218 Comments
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Feb 6
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I'll give them that much, they're really good at the smear that takes no time to state, but takes some time to refute. They win at that.

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Doin' the Gish Gallop - emit a thick cloud of talking points, lies, and bullshit, and declare victory as your opponent stands silent trying to parse out which portion to refute first.

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Shorter: "Uppity n****r b***h."

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"But these days I do wonder how keen the average person’s nose for bullshit is."

Great question (duh).

Alas, there are only clues and signs and no real conclusive data.

Elections are a sign but they're undercut by the cohort of close-minded believers among voters -- people incapable of recognizing the BS.

Another, maybe better clue, is how mainstream media's audiences are shrinking. On important issues (as I keep ranting) they overwhelmingly produce bullshit. An as for opinion stuff, the same crap's available for free on social media. So why pay?

As for the Times' editorial side: it's worse under current management than it was under Bennet -- and the great tell of how fucked up an operation that was was his whine in the Economist a couple months ago.

So yes, how good is the American nose for bullshit?

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Meanwhile: Talk about dirty laundry! The US House of Putative Representatives is now proudly proclaiming it has problems with its johnson!

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I used to wonder what Vichy USA would look like. Now, thanks to that dysfunctional johnson, we know. Time to just hand Pooty Poot the keys and vacate.

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But to where?

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I'm partial to Estonia (because singing) but also doing a recon of Costa Rica soon. And there are a few redoubts high in the Sierra and Rockies...

None of which are serious thoughts. I'll stick around here for the duration of me (long may it continue!). First order of business this week is to squeeze into the Corto di Tutti Corti Thursday morning to witness the 9 Blessed Anointeds schmooze with their supplicants from Colorado and Marge-a-Largeo. If I don't get in maybe I'll drown my slight disappointments in coffee at Jimmy T's.

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Estonia is probably a bad idea, since the Baltics are Putin's next order of business once PAB pulls us out and lets him take Ukraine. You really don't want to be part of CCCP 2.0.

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Well at my age I can easily imagine resisting long enough to die honorably (singing!) under the onslaught of the raging drones.

I mean, gotta move aside SOMEtime...

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"Estonia because singing" I like the way your brain works.

https://singingrevolution.com/

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What are you doing this week with your corto di tutti-fruiti?

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"Oh Rudy (Giuliani)"

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Colorado tried to throw him off the ballot but stayed the decision til Los Supremos had a shot at Trump's appeal (by the way, what IS Trump's appeal? Nobody has a rational answer...) and oral arghs for THAT hit the fan Thursday, 10AM.

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The Hostel films suggest that despite there there being a lot of upside to Baltic tourism: inexpensive, amazing culture, history and art, the downside: being sold to the transnational capitalist elite to be tortured and murdered for “fun”, significantly eclipses the upside…

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I've always wanted to go to Belize. I've never been there, but then I am like Elwood P. Dowd in that respect.

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Yes but you'll need Formula 977, or at least whiskey ("all that beer and no whiskey?")

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Rum though I hope.

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Better invest in really serious insect repellent, I'm told.

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They speak English well, as it used to be British Honduras. Plus, lots of Mayan ruins

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Let's take over New Zealand! It's a long flight but it's worth it.

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I hear Greenland is for sale!

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Where the English folk are retiring in Iberia. Much easier to ignore America’s collapse anywhere but here.

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Oops, forgot Costa Rica. Thanks, Bern!

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Spain seems not to care what sort of person acquires property there...

I kinda lean toward the Italian model: ID the vacant-since-the-Medicis villas, advert them as free-to-the-right-person, and require only that the acquirer fix up the place.

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Mars needs women!

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and Guitars!

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Nah, let THEM move. They've got the world's largest and most under-populated country to move to, hope they like beets.

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Could work, I s'pose, tho they'd likely find the options for bearing (hundreds of) arms a little bit less to their liking...

Still, it IS always fun to say "Borscht!" at every opportunity.

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We're trying to cook seasonally and locally, which means lots of beets this time of year. And one thing I've learned: You add ONE beet to a pot of soup, it's now beet soup. Doesn't matter what else you put in there, it's beet soup (the culinary version of that old joke: "You fuck ONE goat..." )

Nah, better to just peel, slice n' boil. Here's some beets for anyone who wants them, in this I'm a firm believer in segregation.

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Beets! Couldn’t hate a vegetable more as a child, love them now! Haven’t tried cooking with them as a component, but it sounds like they possess an Ice-nine quality on the stovetop?

