Arthur D. Hlavaty

Beyond Marx

Wed, 02 Aug 2017 10:52:35 GMT

Nixon was the Shakespearean tragedy, *Bush* was already the farce, Trump is some avant-garde anti-humor vomiting-on-the-audience bullshit–Arthur Chu

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This is important

Sun, 30 Apr 2017 19:03:50 GMT

Also, listen up: gender is a spectrum. The closer you look at ANYTHING the blurrier the lines get. INCLUDING GENDER. LIFE is complicated

--Adam Savage

Read the whole thing.

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Before Mencken

Tue, 06 Sep 2016 09:24:40 GMT

Henry Adams said, “There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.”

Thanx to Quotes of the Day

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Herd of blind pigs finds acorn

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 10:44:43 GMT

Trump delegate Peter Thiel says something sane:

Instead of going to Mars, we have invaded the Middle East

Thanx to RAW Illumination.

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Only fair

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 11:00:01 GMT

Mike Huckabee has decided to end his presidential campaign but I think he should be forced to carry it to full term–Bryan Donaldson

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Somebody said...

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 14:59:24 GMT

Color-code your infants so strangers know what their genitals look like.

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ReCurse

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 12:22:10 GMT

Trump’s autobiography takes forever to read because it keeps going back to Chapter 11–Daniel Lin

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Trumped

Sat, 11 Jul 2015 18:37:26 GMT

There is nothing more tiresome than respectable Republicans who go around moaning about Donald Trump now and pretend that they don't know how all this ever happened to their party, who pretend that their long-fingered vulgarianism hasn't depended vitally on short-fingered vulgarianism for four decades

–Charles Pierce

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Charles Pierce in the quotefile again

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 10:24:15 GMT

Consider what's being said here. Judge Pape is thanking the governor for having the Texas guard "monitor" an Army training exercise because too many of their voters are bughouse crazy. There are Americans who go to sleep at night worrying that they will be abducted by renegade gynocologists from Alpha Centauri. We call those people "crackpots." In Texas, organized paranoids are just another constituency to be serviced.

--Charles Pierce

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“If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self.”

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:51:32 GMT

Real Albert Einstein quotes

Thanx to Metafilter

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Guilt by association

Sun, 11 Jan 2015 17:27:45 GMT

I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I’ll auto-excommunicate–J.K. Rowling

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Game

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 10:42:08 GMT

Here’s the thing about men like David Koch: Making money is basically just a video game to them. For the rest of us, making money is about being able to pay for things we need and want, such as rent and food and actual video games. But David Koch has made so much money that he literally cannot spend it all. There is nothing he would want to buy he cannot already afford. The only purpose at this point in making more money is for the pleasure of beating your high score. In other words, it really is just a very consuming video game. But unlike when you kill people in Call of Duty or crush candies in Candy Crush, the game David Koch is playing is very real. Millions of people will suffer and die because he wants to “win” his video game by manipulating the public to avoid taking action on global warming. That is evil and hateful and selfish on a level that puts the word “selfish” to shame

--Amanda MarcotteThanx to Pandagon.

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Revilement

Fri, 08 Aug 2014 10:55:27 GMT

I could probably do a Charles P. Pierce bit in the Quotefile every day, but one must have some restraint. Today's is irresistible:

The editors at Tiger Beat On The Potomac went out of their way to give column space to Rich (Sparkle Pants) Lowry, the editor of the longtime white-supremacist journal, National Review. Today, Richie would like to remind the nation that he found the grown-up pants in the back of the closet next to the Paul Wolfowitz action figures.

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Babu Science

Sun, 27 Jul 2014 09:31:06 GMT

The success of mathematical physics led the social scientist to be jealous of its power without quite understanding the intellectual attitudes that had contributed to this power. The use of mathematical formulae had accompanied the development of the natural sciences and become the mode in the social sciences. Just as primitive peoples adopt the Western modes of denationalized clothing and of parliamentarianism out of a vague feeling that these magic rites and vestments will at once put them abreast of modern culture and technique, so the economists have developed the habit of dressing up their rather imprecise ideas in the language of the infinitesimal calculus--Norbert Weiner, God & Golem, Inc.

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Buffer

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 14:09:41 GMT

The abortion issue has been on everyone’s mind lately. On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous finding that the 35-foot buffer zones around Massachusetts abortion clinics violated protesters’ freedom of speech. We do not have time to discuss this in detail, except to point out that this decision came from people who work in a building where the protesters aren’t allowed within 250 feet of the front door--Gail Collins

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Boehner's latest

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 10:07:51 GMT

Is it possible for an empty suit to file an empty suit?-Charles P. Pierce

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Quote

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 10:11:08 GMT

Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.

