Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

The revolution will be supervised.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

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

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

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

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Be a wild strawberry.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

“Alexa, change the president.”

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

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Read a fucking book.

Perhaps some day, over a glass of whiskey that I accept, despite my gastritis, we could talk frankly about this.

mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.

The Fruits of Shunning

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Yesterday’s post about Obama “shunning” the DC press corpse for the G8 started a discussion in the comments about whether this was a wise strategy for the White House. I don’t know the long-term answer to that, but short-term, no harm done. Here’s the WSJ story, written in party by Elizabeth Williamson, the Journal reporter who was complaining about having to stay in Toronto. It’s mainly a re-write of the G8 communique with a few quotes.

This AP “color” report focuses on Obama sharing his helicopter with David Cameron, the seating arrangement of leaders, how everyone was talking about the World Cup, and the kind of beer Cameron and Obama drank. Somehow the reporter for that piece was able to get most of those juicy details without actually being there.

These two stories illustrate the simple fact that the corporeal presence of the DC press corpse isn’t really necessary. The reason reporters get so bent out of shape when they can’t be physically near the President is because they don’t want to be identified as an expensive anachronism. Since they’re mainly well-paid middlemen for packages released by the White House press office, they could most their job just as well from offices in the District, or in Bangalore.

In addition to tailing the President as he attends his kid’s soccer game, the daily duck-and-dodge of the White House press “briefing” is another expensive waste of time. An experienced operator like Gibbs, or even a lesser light like Dana Perino, just isn’t going to cough up news by accident. All the “real news” is leaked via unnamed sources who call their pet reporters.

The whole press conference exercise is actually corrosive to public confidence in the press and the White House. Reporters lose because they look ineffective, and the White House loses because they look like weasels as they duck the reporters’ questions.

Downsizing the elaborate, expensive White House Kabuki operation would probably be a net positive for everyone but the reporters who get to fly everywhere the President goes. That’s the dirty little secret behind stories venerating the sacred agreements between the press and the White House.

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Obama’s Amish Ways

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Obama gave the press corpse a slip, probably because he was going to the buttcrack of nowhere for the G-8, and this is how the WSJ characterized it:

It is highly unusual for the president to shun his permanent media detail that way, particularly at a high-profile event in a remote location.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, here are a few of the New Testament verses which serve as the basis for shunning:

2Thessalonians 3:6: In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.

Romans 16:17: I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.

2John 10–11, NASB: If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.

I’m not a biblical scholar, but some of those sound pretty close to the mark. Thanks to Joseph Nobles for the link.

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Die Already

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Here’s the result of The Times of London’s first step towards a paywall, requiring user logins:

[…] according to Hitwise’s numbers, simply adding the registration barrier has cut traffic to the site almost in half. Prior to the change, The Times was seeing somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five percent of the traffic going to the print news media category; after, it was hovering around two percent.

Hitwise also tracked where users were going once they hit the registration page. About a third stay on one ofThe Times’ properties, but many head straight to another news site (The Telegraph and The Guardian are big winners here), or simply to Google.

It’s nice to see Rupert Murdoch getting a taste of a choice-driven free market.

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It Never Ends

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Expect to hear a lot more of this:

DAVID BROOKS: […] I thought nominating or appointing Petraeus was like an apology to George Bush and Dick Cheney, because it’s an acknowledgement finally that Petraeus’ strategy with the surge actually worked, which the administration is slow to acknowledge.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which was something that Barack Obama had said — had been critical of.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And, in private, I think they knew it worked. In public, they can’t say it. But it clearly worked.

It’s not just the zombie lies that kill us, it’s zombie quarter- and half-truths like “the surge worked”.

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Anger Management

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Meg Whitman showed her face in public for the first time since news broke that EBay paid a $200K settlement to an employee who Whitman shoved (or, in the words of the AP, “physically ‘guided’ her from a conference room”). Here’s Meg:

“Listen, I bring tremendous strengths to this office. I have worked in business. I have met a payroll,” she said. “I know how to get things done, and I am held accountable for results.”

Perhaps I’m unschooled in the fine details of corporate accountability, but I’d wager that a low-level EBay manager who shoved a subordinate might not experience exactly the same kind of “accountability” as Meg did.

Also, too: Who gets that pissed about an interview in Second Life (via)? If something that trifling is enough to turn Whitman into a strong-arm shoving machine, how can anyone expect her to keep her cool as Governor?

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