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As a member of a race that, once it gained its freedom, America has tried to send to (a) Liberia (b) Panama and (c) Santo Domingo, I think I'll stay here for the duration. (Nobody else wants us either.)

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As an actual hillbilly, i love these Blue Ridge mountains like I love Dolly Parton. They couldn't run my Unionist ancestors out, and I'll be damned if I'm going anywhere.

Even as it becomes Florida's Florida: where they retire, vacation or hide from the Law.

Besides, I couldn't afford to leave , even if I wanted to.

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You forget the Underground Railroad ended in Canada and Mexico

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Since you went there…

How many phallo-American members do you think have problems with their johnsons?

How many vagina-Americans* in the Asylum of Representatives do you think have trouble finding, getting and keeping johnsons?

(*h/t NatLamp.)

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Feb 6
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Even if he does have a mighty sword, it might still get laughed-at. And I concede your point, Margaret, but though being murdered is very bad the prospect of being laughed-at repeatedly for the rest of your life is not an happy one, especially if you've pretensions of being one of Life's laughers-at.

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Obviously not Lauren Boebert.

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That fun time at the musical theater and quickly she dumped the BF suggests problems.

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I can't believe I'm even saying this, but I'd leap over MTG, Noem, Mace, and Stephanie, to get next to BOBO. and I can't jump anymore.

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Well the rest of us can't quite wrap heads around that either, so we're square.

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Johnsons all the way down!

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I wouldn't be so sure:

0.) sildanefil, tadalafil ('Ta-dah!') and the like work very well, and

1.) 'terrible people have bad sex' sounds too much like a Just World feature for me to credit it as a generally correct predictor.

2.) Some people get off on the thought of an evil partner…Plath was wrong only to the extent that many women do not adore fascists and many men do.

Perhaps there is some correlation between bad sex and unenlightened selfishness, but a.) bad sex for whom?, if a party is selfish enough the other party's dissatisfaction might not matter, and b.) someone might be genuinely giving in private, or enlightened enough to simulate it for the sake of repeat engagements….

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Did you miss the Jordan Peterson-Ben Shapiro podcast about Sexual Boredom?

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Link?

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God, it must be weird being a lizard person living among the primates, trying to analyze primate sexuality’s love of the Freaky thru the lens of a lizard person’s sexual socio-cultural experience and analysis. They must feel confused, unhappy, and anxious all the time.

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I think the average person's nose is still keen for it. the problem is that too many are then drawn to it.

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“Democrats are not winning on the economy, crime, the border or foreign policy, but they have leveraged fear and lies about total opposition to abortion and a national abortion ban — and unforced errors by pro-lifers in state initiatives — to keep the heart of abortion beating strongly.—Kellyanne Conway

“Fears and lies,” you say? So says the gal who invented “alternative facts”! You must give these conspiratorial whack jobs some credit though; their shamelessness, is only matched by their obliviousness to self awareness and projection.

That said, the only thing one needs to say about Kellyanne and her fantastical tales, is that even her conservative husband has had enough, and filed for divorce. End of story!…:)

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Feb 6
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I've seen him from time to time on MSNBC. He seems happier now.

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Feb 6
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What was it Lindsey Graham supposedly said to Fani Willis? "That was so cathartic!"

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Feb 6
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I forgot to mention the EXTREMELY awkward attempt at a hug.

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I have serious doubts that anyone who knows Bolton would ever enter a room he occupied.

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Ok, ok, but you gotta give props for "keep the heart of abortion beating strongly"

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"Heartbeat props" as Digital Underground might say

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The heart of abortion is in Cleveland.

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Detroit!

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I wonder how she's getting along with her daughter nowadays —

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My guess is, the daughter is in the Witness Protection Program.

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While her mother carries on under the Witless Protection Protocol.

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One letter off Witless Projection Protocol

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First I'd heard about her daughter, but isn't this just standard for all conservatives? Kids move out of the house, possibly to go to college, come to repudiate everything you ever stood for and won't ever talk to you again. Absolutely none of it is your fault, of course. In fact, a good portion of right-wing media is basically "Here are all the people to blame for your kids not talking to you, none of them are you."

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If I recall (Note: no reason to assume I do), the daughter threatened to walk and never come back unless the Squabblin's got their shit together. That is apparently one reason the Woman who Tried To Run Me Down dropped off the screen for awhile. Maybe now she's finally decided she's over kids.

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"the Woman who Tried To Run Me Down"

Have you shared this story with us before?

