[Her] degree is in "I know you are, but what am I?". Pee-Wee Hermeneutics is the formal title.
-- Little Pig, Sadly, No!, comments

Some time back I had a hernia operation. This was at my own expense, having cancelled our useless & hateful Blue Cross policy two years previously. Afterwards, I added up what those two years of premiums would have cost if I'd continued to go into debt to pay them (yes, I was writing credit card checks to pay the goddamned insurance). Would you believe that even with the amount Blue Cross would have paid if my policy had still been in effect, the total cost WITH insurance amounted to nearly DOUBLE what I actually paid out of my own pocket??? This is the vaunted "health care" the Democrats would force me to buy, so please don't do me and the 30 million others any favors. As you can see from this example, the mandate isn't for the uninsured: it's really a way to shovel money to the insurance companies.
-- TaosJohn, Balloon Juice, comments

Oral Roberts dead? They can't bury him deep enough.
-- Dust, Pharyngula, comments

They seem to think if you could just stuff all the things they fear and hate into a box and lock them away, then the world would go back to being like some non-existent paradise from the past they’re fixated on. And they’ll lie, cheat, steal, and kill to get it…
-- MikeEss, Pandagon, comments

Alternative medicine pseudoscientists don't seem to mind cognitive dissonance. They are content to look for evidence to support their own chosen treatment while blithely disregarding competing claims. They don't want to look for evidence that something doesn't work. While each claims to know the one cause of disease, they don't seem interested in looking for the one truth.
-- Harriet Hall, "The One True Cause of All Disease," Science-Based Medicine

My best friend has a gift giving problem with her husband, if he wants something, he buys it, leaving him with no unfufilled desires to be filled through gift giving. I think this is very indicative of the social differences between male and female gift-giving. If women were paid equally and had equal access to professions, and were socialized not to feel guilty about buying nice things for our own damn selves, I think the disparate expectations tied to gift giving would start to normalize.
-- bellacoker, Shakesville, comments

Hey, I am sure William Jefferson Clinton never realized that his signing of the media law overhaul would lead to six thousand Rush wannabes wailing from every freaking local radio station in this country. Even on XM you have one single left station and five right wingnut stations.
-- mai naem, Balloon Juice, comments [I didn't like Clinton either. -- ?!]

One thing the blogosphere has done is revive the art of the public diatribe.
-- wertys, Quackometer, comments

This is a key point that always gets missed when doctrinaire "free market" conservatives argue against regulation (and in particular against environmental regulations, including those predating the current concerns about climate change): In their ideological enslavement to laissez faire, they utterly miss the fact that regulatory change inevitably creates new opportunities for the very kinds of businesses - agile, innovative, entrepreneurial - that they claim to love so much.
-- Bill Dauphin, OM, Pharyngula, comments

It’s strange that the Family Research Council hates families, does little research, and is more of a commission than a council.
-- norbizness, Pandagon, comments

The one true cause of most of society's ills is an overabundance of morons.
-- windriven, Science-Based Medicine

Yeah, I'm just a netroot...or nutroot, maybe. That wasn't me voting in every election since I was eligible to vote, including school budget votes taking place in February sometimes. That wasn't me giving money to candidates all those years, though my name was on the checks. That wasn't me phone banking at Democratic headquarters all those years; it was a hologram (oooo, those tricky Democrats, using a hologram of me rather than getting me to actually volunteer). That wasn't me talking conservative friends, over and over again for years, into saying (who knows what they really did) they would vote for the candidate I supported. That wasn't me meeting with my representative one-on-one, attending town hall meetings, writing email after email and making phone call after phone call to my representative, trying to somehow get him to support my position. That wasn't me button-holing Erik Paulsen's (R-MN-3) staffer on health care, Andy Christiansen, and chewing his ear off until he lied about having to talk to someone just to get away from me (and he absolutely would not name anyone who had input to Paulsen's health care legislation, which was never going to be considered anyway, but I wanted to know exactly who had input to it and Christiansen wouldn't say...I pursued a level of investigation that Matthews would consider beneath him because it involved details and icky, wonky stuff like facts). No, none of those people were me. I'm a nutroot. NUTROOT! GET IT! HILARIOUS! I forgot to mention how it wasn't me who got to know every single person living within two blocks of my home when I was in NJ and making sure they knew where I stood politically and getting them to sign petitions and vote, and getting them over to my house when my representative stopped by so they could meet him and ask him questions and maybe get them to vote for Corzine. Nope, that wasn't me, either, though it sure looks like me in the photos with my representative and neighbors.
-- DBK, Hullabaloo, comments

The Jane Hamshers of the Left don't insist that our representatives win every fight. They insist that our representatives fight every fight.
-- Guster, Balloon Juice, comments

Why do all these cretins react to suggestions there might be a few too many people on the planet as a call for mass executions, rather than a suggestion that not everyone needs to have five or six offspring?
-- M. Bouffant, Sadly, No!, comments

Have I been mistaken in my belief that medical doctors first established the link between smoking and lung cancer? Was it actually a naturopath gazing into a crystal?
-- windriven, Science-Based Medicine

I have basically no school debt, living in a society that provides free health care and I would still laugh at someone suggesting I have a kid for 5k.
-- hypatia, Pandagon, comments

I'm not sure how possible it is to prove future political backlash, but this is how I see current trends ... : Republicans in office, screw up a bunch of crap. Voters say good grief, these guys are awful! Get someone new in there!/ vote in Dems / Democrats paralyzed by inaction, get nothing done. Voters say good grief, didn't you see what the last guys did? We have crap that needs fixing! Do something! Dammit! Get someone new in there! / vote in Republicans, repeat. You can call it unfair, call it illogical, simplistic, whatever, but when there's a problem that needs fixing and one political party has the executive branch and a supposedly filibuster-proof majority in the legislative branch and still can't even make modest progress on that front, then representative democracy isn't doing us any good, and the only ways we really have to express frustration about that are to not vote or vote for someone else.
-- jibeaux, Balloon Juice, comments

I wonder how many others will start to see that a party "w" for a bill that mandates paying 8% of your income to private corporations and using the IRS as a collection agency is political suicide for them, and come to the same conclusion as Massa before we're through.
-- Jane Hamsher, quoted at Hullabaloo, in comments

There are a number of small Pacific island nations who could stand to lose significant chunks of their habitable land area, up to 90%+ in some cases, if the sea levels rise even a small amount. Some of them made a diplomatic plea regarding this in Copenhagen recently, and they were summarily ignored by the industrial and oil-producing nations. There are other nations who might lose most or maybe even all of their readily accessible fresh water supplies, others that stand to lose much of their arable land. These nations are primarily small nations that have done almost nothing, nothing, to contribute to AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming]. From their perspective, what is it that the rich industrial world has done to them, if not an act of war?
-- amphiox, Pharyngula, comments

[C]onservatives ringing this particular bell are offended at the idea that working class people, especially working class people of color, should get slots in college classrooms and jobs that they believe should be reserved for white children of privilege. And that the quickest way to put an end to class mobility is for the college-educated class to have so many children that there isn’t any room for anyone else to move up the ladder. Frankly, if their fears are right and lower child-bearing in the middle class creates more opportunities for working class people, I’d argue that it’s your moral duty as a middle class person to have few to no children. Give someone else’s family a chance.
-- Amanda Marcotte, "Quick fixes to kill feminism doomed to fail," Pandagon

There has long been a suspicion of viral infections altering the brain to unmask schizophrenia and there is an association between borna virus and OCD.
-- Mark Crislip, "Measles," Science-Based Medicine

What with Canadian subsidies, it's cheaper to import weather than make our own.
-- twoeleven, James Nicoll's LJ, comments

NYU guy #1: If a girl asked me to go buy her some tampons, I wouldn't care.
NYU guy #2: Yeah. Actually, I'd rather buy tampons than condoms.
NYU guy #1: Yeah! Because like, with condoms it's like "yes, I am planning on having sex tonight"! But with tampons it's more like, "oh, what are you gonna use those for? A nose bleed?"
-- from Overheard in New York

Alternative medicine is nothing if not irresponsible, the relative few people sacrificed in the service of staying true to one's ideals should provoke nary a shrug. Hey, when you're infallible, it's hard to be humble.
-- DevoutCatalyst, Science-Based Medicine, comments

[As a] United Empire Loyalist I have to say that the American Revolution was launched on the flimsiest of excuses and all the beautiful words were just rationalizations for skipping out on paying yer rent. Americans are the original dead beat tenants who in response to the landlords request for back rent say sorry mate this is our building now and if you don't like it you'll have to shoot us out of it. Shame the crown failed in that endeavor.
-- Northern Observer, Sadly, No!, comments

If your main goal is getting women out of the workforce, at least in high enough levels where they’re competing with middle class men for plum jobs, then it’s easier to believe that women attain those high levels of competitiveness as a mere side effect of larger forces. Picture the argument as this: Women who graduate from college have to work instead of having babies. While they’re out there working---to pay off that student loan debt, of course---they climb up the ladder and continue competing for men with jobs. They’d prefer to be at home making babies, of course, but if they have to be at work, they’re going to make the best of it. But if they were relieved of student debt, then they would immediately quit the rat race and get to knitting doilies and pushing out pups. And being good helpmeets to men, which we have plenty of statistical evidence to show helps men in the rat race. This is a preferable theory to the more likely one that women are delaying marriage and child-bearing because they actually want to do well in both their marriages and their careers. Why? In part, it’s about sales. It’s easier to sell the oppression of women if you argue that women want to be oppressed. But it’s also a matter of wishful thinking. If it’s just student loan debt that has created this situation---and deep in their hearts, women want to get married and have babies and support working husbands while not having ambition themselves---then you merely have to figure out the debt situation and voila! Feminism is defeated. But if it is in fact that women want to work and delay marriage and childbirth, then you have to unravel a whole lot of
progress to force them into it.
-- Amanda Marcotte, "Quick fixes to kill feminism doomed to fail," Pandagon

Knew a guy who spent several days of prayer and fasting. I asked him what he'd been praying about. "Praying for food!" was his honest answer.
-- Curmudgeon, in comments on a Yahoo article

When I first began writing for The Times, I was naïve about many things. But my biggest misconception was this: I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence, that they would change their views if events completely refuted their beliefs.
-- Paul Krugman, "Disaster and Denial," The New York Times

No, see, Goldman Sachs is Giant Conspiracy to take your job away and sell your children into debt bondage forever. This climate change business is much more a matter of making sure that your children have a habitable planet on which to live, clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and like that.
-- driftglass, "Sunday Morning Comin' Down," d r i f t g l a s s

Wait, so DC City Council votes 11-2 for same sex marriage and Oral Roberts kicks the bucket? How many states legalizing gay marriage would it take to bump off Joel Osteen?
-- Sadly, No!, comments

I'm normally opposed to race-based laws, but I'd be willing to make an exception for legislation which bans white people from even considering a career as a rapper, so long as it includes two amendments. The first would be a grandfather clause exempting the Beastie Boys from prosecution, and the second would be a clause ordering the death penalty for anyone who objects to the proposition that we should kill Kid Rock, incinerate his carcass, and launch the ashes into space where they can no longer pollute the Earth.
-- Wes, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, comments [I completely concur. Especially the part about Kid Rock, whom I despise especially for being a Confederate-flag-sucking waste of skin. My only question is, given that the Beastie Boys are a couple of NJBs from Brooklyn, are they really "white people" in that sense? -- ?!]

