(Click to embiggen) Looks like we need an open thread.
Am I the only one who thinks this kind of stuff is funny as hell? In the same vein, this cover cracks me up. (From Reddit, where else?)
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 32 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
(Click to embiggen) Looks like we need an open thread.
Am I the only one who thinks this kind of stuff is funny as hell? In the same vein, this cover cracks me up. (From Reddit, where else?)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 35 Comments
This post is in: Lizard Blogging, Our Failed Media Experiment
Let’s wring our hands, because some Democrats are using the same laws Karl Rove used in 2010 to create their own giant anonymous PAC full of corporate money:
The effort is modeled on the one Republicans started last year — with help from the Republican strategist Karl Rove — that attacked Democrats with a barrage of advertisements, mailings and phone calls. It was widely credited with helping the party to take control of the House and diminish the Democrats’ edge in the Senate last fall. One of those groups, Crossroads GPS, was set up under a section of the tax code that allowed its donors to remain anonymous, leading Mr. Obama to refer to such groups collectively as “a threat to democracy” for the way they had shielded corporate interests from view as they sought to sway elections.
[…]Republicans seized on the formation of the group and its connections to the White House via Mr. Burton and the other co-founder of the groups, Sean Sweeney, a onetime deputy to the former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, as an example of hypocrisy.
This is the same kind of “hypocrisy” that Gregg Easterbrook wanked about last week:
If Obama is in earnest about wanting increased taxes on the wealthy, then he should send the United States Treasury $182,998. That’s the difference between his Form 1040 Line 60 (“This is your total tax”) and what he would have owed at the higher rate (plus limits on itemized deductions) he himself advocates.
Politicians are always advocating for what–in their view–is a better law, while following the current law. That’s just the way the system works. But the press is always ready to dream up, or re-print without comment, variations on the theme of calling someone a hypocrite for following a law they think ought to be changed. While I’ll admit that this does happen to both sides, it happens more often for Democrats, because they’re usually trying to strengthen existing law rather than weakening it.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 75 Comments
This post is in: Assholes
Here’s the nut of Trump’s problem:
Trump hasn’t disclosed his financial documents
Questions over Trump’s net worth have persisted for years and his refusal to reveal actual figures in the past is one reason some believe he’ll never run for president, since to register as a candidate involves extensive financial disclosures. Trump sought to tamp down such criticism by pledging to release his financial documents if President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. The president did just that Wednesday. Trump responded by saying he’ll release his financial documents “at the appropriate time.”
There’s no “appropriate” time for Trump to release his financial documents, because most of what Trump says on any topic on any given day is a baldfaced lie, and his favorite topic is the vastness of his riches. His whole faux empire of rented helicopters and jets, over-leveraged hotels and fake reality shows is built on an illusion of fabulous wealth. Filing the disclosures required to run for President would show once and for all that he’s miles from being a billionaire, has filed for bankruptcy numerous times, and that the “art” of his deals is that he gets to be the face for other people’s money.
Trump may or may not announce a run for President, but he will certainly not file the paperwork required for a real run for the office. He knows that the clickslaves in the press who are slavering over his current freakshow are aching to garner more precious hits by mining his financial documents. And he knows that this time he can’t file a nuisance lawsuit when reporters prove that he’s a garden variety millionaire instead of the $6 billion dollar man he claims to be.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 72 Comments
This post is in: Fuck The Middle-Class
Reader P sent me this link:
House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.[…]
“It’s pretty stunning,’’ said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions… . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.’’
ED has also posted about this. Maybe some of you know why this happened, but it seems like a strange development in a blue state.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 76 Comments
This post is in: Both Sides Do It!
Remember when a guy who wasn’t born in America was running for President?
During the 2008 campaign, questions about John McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone on a U.S. military base prompted some to ask whether McCain was eligible to be president, since the Constitution stipulates that anyone not born in the United States is not eligible to be president.
Amid a flurry of news reports, McCain’s own campaign announced in February 2008 that it was conducting an investigation. When a bipartisan pair of lawyers announced the following month that McCain was indeed eligible, the issue virtually died–apart from a Senate resolution that pretty much laid the question to rest by attesting to the facts surrounding McCain’s birth and citizenship.
But the winner of the 2008 election, Barack Obama, has faced a relentless campaign questioning his U.S. citizenship–and thereby the legitimacy of his presidency–that has disregarded the facts.
IOKIYAR
This jogged my memory of Andrew Sullivan’s frequent, intense and bracing calls for an investigation into McCain’s citizenship, his howls of scorn at the media who failed to do their part, and his questioning of McCain’s delay in providing a long-form birth certificate to clear the whole matter up.
Also, too: A Senate or House vote on Barack Hussein Obama II’s birth and citizenship would be very fucking interesting right about now.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 115 Comments
This post is in: WTF?
Amazon is holding states over a barrel, asking them for sales tax exemptions in return for building and staffing distribution hubs in their locales. South Carolina recently voted against an exemption, and Amazon is leaving. I get that, but why is this a Tea Party issue?
Most Midlands lawmakers supported the exemption, but opposition fanned by a coalition of small merchants, national retailers and Tea Party activists proved insurmountable […]
Is it localism and solidarity with the small merchants, or are they on the side of the national retailers? Did they pick this issue because Amazon is run by Yankees? Or do they just attach themselves anywhere they think a little noisemaking will get them some attention?
by $8 blue check mistermix| 107 Comments
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal
New Jersey suburbanites are upset about solar panels appearing on utility poles:
“I hate them,” Mr. Olsen, 40, said of the row of panels attached to electrical poles across the street. “It’s just an eyesore.”
Around the corner lives Tom Trobiano, 61, a liquor salesman, now adapting to the lone solar panel hanging over his driveway. “When it’s up close,” he said, “the panel takes on a life of its own.”
[…]Some residents consider the overhanging panels “ugly” and “hideous” and worry aloud about the effect on property values.
You know what else are hideous and ugly eyesores? Utility poles and power lines. I realize that the kind of stupidity that would let birtherism become mainstream is killing us, but its handmaiden is the inability of the average white burbclave-dwelling Christian to accept even the smallest change or sacrifice to their culturally venerated 100% American way of life.