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Think so. TLDR: Ridin' round the corner near her place. She rounded the corner in her monster station wagon on stilts (well what do YOU call SUV's?) and almost took me out. I managed to catch up just at the signal and admonished her. She failed to respond (at least not visibly, tho I hold out hope...)

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+1 Mark for catching up to her at the stop light. -1 Mark for not smashing her window with your U-Lock.

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[Psssst, ROY! Subhead spelling!]

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Yes, I just noticed that. Fixed now. We'll have a meeting with QC.

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Oh. Well go easy on 'em. Overworked/underpaid® an' all 'at.

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"A process of continuous improvement" is a phrase I use myself on occasions like this.

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I had to design a process for showing how we tried to achieve continuous improvement for our ABET accreditation

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As a teacher, I much prefer saying "I'm continuously improving!" rather than "Damn, I'm just NEVER gonna get this right."

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I once had a teacher who told us on the first day that "Sometimes I'm going to put something up on the chalkboard that is purposely wrong, just to see if you're paying attention." And when someone would point out the mistake, he'd first deny it, then stare at the board for a moment before he figured it out. There'd always be a momentary pause before he remembered to do the "See, that was one of those tests I told you I'd do" routine. No one was fooled, hahaha! We could, in fact, detect the bullshit.

(Not saying that's what happened here!)

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I swear to God, I knew what "mimesis" meant.(though probably, admittedly from the time I looked it up last time Roy used it)

"Credible, courageous and fluent" The idea that there's a rightwinger somewhere with even one of those traits.. maybe psycho toad Lynne Cheney

(Who I find myself agreeing with quite often these days. Maybe that drug abuse wasn't such a good idea)

So yeah I guess good news is bad news for the press. Even with all the bullshit Trump drama the business is shrinking faster than anybody can keep up with. They can't even go back home and write for the Penny Saver. Craigslist and Facebook marketplace killed that.

In another year shortstak here will be full of former journalists and Hammish will send us a list every week. Some will send us stories about how we too can become successful writers.

Great article-thanks Roy !

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"Credible, courageous and fluent"

When EF Fluent talks, people...uhmm...

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Gack! even Kellyanne's dog whistles have dog whistles

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Flea whistles!

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Sure, good idea to have at least one person on the ticket who can speak English.

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effervesce?

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If that's anything like 'going FOOOOM' then yeah...

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"Some will send us stories about how we too can become successful writers." Maybe I should get in on that racket. I understand not everyone knows I'm broke!

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So this is the greatest thing ever

https://www.justtherecipe.com/

I feel a little bit guilty when I use it.

I figure a lot of pro or wanna be pro writers depend on puffing up recipes for grocery money. Sort of like you writing Yelp reviews in your formative years. Those days are probably gone too- It's all AI now, I'm sure.

Maybe you should do some outreach to the journalism community- how to survive on luck and pluck in the fast-paced world of pay by click.

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Alternatively you can put "https://cooked.wiki/" in front of the bloated recipe page. That works too!

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"What about my rustic monologue? "

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Is it flavored with authentic frontier gibberish?

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You should write about fashion and clothes for the bongo bux, Roy. You seem to know about this.

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I don't really! I just look at what rich people wear and pick what's funny.

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Yeah, to be honest, I've always looked at your wardrobe notes as "What NOT to wear, even if you could afford it."

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So exactly like a fashion columnist -- maybe more like a fashion FIFTH columnist...

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I swear to God, I knew what "mimesis" meant.

Are you sire you weren't thinking of mimosas?

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Whenever a RTLer says they support "compassionate" approaches to abortion (viz. Nikki Haley) it's shorthand for "You're not going to get me to state my policy preferences; please project your own personally acceptable bullshit here."

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I once wrote on a Catholic blog (sue me; you are one until you officially become something else) that the true prolife position would be to overturn Roe last, after you built an economy and social infrastructure to allow pregnant women to genuinely choose without worrying about how they would take care of a baby, get an education, survive trauma, whatever is needed. The antichoicers, showing their true colors, did it backwards, and will never get around to actually helping pregnant women who can’t or don’t want to be a parent.

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Feb 6
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Death was their preferred cure for AIDS back in the day

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Protip: You can bullshit your way through any topic as long as nobody in the audience knows or cares much about the issue. "What's my position on the recent Ethiopia-Somaliland port deal? Well, Ethiopia is a land of contrasts..."

But you're not gonna bullshit your way through abortion, not unless your audience is the septuagenarian sausage-fest that is your local Republican party.

