Ryan Joy (atxryan)

"Last night, though, he had to know. You don't do what he did unless you know — calling out not only the political opposition for its opportunistic nihilism, and not only the United States Senate for its structural inertia and for the remarkable number of venal gobshites among its membership, but the Supreme Goddamn Court of the United States, sitting right there in front of him, for handing down a recent decision that guarantees that every election for the foreseeable future will have all the essential integrity and nobility of a Moroccan bazaar. You don't do that, getting Justice Sam Alito mumbling under his breath like a drunk on a subway, unless you know you're the only president in the room."

"They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.
There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots."

"The mere routing of data packets is not inherently expressive," Corie Wright, a lawyer for Free Press, said. "It doesn't express an opinion or an idea or a viewpoint of the cable operator. They're basically shuttling other peoples' content back and forth. … You can't have it both ways. You can't claim First Amendment protection so that you can discriminate against whoever you want to, then claim you're not an editor in order to not get sued by people when there's some kind of harmful conduct that happens online."

"Neither in action nor in message is [Obama] in front of the anger roiling a country where high unemployment remains unchecked and spiraling foreclosures are demolishing the bedrock American dream of home ownership. The president is no longer seen as a savior but as a captive of the interests who ginned up the mess and still profit, hugely, from it."

Forty-one senators from our 21 smallest states — just over 10 percent of our population — can block bills dealing not just with health care but with global warming and hazards that threaten the whole planet. Individual senators now use the filibuster, or the threat of it, as a kind of personal veto, and that power seems to have warped their behavior, encouraging grandstanding and worse.

“President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option,” McClellan concluded. Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/05/28/0528mcclellan.html Read that statement again. Slowly. Whether you believe Scott McCellan is just doing this to sell books (he is) or not, that doesn’t change the fact that this is [...]

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that many court fines must now run concurrently instead of consecutively, much the same way many prison terms must be served at the same time instead of being stacked one after the other. This means that in many cases only the most expensive fine would be applied and [...]

Returning from a recent trip to Houston, Jade and I stopped to fill up the tank in Brookshire, Texas at a Flying J. There I encountered this absurd sign → YELLOW is not a threat level. It’s a color. It represents the Department of Homeland Security’s Elevated threat level designation in their inane advisory system. [...]

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No it won’t from The Onion. This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher. It will not end the threat of weapons of mass destruction; it will make [...]

I received a voicemail this morning at my work phone number from a Bill Barkus claiming to work for Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) and the National Republican Congressional Committee. According to the message, the RNCC wants to recognize me with their “national leadership award”. Of course I’m immediately skeptical as I consider: a.) why would [...]