You got what you wanted now. He’ll overturn Roe. He’ll side with businesses against unions. With wealth against powerlessness. He’ll help politicians cut your goddamn sacred motherfucking TAXES. Who cares if he’s a rapist? WHO CARES IF HE’S A GODDAMN RAPIST, right? Who cares how many women he hurt? Who cares enough to even FIND OUT how many women he hurt? You got what you wanted. You got what you wanted so why even bother. You got what YOU wanted. You screamers outside the clinics. You affluenza-riddled tourists to the idea of America, policing the grocery carts of food-stamp recipients, … Continue reading Go Ahead and Celebrate, Wingnuts. Me and Mine Have Work to Do.

Watching this on Sunday night I screamed so loud Ada ran upstairs and refused to come back down no matter how many treats I offered her: This offensive line, I’m amazed Rodgers can cut his food anymore, but here he is, having spotted the Bears 20 points, playing on one good leg, with receivers who treat every incoming football like it’s made out of bees, and the Packers still pull it off. McCarthy should be put in the stocks when this season is over, but Rodgers should be knighted. A.   Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Aaron Rodgers Edition

I went back to this story about the normalizing of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam last night hearing about McCain’s death, thinking that though we’re now pretending the Vietnam War never happened, it might be his (and Kerry’s) most significant accomplishment as lawmakers:  In January, 1994, a Kerry-McCain-sponsored Senate resolution urged the President to lift the embargo. A few veterans mobilized in opposition, drawing the support of the American Legion and the Republican leadership. McCain’s sponsorship persuaded twenty Republicans to vote for the measure, which passed by a vote of sixty-two to thirty-eight. McCain said, “The vote will give the … Continue reading McCain & Vietnam

People have a phenomenal capacity:  The welcoming committee is trying to ensure that families make their initial check-in dates, something they feel the government should be helping with but isn’t. But they’re also trying to show another face of America to the victims of the family separation policy. “The American public is going to step in where the government has failed,” said Alida Garcia, the coalitions and policy director for FWD.us, on a press call Tuesday. “It’s going to provide comfort and love and care to these families.” Sometimes comfort looks like an airplane ticket. Sometimes it’s an impromptu “Happy … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks

God, THIS:  This new racist is cast as sympathetic, an inevitable byproduct of a culture of white supremacy in the South or a remote homogenous life that has left him ill-prepared for this terrifying new world where people speak Spanish sometimes, or where she’s the only white person in the room. They aren’t heroes. But, the Times and the Post tell us, they’re people with compelling backstories that forced them to be like they are. They were raised to it, or maybe they’re just poor. It is paternalistic infantilizing nonsense. Poverty doesn’t make you racist. It’s more that the exhaustion … Continue reading No Excuses

When people say “I’m a centrist” they are basically just jerking off:  It is reasonably clear that Bernie Sanders and his distinct movement (joined on the campaign trail by the new Democratic Socialist megastar from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), had a rough night on Tuesday, when candidates they had backed in person, Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Kansas congressional aspirant Brent Welder, both lost races many expected them to win, against (respectively) Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids. But were those defeats for “progressivism” or victories for “centrism”? That depends on whom you ask. Yeah, because we’ve somehow defined “centrist” to mean … Continue reading The Center Can’t Hold if You Don’t Know Where It Is

Adrastos is a relentlessly kind and generous human being who is a great blog partner. And it’s his BIRFDAY so we wish him a happy one! A. Continue reading Happy Birthday Adrastos!

By the framework of politics pre-Bush administration, most of this would have ended somewhere around “lock her up” or the pussy-grabbing tape or on day one where he called Mexicans rapists so the fact that it hasn’t should really tell you something: I continue to not get why liberals talk about the Garland seat theft as if it’s anything they will ever shame Republicans for. McConnell openly brags about it being his proudest achievement. When you go “well what about Garland?” Right-wingers respond “heh. Yeah.” — August J. Pollak (@AugustJPollak) July 10, 2018 There is no shame anymore. That was … Continue reading Stop Expecting Shame To Do the Job Votes Will

It amazes me that we make movies about wars like we know what they are, like we know all the stories already:  A stash of wartime bank notes worth the equivalent of £1.5 million has been found under the floorboards of a shop that is believed to have been a branch of Winston Churchill’s tailors. Bundles of decaying notes, dog-eared and caked in dirt, were discovered by builders renovating a shop in Brighton. There is speculation that the money was part of an escape plan in case of Nazi invasion. Sussex police have taken the £5 and £1 notes with … Continue reading The War Isn’t Over

