It looks like Dan Froomkin got out just in time.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.
Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.
Damn right I heard that as a threat.
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
Everything is totally normal and fine!!!
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
You cannot love your country only when you win.
It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.
This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.
The unpunished coup was a training exercise.
Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.
Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.
fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.
Crusty Dem
True true.
Why even bother with the newspaper? The Washington Lobby and Post has a nice ring to it. They’ve finally found their business model..
Dork
Wimbly semi between Serera and a Russian is teh awesum.
The Ruskie cant close the deal, it appears.
gex
@Dork: I think that Dementieva is actually playing harder and tougher than normal. It’s just that the fight in Serena is unlike any other woman on the tour.
harlana pepper
Does anybody know where I can find the full transcript of Sanford’s AP interviews, if it’s available online? Of course, the audio would be even better, if you know.
Bill E Pilgrim
Announcement: As of today this newspaper is discontinuing print and Internet publication, all content will be posted in the lobby.
cleek
according to Yglesias, they’ve now cancelled the event.
gex
@cleek: They never expected the *lobbyists* to blow the whistle. You know you are engaging in some seriously unethical behavior when a lobbyist balks.
JimPortlandOR
Politco reports this outrage against journamalism
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
I’m humming the song: Love, for Sale
A Mom Anon
Since we’re in an open thread,does anyone have any book recommendations?
No fiction or politics,please. I’m not into the former and have read more than enough of the latter.
Maybe something related to gardeny things or travel or food. Anyone?
MikeJ
@gex: Lobbyists don’t mind paying up if they think they’re going to get something for their money. At this point, what does WaPo have to offer anyone?
unabogie
@A Mom Anon:
I recommend “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers”. It’s utterly fascinating and hilarious at the same time.
Crashman06
@A Mom Anon: Did you ever read anything by Mark Kurlansky? I’m thinking of Salt, Cod, or Big Oyster. I only read Salt, which was good, but from what I’ve heard they all seem to delve into some interesting, lesser known history of the ingredient/food in question. He also has a new one out, The Food of a Younger Land, about American food at the beginning of the 20th century, that sounds pretty interesting.
rreay
@A Mom Anon:
Maybe something related to gardeny things or travel or food.
@unabogie:
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers
Having read Stiff, I’m not sure if you’re recommending it as a gardening book or a travel book. I hope it’s not as a food book.
The Sphynx
@A Mom Anon:
If you’re feeling Travel, I enjoy Paul Theroux. Pillars of Hercules or the Oceania one are good
Brick Oven Bill
The Amtrak came through last night and was silent. This morning, a local freight came through and rumbled loudly.
This is because in the evening the valley floor is warmer than the sky and sound energy bends towards denser mediums. Energy bends towards denser mediums because the denser the medium, the more quickly the energy can move. Thus last night, the Amtrak’s sound energy was sucked into space.
This morning, the valley floor had cooled, and the sky was warming. Thus, the sound bounced between the valley floor and the lower atmosphere, and the train rumbled. The air in the valley was denser than the air in the sky.
…
Honduran Constitution Article 239 Translation.- The citizen that have performed the ownership of the Executive Power will not be able to be a President or Appointed. The one that break this disposition or propose their reform, as well as those that support the direct or indirectly, they will cease immediately in the performance of their respective charges, and they will remain disqualified by ten years for the exercise of every civil service.
The President is opposing the Honduran military’s move to uphold the Honduran Constitution. Imagine that.
Bokonon
Everything is for sale. Everything. The Post just decided to try to leverage their status as a newspaper and get ’em some. Why continue to be independent news organization – that’s so boring! and unprofitable!! – when you can be a player?
But given the Post’s deterioration over the last 10 years, I can’t say I am surprised that someone in the organization tried a stunt like this.
gbear
Mom Anon, If you’re looking for a gardening book that’s non-technical but great eye candy, I like ‘The Natural Garden’ series by Ken Druse. The photography is inspirational. The text is kind of touchy-feely but it also gets you motivated to go dig in the dirt.
Bill E Pilgrim
@A Mom Anon:
I don’t know if you can find this but… ah here it is:
http://amzn.com/9997549872
One of the best books I ever read, funny, entertaining, and interesting, all about la Belle Epoque in Paris. It’s called Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, respectively referring to the playwrights, who uttered the bon mots, which were passed all over town, and the prostitutes.
Few have heard of it but it’s a gem.
BDeevDad
@A Mom Anon: Not exactly cooking but a fun read: Father Knows Less Or: “Can I Cook My Sister?”
CapMidnight
Why pay so much? It is much cheaper to just make stuff up, like news, journalism, and answers to my Mom about what have I been up to now.
arguingwithsignposts
If you like humor, any of David Sedaris’ books are worth a look. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is hilarious. I wasn’t as enamored of When You are Engulfed in Flames. Sarah Vowell, also.
Violet
@A Mom Anon:
Totally recommend “Word Freak” by Stefan Fatsis. It’s all about the world of competitive Scrabble playing. It sounds geeky, and it is, but it’s a great read. Especially good if you like Scrabble.
Also loved “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” by Barbara Kingsolver. Gardeny and Food-y. Very good read.
Tim F.
@A Mom Anon:
Here are some personal favorites.
Science, neuro: The Feeling of What Happens, by Antonio Damasio. If that is too dense, Why Choose This Book?, by Read Montague.
