Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How stupid are these people?

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

This fight is for everything.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

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

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

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

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

We still have time to mess this up!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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Monks Gone Wild

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Seriously wild:

Cambodian Buddhist monk was in hospital and his colleague was under detention on Thursday at a pagoda after a drug and alcohol fuelled fight allegedly ended in one attacking the other with a machete.

Police chief of Kandaing district in the central province of Pursat, Pen Thun, said after a night spent binging on methamphetamines and rice wine, the pair had quarrelled over a 50 cent loan owed to Khieu Aen, 23, that fellow monk Van Chanthoeun, 19, said he would need time to repay.

“Khieu Aen became enraged, produced a machete and chopped Chanthoeun once in the shoulder, requiring him to be sent to hospital,” Thun said. “It is unseemly behaviour for monks and it gives the police a headache dealing with such cases.”

He said police were now waiting for the ministry of cults and religions to make a decision on the case as the police cannot arrest monks.

That is the weirdest story I have read in a while.

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Speaking of the End of Vacation

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WVU’s fall semester started, and Morgantown is a flurry of frenetic activity once again. There are just people everywhere, and the traffic is terrible (by local standards). The bus I take to work and back usually takes 20 minutes to get there (which is still faster than driving, because you don’t have to spend 30 minutes finding a place to park), but yesterday it took 50 minutes.

Because I will be busy, expect this blog to slow down during the days. I will still have all my morning posts and updates at night, but since I work during the days (and on Wednesday, from noon until nine), daytime updates will be minimal to nonexistent.

Still, this is my favorite part of the year. You can feel the electricty and energy in the air, Mountaineer and Steeler football are about to start, and every semester is a chance to start anew. One of the things I really enjoy is watching the students. As they get younger every year (I stay the same, of course), it is endlessly amusing to watch them try to assert their own identities and struggle to express themselves.

There is no better life than on the college campus.

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Sullivan Is Back

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Andrew is back from the beach, and starts off on a dour note:

Hey, we’ve exploded the size of government, legitimized an insolvent nanny-state for a generation, guaranteed a huge future tax increase, missed an opportunity for seriously trying to move toward energy independence, and made the biggest intelligence error since Pearl Harbor. Not bad, eh? The emails on Frum’s blog are very telling about the mood of the conservative base. My own evolving view of what’s happening in Iraq is that there’s still a reasonable chance of a pretty depressingly illiberal constitution, folllowed by low-level civil war, policed in part by young Americans. Better than Saddam? You betcha. Better than a crumbling regime under Saddam’s sons during an Islamist upswing? Absolutely. But a long way from what many of us had hoped for.

And that is after a several month vacation.

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Straw Poll Update

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If you haven’t already, go vote in Patrick Ruffini’s straw poll.

The overall results can be found here, with Giuliani, Allen, and Gingrich leading the total vote getters.

Results from Balloon Juice voters (107 of you have cast your vote as I write this) can be found here, with an almost even split between Hagel and McCain with Giuliani trailing in third place.

Go vote.

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