It won't do the atheist cause any good when I have a glass of scotch tonight, but I'm still going to enjoy it.
-- Screechy Monkey, Pharyngula, comments

Doesn’t matter if you’re pro or con when it comes to population control – if you live on a planet with a non-infinite diameter, it’s inevitable. We merely haggle over whether to get there via education & contraception or natural attrition … but you must admit, it surely takes some titanic cojones to argue that the readily-available alternative to the “organic” route (you know, the one where that winds up with far more dead bodies then live ones, & the rapid onset of a total global social meltdown) is the nihilist perspective. Who knew that all of moden civilization was actually one ginormous false-flag op secretly perpetrated by a cabal of nihilists? Not me, that’s for sure.
-- jim, Sadly, No!, comments

We no longer have government, only politics.
-- DBK, Hullabaloo, comments

Right now, I'd like to tell everyone to go to hell. (And I don't even believe in hell.)
-- avenging_angle, Shakesville, comments

The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan - and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess. But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape.
-- Paul Krugman, "Disaster and Denial," The New York Times

[S]omewhere out there is a christian boy-band wondering why their latest, "Baby I want to give you a firm handshake", isn't doing as well as they thought.
-- mgjssit, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, comments

Thune said that bankers aren't loaning money to ranchers because of...wait for it...waaaait for it...cap and trade. Also health care reform. Seriously. John Fucking Thune looked straight into a camera and said banks will only start lending again once heath care reform is killed and cap and trade legislation is strangled. Thune should put up a flag, because he has managed to scale to wholly new plateau of bullshit. Sure, Republicans always start out with the list of their Usual Suspects - women, minorities, damned filthy Liberals, the Liberal Media -- and then work their way backwards into weaving them some-or-all into another Giant Conspiracy Christmas Sweater big enough to cover their problems, bigotries and paranoid fantasies. Political dialogue on the Right is, as Jon Stewart has pointed out, long ago degenerated into a game of Wingnut Mad Libs, but in the past this has usually come with at least some driveling attempt at bridging Topic and Scapegoat. With his breakthrough today. Thune has finally cracked the Subject/Predicate Barrier. Now with the development of "Thuning", Conservatives need no longer bound by offering tiresome bunches of "explainy" words which, let's face it, their followers neither comprehend nor care about. Instead they are now free to simply bark out random grievances from Column A and hated stereotypes from Column B. This will save everyone involved enormous amounts of time that could be better spent on other, more important matters.
-- driftglass, "Sunday Morning Comin' Down," d r i f t g l a s s

Men who seem like "good people" to other men frequently aren't good to women. Or children, or the weak, or the otherwise marginalized.
-- Melissa McEwan, "I See a Trend," Shakesville

My god, I can’t take it anymore. I’m starting to hope for the worst-case scenario. I want the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to collapse completely tomorrow. I want the midwest to turn to desert and the oceans to turn to acid and start belching out hydrogen sulfide. I want a vast wave of climate refugees squatting in the homes of every denier, every concern troll, and when it happens I want to walk up to Christopher Monckton, Viscount of Deniers, and I want to slap him in the face and say, “See, I told you so.”

I need a vacation.
-- Proper Gander, Sadly, No!, comments

I'm convinced that Stephen Harper lies every time he opens his mouth so I just assume he's always lying.
-- CC, "One more time, trying for actual intellectual discourse," Canadian Cynic

I've never seen a "return to maleness" ad that doesn't define it on some level as a foot on women's necks.
-- SunlessNick, Echidne of the Snakes, comments

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It's a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It's a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question. Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don't fit the narrative.
-- Paul Krugman, "Disaster and Denial," The New York Times

Anyone who has followed [Rick] Warren for any length of time recognizes this as a pattern, where he backs vile policies and then pretends that he never did - even when he did so on video for the world to see. He explicitly compared gay marriage to incest and beastiality, then lied and said he didn't. He explicitly endorsed Prop 8 in California and told his followers to vote for that referendum, then lied and said he didn't. In both cases, we have him on video saying exactly what he later denied saying. And he has never owned up to the lies. This is Rick Warren's MO. We should all be used to it by now.
-- Ed Brayton, "Rick Warren: Too Little, Too Late," Dispatches from the Culture Wars

I love the right wing. Only they could hire as a spokesman a traitor to his country who ran weapons to a declared "terrorist government," then used the profits to finance another terrorist group in Central America, then still call themselves "patriotic." If Carter and Obama are "traitors" and "collaborators" for not being "tough enough" on Iran, what exactly do we call a guy who actually armed them? For that matter, why isn't a guy who financed terrorism in Gitmo right this minute saving a seat for Osama Bin Laden?
-- Chris Parmly, Sadly, No!, comments, on Oliver North

The idea that women might be human beings threatens ... profoundly, because the view of masculinity that has developed over the past century (I'm not sure about earlier) is subtractive. That is, a Man is defined as someone who is Not A Woman. This worked OK when men could do a lot of things women can't. But if women can be smart, then men must be stupid; if women can be moral, men must be evil; if women love beauty, men must love ugliness. ... And at the end, Barber and his ilk are faced with the horrific consequences of their subtractive masculinity: if women are human beings, men...cease to exist.
-- Doctor Science, "Gay-hatin' and Subtractive Masculinity," Doctor Science Knows

[F]or the general public there is a capacity to posit a mass conspiracy despite the implausibility of a mass conspiracy.
-- Kel, OM, Pharyngula, comments

Everyone knows that engineers are experts on one particular subject - the problems with the theory of evolution!
-- Sigmund, Respecful Insolence, comments

Copy Editor: “This first sentence is like two run-on sentences got married and had run-on babies.”
-- from Overheard in the Newsroom

I absolutely fucking hate it when people act like the "good old days" were so great for women because the poor little dears never had to exert themselves to open doors and they never had to pay money for dinners. The things women had to do to get this "deal" sucked far far worse than opening doors. ... I'd rather mow the lawn and fix my own car than to end up with a husband who acts like an overgrown child. What's the point of even "landing" a husband if you have to clean up after him all the time? I'd rather be single than settle for that deal, and no amount of open doors and free dinners and jewelry will make it more appealing to me.
-- catgirl, Echidne of the Snakes, comments

Of course, the Resurrection occured when Blue Cross refused to cover the Crucifixion.
-- actor212, Sadly, No!, comments

[S]outhern English is just 18th-century English without the frilly underwear.
-- Darren J Butler, TECHWR-L

The fact that you have a copy of of Atlas Shrugged under your arm as you evangelize, as Penn Jillette does, and not a Koran or a Bible, is not as important as whether you believe, on faith, that everything works out for the best due to the magic and wisdom of invisible entities like "the Market" who guide us with invisible hands, and ascribe personhood (and worship) to inanimate, noncorporeal persons, who are immortal, unaccountable, and suprahumanly powerful.
-- Marion Delgado, Respectful Insolence, comments

I'll make the assumption that wherever you do live, agriculture is probably a pretty important part of the economy. Global warming raises us a little, and guess what happens to that agriculture? It moves a few degrees of latitude away from where it is now. That, in many cases, means to a different country. Bye, export of agriculture! Time to import your food instead. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases it also means that it moves to areas that don't have rich enough soils to support it for very long. Bye bye, food! Oops.
-- Carlie, Pharyngula, comments

Am I imagining the fact that we're no longer in the 1950s? Is this all a crazy dream I'm actually having while baking dinner and waiting for my bread winning hubby to come home? Or waiting for my hubby to take me shopping so he can show me what I'm supposed to buy? Because last I checked, I bought my own car (with the help of both parents but I chose the car and paid/am still paying for half of it) and I pretty much bought everything I own and everything I use. So why is it that I, as a female, am left out of the brainstorming sessions at advertising HQ?
-- pmsrhino, Shakesville, comments

A college education is a class marker that’s treated as a necessary part of making someone a good wife to a striving middle class man, and also part of the conservative fantasy is that women go to college to meet their husbands.
-- Amanda Marcotte, "Quick fixes to kill feminism doomed to fail," Pandagon

That’s debate in Neocon, as opposed to English. The Neocon word means “our side gets to say whatever we wish, while the other side gets to SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY”. Neocon sounds like English, so it is easy to be confused.
-- LittlePig, Sadly, No!, comments

Some people, both men and women, find some comfort in conforming to certain roles because it makes them feel like a real man or a real woman. But what I realized is that while men get to be Men and women get to be Women, nobody gets to be a whole, complete person.
-- catgirl, Echidne of the Snakes, comments

Inkily, Slinkily,
Tool-using octopus
Armors its body with
Coconut shells;

Film has been shot of this
Cephalopoddity--
Gives me the mother of
All "What the Hell?"'s
-- Cuttlefish, OM, Pharyngula, comments

It generally isn't taught in history classes, but the reason we called it The Great Depression instead of The Depression is because depressions used to be very common in America. Not "a rough economic patch" or "a slight downturn" but full-on, bread-line, tent city depressions, roughly one a decade. That is, until we put in institutional reforms and threw the bums out, and then went generations without one. Today our government doesn't seem willing to do either.
-- Notorious P.A.T., Balloon Juice, comments

you should always short the stock of a company whose CEO is the subject of a glowing cover story in a major magazine.
-- Paul Krugman, "Bernanke and the cover curse," Conscience of a Liberal

I always thought there was a good word to describe a patient with a blood pH of 8.0: Dead.
-- spudbeach, Respectful Insolence, comments

They whinge and whinge about the liberal media, but given the chance to embrace a policy which would require the liberal media to air their views, they shriek in protest. It’s almost as if they know the media is not actually biased against them!
-- The Tragically Flip, Sadly, No!, comments, on wingnuts and the Fairness Doctrine

I found this on the Monster web site. ...