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If they're going to try to sell "compassionate conservatives" again, it's gonna be an uphill battle in the new "fuck you" MAGA reality.

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The MAGAs sneer at compassion.

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Emapthy, to them, is a sure sign of weakness.

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I think Roy's concept of what's 'normal people' these days might need a re-set. Looks to me it's pretty likely that normals (MAGAs, even) have functioning BS detectors, but they no longer care about the stench. Seems to me they are willing to (sw)allow it in pursuit of their greater goal of eternal domination of the damn nation.

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Yeah, this. Completely full of shit, they don't even care about the things they pretend to care about. Oh, sure, you've always been filled with intense concern about Fairness in Women's Competitive Swimming.

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It’s tribal signifiers all the way down.

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This is all about ethics in gender-based athletic competition.

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That explains the death threats.

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Seems at least a few of them found a stench at the Texas border.

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The image of those folk will be etched into my memory forever. Somewhere between Tod Browning's 'Freaks' and the parking lot at a Molly Hatchet concert *shudder*

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Yeah, I tripped over that "average person's nose" phrase. The shaded bar of average Americans runs from those who didn't break into the capital on Jan 6 to those who aren't social media shitlibs. That's a helluva spread. MAGA happily consume the bullshit because it confirms what they most believe, that America is collapsing, they are oppressed, and it's people not like them that are causing all of it. Any authority figure that says that on TV is their friend and ally. These people don't read the Times, for gods sake. What Crypt Keeper Conway is doing is gaslighting the elites who want to read a fair and balanced range of opinion.

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Hey Roy, there really is an "Abolitionists Rising" group here in the Midwest that wants abortion completely outlawed, although they don't seem to realize that even the mainstream anti abortion movement disavows them. At the Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas City, Kansas this past Saturday, about a dozen of them, students from some Nazi Bible college or other, showed up to yell at patients. There were only three of us clinic defenders there, but we screamed their fucking faces off so good that we actually made a couple of them go cry in their cars. 🤣 I'm bragging, I know, but I'm fucking proud of it. They kept trying to schmooze us and engage in dialogue and I told them we weren't there for a fucking garden party, we were there to make their time harassing patients as unpleasant for them as possible. It was fucking epic. 🤣

Keep writing the truth! You and Jeff Tiedrich are the lights of my mornings these days ✨️

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I like Tiedrich, too, but I’d like to donate some capital letters to his substack.

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You are my hero.

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You're doing the Lord's work, my friend. Keep poking the monsters back into their cages.

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They've been calling it murder for 50 years now. Gonna be hard to back off from that.

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I composed and then deleted a list of possible rebrands that might Bring The Nation Together and Begin The Healing. It was a pretty pathetic word salad, and I prefer a nice Caesar...

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I’m proud of you too.

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I think that absolutely is something to be proud of, so thank you for keeping up the good fight.

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"A lack of gravitas and a paucity of confidence in her competence..."

Looks like someone found the Thesaurus Rex function on her puter...

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IKR what errant hackery. Well, the bigtimers know as well as anyone how little effort it takes when you're trying to do is bullshit.

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It would still be terrible, but at least she could’ve used alliteration in her florid prose. This is pretentious, artless, *and* lazy.

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Before you submit that final draft to the Times, read it out loud to another person. If they repeatedly break into giggles, maybe it needs a rewrite, unless you're Dave Barry.

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I’d submit to the Bloom Beacon or Bloom County Times-Picayune.

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or the Press and Dakotan

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Oddly enough, Pretentious, Artless and Lazy LLC is her all-purpose legal team.

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Oh, they’re good!

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One she shares with Megan McArdle.

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Meg & McArdle would be the ones you go to when you've run out of options.

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I think it's beyond bullshit detecting at this point, at least in the presidential election. It's all about how effective the Democrats are at pounding into the common clay of the American voter (you know...) that Trump is 1) the guy who took away abortion rights; 2) unhinged.

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It beats having stances of one's own, doesn't it?

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The only consistent stance you need is “the kids today” and “the left” aren’t shutting up and voting hard enough.

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With all the concern I see expressed on MSNBC lately about possible low Black voter turnout, I'm thinking here's another group being set up to take the blame if Biden doesn't win. Sure, an actual majority of White people voted for Trump, but Black voters delivered *only* 80% of their votes for Biden, it's all their fault!

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If that happens (heaven forbid) we’ll be treated to self-righteous, spittle-flecked ranting about how they all need to suffer the consequences of their perfidious failure—even if most of them voted for Biden, or if, like many staunchly Democratic Native American voters, they’re trapped in “red” states and already get to suffer despite their best efforts.

