a factor.

JP Morgan estimates it accounts for half a percentage point of the drop. With jobs scarce, it causes little drag on growth.

But Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, said over time, disability will rob roughly $250 billion — or 1.6 percent — from total output each year once the economy returns to full employment, probably within the next five to seven years. This will also widen the budget deficit.

ROB, he says. Okay, here’s the other item:

Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years

From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.

In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, EPI found. The pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses — as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company’s stock price plummets and jobs are cut.

Workers’ wages aren’t tied to productivity either. Despite substantial gains in productivity since the 1970s, worker pay has remained flat. According to Labor Department data cited by the Huffington Post, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011.

How to solve the problem? Getting the feed straws of those disabled layabouts out of our wallets, obviously. And more tax breaks, a greater share of political control and higher bonuses for the CEO class.

I haven’t heard a GOPer make a big show of specifically attacking disability payments yet, but it’s coming if it hasn’t already happened. The disabled will be the new strapping young t-bone buying bucks.

[X-posted at Rumproast]

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Dispatch from a Very Sincere Pumpkin Patch

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It turns out Erick Erickson is more limber than generally suspected, fully capable of bending over and blowing himself on his own blog (hey, somebody has to do it):

As I’ve grown up online, I’m one of the uncommon few who has moved on to both television and radio. I have been blessed. Along the way, I find others who are making the transition too, but still others who have been toiling away in the blogosphere for years who have refused to make the transition, or been unable to despite their hopes, and they may look at me and others like me and think we’ve sold out or decided to go along to get along. But I look at them and think what a waste of talent and energy.

Erickson notes that more wingnut bloggers get “respectable” gigs like CNN analyst spots than lefties:

Though there are a few exceptions, I think more conservatives have moved into television and radio directly from blogs and new media websites than the left.

Hint: It’s not because y’all don’t suck: It’s because Fox News is eating CNN’s lunch with an all-wingnut, all-the-time format. The other media corporations want a piece of that sweet wingnut action, and they found you all tarted up on your street corner. Meritocracy!

But Erickson, having become all respectable, notes that “others” on the right could fuck the dealio up for the lot of them:

But there are others who are dragging those folks down and the rest of us too.

Sadly for them and the rest of us who get invited to nice places to meet nice people off the record, as long as the rest of us keep humoring them and their antics, those invites won’t come for any of us.

I don’t follow the wingnutosphere closely enough to know who pissed in Erickson’s cornflakes. Does anyone know?

BONUS: I hate opening the RedState page, not only because of the suckage contained within — hell, that’s what I’m there for — but because of the stupid newsletter popup that features a graphic of Erickson’s grinning melon rising from the bottom of the page like the Great Pumpkin. But all is forgiven, RedState, because this is the best wingnut website ad ever:

Hahahaha!

[X-posted at Rumproast]

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Profiles in Courage (Not)

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Willard is taking some flak from folks who observed the way he left the rabid neo-con he’d hired as a foreign policy spokesman twisting in the wind when the rabid anti-gay bigots in Willard’s party hung a “NO FAGS!” sign on the GOP clubhouse.

One of the several Sears mannequins deployed by the Romney campaign argued that Willard does TOO have the balls to push back against wingnut bigotry:

“Mitt Romney has confronted those voices of intolerance,” Fehrnstrom said. “He did it last October on stage at the Values Voters summit and denounced some of the poisonous language that is being used by some of the same people that had criticized Ric Grennel’s appointment.”

Yeah, when the talibangelicals go after Willard as a heretic for his Mormonism, he can be arsed to fire back. But when they go after someone on his staff for being gay, Willard regretfully accepts the man’s resignation. Face it, centrists: Martin Niemöller he ain’t.

[X-posted at Rumproast]

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Elderville (Open Thread)

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I live kind of out in the boonies in Central Florida. One of the closest towns is a massive retirement community, where you’ll find more gussied-up golf carts in the parking lots than Lincoln Town Cars and Oldsmobiles.

Not coincidentally, this town is the local mecca for medical and dental care, and during our occasional visits for these services, I get to briefly enjoy the sensation of being decades younger and a head taller than anyone else in sight — man or woman.

So I was in the waiting room at the dentist’s office while my daughter was getting her teeth attended to, thinking about the upcoming consult with the orthodontist, who has probably already nicknamed my kid “Porsche.” Suddenly, an elderly gent burst through the door and tottered up to the counter clutching a small vial.

“I brought my stool sample!” he announced loudly, flourishing the vial at the receptionist. She recoiled and told the old man he must be in the wrong office because this is a dental practice and they don’t collect stool samples.

“You’ve got to see my stool sample!” he insisted, and to everyone’s horror, he began trying to pry off the lid of the vial.

The receptionist, thinking the codger must be deaf, was shouting that he was in the wrong office, and swiveled her office chair as far away from the counter as she could in her little enclosure as the old man turned the vial sideways and removed the lid, intent on displaying his stool sample on the counter for all to see.

Which he did. It was a wooden, miniature three-legged stool, about the size of a quarter. The old fellow laughed and laughed and laughed, then made a present of his “stool sample” to the receptionist. People are weird here.

[X-posted at Rumproast]

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Locked and Loaded

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I’m not a huge fan of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn (he’s no Pam Iorio). But to his credit, he was able to imagine tens of thousands of pissed-off citizens, drunken yahoos, strip-club happy-hour ejectees, belligerent teabaggers, endlessly circling Hoveround grannies and assorted other malcontents milling around the RNC — with guns! — and recognize that it might be a problem.

So he asked state seal-embossed ambulatory dildo and future one-term Governor Rick Scott for an exception to the area’s concealed carry laws, which basically require everyone over the age of five to pack a 9mm, and received an NRA-drafted missive by return post:

The short answer to your request is found in the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution…You note that the City’s temporary ordinance regulates “sticks, poles and water guns,” but that firearms are a “noticeable item missing from the City’s temporary ordinance.” Firearms are noticeably included, however, in the 2nd Amendment.

Sweet bandoliered Jeebus, what a condescending prick. Well, at least Buckhorn covered his ass. If there’s a shoot-out at the No Gay Corral this August, no one can pin it on him.

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