--Nassim Taleb

Thanx to Slate Star Codex

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Delocalization

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 10:19:56 GMT

I remember the liberalization of censorship of both text and images in the 1960s. The overall effect, it seemed to me, was that sex got less creepy. You could tell where it was and where it wasn’t–Teresa Nielsen Hayden (and read the comments)

Thanx to Making Light.

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But do you like him?

Sun, 23 Mar 2014 21:33:47 GMT

Blow me, you monstrous, bloodthirsty fraud, you silly, stupid chickenhawk motherfker who plays army man with the children of people who are so much better than you are, and who would feed innocent civilians in lands you will never visit into your own personal meatgrinder to service your semi-annual martial erection. You and the rest of your cowardly cohort helped prepare the ground for the worst geopolitical mistake the country has made in 30 years. You fought the battle of the Green Rooms and the think tanks while other people's sons and daughters died for your fantasy of how the world would work if you really were the pimply, adolescent Zeus you see when you look in the mirror every morning. The country does not need you lectures any more. The country does not need your counsel. The country does not need your advice. And, as sure as human beings have become dead because of your lectures, and counsel, and advice, human beings about whom you otherwise care nothing, the country does not need your hectoring that it has become insufficiently bellicose to fulfill your newest, blood-drenched fantasies. Even here, even now, you hide behind the skirts of a woman from Indiana who, while I believe her to be wrong, seems to be genuine in her beliefs. You are unworthy of her intellectual camouflage. You should be driven from polite society, consigned to an ideological Molokai so you can no longer infect the rest of us. People should shun you. You should wear the bell for the rest of your miserable days.

--Charles Pierce on William Kristol

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On Strategic Calm, as a Virtue

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:00:17 GMT

As the years go by, I am more and more convinced that the immediate, fast-twitch talk-show responses about what we "have" to do in response to various developments are almost always wrong, and the calm, day- or week-after reflections about proportion, response, and national interest are almost always wiser. If I could, I would put all cable-TV discussion of breaking-news crises on a 24-hour delay. Maybe there has been a case in which immediate reflex-response to big news has seemed wise in the long run. Right now I can't think of any.

–James Fallows

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Scary

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 10:30:17 GMT

It doesn’t really matter that no one is actually harmed by enrolling in an insurance plan at healthcare.gov. The point of these ads is not to make the argument that people lost money, since that argument will get fact-checked pretty quickly. The point is to send the message that, if you go onto the website, bears will eat your face and dragons will set fire to your ass and you will be a sad person who is never the same again

--Amanda Marcotte

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Plus

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 10:51:17 GMT

It is worth noting that “plus-size” is a fashion term for women who are known in the real world as “thin.”

--Amanda Marcotte, on a raging fatphobe who appeared on Fox News to warn about how civilization will crumble if Disney has a plus-size princess

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Monopoly

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:28:15 GMT

I don't do a Charles Pierce quote every day, but I'm usually tempted. From a discussion of the health insurance racket:

This is what I wonder. How do you sleep at night knowing that you have monopoly control over the health of the people in your region? How do you sleep knowing that you exercise that monopoly power the way every monopoly power always has been exercised?

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Quotefile

Sat, 01 Feb 2014 12:10:50 GMT

Charles Pierce is in good form this week. On the significance of the Super Bowl:

Yeah, there's a bigass football game this weekend, and I am tremendously disappointed that at least two mayors from towns in Washington state and Colorado didn't bet each other an ounce of their finest weed on the outcome. Until dope can be used as currency in a dumbass publicity stunts between second-rate politicians, we cannot truly be a free people

On the Republicans:

The Republican party's congressional delegations went on "retreat" this year in order to produce plan-like products that allegedly will address the nation's problems. Now that the crayons all have been put away, and nap time is over, the party has produced a plan-like product with "Immigration" written in big red letters across the top of the first page, one that has absolutely no chance of passage and also will get many people in the party throwing rocks at each other.

And on a favorite (deserving) target

Once again, I appeal to anyone who knows, please tell me where David Brooks buys his mushrooms.

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The NSA Ruling

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 11:22:34 GMT

Let us congratulate U.S. District Judge William Pauley III. It cannot be easy issuing an important ruling while hiding under your bed– Charles Pierce

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