"Technical Writer,technical editor, document perpetration, desktop publishing,automated work processing, Word, Excel, Report Writing"
-- Keith Hood, TECHWR-L

Part of the problem is that in the past when people heard about a problem and took steps to fix it later they say, "Well that didn't happen." I'm thinking about the Y2k programmers. I happen to know about the millions of person hours spent fixing code so that nothing bad WOULD happen. There was a reason the world didn't shut down and it took a ton of money and a lot of work to make sure it didn't.
-- Spocko, Hullabaloo, comments

You don't automatically become a worthwhile and good human being simply for having died.
-- tsg, Pharyngula, comments

I hate driving by abortion clinics and seeing dirty old men standing around outside. I feel like yelling at them, ‘Impregnators!’
-- John Waters, quoted at The Feminist Texican

There's a big hole in the middle of the food in Nero's dish. There wasn't much food in there to begin with, but he's eaten probably half of what was there...

Himself: Nero actually was drinking on his own today, but he's not eating on his own yet. He'll eat if you force-feed him, but otherwise not. I just force-fed him some special veterinary food. We'll see how that goes. He's acting much perkier than he has been, at least.

Me: The doctor thinks I may have MRSA in my sinuses, so I'm now on a long course of a completely different antibiotic...

Oh sorry, my bad. I found the science lying around on the floor, so I put it away. If you need it, it's over there, just behind that burning goat.
-- Brian, Pharyngula, comments (context is for the weak!)

I thought the psychology of his last threat was interesting: "I want every Democrat who is about to sacrifice their seat for socialized medicine to understand: after you lose your seat, you’re going to lose the socialized medicine too." That is *exactly* the logical form of a famous type of gangster threat: "I'm going to kill you slowly and painfully, and I want you to know that after I do that, I'm going to find your wife and kids and I'm going to kill them too." Nice psychic neighborhood these folks live in, especially their vaunted "idea man," who's always welcome on all the "serious" news shows.
-- Kevin Egan, Hullabaloo, comments, on Newt Gingrich

I am growing increasingly convinced humanity will never amount to anything significant, because we are too busy oppressing, attempting to kill, or actually killing one another. I want off the planet. Now.
-- Meechiru, Shakesville, comments

Beck and other wingnuts scream and yell that he’s a radical. A socialist. A tyrant. But in reality, he’s just a keeper of the status quo – even more conservative than a Clinton, IMO. Clinton signed the last bill related to abortion – The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994. We had a doctor shot in the head in church this year. I and the National Abortion Federation asked that Congress step-up protections for doctors. Maybe making harassment and homicide of any doctor a federal crime. We were met with silence. And the other side is reloading. Barry is the best thing the Republicans have going right now. They always run against the government to maintain power and keep the status quo. And when the face of the government is a chain-smoking, do-nothing, egotistical (let’s admit that, please) black man, they have all they need to win in 2010 and 2012. We didn’t want to see this coming. We wanted a leader who would kick ass and know we had his back. Tax increases for the wealthy? Push it down their throats. And end to torture and an end to Pentagon contractors? Ditto. But when his chief of staff and the speaker of the House spend more time scolding and restraining liberal democrats and zero time investigating -let alone prosecuting - John Woo and Dick Chaney, we should know we are beyond fucked.
-- Dhalgren, Sadly, No!, comments

In the US, a bandwagon gathers steam. In Canada, people stand back and say, "You watch, Mildred, the wheels are gonna fall off that fuckin' thing..."
-- Sanders, phone conversation, 14 December 2009 7:20 PM

Why are they doing that, those good girls? Why are they killing themselves? Parents, teachers, administrators, pastors, bullies, slut-shamers, fools, woman-haters, hypocrites, tell me why YOU think they are killing themselves. Do you know? Do you know why Hope Witsell hanged herself? Do you know why she thought she had no future? It wasn’t because she made a momentary, impulsive expression of her barely-adolescent sexuality (or gave in to peer pressure from boys who felt that her body was public domain; if the latter, that is just another horrible thing to add to this horrible thing, but either way it was not because she took a picture of her boobs). It wasn’t because of a media-manufactured techno-trend. It wasn’t the internet. It was not that, as this putrid “news” article disgustingly asserts, “The downward spiral of Hope’s life was unstoppable.” If everyone I know who had a picture of their boobs on the internet before their 18th birthday killed themselves, I’d have a lot of dead friends. I wouldn’t be around to remember them, though, since I’d be dead too. It wasn’t SEXTING. It was you, adults, all the adults in her life. The high school assholes too, but they’re in high school. You’re adults. She was thirteen years old and she was driven to her grave for nothing and there was nothing inevitable about this.
-- Sylvia, "What Happened to Hope Whitsell?", Sylvia Has A Problem

If you're a bit frustrated with looking for this and don't mind struggling against a torrent of potential legal issues, it is available through less legitimate means.
-- MikeTheInfidel, Pharyngula, comments

If a King is bad, a King with a four year expiration date isn't necessarily much of an improvement, especially in a 21st century media environment.
-- Thers, "Have You Noticed There Are No Timelines?", Whiskey Fire

Me at Jack in the Box:
Speaker located at tire-level: Rugmytb?
Me: I’d like order a chicken fajita and a small chocolate milkshate.
Speaker: Dave’s not here, man.
-- Knights in Black Satin, Sadly, No!, comments

This is as much a cultural issue as anything else. In the United States the public is constantly made to fear criminals as much as terrorists, and so the result is that the humane treatment of (alleged) criminals is not exactly a priority for most people. Unfortunately these same people fail to recognise that their attitude is the symptom of a sick society, and not an adequate response to it.
-- Andrew M, Hullabaloo, comments

Assistant Editor: “Proof page 11 for me.”
Copy Editor: “What’s the magic word?”
Assistant Editor: “Now.”
-- from Overheard in the Newsroom

Speaking as someone whose parents took away any and all social contacts at the slightest excuse (getting a B, for example), I can tell you that I spent very many horrible, lonely nights crying in my room and praying that God would kill me. I developed an eating disorder, not because I wanted to be thin, but because I wanted to die. My parents moved into a rural home so that our family would be more isolated. Any friends I made in school lived “in town”. Even if I had been permitted to ride a bike off our property, it would have taken a three hour bike ride to get to the edge of town. Any kids my age within reasonable walking distance were declared “bad”, so I wasn’t allowed to make friends with them. Social isolation is a horrific thing. I look back on those times and realize just how mentally ill my father was; he lived in terror that I would encounter other people who might have a bad influence. School was my ONLY means of having a social life, outside of the telephone. During the summer, I had no one. When my parents decided to remove phone privileges (for a “bad” grade), I didn’t even have a friend’s voice. ... Now of course I’m married and live *far* away.
-- R.I., Sylvia Has A Problem, comments

The Law of Denialist/Creationist Atomism decrees that if even one error is found in any one page of the 1,000,000 published papers on a subject they don't like, that whole field of science is proven 100 percent wrong.
-- Douglas Watts, Whiskey Fire, comments

I’m totally creepily stalkerishly pervertedly in love w/food…just not stuffing my face with empty calories.
-- Vacuumslayer, Sadly, No!, comments

When the new investors took over Tip Top Tailors they were met with explanations and finger-pointing as to why the company was in such poor shape. DYLEX stands for Damn Your Lousy EXcuses which was a sign that things were about to change in the management of the company.
-- [citation needed] claim from the Wikipedia entry for Dylex, which used to own BiWay

For all of our social progress, we have yet to destroy the contemptible attitude that too many boys are taught to cultivate toward women: I desire your virginity so I can destroy it and then despise you.
-- Stella Quinn, "Rant: Leave Her Alone!", Robot From the Future

I live in New Orleans where the food is so bad for you, your cholesterol hits dangerous levels just walking down the street.
-- Matt T., Sadly, No!, comments

If you even remotely suspect that the corporate media are even marginally "Deomcratic" or liberal, you are out in the far right fringe with the other 23%ers.
-- drdick, Whiskey Fire, comments

The hullaballoo about “sexting” is ridiculous. In my day, it was Polaroids.
-- Frank, Sylvia Has A Problem, comments

my uterus is closed for business and I'd consensually bed a good chunk of NYC too if I had the chance. rawr.
-- groggette, Shakesville, comments

Soylent Green is sort of the Velveeta of cannibalistic products.
-- Wyatt Watts III, Sadly, No!, comments

I'm so tired of these ass hats threatening to cut [Social Security and Medicare]. I've been paying into these programs, in good faith, since one week after I turned 16 and got my first job. The idea that these program are "free" money is just insane. We paid for these benefits. This is not some government handout, this is our money, taken out of our paychecks and matched in part by our employers.
-- diav, Hullabaloo, comments

When a giant like Oral Roberts dies, I have to go back in time to unrealize that I thought he died 20 years ago.
-- Jay B., Sadly, No!, comments

Now we all know that LGBTs already have far too many rights as it is. Which is why its necessary that the majority tell them exactly what they are allowed to do regardless of what the constitution says.
-- Richard Eis, Pharyngula, comments

Jonah Goldberg—who has a career of any kind solely because his mother told Linda Tripp to secretly tape conversations with a lady who gave the president a blow job, and who is generally considered to be one of the most intellectually lazy pundits of any political persuasion of all time—writes about The Simpsons for The National Review Online. His last book, Liberal Fascism, was based entirely on the fact that someone told the 40-year-old Goldberg that "Nazi" stood for "National Socialist" and then he basically stopped listening.
-- Alex Pareene, "Idiot Inks Boffo Book Deal," Gawker

I am going to hell, but I might as well enjoy the ride
-- MattR, Balloon Juice, comments

Apparently the only acceptable population control methods are war, weather, disease and starvation. I guess when those folks are anti-choice, they’re anti-choice all the way.
-- tigirismus, Sadly, No!, comments

Steps should be taken to make sure he remains dead.
-- Larry W. Jewell, Pharyngula, comments, on Oral Roberts

While I'm not glad the man died, I sure am glad that he's no longer alive.
-- RevBigDumbChimp, Pharyngula, comments, on Oral Roberts

I spoke ill of him when he was alive. I don't see why I should suddenly stop now.
-- Brian, Pharyngula, comments, on Oral Roberts

It's a sad commentary on civilized society that a scam artist like this will die and get showered with post-mortem praises.
-- lose_the_woo, Pharyngula, comments

Remove and retain the four nuts securing the media panel to the old media cover and set them parts aside.
-- instruction quoted by Carla Martinek, TECHWR-L

I'm just wonder who the "four nuts" might be referring to?

