Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Libby Spencer wrote for Balloon Juice from 2011-12.
"Well, it’s my turn to fill in for Doug, and no, I have no idea why he and John so kindly gave me the keys to the place either."
This post is in: Because of wow., All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Fucked-up-edness
Bringing new meaning to “indoctrinating the children” this is quite possibly the most disgraceful exploitation of a child I’ve ever seen that doesn’t involve actual physical abuse.
Find the gun bit especially disturbing. Can only hope this kid wises up like the CPAC whiz kid once he gets past puberty.
This post is in: Election 2012, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
Your future under a Romney presidency. The Tea Party reads the tea leaves.
The stunning Texas victory of Ted Cruz, a young Tea Party-backed Republican over an establishment candidate vying for a Senate seat, has already so emboldened the insurgent conservative movement that activists are warning Mitt Romney he had better get on board.
“If we can elect a really conservative House and Senate that will force Romney to go along with our bold conservative agenda,” Shell said. “He’s going to have to really, really go to the right. He’ll be working with guys in the House and Senate. He won’t be able to get away with too many middle of the road policies, especially on things like the deficit.”
“It’s not going to be a Romney driven presidency,” Norman Orenstein, a researcher at the conservative think tank AEI recently told ABC News. “It’s going to be a Congressional, conservative, Republican driven presidency from Congress.”
I see no evidence that they’re wrong. And wasn’t it Grover who assured us earlier that Romney would do as he’s told?
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
Oh no. I’ve been dreading this day. This town is just teeming with abandoned cats and it’s stray kitten season. Went down to the porch for a breath of fresh air and a sweet little gray Tort kitten came running up to me. Not at all feral. Jumped in my lap and purred its little heart out.
I can’t have pets. I couldn’t bring him inside. But he was so skinny. And alone. And hungry. Yes, I fed him the fish I was going to have for dinner. He’s gone now. Maybe he won’t come back.
Update 12:12am: Hot bear on salmon action happening right now. Waterfall bear has a close friend.
by Libby Spencer| 128 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012
You could be the first to know who gets to be Mittster’s number two. Stealing a page from Obama’s 08 playbook, Team Rmoney developed a smartphone app to make the big announcement and it shall be called “Mitt’s VP.” I can hardly contain my excitement.
And it appears Team Rmoney is taking the data harvesting aspect to the next level.
But depending on how the Romney app works, it could provide even more demographic information to the Romney campaign. Upon instillation, the application asks permission to access data about where a user is located, and urges supporters to log in using social networks like Twitter. That could allow the campaign large-scale data harvesting, an invaluable tool for campaign staff looking to tailor advertising and fundraising efforts.
So far, it’s not flying off the shelves at the app store. The twitter just told me Obama’s new grassroots organizing app is swamping Mitt’s VP app in downloads.
Meanwhile the pride of the South Carolina, appearing “in Ann Arbor as part of a ‘Built By Us’ rally,” Gov. Nikki Haley says she doesn’t want to be VP or anything else in a Rmoney cabinet. Reasonably sure they weren’t planning on asking her.
Update: Apparently the plot hatched in the comment section is already working. Buzzfeed now reporting Romney is at #14 on the top free apps on the App Store, Obama’s app is at #165.
I have a feeling they are not all Romney supporters.
This post is in: Media, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Our Failed Political Establishment
The House GOPers are shameless liars:
Republicans have been been clear that they do not regard deep, looming cuts to defense and domestic programs — the enforcement mechanism at the heart of last year’s debt limit agreement — as a reason to compromise with Democrats and put real tax revenues into the mix of cuts and reforms required to reduce deficits over time.
But in recent weeks they’ve taken things a step further. They’ve disavowed the so-called “sequester” altogether and handed full responsibility for its existence to President Obama — despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of them voted to implement it last August.
“It was the president who came up with the sequester because he didn’t want the debt limit to get in the way of his campaign,” said House Speaker John Boehner at his weekly press availability last week. “Now these cuts are looming and he’s nowhere to be found.”
Not sure how that could be less true. It’s certainly not what Boehner was saying last November.
“I would feel bound by it,” he said. “It was part of the agreement. And so either we succeed or we are in the sequester. The sequester is ugly. Why? Because we don’t want anybody to go there. That’s why we have to succeed.”
And let’s review what Boehner said when the budget deal was passed almost exactly one year ago.
Boehner: I do. When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I’m pretty happy.
Of course, we all knew at the time Republicans would never honor the agreement. But I didn’t expect them to pretend they never voted for it. Sadly, fully 27%-40% of the voters will believe them. Not like anyone on the nightly news is going to call the Republicans out for lying about it. And I imagine the official Village fact-checkers are even now madly parsing the statements looking for that one grammatical twist that makes it at least partly true.
This post is in: Media, Movies, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
Stayed up until 5:00am last night watching two of the worst B-list movies I’ve ever seen. Never caught the name of the first one. Some kind of “end of the world” theme. Looked like it was from the 80s. I recognized the stars, but couldn’t remember their names. The plot was so absurd, by the end I was glad they died. They deserved it for being so stupid.
The second one was The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Set in the late 40s to early 50s. Allegedly true story about a serial killer in Texarkana. Costuming and period sets saved that film. But the most awesome Texas Ranger in all of history and hundreds of LEOs never caught the killer. Most unsatisfying ending but not surprising because their police work sucked as bad as the dialogue. So why did I keep watching? Damned if I know.
On a related note, guess I’m so uncool, that I’m the only person on earth who is happy Peter Jackson is stretching The Hobbit into a trilogy. I understand he’s expanding the story into prequel flashbacks or some such thing. I hope he figures out how to work in Bombadil. Really missed him in LOTR. And if Peter is adding from the appendices, then there should be lots more elves. I love elven history.
I don’t care how long it takes. Not like I don’t know the end of the story. I’ve read the books so many times, I know the whole series practically by heart. Okay with me if it takes a couple of years to finish the movies. Happy to wait to see what Mr. Jackson does with his vision of the tale. Hell, gives me a reason to hope the Mayans are wrong.
This post is in: I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
Although there are many others, this is one reason why I follow Lizzie Oh Really on the twitter. She discovered the wild bear livecam on the same site that hosts the Golden Retriever puppies. Last week the #bearcam hashtag she launched one afternoon pretty much captured the entirety of my follow list by nightfall. It got to be big enough a thing to get a Gawker mention.
Evenings seem to the best time to catch the bear on salmon action. A lot of bears there right now. Sadly, waterfall bear is missing. He’s my favorite. But fair warning. It’s hypnotic. You think you won’t stay when you get there, but suddenly it’s half an hour later and you find yourself cheering when they catch that fish…