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Honestly, it's a little greedy, isn't it? The question that seems to be consuming MSNBC this week is whether Black voters will give Biden 85% or just 80%. Wherever that number comes out, I'd say they're more than pulling their weight, right?

As for young voters, God forbid we actually listen to what they're saying and throw 'em the tiniest of bones, policy-wise.

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“But we gave them student loan forgiveness!” (Some, after years of begging.) “What more do they want, those ungrateful punks?!”

Never mind that, for instance, one loan forgiveness program was for people who had been paying on their student loans for at least 20 years. I mean, that’s good… though anyone who’s been paying a student loan for 20 years is in their 40s and not an insolent youth.

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They could, you know, have their Black show hosts talk to some actual Black voters during the work week. . . .

(Pauses, checks earpiece) Hold on, getting news that they only have *one* Black show host, for an hour a day, during the work week. . .

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Oh, I fucking guarantee if King Toad gets back in we'll ALL suffer.

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„Fluent“, huh? Sounds like another dogwhistle

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Bern got there first. I thought it was just too warly in the ayem and I was hllucinating

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Wow "MAGA toxoplasmosis" That's why I come here. Come for the laughs and stay for the science education. Although, are you sure it isn't the prestige media that is the disease to begin with?

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Arguable!

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You know how they came by MAGA toxoplasmosis?

By paying too much attention to catturd2.

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2 slightly soiled marks.

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Someone shook the box and Kellyanne Conway rose to the top.

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So he's the new Drudge Report. Holy crap...

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I'm very sorry, but permanent middle-schooler that I am, I just can't get past "Trump's No. 2"

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Damn . Scrolled ALMOST all the way down.........................

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I think it's OK that Steve's in middle school. More than OK, really – I mean who'd wanna be stuck somewhere way out in the unfashionable outer edge of school? Steve's right there in the thick of it!

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Here I am, stuck in the Middle School with you.

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Where the clowns and the jokers got their start.

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It astonishes me how many lying liars get away with saying, "Democrats support abortion up to the moment of birth, and in some cases, even afterward," in public forums, and people don't stand up and either walk out or call them lying liars in very loud voices. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I'm scrolling cheap offshore real estate social accounts. Come, join me in sunny Sicily and let's redo Paris in the '20s!

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I really do think there are millions of people who act like they're buying this bullshit, but that's all it is, an act. They know it's all lies, but they also want their team to win, and they think this helps. Kind of a "bigger fool" theory: "Hey, if I pretend to believe this, maybe some moron out there will be fooled into thinking it's true!"

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"one of the least popular [Veeps]"

Yeah, Kellyanne, I call shenanigans, because some of us actually remember the name "Spiro Agnew".

(I note that autocorrect anticipated my comment by changing "Veeps" to "Creeps".)

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Look, I've been there. When we were trying to drag a sack of cement named Michael Dukakis across the finish line, we did all we could to call attention to a guy named J. Danforth Quayle. Turns out nobody gives a shit about the V.P., but you can't blame us for trying.

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Shorter: If you're talking about the other team's V.P. you're losing.

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Let's face it, the woman is no J. Danforth Quayle.

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Dude couldn't even SPELL "gravitas."

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You want gravitas with that?

Nah, just one, thanks

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Plural is gravititti

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I thought you said it was for something other than porn.

Still, all is forgiven Mr Heavy Tipper.

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With two vee's, duh

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It's been about a year since I canceled my Times subscription, and once in a while I'll see a Times story in my google news and think, "Oh, that looks interesting, too bad I can't get past the paywall", but then this thing comes out...

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(𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩) “private” or “incognito” browser window (𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩). I still pay for the NYT, notwithstanding its egregious political reporting, for its archives and for its occasional prodigies of long-form nonpolitical journalism. As to the latter, if you have time for a longish read, see the unpaywalled sample at this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/the-jungle-prince-of-delhi.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TU0.PcqB.M9WwhAGobolj&bgrp=c&smid=url-share

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Hey, it's not just for porn? Thanks for the tip! (intended double-entendre)

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I still have a $4 pcm sub from my student account, and it's a guilty pleasure of mine to see how far to the right the old Grey Lady has tipped so... I also feel a little subversive yet, doing the free versions of the puzzles at my desk at work in a teeny-tiny window so I don't get caught. #anarchy

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This one's for you, pal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmo3HFa2vjg

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