Well, the four nuts are used for a media panel. So I'm guessing one cable TV news reporter, one op-ed writer for the Post, and two radio talk show hosts.
-- Tony Chung and Dan Goldstein, TECHWR-L

I called the vet's in Guelph today because the vet there is an excellent diagnostician, probably orders of magnitude better than the local vet, who is a bit of a screw-up. The vet in Guelph seems to think Nero probably has pancreatitis...

The Auld Fraud's Met His Gaud So Oral Roberts has died. Go on, tell me how you really feel about it. To hell with being nice to the dead; it's not like I believe in an afterlife where the bastard's listening omnisciently to everything I say, so what the hell difference does it make? Besides which, I'd say it to his face: Oral Roberts was a lying, transparently fraudulent piece of scum who conned and extorted vast amounts of money out of gullible people using religion as the most pernicious and invasive method of social control ever devised by humankind. For what it's worth, I'd say this to any of his relatives, too, and ask them when they were going to give the ill-gotten gains back. Last I heard, profiting from a crime was illegal, except when the crime was committed under colour of religion, I guess...

What Syntonic_Comma Said: This. Absolutely this. If I ever become an MP(P), I'm going to table a private member's bill making it a statutory offense to play Christmas music in public places before December 1st. Personally, I'd rather make it December 15th, since ten days of hype around a freakin' one-day holiday is fucking enough, but I realise that some people enjoy that kind of thing, so I'm willing to take one for the team and suffer for the extra fifteen days. I think I could sell the bill to both sides of the political spectrum, frankly.

Practical Oncology, Yet Again: Nero is not doing well, for some reason. I had him in at the vet's since he seems to be determined not to eat at all for the last three days or so, and threw up a bunch of foam and bile in my bed this morning. The bloodwork was inconclusive -- his liver, kidney, and pancreatic function are fine (good, no fatty liver syndrome -- yet), and he's not anemic. He got 300 ml of subcutaneous fluids because of dehydration, a shot of anti-nauseant, and some antibiotics in case he has some kind of cryptic infection, although nothing seemed evident. Sigh.

Time Off: I'm apparently working the 21st and 23rd, and I don't yet know what the company schedule is for between The Holiday and New Year's. A lot of our clients basically shut down between about the 20th of December and 1 January, so I may or may not be working then. Boxing Day is on a Saturday this year, so I get aced out of my stat pay, too. Bah.

I Has a Sad: Fortnum and Mason seems to have removed their delicious Rose Pouchong tea from their web catalogue. If I can't get more of it, I'm going to cry a lot. I'm almost out. It's delicious. The Twinings stuff, which also isn't available here, is good, but the Fortnum's stuff makes the Twinings taste like dishwater...

I'm just testing some stuff and happen to be looking at an invoice for nearly $30 worth of chocolate hemp milk. I dunno about you, but I've never eaten anything made from hemp that didn't taste strongly of lawn clippings. Squid save us from crunchy-granolas and their dysfunctional taste buds.

[T]he problem with all the "science deniers" is they think the argument is about power and "we" think it is about what reality is.
-- uncle frogy, Pharyngula, comments

Analysis: We tried it your way. Now fuck you. We’ll do it our way. We know it works. 1945-1979 were some pretty fucking good years all told.
-- slippy, Sadly, No!, comments

When Big Government is captured by the corporate intrests, why don't you blame the corporate interests calling the shots instead of the tool that they used? What a stunning display of cognitive dissonance.
-- Tao Jonesing, Hullabaloo, comments

Our niece and nephew are aged five and eight. Even without brainwashing from games, they have picked up messages about gender roles from the culture at large already. My niece recently informed me that "only men can be mayors". When I asked her who told her that, she replied, "nobody told me--I just know it already!"* My nephew and I had a discussion after he told his sister that only men can be doctors, and so she had to be the nurse in their surgery game. He had this idea in spite of the fact that his pediatrician at the time was a woman.
-- SKM, "This is a Real Thing in the Wal-Mart," Shakesville

My real problem with putting all our problems onto God's shoulders isn't even so much that my agnostic tendencies get in the way, it's that it's ineffective. Cosmic Boyfriend Jesus is not gonna show up and cure anger, hatred, violence and death, not to mention the enduring habit of treating the poor like less than dogs. She's forgetting that Jesus, no matter which vaguely historical account or mystical fortune-teller's tale you believe, tried that before, and the people he was trying to help nailed him to a tree for it. He was like, "Fucketh this," at the end, "Dad, why are people such bitches?" Jesus didn't have the answer to this eternal question either. He's had a couple millennia since to ponder, but I think if he'd come up with a better response before now he'd have sent us an e-mail.
-- Athenae, "This Will Fix Everything," First Draft

I had a friend who used to say that if you were expecting a kick in the nuts and got a slap in the face, then you had a good day. That’s my philosophy on the Obama Administration.
-- D Johnston, Sadly, No!, comments

To work, the Randian model requires that the rich adopt a level of morality and self-control that they have never had. Indeed, they are always the most corrupt segment of any society.
-- dcnataro, Hullabaloo, comments

The Overclass will keep the national carcass on life support forever. The rubes don't care. After all, Jon & Kate & Tiger!! Whats not to like about America!
-- Proud Socialist, Southern Beale, comments

Ann Rand's Air Traffic Control would keep the skies completely clear, because only those superhumans who could actually flap their arms and fly would be allowed to have access to them.
-- Tommmcatt, Sadly, No!, comments

[T]he Rushevik Party commissars say to their constituents that the problem of unemployment is that people want too much money for their labor, that if people would simply accept less money they could find employment. Of course, in our real universe things are different, but they live in a fictional universe where all markets are perfect and where there is no lower bounds to the marginal cost for human labor because in their universe (unlike ours) human beings willingly starve to death if they do not possess sufficient market value for basic subsistence. Of course, in this universe, there is a lower bounds on the wage that a human being will accept, thus the notion that the solution to our unemployment problem is lower wages is nonsense. If a wage is below the subsistence level needed for basic survival, the person will not accept it because the way a human being works in this reality is that if you're going to die, you might as well die doing something useful like storming Congress with pitchforks and torches demanding assistance.
-- Badtux, "The right-wing mindset," Badtux the Snarky Penguin

[I] wish I had become a wingnut. They put the “intellectual giant” bar so low that I could have cleared in in high school, then I too could be raking in that sweet, sweet cash. Unfortunately, I am cursed with a conscience, and so must compete in the marketplace of ideas with people who can actually think.
-- Lurking Canadian, Sadly, No!, comments

This idea that journalist should should give equal time to all sides and passively report is, quite frankly, why much of the news media is shit.
-- Feynmaniac, Pharyngula, comments

I lived in Port Huron for a summer way back. OK place I suppose but still refer to it as Port Urine and nobody ever catches it. Pretty funny.
-- rapier, Hullabaloo, comments

The illusion of a solution is immeasurably worse than no solution at all.
-- Athenae, "This Will Fix Everything," First Draft

We gave the South Vietnamese government enough money to pay the troops, but the paymasters tended to embezzle the money into their Swiss bank accounts rather than paying the troops with it. There's many a restaurant here in the USA that was started with money that was intended to be paid to ARVN soldiers.
-- Badtux, "The Taliban pays better," Badtux the Snarky Penguin

[Y]ou should see our guys negotiating trade agreements - if we can't unilaterally screw you over, there's no deal.
-- MadScientist, Pharyngula, comments

[W]e used to call it the “tinkle-down theory” when we where young & unemployed in the 80s.
-- Shell Goddamnit, Sadly, No!, comments

The only reason I obtained citizenship was to bypass the garbage that greencard holders suffer. Doesn't say much for a country does it. "Why did you become a citizen?................ So I wouldn't have to suffer so much crap at the border." Notice, not a mention of 'land of the free, home of the brave'. It just boiled down to...... 'stop hassling me'.
-- Bollox Ref, Hullabaloo, comments

[T]here should be cartoon confessionals where we could go and say things like, 'Father, I have sinned – I have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together in the same cartoon.
-- Gary Larson, quoted in the Wikipedia entry for "Thagomizer"

We don't have broadcast journalism in the US. We have corporate bludgeoning. US TV exists for one reason and one reason only. To take money from those who have less of it and transfer it to those who already have too much of it. US TV has only one product. Your eyeballs. It exists to sell your eyeballs to advertisers. The programming is simply the bait. Early on the sociopaths thought reasonable quality would be a better bait, but lately they have discovered that they can actually use the bait to make your eyeballs a better product. They can use the bait to make you stupid, to make you confused, to bludgeon you into senselessness and make you better prey. They can even use the bait to get the cattle fighting amongst themselves, to get some of the cattle to proudly herd the others into the slaughterhouse before they themselves march in. It's an immoral, sick, evil enterprise, and immoral sociopaths ..., who in a sane society would be ostracised or institutionalized, line up to profit from it.
-- Jafafa Hots, Pharyngula, comments

Incremental change we can just barely believe in.
-- Michael Bérubé, Sadly, No!, comments

I am developing an argument at my personal blog that Conservatism generally (which here would emcompass the traditional Church as revived by Pope Benedict) believes that Perfection lies in the Golden Age, which is to say the past (Eden, Christ). Whereas those movement which rose out of Englightenment (which odd includes even fundamentalist Protestants) believes that Perfection lies in the ultimate future (Heaven after Apocalypse, Communist Utopia, psychiatrically balanced society). That is the fundamental split is not between left and right or authoritarianism and liberty, but between past and future. Conservatives not only not looking for 'Change we Can Believe In' they really don't believe in Change at all which can only lead you away from Original Truth.
-- Bruce Webb, Hullabaloo, comments

Unemployment is not going to bounce back like it did after previous recessions. In fact, unemployment is following the same flat-line trajectory as business investment. Too many high-paying jobs have been shipped overseas; too many businesses have moved offshore. Free trade has changed the economic landscape dramatically. If Obama doesn't take decisive action now, the wealth gap will widen, double-digit unemployment will be the norm, and a permanent underclass will emerge in America. The social unrest that this will generate, will be significant. It would be wiser to avoid potential disruptions and preemptively address the minimal needs of ordinary people in distress. That means jobs, lots of jobs.
-- Marshall Auerback, quoted at distributorcap NY

