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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Open Thread

by Tim F|  March 2, 20062:23 pm| 51 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Unleash your barbarian yawp.

Until we resolve the issue with our server quota you’ll have to go here for kitten pictures.

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51Comments

  1. 1.

    Gray

    March 2, 2006 at 2:30 pm

    “Unleash your barbarian yawp.”

    Hmm, sorry, for the foreign readers here, what is a yawp?

    I found yawl, yaws and yawn. While all give your sentence a funny appearance, none makes much sense…

  2. 2.

    Tim F.

    March 2, 2006 at 2:34 pm

    It’s a reference to the poet Walt Whitman. See here.

  3. 3.

    ppGaz

    March 2, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    “Unleash your barbarian yawp.”

    I did, and it ate my neighbor’s chihuahua.

  4. 4.

    Lines

    March 2, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    If when Bush lies, a kitten dies, why do we still have any cats left?

  5. 5.

    Paul Wartenberg

    March 2, 2006 at 2:54 pm

    Lines Says:

    If when Bush lies, a kitten dies, why do we still have any cats left?

    Because kittens have nine lives, so Bush has to lie 9 times as much to finish the poor felines off. Which would explain the administration’s massive efforts of spins and distortions on a scale not seen since the Nixon administration…

  6. 6.

    Mac Buckets

    March 2, 2006 at 2:54 pm

    Evidently, David Gregory can’t hold his liquor. And he thinks it’s funny to call national simulcast talk shows drunk. I take back all the bad stuff I ever said about him.

  7. 7.

    Paul Wartenberg

    March 2, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    I’ve been re-reading The Price of Loyalty and Worse Than Watergate, and I’ve been struck by how much of each work is still relevant in explaining the horrors, lies and arrogance of this administration…

  8. 8.

    Paul Wartenberg

    March 2, 2006 at 2:57 pm

    Regarding the video release showing Bush’s response (or lack of one) to events leading up to Hurricane Katrina… Just how bad does it look for Dubya when *Brownie* looks more competent than him?

  9. 9.

    demimondian

    March 2, 2006 at 3:12 pm

    Bush has to lie 9 times as much to finish the poor felines off.

    What about the rich ones? Does he offer special lie cuts for the Main Street Republican Cats? Does he fly back to Washington to pander to the Fundimenti-Cats?

  10. 10.

    jg

    March 2, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    I’m only on my first book by the author but I think its safe to say that Phillip K. Dick is like Edgar Allen Poe on meth,
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .literally.

  11. 11.

    Marcus Wellby

    March 2, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    Regarding the video release showing Bush’s response (or lack of one) to events leading up to Hurricane Katrina… Just how bad does it look for Dubya when Brownie looks more competent than him?

    Hurricane Katrina was just another lie spewed by the MSM. There was no hurricane, and New Orleans is just fine. The people at the Superdome were just Wellfare Queens and Kings looking for handouts. Move alone, nothing to see here.

  12. 12.

    Jim Allen

    March 2, 2006 at 3:26 pm

    Anyone who could come up with a title like “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” had it together, IMHO.

  13. 13.

    Marcus Wellby

    March 2, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    I’m only on my first book by the author but I think its safe to say that Phillip K. Dick is like Edgar Allen Poe on meth

    Which one? Some are much better than others. Valis, Ubik, and Do Androids… were great. Others like The Man in the High Castle were just alright.

    I went through a pretty long PKD phase. He was an amazing author, but you do need to take time between his books.

    Bladerunner is one of my all time favorate movies. I saw the movie before reading the book. I found the book to be much, much more interesting and wish the movie stayed a little closer to form.

  14. 14.

    jg

    March 2, 2006 at 3:42 pm

    I just picked up A Scanner Darkly after seeing the trailer for the movie on Apple.com.

    Next I’ll get Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, after that who knows, maybe a book of short stories. I’ve always wanted to read We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

  15. 15.

    Pb

    March 2, 2006 at 3:45 pm

    When it comes to cat pictures, nothing beats Stuff On My Cat…

  16. 16.

