Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Second rate reporter says what?

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

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Open Thread: Be Of Good Cheer

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Couldn’t resist. Scott Meyer’s website is Basic Instructions.

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Also, commentor Steeplejack posted this earlier today:

All may not be lost. Yesterday I got a report from my friend in Alaska (70-year-old woman), who went to a “meet and greet” for Scott McAdams, the Democratic nominee for the Senate.
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“Went to meet the Democratic Senate candidate who is going up against the now notorious Tea Party candidate, Joe Miller—don’t know if you saw the profile on NYT yesterday. [. . .] I learned more about [Miller] than I had heard in Fairbanks, which is where he lives at the end of Tribulation Trail, with his wife and eight kids. Like everyone in the sociaIist state of Alaska, he has been freeloading in various ways here, but now saying we have to cut the federal deficit and stop earmarks which Alaska lives and dies by. He forbade the reporter from visiting his home, sounds like a conspiracy theorist, thus paranoid. It fits. Anyhow, the Dem guy is the mayor of Sitka and was chosen by the Democratic Party in Alaska probably at a jovial gathering when everybody thought he’d be running against Murkowski and didn’t stand a chance. He may stand a chance now because once Mr. Miller’s philosophy sinks in, more people may vote against him.”

More and more, it looks to me like Scott McAdams deserves some of Balloon Juice’s ActBlue dollars. (And that NYTimes article certainly makes his opponent sound like every astroturfed teabagger’s wet dream.) Your thoughts?

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Call them Al

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Dave Weigel has an interesting piece on what would have happened if Al Franken had been seated more promptly. I’m not big on counterfactual analysis — it always makes me think of “What if Napoleon had a B-52 at the battle of Waterloo?” — so I’ll skip his predictions (if that’s the appropriate word here) and focus on this:

Here’s something amazing about the Franken mess: Republicans appear to have paid no price for it.* The Republican who lost, Norm Coleman, is a respected think tank chairman who’s seen as a credible candidate for RNC Chairman in 2011 or for U.S. Senate again in 2014. From time to time a conservative group releases some fishy data about how Franken won with “fraud” (on this, I trust the Minnesota courts and election boards that he didn’t), and the claim gets aired out on Fox News and endorsed by prominent Republicans. History’s written by the winners, unless those winners 1) join unpopular Senate majorities and 2) are Democrats.

*Why are Republicans better at making scandals out of other process fights than Democrats were at making a scandal out of the Franken seating? I’m referring to how they intimated, even before the election, that the Democrats would refuse to seat Scott Brown, and how they’re currently churning up fears of a lame duck session. Two things spring to mind. First, Republicans are better at messaging things like this. “But the Democrats have the White House!” you say? Sure, but the president doesn’t want to spend his capital on process fights, while Fox News and a bunch of busy back-benchers will happily do so. Second, I think a big factor was Al Franken himself. If Democrats needed Generic Lawyer Who Barely Won to take his seat, that would have been one thing. But the optics of going to the mat for Stuart Smalley sucked.

I noticed that the teatards made all these pre-emptive attacks against Lisa Murkowski “pulling a Franken”, attacks which worked in terms of getting a pretty quick concession. I expect the teatard primarying of Republican incumbents to continue at least through 2012. It will be interesting to see if the general dynamic is that the Republican incumbents play the role of Democrats (easily cowed) while the teatards play the role of Republicans (bullying).

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Open Thread: Cat Rescue (Large & In Charge)

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Via commentor Chris W.:

This is Moe. We adopted him from the local shelter when he was around four years old. He had been turned back into the shelter two different times. They made it clear to us he could not be around other cats (we’ve since found out he is unbearably dominant around other cats, the exact opposite of his normal personality). He was even kept in a separate room at the shelter.
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After we’d agreed to adopt him, the staff let us know it was his last day and he would have been euthanized if we hadn’t adopted him. He was so well loved there the manager of the facility came in on her day off to say goodbye to him.
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Moe is ten years old now and, for the life of me, I cannot imagine how anyone could have turned such a gentle, affectionate animal back into a shelter. He is beloved by everyone (I have a friend who has more pictures of Moe in his phone than of his own cat).
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In spite of his size (29 pounds at his top weight), Moe has always been a very healthy guy so were quite surprised when late last year he turned sluggish and just lost most of his natural fire. After several ER visits and 2 hospital stays, he was found to have an
abscess (it grew from not visible to the size of my fist in about 2-3 days). We are incredibly grateful to the staff at The University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Medicine Center for saving Moe’s life and providing him with love and bellyrubs while he was in hospital. Their staff is the best (his doctor even asked after him by name when she saw us at Trader Joe’s six months after she’d seen him).
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We have our old buddy back and better than ever. My wife barely misses the flesh she lost trying to administer the oral antibiotics for a month and Moe has even lost a couple of pounds.
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Shelter animals are the greatest. I also highly recommend mature cats over kittens (they are more stable and a lot less likely to be adopted).

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Open Thread

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Sorry for the lack of posts, but had a busy weekend. I had some company in town, and then on Saturday we had a food co-op to cook for that took up the whole day. Basically, eight different people joined the co-op, and we make a main course for eight people, put it in tupperware, then meet and swap so everyone has something different for eight meals. It was actually a lot of fun, and I got some good eats in freezer. I made a stuffed pepper dish of sorts. I put a bed of cilantro infused rice and black beans down, then stuffed poblano peppers with a mixture of queso, chorizo, and rice, then placed them in the container, then topped it with a red sauce with onions and peppers from the garden with some spices and then put melting queso all over that and baked it. It turned out pretty well, I think.

I’m also now on day five without a phone, and am starting to get used to it. I think I actually like it, to be honest.

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