If you are ever time-travelling, consider giving poor old Thomas Paine a pity-fuck. The man genuinely deserves it.
-- st alec, Sadly, No!, comments

What wonderful Hegelians these Republicans are. Too bad they are evil.
-- Li, Hullabaloo, comments

And even in this ultra-liberal college-town bastion of hippy-tree-hugging goodness, where there are bike lanes on 90% of the streets, I still won’t ride on the street anymore. While I could get killed by running into a tree, it’s pretty unlikely it will jump in front of me while talking on its cell phone.
-- Oregon Beer Snob, Sadly, No!, comments

[T]he fact that men have marginally higher standardized test scores in math is constantly touted as solid proof that men are better at math than women. But the fact that women have marginally better verbal standardized test scores does not mean that woman are better writers, even though by the previous logic it should. Instead, men are much better serious writers (see Publisher's Weekly's Best Books of 2009 adult list) and women can only write for children. Sexism makes no sense.
-- ambergold, Shakesville, comments

Really, just rename the country the United States of Goldman Sachs.
-- Lincolnshire Poacher, Balloon Juice, comments

We are not just "energy". We are a pattern of energy and matter, a very specific and precise arrangement of molecules in movement. That can be destroyed. When you've built a pretty sand castle and the tide comes in and washes it away, the grains of sand are still all there, but what you've lost is the arrangement that you worked to generate, and which you appreciated. Reducing a complex functional order to nothing but the constituent parts is an insult to the work. If I were to walk into the Louvre and set fire to the Mona Lisa, and afterwards take a drive down to Chartres and blow up the cathedral, would anyone defend my actions by saying, "well, science says matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, therefore, Rabid Myers did no harm, and we'll all just enjoy viewing the ashes and rubble from now on"? No. That's crazy talk. We also wouldn't be arguing that the painting and the architecture have transcended this universe to enter another, nor would such a pointless claim ameliorate our loss in this universe.
-- PZ Myers, "The dead are dead," Pharyngula

From each according to his carbon footprint, to each according to how badly geography has screwed him and/or her.
-- N__B, Sadly, No!, comments

Right now I have a child in the house who does not happen to have an immune system capable of fighting viruses, Tony. He won't get the H1N1 vaccine because he is not around anyone who has the virus. That's not a very reliable method of keeping the little guy alive during a pandemic but it will have to do. In the mean time, people like you should be rounded up and shot. In the arm. With a vaccine.
-- Greg Laden, Greg Laden's Blog, comments, responding to an antivax troll

Fuck Newt Gingrich. On a scale of One to Ten, the guy is a fucking FIFTEEN when it comes to being a sanctimonious fucking asshole. Rush Limbaugh is a twenty five.
-- Bustedknuckles, "One More Thing Before Night Night," Ornery Bastard

My mom's a prosecutor and she is always saying how hard it is to try DV cases or rape cases especially in the usual case when the victim knew or was romantically linked with her attacker. Something she said about her last DV related homicide sticks with me, "I can't understand why people seem to think it is more allowable to do something terrible to someone who trusts you than to do it to a stranger."
-- summer0916, Shakesville, comments

I grew up with lots of woo, especially past lives. In the absence of a formal theology, I created my own little religion and afterlife as a little girl, trying to make sense of death. In Haley's fairytale, there was a heaven, and it was like a meeting place. I figured there was probably a god, but he was more like the mayor of heaven and not at all important. Groups of souls that had made friends in heaven chose bodies and lives to inhabit, and heaven was like a big dinner table of people planning who they would be next. Souls switched gender freely, and those who were separated by a couple generations in the past life decided to be soulmates for their next trip.
-- Haley, Pharyngula, comments

It's okay ... I wasn't really using my sanity much anyway.
-- jim, Sadly, No!, comments

I found a short film on Internet Archive Monday. It was produced by a university in New York state around 1940 and I think it was called 'The Children Must Learn' and followed an Appalachian family. One of the key points it made was that raising children on a diet of corn pone and sausage, with no dairy, green vegetables or other, healthier foods, was an impediment to their ability to learn.
-- tellybelly, Dependable Renegade, comments

Peak flu season runs for about three months (January through March). This swine flu showed up in April and has done a remarkable amount of spreading and killing considering it's seen very little of the conditions that promote flu transmission. Counting it out now would be like snubbing a swimmer based on their performance in a drought.
-- Stephanie Z, Greg Laden's Blog, comments

Film and TV are not careers for people with low energy. If your personality doesn't naturally exude the sense that you're on speed, it's a really tough business to be in.
-- Ashley F. Miller, "Hollywood: Not for the weak," Ashley F. Miller

History doesn't depend on plausibility, history depends on evidence.
-- CJO, Pharyngula, comments

Global warming denialism is not so hard to explain. The free market ideology at the heart of economic conservatism depends on several assumptions -- all false -- the most important of which, and the most universally and most utterly false, is the assumption of no externalities. If you've had even casual exposure to economic theology (that's what it is, it is not a science), you know that is the assumption that all of the costs and benefits of a transaction are captured within the transaction, that is, felt by the buyer and seller. The supposedly occasional exceptions are called "market failures" which may need to be addressed with some form of regulation but these are unusual. In general, this imagined "free market" allocates resources "efficiently." It is pretty obvious that the second you acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic global warming, the entire edifice of conservative economic theory is smashed to rubble. The very foundation on which industrial capitalism is built -- burning of fossil fuels -- is not an example of "efficient" allocation, it is in fact systematically destroying the very basis of human existence. Obviously they cannot allow that to be true or everything they have ever said about the economy and the glories of the Free Market is rendered utterly, horrifyingly, abominably false. And so global warming denialism is pretty much the same thing as denial of evolution. Reality conflicts with faith, and something has to give.
-- cervantes, Hullabaloo, comments

Any of you who DO like cliche-ridden books, try a Barbara Taylor-Bradford bestseller. I only read one, once. I had a yellow highlighter to mark every cliche; and when I was done all the pages were mostly yellow.
-- KnightsInBlackSatin, Sadly, No!, comments

Ayn Rand is like the Marquis De Sade without the ebullient debauchery. Such a grim, dull, bourgeois sociopath.
-- beltane, Balloon Juice, comments

A photon may have no rest mass, but I can't use this fact to justify my grand new weight loss plan.
-- PZ Myers, "The dead are dead," Pharyngula

Stevie Wonder was right. When you believe in things you can't understand, you've suffered.
-- montag, Dependable Renegade, comments

In the 1920s, the average Southern textile mill employee working full time earned less money than was sufficient to buy enough food to replenish the calories expended in work that day. God, damn, but America used to be beautiful, and moral. Not like when FDR came in and changed everything and use his magical evil warlock powers to transform the South from its idyllic, hardworking, hookworm-enabled paradise to the modernized hellhole it is now, with its 'roads' and 'schools' and 'flush toilets in the house' and 'hospitals' and 'technical colleges' and defense plants and military bases.
-- El Cid, Sadly, No!, comments

I argued that when markets are free, and when government does not collude with business, greed is useful. People acting in their own self-interest is the fuel for all the discovery, innovation, and prosperity that powers the world.
-- John Stossel, quoted in "Fitting In at Fox," Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast

And to think I read a lot of Ayn Rand at one point. But even as a teenager, I could see there was something wrong with her juvenile philosophy.
-- Seanly, Balloon Juice, comments

Once Obama leaves office, hopefully at the end of eight years, and the idiocracy votes in another Repug, I truly expect that there will be a horse appointed to a vacant Senate seat. Of course, by then, Pat Robertson will have sealed his pact with the Devil and the thousand cable channels will be Jeebus 24/7 and no one will know about it...
-- montag, Dependable Renegade, comments

Nobody remotely cynical about American foreign policy or American history has occupied any public office of any note in generations, and that includes public offices whose ambit has nothing to do with American foreign policy or American history. Senator McCarthy was holding a laundry list. There is no fifth column and there never was, and anyone who tells you there is is a cynical hack trying to rob you blind.
-- st alec, Sadly, No!, comments

Y’know, I think I must be vague about the definition of a “lawful order”, then, because I’m pretty sure not getting back into your vehicle when told does not equate to “assault on a federal officer”.
-- Raymond, No Moods, Ads, or Cutesy Fucking Icons, comments

Remember that when a New Ager says "energy", they don't really mean energy. They mean magic. But they can't say that because it doesn't sound sciencey enough.
-- wisnij, Pharyngula, comments

Gordon Gekko is a lefty in sheep’s clothing. Sort of like George W. Bush.
-- John Stossel, quoted in "Fitting In at Fox," Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast

Why are working writers so shy to blubber on the street about their undeserved fate? Well, it's because our world is based on "looking good" and not appearing ungrateful. Every deal, every new gig, is an audition. When we're told we're being let go, or that the corporation can only pay us $50 instead of $500, there's a taint that it's not about economics— that we simply didn't "merit" the cost. If only you had been a "better" writer, you might've been paid; your labor could have been respected. You're afraid that your reputation will be diminished if word gets around… This is the bubble that needs to be burst.
-- Susie Bright, "The Season of Freakin' Out," Susie Bright's Journal

I remember back when rules were implemented to allow exit searches of random crossers, citizens and visitors alike, at US airports, and how the internal guards were even given the authority to prevent someone, who had otherwise done nothing illegal, from leaving the country. I just did a quick search to refresh my memory on this issue, and no mention is made of guards at land crossings. This is scary news to me, and I don't wish to subject myself to such "authority".
-- auditorydamage, You Can't Do That On Slashdot, comments

You can opt out of Social Security pretty easily, I hear. There are 202 other sovereign countries and de-facto states you could try living in, if the United States isn't quite up to your standards.
-- N.C., Sadly, No!, comments

Personally, I try not to travel to the states anymore, and I purposefully book flights that do not have stop-overs there, even if they take longer. While nothing has happened to me, the fact that if anything DOES occur I would have no rights and would be totally fucked is a pretty severe downside. All they have to say is “Terrorist” and it’s over. Goddamn terrifying. I think if something happened to me visiting most countries, I could count on my government for some support. But not so with the US…
-- London, No Moods, Ads, or Cutesy Fucking Icons, comments

Having people tell me that it was ok my parents had died and left me and that my best friend had died in a random hit-and-run because "God has a plan" or "they're in a better place now" didn't just nudge me out the door of Christianity, it caused me to run away as fast as possible. Not only was it fucked up that a deity thinks it's EVER a good idea to take not just one, but BOTH parents from a child's life for some unfathomable cosmic reason known only to said deity, it was fucked up that other people thought it was entirely OK for those deaths to have occurred because "God must have had a good reason."
-- The Pint, Pharyngula, comments

