Well played, Mr. Axelrod.
Poll-Axed
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Election 2012, Open Threads, Politics
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Election 2012, Open Threads, Politics
Well played, Mr. Axelrod.
by Betty Cracker| 123 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Teabagger Stupidity
U.S. Rep. Allen West of Florida rivals even Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Deadbeat Dad, in personal and political assholery. Having been booted out of the Army for a harsh interrogation incident in Iraq, West went on to win a House seat during the 2010 election. Since then, he has consistently hit every wingnut pleasure center, comparing …
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Domestic Politics, Open Threads
[I think there’s a clause in my Balloon Juice contract about pet photos. This one depicts my dog Patsy, who harbors ambitions to become a biped. She loves to belly up to our backyard tiki bar. You can see the whites of her eyes because she’s scanning the surface of the bar for pretzels without …
We don’t serve your kind here…Post + Comments (75)
To compensate for these restrictions, she dyes portions of her spiky hairdo vivid colors, achieving a sort of peacock effect. I think it’s kind of cute, and it certainly stands out in our little town, garnering amazed commentary from grocery cashiers to farmers’ market attendants to parents at the little league softball field, which is kind of the point, I guess.
This latter group (little league mombies) has long eyed us warily, ever since asking me years ago what church we attend and receiving a “we’re not religious” in reply. They’re thus unsurprised that I allow my daughter to eschew Bumpits and ponytails in favor of a vaguely Satanic hairdo and god only knows what else. I can sense the clucking and pitying glances thrown my way as I sit stoically in the bleachers during practice, reading a book or scrolling through godless blog comments on my iPhone.
Earlier this week, my daughter and I took it into our heads to teach ourselves to juggle. We found numerous video tutorials on YouTube and selected one that seemed likely. All we lacked were appropriate objects to juggle. After softball practice, we stopped by the discount general store to see if we could find tennis balls. They didn’t have any, but they did have cat toys that would do the trick. We selected three nearly tennis ball-sized ones and three smaller ones.
The lady at the check-out asked us how many cats we have, and we told her we had none and intended instead to use the balls to teach ourselves to juggle. The conversation then took a strange turn: She asked us what we had against pets. We assured her that we adore pets and in fact have two dogs. Then she asked us what we had against cats specifically. I told her I think cats are perfectly lovely, but my husband doesn’t really like them, and that we are basically dog people.
She then launched into a passionate defense of cats, which she needn’t have since I had already told her I have nothing at all against the critters. She implied that people who dislike cats are heartless monsters, which was kind of rude since I’d just told her my husband doesn’t care for them. But I let it pass, grabbed our cat toys and receipt got the hell out of there.
We got home and commenced the juggling lesson. It’s harder than it looks. Our YouTube instructor recommended throwing a single ball in an eye-level arc from hand to hand until it can easily be done with one’s eyes closed before moving on to the next step.
My daughter lacked the patience to perfect each step before moving on to the next, so after just a few minutes of arcing a single ball, she was attempting to introduce a second and then a third, and soon she was chasing them all over the room and trying to extract them from the slobbery mouths of our dogs, who couldn’t understand why we were hogging what were clearly PET toys to ourselves.
Mr. Cracker had been out all morning, and he arrived home to this scene of chaos. When we explained that we were trying to learn to juggle, he picked up three balls and commenced juggling like a goddamned trained circus clown! Not just basic juggling either -– he could do fancy moves too like passing one ball from hand to hand while lobbing and catching the other two straight up and down in perfect synchronicity.
Now, my daughter and I have known this man for 13 and 17 years respectively, and not once has he ever dropped a single hint that he possessed this talent. While it’s true that juggling may not have ever come up specifically, wouldn’t a person who knew how to juggle so well have demonstrated that talent at some point during the course of nearly two fucking decades? Maybe while sorting socks or something?
Our daughter declared that she hated him and stormed off to her room, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows. She’ll probably never attempt to juggle again. As for me, I’m left to wonder what else the juggling,* heartless, cat-hating bastard is hiding from us…
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]*H/T: DanielX
This post is in: Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Sarah Palin took to Facebook last night to express shock that fellow Republicans are using dirty tricks on one another in the campaign: We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the …
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Life as an iconic hairdo isn’t as glamorous as media depictions would have you believe. Take the sad case of the self-contained hair-pod that resides on the noggin of the third Mrs. Gingrich. If you only knew what those titanium tresses have had to endure. Crushing ennui brought on by endless rubber-chicken circuit events. Listening …
by Betty Cracker| 109 Comments
This post is in: Media, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, General Stupidity
Angry DougJ is definitely onto something with this “useful idiots” idea: One of the great victories of conservatism was framing every debate as the real, Tebow-fearing Murkins versus the dirty hippies who spit on soldiers. Is there anyway the left could try to do the same with banskters and bankster fanboys? A few months ago, …
Useful ImagesPost + Comments (109)
As DougJ suggested, a study of the great conservative victory in framing the debate as DFHs vs Real Americans is instructive. So what images did conservatives use to bolster their case?
As it turns out, the stories of hippies spitting on soldiers was apocryphal, but we must always remember that the truth doesn’t matter in this scenario. What’s needed is a compelling image to go along with the narrative.
Reagan knew this, which is why he invoked an image of the unwashed hippies who haunted Middle America’s dreams at the time when he said, “A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.” There are many iconic images to go along with that characterization, of course. But the image that is perhaps the most enduring symbol of hippies’ alleged traitorousness involves a different Jane:
It’s so powerful that it still appears on a newish bumper sticker affixed to a neighbor’s pickup truck even though the event was 40 years ago, the subject is now a grandma who has long-since apologized for giving offense and the war she opposed is now nearly universally acknowledged to have been a giant, bloody mistake.
Conversely, accusations of bankster malfeasance are true; we are standing in the economic rubble they created. Do we have any handy images in our grab bag? Well, there’s this:
And maybe this:
Got any other contenders? Think hard. This is important shit, people.
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Snoozy has-been Fred Thompson was supposed to cut an endorsement vid for his pal Newt Gingrich. But as Fred did so often during his short-lived campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, he plopped down in his recliner with a glass of scotch and was soon swept away by the sandman. The Gingrich people called about …