    Marcus Wellby

    March 2, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    I just picked up A Scanner Darkly after seeing the trailer for the movie on Apple.com.

    Yes, that was a good one. Very trippy at times.

  17. 17.

    ppGaz

    March 2, 2006 at 4:09 pm

    “Unleash your barbarian yawp.”

    Is this anything like “Shut your barbarian yap,” when my wife says it?

  18. 18.

    rilkefan

    March 2, 2006 at 4:36 pm

    Anybody remember the PKD story about an imagined doctrine that children get their souls at age 12 or so, imagining a world in which abortion is legal until that age?

    Oh yeah, “The Pre-Persons”.

    I thought long stretches of _Do Androids_ were turgid at best.

  19. 19.

    Lines

    March 2, 2006 at 4:37 pm

    Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked why fines for conditions that endanger miners are “always pleaded out to be the least amount.” He said that minimal fines are “part of the real tragedy of recent years.”

    A data analysis by The New York Times found that the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001 and in nearly half the cases not collected them at all.

    Kennedy captured trying to hog the camera and mic again! He was probably drunk, and fat!

    Please, please, please try to justify the Bush Administration’s cuts to fines. I really need a good laugh today, you pathetic Republican twits.

  20. 20.

    Lines

    March 2, 2006 at 4:40 pm

    Source for my above rant.

  21. 21.

    jg

    March 2, 2006 at 4:42 pm

    It hasn’t rained since I got my wisdom teeth out.
    Coincidence?

  22. 22.

    Perry Como

    March 2, 2006 at 4:42 pm

    If you pay your bills, you may be a terrorist:

    After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn’t changed.

    So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

    …

    They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.

  23. 23.

    jg

    March 2, 2006 at 4:45 pm

    Its an old money laundering trick. The DHS shouldn’t waste its time here, there are libraries where teenage boys are sneaking peeks at online porn.

  24. 24.

    Eural

    March 2, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    I read some of PKD stuff a while back.

    I’m not sure when. But it was a while back.

    I’m not sure it was me. Or me. But someone read it.

    Time for my meds. Or mine.

  25. 25.

    Catfish N. Cod

    March 2, 2006 at 5:20 pm

    The correct Whitman is “barbaric yawp”, not “barbarian yawp”. The point is that I can speak barbarically without becoming a barbarian. I can yell and scream and still not be Conan… thank goodness — I don’t want to run California.

  26. 26.

    Paul Wartenberg

    March 2, 2006 at 5:25 pm

    Off on a tangent, the NFL may lose its collective bargaining agreement with the Players Union and at 10 pm this evening everyone will turn into pumpkins. :glances about: Well, it’s a possibility!

    Actually what will happen is that there will be no cap adjustment for the coming year, meaning more teams will be waaay over the cap limit this year forcing massive cuts to their lineups. And with a tighter cap more of those high-priced veterans are going to find few teams willing to take them back.

    The sticking points seem to be revenue sharing and percentages: the large-market teams are refusing to cough up any local revenue to share with the smaller markets; the players want more of the percentages on certain revenues (can’t remember the specifics from that point). So there’s actually multiple points of -ssh-l-ry to spread among the combatants on this one…

    If only sports athletes were paid at the same wage level as teachers… and owners got paid the same wage level as garbage collectors… we’d all be better off ;)

  27. 27.

    srv

    March 2, 2006 at 5:33 pm

    More happy news today. NASA is out of the science business:

    NASA no longer serves any purpose

    I weep, knowing that this dark age is going to last alot longer now.

  28. 28.

    jaime

    March 2, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    Evidently, David Gregory can’t hold his liquor. And he thinks it’s funny to call national simulcast talk shows drunk. I take back all the bad stuff I ever said about him.

    I like Wonkette’s take on it. Plus that show is on at some ungodly hour in the morning. Also, since Stern left for Sirius even less people listen to that fake cowboy Jackass Imus.

  29. 29.

    Davebo

    March 2, 2006 at 6:28 pm

    Actually what will happen is that there will be no cap adjustment for the coming year, meaning more teams will be waaay over the cap limit this year forcing massive cuts to their lineups.

    Really?