As long as the base of the Republican Party is as narrow as it is, it will demand rigidity of its leadership. In my own state, Wayne Gilchrist, who voted right down the line with Republicans on economic issues but diverged on choice and guns and environment, was knocked off in a primary by a Club for Growth candidate. And then they lost the seat.
-- Steny Hoyer, quoted in the Washington Post

If expanding Medicare is good for people aged 55 and up, why isn't it good for everybody? Why isn't it a good idea to provide cheaper insurance for people in their preventive care years, so that they cost Medicare less as they do get older?
-- Matt Taibbi, quoted at Bartcop

It's all part of the scheme of "manufacturing doubt", as the tobacco industry called it. It worked out very well for the sales of lung cancer; to this day you will hardly meet anyone who realizes that the vast majority of lung cancer is due to smoking. If we were to destroy all seeds and lines of tobacco tommorrow, and wait a few decades for the last smokers to die out, the rate of affliction with lung cancer would drop to perhaps less than 1% of the current rate. Yet if you interview smokers (who are for the most part innumerate), they believe that the government is lying in telling them that smoking causes cancer - after all, so many of their friends and relatives smoke and none have died of cancer. I always thought that a most peculiar thing with human psychology: disasters always happen to someone else - until it happens to you.
-- MadScientist, Pharyngula, comments

The greater group of teachers have no job security and are paid less per hour than you'd get at McDonald's. That's not an exaggeration… I took apart my paycheck one quarter from the University of California and did the math. Thank you, Simon and Schuster, for subsidizing three years of undergraduates that went through my classrooms. I couldn't have afforded it without my then-stable royalty income.
-- Susie Bright, "The Season of Freakin' Out," Susie Bright's Journal

If the Republicans had spent the 1980s campaigning against interracial marriage, they wouldn’t exist today, because nobody born after 1950 thought interracial marriage was controversial.
-- st alec, Sadly, No!, comments

America is the biggest bully in the world. There was some guy in Canada who shipped pot seeds around the world. America demanded the Canadians turn one of their soverign citizens over to us - and they did. We have a mighty military so we push smaller countries around like the street-corner bully. Sometimes it's easy to be ashamed of America.
-- Bartcop, "Vol 2439 - Norweigian Wood," bartcop.com

We don't do God.
-- Alastair Campbell, quoted at BBC News

In fact, I'd argue that financial crisis was 100% the fault of the Axis of Evil that is Ludwig Von Mises, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand.
-- Tao Jonesing, Hullabaloo, comments

The only thing constant taunting and social stigmatisation seem to reliably reduce is extracellular serotonin levels.
-- Brownian, OM, Pharyngula, comments

Who, Me, Corrupt? More allegations of Toronto narcs stealing everything that wasn't nailed down from drug dealers under investigation during Julian Fantino's tenure as police chief there. (This is besides what he did in Whitebreadville, which largely consisted of running a bunch of gay men out of town on trumped-up child-porn charges and pedophilia allegations, and busting potsmokers, while completely ignoring the multiple violent criminal gangs moving into the city and taking over most of the drug trade.) Fantino always was an incompetent sleaze. Worse, he was a nakedly ambitious, entitled, incompetent sleaze. When he got the nod to be chief of police here in Whitebreadville, his response basically amounted to, "Well, that's nice and all, given that I'm entitled to it and everything, but I really should be Chief of Police in Toronto..." Boy, what I wouldn't give to see him get his ass hauled off to the slam...

Whatever They Accuse You Of, They're Doing And Then Some: Remember all the fuss about Adscam? Well, in case you missed it, the CRAPs have been using so-called "ten-percenters" as not-even-barely disguised campaign materials -- why bother obeying the law when you're a CRAP? Exploit loopholes so you don't have to worry about the statutory limits on election campaigns, so you can campaign indefinitely and expense it separately from your campaign warchest! Brilliant! They're doing it a lot, and all over the country. My local miscreant in this area, Ed Holder, keeps spamming our riding (next door and held by a Liberal) with his goddamn propaganda sheets. (Given that one of the houses down the block on Wilson has

NO CONSERVATIVES!
NO FLYERS!

written on the front of the house in black Sharpie, this is probably not going over very well...)

I Write Letters: Before even finding out that this wasn't just Holder being the unctuous greasy Christianist idiot he is, I got fed up with him spamming our house, and wrote to his office:

Dear Mr. Holder,

We live on the east side of [redacted], in Mr. [Redacted]'s riding. Nevertheless, we keep getting junk mail from your office. Please cease mailing things to at least our address, if for no other reason than that you're irresponsibly wasting tax dollars in doing so, since none of us over here in [Riding] *can* even vote for you. (You're also unlikely to win voters for whoever your party is running in this riding, either, because you come off as careless, irresponsible, or both.)

Please stop. And don't assume this notice constitutes an "opt-in" for an e-mail newsletter, either.

Sincerely,

Interrobang
Interrobang's Address

I might e-mail him again. And failing that, I might gather up a whole shitload of my junk mail and deliver it to his office. Fair's fair, right?

Further Holdery Goodness: The corpulent little no-neck fuck's last taxpayer-funded missive to those of us who don't even live in his fucking riding was a Christmas card, that was explicitly (about four times in the text) a Christmas card, just so that everyone knows that everyone's supposed to be celebrating Christmas right now. Never mind that Christmas isn't until the 25th of December (more than 2 weeks away, I reckon), and Christmas only lasts one day in total (this "twelve days" thing doesn't count, since that's not Christmas proper), and it is actually Hanukkah right this very instant (chag sameakh, kol ha'olam!), and it was the Islamic new year on Friday... I bet that doesn't play very well in this neighbourhood, which looks like it isn't uniformly Christian, and I bet all those Muslims who live near the mosque just down the next main east-west artery northward love that shit...

Even the smart CRAPs aren't very smart. And the dumb ones are beyond dumb. I note that our mail miscreant lacks a neck, which is a characteristic he seems to share with Harper and innumerable Republicans. What is it about right-wingers and either being so corpulent their necks have disappeared, or else just having a head that sits on their shoulders? Did their mothers drop them headfirst onto the floor, repeatedly, when they were infants or something? (Might explain a few things.)

Studies such as this one into simian communication remind me of how much we take our own communication and problem-solving capabilities for granted.

The biggest question raised by this CBC article goes untyped: When will someone investigate Julian Fantino's career-long abuses of his power and authority? How many dirty cops will he protect, and how many corrupt and oppressive practices will he tolerate, in the name of ensuring he and his troops have the widest authority possible to do whatever the hell they want in the name of the gods Lawandorder and Fightinterra?

Science fiction writer and acquaintance of the lovely lpetrazickis and his lovely wife pbprincess was accosted at a "pre-border checkpoint" by American customs, while trying to leave the US and return to Canada, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and charged with assaulting the customs goons.

My worst experience with US border goons involved one lovely specimen who sat in his little booth cracking his gum the whole time, and one of the questions he asked us was (direct quote) "So when was the last time you were in jail?" (Fortunately, Sian is quick-witted enough to have defused that one nicely, as it could have gotten ugly in a hurry.) My second-worst experience was with a guy at Pearson (remind me again why we let the US have "sovereign territory" inside an airport in Toronto?) who asked me about a million questions (in retrospect, I think he was trying to ascertain whether I was engaged to an American guy so I could move down there and get a job; given that I kept telling the American Ex-Fiance that I was not moving down there noway nohow unless he could guarantee me good health insurance, Not Bloody Likely), until I finally said something to the effect of, "Look, I'm late for my flight and my fiance is waiting for me just over there. Are you gonna let me go through, or are you going to send me back? If you're going to send me back, at least let me go over there and talk to my fiance so that he knows what's going on..." and he said, "Aw, that's okay, go on through, I was just funnin' with you..."

Between all that and every male TSA security checker yanking me out of line so they can extra special wand my DD tits and some appalling treatment by similar security goons at the Philadelphia airport, I haven't been to the US in years. Unless something changes radically for the better, I won't go again anytime soon.

I realise nobody's got two zuzim to rub together at the moment, but if you can spare a couple bucks for the poor guy's legal defence fund, he's taking donations at his weebsite...

Ice. Why does it always have to be ice? I hate ice.

Somehow there is some imbalance here. Defense gets $1 trillion - most of which goes to vendors like Halliburton and other contractors to supply and build weapons, jeeps, arms etc. Defense doesn't pay a nickel into the government coffers - and often times those corporations benefiting from generous government contracts find tax loopholes on the income they receive from the government! But the people the $1 trillion in defense is supposed to be protecting - well let them eat cake. They pay into the system via payroll and other taxes. But when it comes time for their return after 30 or 40 years of working - they are told the rules have changed - that Social Security is really a handout and it needs to be reined in.
-- Distributorcap, "That's Where the Money Is," distributorcap NY

Obama likes to give off the air of someone who makes decisions only after careful deliberation and weighing the costs and benefits. The neocons, however, only respect fellow travelers who get funny feelings in their pants when they think about war, people who really get off on the idea of watching other people get blown up. For them, war isn't merely an act of national defense but an emotional gratification and a validation of their personal strength. To be fair, I can sympathize with them in some ways. When I used to play StarCraft back in the day, I'd really enjoy sending in a platoon of siege tanks to blow up Zerg encampments. But mercifully for the rest of the world, I learned to get out my primordial thirst for blood through computer games and not through becoming a member of the American foreign policy establishment. If only I'd applied to work at the American Enterprise Institute instead, I could have made quite a name for myself.
-- Brad, "Shorter Charles Krauthammer," Sadly, No!, comments

I love that it's got every single hallmark of wingnut writing as well.

CAPSLOCK? Check.
Poor/non-existent grammar? Check.
Punctuation, exclamation mark abuse? Check.
A variation of "This is absolutely 100% true!" repeated over and over? Check.
-- DCPlod, Balloon Juice, comments, on a wingnut urban legend

Mostly, though, what happens is, as with any other woman, you're going along your way, minding your own business, and some hairbag or frathole or other form of arrested male development decides to inform you that He Would Not Fuck You Anyway, He Does Not Like You, Spam He Am.
-- belledame222, "The flip side of this charming worldview...", Fetch me my axe

White men should be beaten with large sticks all over the world until we shut up, die, or crawl away on broken limbs to ponder our many sins.
-- TaosJohn, Hullabaloo, comments

People love stories, and one of our favorite motifs is the little guy whom nobody expected much of, defeating powerful enemies. Another favorite theme is that of a good heart and gentle kindness being more important than intelligence or experience. Put them together, mix it up with religion, and people find this headline plausible, realistic -- and exciting. Oooh, that could be me! Show me how I know more than the eminent smarty-pants biologists, because I have common sense and love for God, too -- and all they've got is their crummy expertise.

