Punch Lines

Josh Marshal, on news of Rand Paul’s white supremacist aide:

“It’s weird how often the folks with a ‘passion for freedom’ end up being involved in neo-Confederate and white supremacist politics.”

Hunter, on a Fox News-Liz Trotta rant about the dangers of “creeping paganism”:

“Will it result in more candy on Halloween? Or just more apples?”

Mistermix, on a claim that “Immigration reform is dead and Obamacare implementation killed it”:

“The House Republicans are really demonstrating how far human beings can crawl up their own asses.”

Outrage Fatigue

Ratings for the evening MSNBC programs, including Rachel Maddow’s show, are significantly down. Digby notes that traffic is down across the board in liberal media generally, including blogs.

We’ve been through a number of elections, crises, other ups and downs over the past decade but I’ve not seen anything like the drop in interest over the past few months. If it was just me I’d attribute it to my little project having run its course but it’s happening across the liberal media spectrum. I don’t now what the answer is, but it isn’t that there isn’t a permanent audience. There was until very recently. It’s that the liberal audience is tuning out and one can only assume it’s because they don’t like what they see in our politics.

Annie Laurie adds,

“We” spent money and time and energy we could barely afford to elect President Obama, not once but twice, and thereby avoided the disasters of Presidents McCain and Romney. President Obama has not been an unmitigated blessing to the Democratic Party, nor has the Democratic Party always been a loyal servant to President Obama. And the Republicans are variously liars, thieves, grifters, ratfckers, self-satisfied morons and generally crazy people. Also, there is no cure for the common cold and no pill that will allow us to eat whatever we want and still loose weight. Welcome to the human condition, aka “politics”.

I have to plead guilty that I haven’t watched the evening politics talk shows in quite a while. Since the November elections I either spend evenings when I’m at home writing stuff, or reading, or playing Words With Friends, or watching teevee shows that are mostly fantasy, like Grimm, in which a Portland detective deals with fairy tale characters. After years of following today’s Republicans, Grimm feels like an oasis of sanity.

This is not because I don’t care. But I’ve been blogging here for nearly eleven years now, and while I have no plans to stop, at the moment I’m kind of exhausted with it. I’ve run out of entertaining ways to say that Republicans are variously liars, thieves, grifters, ratfckers, self-satisfied morons and generally crazy people. But we’ve got some interesting stuff coming up, like the George Zimmerman trial and the implementation of Obamacare, and next year’s midterms, so I expect to get back into the groove eventually.

Buddha Loves Me

I have come to realize that most of my building is without power. One neighbor has partial power, others don’t have any. So far today all my electrical stuff has worked just fine. Apparently there’s one power line servicing the building that wasn’t damaged, and it’s the one that goes to my apartment.

I rule.

A Tad Warm

At noon the outside temperature was in triple digits, although I see now it has cooled down to 99 degrees. The National Weather Service has issued an “excessive heat warning” for southern New York state. Do tell. It’s supposed to be considerably cooler by Friday, though.

The FBI Might Crash Your Computer

Some time today or tomorrow, click on www.dns-ok.us to be sure your DNS resolution is OK and correctly looking up IP addresses. This is why. If you don’t click on the link, on Monday there may be black helicopters hovering over your house. Worse, your web browser might not work.

This may only apply to computers in the U.S., but if you aren’t in the U.S. it doesn’t hurt to check it out.