Just stop it: It’s also a tacit (and appreciated) recognition of how Craigslist killed classified ads, the economic lifeblood of many local papers… https://t.co/uj4DZqGB0a — Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) June 11, 2018 So Craig Newmark gave a squillion dollars to CUNY’s J-school, which is more than any wealthy media organizations have ever done, and the Internet is full of Very Serious Journalists dunking on him like “thanks for destroying the industry and then giving us peanuts, asshole.” IT IS 2018. It is the year of our lord 2018 and Craigslist went online in 1995 and in 23 years the only solution … Continue reading Keep Bashing Craigslist, It’s Sure to Work Any Day Now

Ian McKellen, human treasure:  The younger Dumbledore isn’t explicitly gay in the new ‘Fantastic Beasts’ movie. Why do you think there are so few gay characters in blockbusters? ‘Isn’t he? That’s a pity. Well, nobody looks to Hollywood for social commentary, do they? They only recently discovered that there were black people in the world. Hollywood has mistreated women in every possible way throughout its history. Gay men don’t exist. “Gods and Monsters” [1998], I think, was the beginning of Hollywood admitting that there were gay people knocking around, even though half of Hollywood is gay.’ A. Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Gandalf and Magneto Edition

It’s almost like three years of telling your voters that women should be in the kitchen making sammiches instead of running the country is … bad, or something:  McMorris Rodgers is campaigning like she has a contest and a competitive one at that. In addition to the strong fundraising numbers, she has held multiple town halls: four alone during the last Congressional recess, for a total of 38 since August 2013, according to her campaign. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a powerful GOP super PAC supported by Ryan, has opened an office in the district to aide McMorris Rodgers. The non-partisan Cook Report … Continue reading Basing Your Party on Misogny Has Consequences

Here’s the late Harry Anderson in a 1986 Showtime special: Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Harry Anderson’s Hello Sucker

It’s not too late to tell them:  In her will, Lewis identified herself as a “Spinster and Sculptor.” She asked for a dark walnut coffin, and that a notice of her death be printed in the Tablet, a British Roman Catholic publication. The resulting announcement — a curt sentence fragment — made no mention of her myriad accomplishments, and did not reach those who sought her across the sea. Until, over a century later, it found Richardson. Richardson sees her research as part and parcel with the efforts of other black women scholars: after all, she noted, Alice Walker found … Continue reading There Are So Many Stories We Don’t Know

No. Just no. A chorus of local news reporters reading, word-for-word, from the same Sinclair script to attack the media and defend the President. This is not what an independent media looks like. pic.twitter.com/7QEEE9ltUK — Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) March 31, 2018 This is the point in that stupid story about the boiling water and the frog where the fucking smoke alarm goes off. Just in case you were confused. It’s time, guys. It’s time to quit. It’s time to refuse to be a part of this anymore. Forget fighting from the inside to change stuff. Forget whatever else you’ve been … Continue reading Every Day’s Just A Little Worse

People are good and kind:  “I just found my happy writing place in a Tires Tires Tires waiting room and decided to tell people about it,” Amy said. “With all the sad stories in the news, the thousands of things that get us down in life, sometimes, you just need to open up Facebook and have a laugh at a weird author appreciating the little things in life.” A. Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Writing Edition

I can’t seem to let go of Saint Patrick’s Day. Here’s a 1988 set at the Ulster Hall in Belfast. Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: Van Morrison & The Chieftains Live

Classy: Ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson found out that he had been fired from the tweet from President Trump on Tuesday, according to Steve Goldstein, Undersecretary for public diplomacy, @eliselabottcnn reports. — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 13, 2018 Most of the time I can’t get too het up about the ins and outs here, because wow, a burning dumpster is full of garbage that is burning all the time, but THIS MAN THOUGHT HE COULD SIT IN JOHN KERRY’S CHAIR AND I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THAT. A. Continue reading Tillerson Out

I made these for a party a few weeks ago and people gobbled them up.  A. Continue reading Tuesday Foodblogging: Cooooooooooooookie Edition

I used to stick my fingers in all the pages, trying to game the system, find the path that would get me home free. I used to read Choose Your Own Adventure books, too:  Yet you never quite escape completely. The lasting influence of Choose Your Own Adventure might be how it made us subtly reflect on traditional story-telling. It may be hyperbole to claim that books for kids planted a seed of doubt about our credulity in later life. And yet there is something of the alienation effect to a form of literature that continually suggested other paths, other possibilities. The … Continue reading Choose Your Own Adventure

What the fuck is wrong with you?  But a gun massacre at a Florida high school last Wednesday, which left 17 dead, seemed to shift the media glare away from the Trump scandals and gave embattled aides an opportunity to refocus on handling a rare crisis not of their own making. While the White House mourned the loss of life in Parkland, Fla., some aides privately acknowledged that the tragedy offered a breather from the political storm. A breather. A breather. A fucking breather. What kind of solipsistic asshole … you know, this is paragraph two of this story and … Continue reading ‘a reprieve’