I've always been more partial to the "Rag-Tag Group of Misfits Pull Together and Use the Very Quirks that Make Them Outcasts to Defeat the Snobby Country Club Kids at the August Regatta and End Up Saving Camp Makorbrakya from the Evil Soulless Developers" theme, and I think it could work to our advantage. Let's see how the papers play up the "Biologist on a Small College Teacher's Salary takes on Former Child $tar Funded by Jim Baker's Heirs" angle.
-- Sastra and Brownian, OM, Pharyngula, comments

I went to grad school and graduated into this mess, and the government doesn't do a thing to help me since I wasn't actually laid off. The best they can do is allow me to delay paying back my student loans (of course, what I really want is to tell Uncle Sam is that he can have my $28,000 in loans back when AIG pays back its $170 billion in "loans").
-- New Yorker, Balloon Juice, comments

In a culture that revels in usury, the profit of others' misfortune, and insury, the profit of the potential of others' misfortune, why are we surprised when half the population thinks torture is okay?
-- Ten Bears, Hullabaloo, comments

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from liberals under the bed.
-- Substance McGravitas, Sadly, No!, comments

Glenn Beck, above all else, is a flamboyant theater nerd. (Not that there's anything wrong with it.)
-- Iced Borscht, Pharyngula, comments

A good friend of mine has turned into a Democrat because of all the aid he's gotten during his one year of being unemployed. He now sees the value of a social safety net: he didn't lose his house.
-- comrade scott's agenda of rage, Balloon Juice, comments

[B]ack when my company was starting to work with nastier chemicals and the safety committee was trying to sort out how to do this safely, it was one of the men on the committee who insisted that we needed to make the environment safe not just for your average adult but also for pregnant women. His argument was that early on, a woman might not yet know she was pregnant, and even if she did, she might not want to have to tell all and sundry in order to have a safe work environment. I was thrilled he brought this up, because if he hadn't, I would have had to. And I was pregnant, and trying not to tell all and sundry yet....
-- Cloud, On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, comments

I think I've got it - let's have some new ethics rules in Congress: members can accept money or other benefits from companies affected by a piece of legislation, BUT if they do, they are prohibited from debating or voting on that legislation.
-- waguy, Hullabaloo, comments

Does this shithead have a uterus? Do the bishops? I didn’t think so. In that case, I have no interest in hearing anything either might have to say that even tangentially touches on the subject of abortion.
-- Rightwingsnarkle, Sadly, No!, comments

Yeah, sex is fantastic, but now and then somebody's gotta do the laundry.
-- filkertom, "Suck It Up, It's a Tit," LJ

It's easy. It's like metric, but it doesn't make sense.
-- Sanders, conversation, 4:20 PM, on measuring things in Imperial

I'm betting somewhere in the Bush administration, there was a working group trying to talk NASA and the major military suppliers into working in cubits.
-- AJ Milne, Pharyngula, comments

Hope everyone who bought into the 401K bullshit now sees the folly of counting on that to fund your retirement. Mine's a 101K now.
-- comrade scott's agenda of rage, Balloon Juice, comments

Orrin Hatch is full of shit.

That's right up there with the headline, "Big light in sky slated to appear in east."
-- Digby and Rightwingsnarkle, Hullabaloo, comments

As Bill Maher has pointed out, the US military is like herpes, or Irish relatives: Once we move in and establish ourselves somewhere, we NEVER leave. Every country we have ever been at war with, or conducted military operations in, we still garrsion. You name it: the the Pacific, Asia, Europe, Central and South America-if we ever built a base there, we still have a base there today.

With the one, glaring exception, of course: Saudi Arabia.
-- Steerpike, Sadly, No!, comments

Can I just say, as a female scientist with a disability, that the reason we by and large don't exist in science is because science refuses for the most part to accomodate us. That's because we need things like greater daytime flexibility (sound familiar, moms?) because of the flow and ebb of how you feel physically, the need to go to the doctor more frequently, etc. Also a lot of academia in particular is based on 'face time' and the appearance of working 90h/week even if you actually can't.
-- ascientist, On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, comments

The dog and cats have never forgiven me for the first kid. After the second, they turned their backs on me.
-- erlking, Balloon Juice, comments

I remember this vividly, and I am not Canadian. I was in grad school at the time, and it was near the end of the semester. One of my profs was holding our last class meeting at his home. We were scheduled to make presentations of our term papers. As we were waiting for everyone to arrive, several of us were chatting about the events of the day. When this shooting was mentioned, the professor said, "Well, that's one way to get rid of the feminists." He thought he was being funny or clever, but I didn't. Sadly, I didn't say anything at the time, but I've never forgotten it.
-- ProfElle, Shakesville, comments, on the Montreal Massacre

Okay, I NEVER EVER EVER want to hear word #1 out of the ignnint piehole of any wingnut about "political correctness" ever again. Not when they've decided to RE-WRITE THE FUCKING BIBLE to fit their ideological wankering.
-- Pere Ubu, Sadly, No!, comments

Al Franken right now must be looking back wistfully on his days as a comedian, wishing he'd had straight men to feed him set-up lines as good as the ones now coming his way. Welcome to the Big Time, Al! Everything before this was warm-up.
-- Occasional Observer, Hullabaloo, comments

It makes me want to scream till my head explodes that whenever someone opens up a conversation like this, we inevitably get people complaining about "what, are you going to have quotas for x% of each group?" and worrying incessantly about how poor qualified white males are going to be driven out by the hordes of unwashed, underqualified OTHERS!!! GET OVER YOURSELVES, PEOPLE. Straight white Protestant males of upper socioeconomic class are NOT the majority and expecting that they are just going to continue to rule everything in sight with nary a peep of protest from anyone around is foolish. It's also unrealistic. There just aren't enough of them to go around.
-- Zuska, Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, comments

It’s very strange to me that the entire conservative movement worships Ronald Reagan, whose greatest political asset was that he didn’t some across as an asshole, and yet there are almost no contemporary conservatives—in the media or in elected office — who make any effort to come across as something other than an asshole. I just don’t get it.
-- DougJ, "Ronaldus Magnus never got called an asshole," Balloon Juice [DougJ didn't hang in the circles I did, then, because everybody I hung with called him an asshole. -- ?!]

We're either blamed for the 'feminisation' of biology or medicine when about half the students or a bit more are women, or told there aren't as many women in physics or chemistry or engineering because we're just not smart enough.
-- AnneOnne, Shakesville, on women in science

Don’t you see? I HAD to commit high treason! Meanwhile, if a Democrat so much as talks to a hostile head of state for any reason, he’s an appeaser and should be shot.
-- Ronald Reagan, Sadly, No!, comments

At work we have a new employee. She’s new to Canada and can’t pronounce “tzatiki” so instead she asks “Would you like some sneaky sauce?”
-- from It Made My Day

Religion has never heard of "live and let live."
-- Stewart, Pharyngula, comments

I was in my last year of undergraduate studies and had already applied to grad school in Canada 20 years ago. The news broke as I was driving home on a cold December night -- and I remember crying as I drove. And only a few months later I sat in a science class and listened to a prof. complain about the fact that the university "forced" him not to hire only male TAs. When I went up to him after class and said that I didn't think this was the moment in Canada to be complaining about women in academia and claiming they were taking jobs away from men he told me that I was a "typical" oversensitive woman.
-- mmy, Shakesville, comments

Sheesh, if Petraeus had any more fruit salad on his chest, he'd be Carmen freakin Miranda.
-- Sharkbabe, Hullabaloo, comments

I'm really about as pro-labour as it's possible to be (check userpic, please), but seriously, that was about the best offer you were going to get, being as the economy's grinding along and all.

Thank you ever so much for stranding me out in the cold like this, me and the rest of the Great Unhorsed of Whitebreadville. (Couldn't you have gone on strike in say, May?!) Unlike a lot of people, I at least can get to work, but I haven't a clue how I'm going to continue to do anything else (I hope you run out of fresh vegetables on your measly-ass strike pay, you fucks) in the meantime, given that I don't own a car, I don't have a driver's license, and I'm disabled enough that it matters (albeit not disabled enough to qualify for paratransit). I also don't really have the money to pay for a cab both ways on top of the soaking I'm already getting at the grocery store. (Talk about needing a raise, christ.)

My dad was a hardcore winger so I heard every manner of shit going back forty years. Of course he worked a UNION job for 35 years that he wouldn't quit on a bet. Even when I was a teenager I could always shut him up with 'So dad, when you gonna quit that evil union job that's destroying America?'. End of conversation. Every single time.
-- mikefromtexas, First Draft, comments

You can't be serious about "Change" when you turn the economy over to some ex-Goldman Sachs boys, and when you've cut a bunch of deals with the healthcare industry before Congress even finalizes their bill, and when you fail to close GITMO on schedule, and when you appoint an Attorney General who is doing nothing about torture, and when you can't muster up the nerve to address DADT, and when you have offered important Cabinet posts to right-wing nitwits like Judd Gregg.
-- gizmo, Hullabaloo, comments

I suppose it's much easier to force any concepts of compassion, thoughtfulness, kindness, respect for others and expectations of personal responsibility into the "political correctness" label and then to rail against "political correctness" so as to present yourself as a rogue or free-thinker than it is to stand up and say: "This encroaches on my privilege, which I feel entitled to. It enrages me that you would fail to honor my expectations of privilege. It enrages me that you object to being dehumanized and objectified because that limits my privilege and violates my sense of entitlement." It's easier that way. They don't have to make an effort. They don't have to think or grow as a person. They don't have to think about others. How the issues they defend, the stance they take, the language they use or the jokes they tell hurt others. They don't have to accept that there is a consequence and that someone, somewhere suffers for it.
-- Scribblemethis, Shakesville, comments

I guess W. would be a Ferengi: diminuitive, full of himself, regarded by others as a buffoon, he sees himself as clever and crafty. Though shallow and somewhat ludicous, he does have the ability to cause trouble for others, either through malice or ineptitude, or a combination of both.
-- Steerpike, Balloon Juice, comments, on Obama = Spock analogies

in the 12th Century the Catholic Church debated whether women were human enough to even be given the Eucharist
-- toujoursdan, distributorcap NY, comments [Martin Luther, that greatest of all Catholic walkaways, certainly didn't think women were human -- "expendable" is the word I'd use -- and he was much later. -- ?!]

