Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Second rate reporter says what?

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Fight them, without becoming them!

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

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

Let there be snark.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

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Open Thread

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Guess who’s going to spend the next sixteen hours (or what feels like it) in front of a microscope. Govern yourselves until I get back.

* This seems like promising research, but I should probably warn those kids about something…
* If you’re in England, watch your back.
* Arctic sea ice is melting faster than ever. Next comes the giant lens of cold fresh water, then the shutdown of the deep-sea conveyor current. Combine that with record CO2 levels and the massive release of permafrost methane. What do you get? I haven’t a freaking clue. But it ought to be fun.

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Open Thread

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Here’s an interesting exercise while the blog’s proprietors try to keep afloat during the academic silly season: come up with one time that you have been completely, embarrassingly wrong about something. Ironic evasion, e.g. “I was arong to give Bush the benefit of the doubt” won’t cut it unless you really did and you were next to insufferable about it.

For me the first thing that comes to mind was my reaction to the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in London. Call me gullible to take the original police report at face value, on top of which I was in a super-cranky mood that morning and feeling unusally sympathetic to authority so I forgot to even hedge my condemnation with the usual qualifications and disclaimers. Eesh. I don’t know how the opinion certification board let me go on blog commenting after that.

New rule for this thread only – commenters have to lead off with a suitably embarrassing goof of his or her own. Then you’re free to mock me, John, each other or chat about the day’s news. Should be entertaining.

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A Small Step

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We never get any good news around here, so here is a small piece:

The cost of treating children infected with H.I.V. and AIDS is poised to plummet next year, under a deal announced today between two Indian drugmakers and former President Bill Clinton’s foundation.

Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories agreed to make 19 different anti-retroviral drugs designed for children available at an average price of 16 cents a day, or $60 a year, which is about 45 percent lower than the lowest current price, the Clinton Foundation said in a statement.

Because not everyone has access to the current lowest price, the plan will actually translate into a four- to six-fold cost reduction for many children, said Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.

The prices will be available to 62 developing countries and will lead to the treatment of an additional 100,000 people in 2007, the statement said.

Good news, indeed.

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The Scandal That Wasn’t

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Until now I have passed on the apparently scintillating question of who Nancy Pelosi would pick to chair the Defense Committee for two reasons. First, the idea that she could only pick Jane Harman or Alcee Hastings seemed silly. Second, I don’t understand getting worked up about something that Pelosi hasn’t done yet. Well, I guess I was right. Alcee Hastings won’t be picked for reasons that should be obvious to everybody and, via two excellent posts by Glenn Greenwald, Jane Harman has already met the post’s limit of four terms.

Look at it this way – the GOP’s work output demonstrates that they never liked the act of governing very much. Despite their rhetoric about the “party of no” and whatnot, Republicans really thrive on ginned-up scandals and phony outrage. Those slow or new enough to disagree can kindly revisit how many hours of testimony the Republican Congress spent determining whether the Clinton White House used its Christmas card list for fundraising. FOX News, the Goldberg clan, Drudge and most of our luminaries in the rightwing New Media made their name by throwing a three-year epileptic fit over a blowjob in the Oval Office. Casting wild aspersions at powerful Democrats is their comfort zone.

With Democrats back in the driver’s seat the GOP and its trained pets will get back to doing what they do best. This fabricated flap over the Defense Committee seat will be only the first of many, many, many Drudge-fueled scandals that amount to less than nothing once the smoke grenades have run out of fuel. I guess one could ask whether the clenis years taught the major news outlets anything about playing the sap, if one wanted to get a reputation for not paying attention. In reality the stupidity hasn’t even warmed up yet.

Postscript: Those scandals which don’t amount to nothing, e.g. which have some meat on their bones, will and should be taken seriously. For example William Jefferson, who bloggers across the lib spectrum are working their ass off to unseat. But count on acres and acres of flak for every one that matters.

***

In other news the pace has picked up here in the salt mines of my academic research lab, which will probably cut into my time to troll the internet for good material and blog it. In the meantime I recommend giving John the usual hard time as well as Steve Benen’s excellent work at the Carpetbagger Report. More than anyone else I usually check there before fleshing out a post because odds are that Steve already has it up. Thus my posts tend to have a lot of Carpetbagger links. I don’t know to what degree his commenters have caught on to our trademarked brand of spoofing (something in the water around here?) but try not to drive them too crazy.

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Turkey Day

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Due to holiday-related stuff I plan be off the grid for most of tomorrow, and if you have the option I recommend that you all do the same. That big lamp with a yellow tint and no diffuser? That’s the sun.

Or chat amongst yourselves. I plan on dining with some French friends of my wife so I have very little idea what I’m getting into. Maybe they’ll do Turkey, maybe goose, maybe (I hope) one of those rib racks with the little hat on each rib. If it’s anything like the mammoth Christmas dinner that my wife and pere – in-law cooked up for my folks in 2001 then I may not wake up until Saturday.

Treat this as an open thread for the holidays, holiday travel, the latest movies, classic movies, your superior taste in music, football. Whatever. Travel safe.

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