    Our local sports talk guy said it would mean no salary cap for the coming year.

  30. 30.

    Pooh

    March 2, 2006 at 6:40 pm

    Davebo, that would be for the 2007 season.

  31. 31.

    rilkefan

    March 2, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    jaime‘s link, working.

  32. 32.

    Paul Wartenberg

    March 2, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    Dave, I was referring to the 2006 season, the cap is like 95 million without an updated CBA. With the CBA it would have bumped up to 105 million. That may look like chump change, but still that’s at least 3-4 starting salaries that face the axe…

  33. 33.

    AkaDad

    March 2, 2006 at 7:01 pm

    You know the reason President Bush was in India?

    He was visiting American jobs…

  34. 34.

    StupidityRules

    March 2, 2006 at 7:36 pm

    If when Bush lies, a kitten dies, why do we still have any cats left?

    Hundreds of cats in Germany has been given to animal shelters since the report of a cat dying after contracting the bird-flu. They are also taking their cats to the vet to put them to sleep. Despite any evidence that humans can get the flu from cats this will probably escalate…

  35. 35.

    SeesThroughIt

    March 2, 2006 at 7:45 pm

    even less people listen to that fake cowboy Jackass Imus.

    Does anybody else remember when Imus was actually funny? I was an ardent listener in the early 1990s when he was on WFAN in New York and had yet to be syndicated nationwide. There was a lot of really funny stuff on his show back then, some of which still finds its way into my speech today. (I’m forever quoting the character of John Cardinal O’Conner reading the Lotto numbers. “The big Lotto jackpot this Wednesday night, Imus in the Morn…will be several million dollars.” And, of course, A Dick’s-Eye View with Richard Nixon.) But then he got syndicated and seemed way more interested in being a “power broker” than being funny, and that was the end of it.

  36. 36.

    Bob In Pacifica

    March 2, 2006 at 7:48 pm

    From kittens to wolves:

    Don’t believe the crap about the old Soviet Union trying to do in John Paul II. The Turkish assassin was a member of a right-wing terror group, I think it was the Gray Wolves. I believe he is back in Turkey doing time for other assassinations. The whole “Commies shot the Pope” story was floated from the kinds of guys who forge docs about Niger yellowcake. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the same names get floated.

    My best guess is that this is something to boost the Italian Right’s flagging numbers in the upcoming election. Berlusconi must be getting nervous.

  37. 37.

    Richard 23

    March 2, 2006 at 9:29 pm

    I really enjoyed PKD’s A Scanner Darkly. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale is under 10 pages, although I liked the ending better than the one in Total Recall.

    Check out Martian Time Slip — really weird. Gubble gubble.

    I also really liked the novel with a simulacrum of Lincoln. Can’t remember the name — perhaps “We Can Own You” or something. Really cool.

    I’ve got dozens of his novels and all 5 short story collections. Great stuff. His exegis is really odd.

    Too bad he died before Blade Runner was completed.

  38. 38.

    Richard 23

    March 2, 2006 at 10:28 pm

    Er, We Can Build You. I was close.

  39. 39.

    Paddy O'Shea

    March 2, 2006 at 10:56 pm

    3 polls came out today, and they all show George W. Bush losing the stink race to a bucket of manure.

    Gallup 38%
    Fox “News” 39%
    Quinipiac 36%

    Fox Poll also shows the voting public preferring the Democrats over the GOP by a whopping 14 percentage points.

  40. 40.

    jg

    March 2, 2006 at 11:23 pm

    although I liked the ending better than the one in Total Recall.

    If you watch the directors cut and listen to the directors commentary he tells you whether it was all a dream or if he was a secret agent with his memory wiped. I imagine the short story a little clearer about whether its a dream or not. Is that what you mean by a better ending, less ambiguous?

  41. 41.

    ppGaz

    March 3, 2006 at 12:11 am

    It’s an open thread, so …. this. I offer it to you without comment, mainly because it leaves me speechless

  42. 42.

    Steve

    March 3, 2006 at 12:24 am

    The founder of that town also gave us this fine establishment of learning, for those who find Clarence Thomas’ judicial philosophy to be a little too liberal.

