Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

It’s the corruption, stupid.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Second rate reporter says what?

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

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Read a fucking book.

mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.

Original Sen

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After this morning’s post on granny fetishism, DougJ sent me this definition:

sen (Latin-senex) ROOT – old
a. senile: of, relating to, exhibiting, or characteristic of old age
b. seniority: a privileged status attained by length of continuous service
c. senior: higher ranking : SUPERIOR
(other words: senator, senescent, senate, senility)

And it fits this interview with Ben Nelson (via):

The Nebraska Democrat pleaded ignorance when asked this week whether Congress should cap ATM fees. Nelson said that while he’s no fan of unnecessary fees, he’s unfamiliar with the charges.

“I’ve never used an ATM, so I don’t know what the fees are,” Nelson said, adding that he gets his cash from bank tellers, just not automatic ones. “It’s true, I don’t know how to use one.

“But I could learn how to do it just like I’ve … I swipe to get my own gas, buy groceries. I know about the holograms.”

By “holograms,” Nelson clarified that he meant the bar codes on products read by automatic scanners in the checkout lanes at stores such as Lowe’s and Menard’s.

I think there are many 70- and 80-year olds who are sharper and more well-informed than people half their age. The problem is that none very few of them serve in the US Senate.

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The DC Press Corps’ Granny Fetish

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Today’s NYT headline on a Sestak story might as well be “Sestak Ignores Specter’s Request to Get Off His Lawn”:

White House Embraces Upstart Who Beat Specter

A 58-year-old former Admiral who’s spent two terms in Congress is an “upstart” only in a world where age and senility are taboo topics. Reporters who would cringe at the notion of an 80 year-old performing a bypass, or a 76 year-old prosecuting a murder trial, routinely ignore the fact that Specter and Bennett are elderly men whose prime was well in the past.

The men who beat Bennett in Utah were 30-40 years younger than Bennett. Utah has the lowest median age of any state in the country. But I haven’t seen a single mention of the relevance of Bennett’s age in any of his political eulogies.

A big part of the reason that age is off limits is that the Village also venerates incipient senility within its ranks. If they started pointing out that 70 and 80 year-olds might be better off retired, people would start wondering why we’re still watching Sam Donaldson and reading David Broder.

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It’s the Playbook, Stupid

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Daniel Larison is the only person I can find who is suitably acerbic about last night’s Republican fuckup in PA-12. As they did in the other recent special elections, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ran against “Pelosi-Reid” and Obama, while the Democrats backed a Blue Dog. In this case, the Democrat, Critz, beat the Republican by 8 points.

I’ve seen the NRCC playbook firsthand for the last few years as a resident of NY-29, and it’s a useless waste of money. The underlying assumption of the strategy is that voters hate Nancy Pelosi with such conviction that merely linking her to the Democrat du jour is a sure winner. The NRCC makes sure that every ad includes an unflattering picture of Pelosi splashed across a shot of the Democratic candidate.

In addition to being borderline misogynist, those ads are almost wholly negative. They seek to prevent the election of a Democrat, not to promote the election of a Republican.

Here’s the question no Republicans seem to ask about the Pelosi-Reid strategy: If the country is in an anti-incumbent mood, why does the NRCC keep running a campaign that focuses almost entirely on the petty squabbles between incumbents in their party and the leadership of the Democrats in Congress?

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Let It Burn

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Carefully following the inverted pyramid rule of good journalism, the Post’s story about Bobby Jindal’s oil spill response puts this in the 8th paragraph of about 30:

He still struggles with political aesthetics: In the first days after the crisis, Jindal showed up wearing a blue blazer at a news conference in a broiling marsh. Only recently has he donned the standard governor-in-crisis uniform of rolled-up shirt sleeves.

Sometimes I think this blog is too hard on the DC media, then I read shit like this.

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Watching the Bishop Squirm

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Orrin Hatch has always been good for a few lines of tendentious bullshit, but the Bennett teabagging has inspired him to new heights:

HATCH: […] I listen to these folks, I don’t disagree with them. They’re angry for good reasons. I mean, my gosh, these people in Washington are running this country right into the ground. […]

INGRAHAM: But aren’t you part of Washington?

HATCH: Hell no. I’ve never been. I’ve never considered this a job. I’ve had, people have asked me, they said, “say Senator Hatch, don’t you just love being a U.S. senator?” My constant answer is this. No, I don’t love it at all, but I’m good at it.

I’ll give Orrin this: having been in the Senate for 33 years, it’s not a job — it’s a life-long career.

Watching the Bishop SquirmPost + Comments (32)