I'm going to put my money into something with a gaurenteed upside! Wingnuts! They are always getting money even when they are wrong. They selll millions of books when they are poorly written. I think since they can never really fail since they are propped up by the richest 1 percent let's commoditize and leverage them 30 to 1.
-- Spocko, Hullabaloo, comments

D'oh! It makes perfect nonsense.
-- Caine, Pharyngula, comments

One possible explanation [for why it's hard to speed up infrastructure projects] is what Frederick P. Brooks called the "mythical man-month," which in its reductio ad absurdum is: "Hey, let's put nine women on this pregnancy project and we'll be done in a month!" Some things take as long as they take. Even for things like "reviewing" and "approval," you can't just turn some dial somewhere to increase the flow. Those things require trained experts-civil engineers, architects, etc.-and they're not just "resources" sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be used temporarily to speed things up and then put back on the shelf. They have to be hired, which usually means at least the prospect of a long-term job, and they usually need at least some training for (or acclimatization to) the job at hand. One of the subtle, long-term problems with underfunding infrastructure maintenance is that you lose the organizational capability to ramp up for big projects when funding comes back (if ever).
-- Steeplejack, Balloon Juice, comments

I take umbrage at the idea that sex is a "game" that god invented the rules to, and that only men seem to know what these rules really are. Fuck that nonsense.
-- Lemur, Shakesville, comments

Editor working on music critic’s column: “Can he call R. Kelly a ‘child-molesting piece of crap’ as long as I insert ‘allegedly?’”
- from Overheard in the Newsroom

Well, I've read that a couple of [Republicans] have been confronted by women in their own district who are upset over voting to allow corporations to take a rape victim and throw her in a fucking metal container to shut her up. You know how we women can be about shit like that. Can you say, touchy? Must be that time of the month!
-- Catharine, Hullabaloo, comments

If theologians make claims about their creator that have testable implications about the observable world, then they are subject to refutation by appealing to observable evidence.
-- Richard B. Hoppe, "Stephen Meyer on Bad Biological Designs," Panda's Thumb

So welcome to the Women’s Movement 2.0: Instead of the proud female symbol -- a circle on top of a cross -- we have a droopy ribbon. Instead of embracing the full spectrum of human colors -- black, brown, red, yellow, and white -- we stick to princess pink. While we used to march in protest against sexist laws and practices, now we race or walk “for the cure.” And while we once sought full “consciousness” of all that oppresses us, now we’re content to achieve “awareness,” which has come to mean one thing -- dutifully baring our breasts for the annual mammogram.
-- Barbara Ehrenreich, "Ehrenreich: The Pink-Ribbon Breast Cancer Cult," Alternet.org

There are already a few terms for [making shit up], depending on what topics you're making stuff up about:

People (though not real people): fiction, mythology, theology
Science: science fiction, theology, political conservatism
History: Historical fiction, theology, political conservatism
Other planets (existing): science fiction, fantasy
Other planets (not existing): Catholicism until the 18th and 19th centuries
Alien creatures and cryptozooids: fantasy, mythology, political conservatism (Ann Coulter doesn't name them as such, but every creature she describes in any of her books, humanoid or no, is technically a cryptozooid), theology
-- Brownian, OM, Pharyngula, comments

Now here's my personal peeve about DADT: the homophobes in the military never stopped asking. The witch hunts continued. No one in Clinton's administration ever tried to make them keep their part of the bargain. Ask anyone of the ten thousand or so Gays and Lesbians who were discharged since DADT if they did anything to call attention to themselves.
-- Houston, "Why I interrupted Bill Clinton's speech at Netroots Nation," Dancing with Myself

the voices in your head are YOU.
-- frankenbeans, Hullabaloo, comments

In 2575, when debating the war on the Romulan asteroid belt, the right wing will firmly and unyeildingly oppose setting a timetable to get out because it has been a core element of their values ever since August 2005 when Russ Feingold proposed it.
-- g, Sadly, No!, comments

Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of rampaging Neanderthals to trample all over it.
-- George Monbiot, "The Most Urgent Threat to World Peace Is … Canada," Alternet.org

Silly Christians, who said you could write scripture based on ours? As a Jew, and therefor owner of the Old Testament, I hearby revoke your right to use it. And since yours make no sense without ours, that means I revoke your religion. You can go home now.
-- Flewellyn, Shakesville, comments

Here's what I'd like to see, and what most progressives would like to see, and a majority of the rest of the country would like to see: we would like to see Obama fucking Cowboy Up and say "this shit is wrong, and that shit is wrong, and that OTHER shit is grievously wrong, and everybody in this country outside a few sociopaths know it, so let's fix at least SOME OF THE EASY SHIT now, mmkay?"
-- Calming Influence, Balloon Juice, comments

I tend to say we have a perennial choice between smart bankers like Obama/Biden/Hillary Clinton and dumb bankers like most Republican leaders.
-- Mitchell Freedman, Hullabaloo, comments

Within days of PGA golfer Tiger Woods crashing his car, the press has hounded him into disclosing in so many words that he's had some sort of affair. Now imagine if the press (generally) pursued with the same vigor and tenacity stories that actually serve the public interest and have value for a democratic society. For instance, consider how sad a reflection it is that the personal life of a professional golfer is bigger news than the CIA destroying evidence of illegal activity (i.e. abusive and/or torturous interrogation) and lying to a court about it.
-- Hume's Ghost, "Imagine," The Daily Doubter [h/t dglenn]

Our President, in his desire to create concensus with a bunch of nihilists, empowered the wrong people in this debate about health care. IF we get anything, it's going to be a pale, sick version of its healthy self. I try not to be pessimistic, but it's real tough when the Democratic President sells us out or refuses to speak up for GLBT issues. Would we have lost on Prop. 8 in California if he'd spoken up? How about Maine? Would the New York Senate have voted against same-sex marriage if the POTUS had invited a dozen or so of them down to the White House for some arm-twisting? Would the war in Afghanistan be more compatible to my community if he unilaterally eliminated DADT and ordered the military to stop Gay & Lesbian witch hunts? Would it have hurt him not to equate same-sex marriage with bestiality and incest? You know what? If this is what "winning" feels like, goddess save me from losing.
-- Houston Bridges, First Draft, comments

[S]o the Japanese porn industry is, like, Major League Coming Up With Weird Fetishes? With 4Chan and the fangirls at LJ as the minors? This idea amuses me greatly.
-- ozymandias3, Shakesville, comments

Today, 1 out of almost 5 Americans is unemployed, underemployed or have just given up looking. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages are in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions, investments and savings, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street. But defense needs $1 trillion (to fight the endless wars), and Social Security needs to be cut. Now, about those 'entitlements'. The Republicans (and most politicians) use the term "entitlement" as if these programs are some sort of handout. Last time I checked, they were still taking FICA and Medicare out of my paycheck as a payroll tax. As long as I have been working, I don't remember a time when I wasn't paying into these 'entitlements'. There are no taxes labeled "Corn subsidies" or "Congressional Raises" coming out my check.
-- Distributorcap, "That's Where the Money Is," distributorcap NY

The neocon approach to foreign policy can be summed up as “Ready! Fire! Aim!”
-- Major Kong, Sadly, No!, comments

It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID [Intelligent Design] policy.
-- US District Court Judge John E. Jones III, in the judgement from Kitzmiller v. Dover, quoted in "How could creationism not be dishonest?", Aron Ra, YouTube

[T]he Rude Pundit can say that, based on everything he's seen of or read by the man, Glenn Beck is one of the most despicable human beings on the earth who does not have the power to decide life or death. A truly just God would have buried him up to his neck in dense shit and then sent a plague of flies to lay eggs in his head. Which, come to think of it, is not unlike watching The Christmas Sweater.
-- Rude Pundit, "Glenn Beck's Christmas Sweater Live Broadcast: A Rude Review," The Rude Pundit

If Rude Pundit were forbidden to use the word fuck (not in itself a bad idea,) he'd have nothing to say.
-- Dean Keeton, Hullabaloo, comments

You know, as much as our national political chattering classes are enamored with the baby Jesus, I find it amazing that none of them ever managed to hear the story of King Solomon. For the life of me, I don’t understand the workings of a mind that says “That is a terrible idea, but if we do it halfway, it becomes better!”
-- John Cole, "The Never-ending Pursuit of Bipartisanship," Balloon Juice [It must have been the lack of condemnation for those two zonot that put the Jesus-shouters off. -- ?!]

[I]f someone has to lie, even in a small way, to support their argument, then they already know that their claim is untrue, and are lying their whole way through.
-- Susannah, Pharyngula, comments

[W]hether you love 'em or hate 'em, you have to admit that nothing quietens down a society quite like a big fresh juicy bourgeoisie.
-- jim, Sadly, No!, comments

I was Rushbo, the last thing in the universe that I would want is a bunch of pissed-off Trekkie geeks on my ass. Fuck with Captain Kirk, you fuck with Starfleet.
-- Ed Brayton and democommie, "Limbaugh's Moral Insanity," Dispatches from the Culture Wars

"Informal inquiry by [myself] and among the judges of this court, as well as knowledge of cases in other federal and state courts ... has revealed anecdotal evidence of repeated, widespread falsification by arresting officers of the New York City Police Department."
-- Judge Jack Weinstein, quoted in the NY Daily News

...the creation of more feminists than that human stain ever imagined.

Geneviève Bergeron, aged 21;
Hélène Colgan, 23;
Nathalie Croteau, 23;
Barbara Daigneault, 22;
Anne-Marie Edward, 21;
Maud Haviernick, 29;
Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31;
Maryse Leclair, 23;
Annie St.-Arneault, 23;
Michèle Richard, 21;
Maryse Laganière, 25;
Anne-Marie Lemay, 22;
Sonia Pelletier, 28; and
Annie Turcotte, aged 21.

Shakesville, The Toronto Star, Toronto Star op-ed, CBC, CBC archives, Gendercide.

This event, coupled with my actually coming to the awareness (at about the age of 19) that other people would consider me to be one of these quasi-mythical beings known as "women" (as opposed to, say, the real female beings we have in the world), were the two accidents that turned me into a genuine-article feminist.

I frankly would have been much happier if I could have remained in whatever gender void I'd grown up in...