  43. 43.

    John Redworth

    March 3, 2006 at 12:47 am

    I was reading up on these Saddam tapes and how it “proves” that Iraq had WMDs… I would like to hear what others around here are thinking about this since some of the conservative sites are quickly reacting…
    http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&artnum=1&issue=20060224

  44. 44.

    Off Colfax

    March 3, 2006 at 1:33 am

    Damn.

    Now I want another kitten.

    I hate you, Tim.

  45. 45.

    Steve

    March 3, 2006 at 10:01 am

    I think it’s pretty amazing that Saddam’s WMDs have been found and yet, instead of everyone in the Bush Administration shouting it from the rooftops, they send out an ex-FBI agent to randomly reveal “hey, you’ll never believe what I heard on those tapes!”

    It’s just, you know, an unusual way of pushing back against the biggest embarassment of Bush’s presidency.

    And I think it speaks volumes for the credibility of the conservative sites who get duped by these “revelations,” time and time again. If some heretofore-unknown bastard great-grandchild of Saddam Hussein came forward in the year 2060 to reveal that Saddam stashed his WMDs on Halley’s Comet with the intent of reclaiming them in 86 years when the comet came around again, these same sites would all declare “BUSH WAS RIGHT!” Take it to the bank.

  46. 46.

    ppGaz

    March 3, 2006 at 10:10 am

    Steve, Washington Monthly did a piece late last year on the “dynamite in the distance” tactic.

    Basically, it amounts to just planting an alternative (and favorable to the right) view of situation, or a distraction (look, a jackalope!) which is just enough to get the noise machine cackling about something other than the emperor’s vestments.

    It’s a fascinating, and sobering article, I will see if I can find a link to it for you.

    They play it like a violin. And their audience loves it.

  47. 47.

    ppGaz

    March 3, 2006 at 10:13 am

    Steve,

    Well, I found the Staples “Easy Button” and came up with the link in 30 seconds.

    Anyway, read the whole thing, as they say. This explans a lot about the GOP noise machine, and a lot about the way the blog world works, too, although the article isn’t about blogs. The tactic works in any context.

  48. 48.

    ppGaz

    March 3, 2006 at 10:15 am

    DeLay needs something—a diversion, dynamite in the distance. And here is McHenry. As the camera turns on, his face snaps into a bank teller’s automatic smile. McHenry is the kind of young person whom other young people can’t stand because he comes across as if he’s been prepping his whole life to be 40. His voice is high-pitched, his tone world-weary, measured, sighingly cynical. Twenty-nine years old, he’s seen it all before. “This is just the pot calling the kettle black,” he says, arguing that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also took a trip she didn’t fund herself. This is the Republican line of the day, even though Pelosi’s trip was a non-profit-funded visit to a U.S. naval base while DeLay’s was a St. Andrews golf vacation financed by indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Nevertheless, McHenry’s eyebrows temple upwards, neat geometries of piety. “They call their own failure to disclose travel a mere oversight. But when Republicans do it, they call it an ethical scandal.” Dynamite in the distance. The news report pivots, and ABC correspondent Brian Ross spends most of the rest of the segment affirming that Democrats, too, have taken some trips they haven’t paid for. A pox on both their houses. For McHenry, this is mission accomplished.

    –WaMO

    That’s the relevant passage, for those too lazy to read the article.

  49. 49.

    Steve

    March 3, 2006 at 10:39 am

    Well, there are still people who believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion after all these years, so I have to figure it’s relatively easy to get all the Bushbots to jump on board for the latest WMD story. There’s no challenge to making people believe what they want to believe.

  50. 50.

    ppGaz

    March 3, 2006 at 10:42 am

    There’s no challenge to making people believe what they want to believe.

    Snap!

    That’s it, exactly.

  51. 51.

    skip

    March 3, 2006 at 6:22 pm

    “If you pay your bills, you may be a terrorist:”

    No, you may be an imperialist. There is still (no kidding) a surcharge on your phone bill for the Spanish American War. As they say, you can look it up.

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