Science, natural: The Diversity of Life, by Edward O. Wilson. Also Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond.
Science, pop, good for travel: The Control of Nature, by John McPhee
History: The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand
Food: Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
InflatableCommenter
Since pulling things out of our asses is the thing to do today, I have pulled out of my ass that McDonalds is going to start selling access to WaPo columnists along with medium or large Mocha and Latte coffee drinks in the Washington, DC area.
This is shocking, and awful.
But, it’s tasty.
Brian J
I didn’t see anybody ask this in the other thread, so I might as well ask it here. Why would anyone pay for the “service” offered by The Post? Isn’t anyone who has enough influence to make a difference in the reform debate already in regular contact with industry representatives?
oh really
When he was fired, it occurred to me that NOT being associated with the Washington Post might not be a bad thing in the future.
BDeevDad
@Tim F.: Second Kitchen Confidential. Love his travel show as well.
cleek
@arguingwithsignposts:
Me Talk Pretty One Day is hilarious, too.
re: Bourdain
he saw him do a lecture a few months ago: very entertaining.
Montysano
Last night, I was defending a gay friend from her friends and relatives. It was on Facebook, where the friend had spoken out in favor of same sex marriage. Suddenly, the American Taliban appeared:
She was speaking of my friend (“practice”) and me (“approve”) who deserve to be killed. To be fair, she did end her comment on an upbeat note:
Heh….
gex
I’m going to have to bookmark this thread with reading recommendations, much like I bookmarked the podcast recommendations thread.
BDeevDad
@Montysano: Someone needs to be removed from the friends list.
debbie
@A Mom Anon:
Julia Child’s memoir from a couple of years ago, “My Life in France,” is really good. Also her editor’s memoir “The Tenth Muse” (Judith Jones) — she was the one who really launched cookbook publishing. If you’re interested in the scientific side of cooking (like why egg whites are best beaten in a copper bowl), “On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee will explain everything in a very readable way.
geg6
@A Mom Anon:
I second whoever posted above the Anthony Bourdain recommendation.
However, one of my personal favorites is “A History of the World in Six Glasses” by Tom Standage. It tells the story of human history from the Stone Age until today through our beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. It traces our cultural and technological advancements and how instrumental each of these beverages were to the science, economics, and politics of their eras. Really, really fascinating stuff presented in a totally unique way.
MikeJ
Howie now has an article up saying the whole thing was the fault of the parent company.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070201563.html
joel
@Tim F.: Here’s a recommendation for you: Operators and Promoters. A bit dense and was incomplete because Echols died while working on it. But a great account of the history of molecular biology (mainly for the figures).
gex
@Montysano: This is what I’d like to see underscored when the slippery slope arguments come out. I’m much less afraid of the (fictional) people who want to marry goats than I am of the (unfortunately real) people who would institute the death penalty for gays.
ETA: And hell yes, I’d go over the top and report that to FB admins as a death threat. Look at what’s been happening in Fort Worth and San Diego. These folks aren’t to be taken lightly.
Crashman06
@geg6: That book sounds great. I might go out and get it today.
A Mom Anon
Thanks for all the recs so far,I knew you all would have some good ideas. I’ve been reading some really heavy stuff lately and it’s enough already. Now I gotta make a list of all these great suggestions.
geg6
@Crashman06:
Oh, please do. In fact, I think I’m gonna pull it off the bookshelf and read it again. It’s been a while, but it really was good and totally re-readable.
Phoebe
Food AND travel: A Cook’s Tour, by Anthony Bourdain.
Everyone: JTP isn’t running bc God advised against it:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/07/joe-the-plumber-god-told-me-not-to-run-for-office.html
Comrade Tudor
@A Mom Anon:
This isn’t about food or travel or gardeny things, but I’m currently in the middle of “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides and I can’t put it down.
Original Lee
New (to me) wingnut meme, as articulated by my wingnut coworker, who went completely around the bend on Election Day:
Obama wants to be President for Life.
Has anybody else heard this one? I just about fell off my chair. This statement was followed by:
Of course, if he wins a second term, this country will be so far down the drain that becoming a banana republic would be an improvement.
geg6
@Comrade Tudor:
OMG, I loved, loved, loved that book. What a saga! And the family is unforgettable.
Montysano
@gex: Between my little encounter last night, and Michael Scheuer’s comment on Beck’s show, it’s apparent that Peak Wingnut can never be attained.
gex
@Montysano: If it could be harnessed for renewable energy it *might* be worth allowing the wingnut to churn. But unfortunately wingnut results in either crazy internet rantings on the one end to active death and destruction at the other end.
JoyceH
It’s out of print, but one of my fav food books is The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook. I hadn’t realized how much eating was in those books until someone created a cookbook for them. Whether you want to cook or not, it’s just fun to read.
Phoebe
Oh, of course, if I’d kept on a-scrollin’ I’d have seen that you already had your JTP fun.
But here’s another book recommendation, How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher.
Thomas Levenson
Food: nothing better, I mean nothing, than A.J. Leibling’s Between Meals: A Memoir of Paris.
(For a surprisingly wonderful cookbook, let me recommend the Lobel’s Meat and Wine. I’ve been cooking out of it for about a year now. I’ve never had a bad recipe; its stews are excellent and unusual, and the Lobel brothers really know their meat. One caveat: their cooking times for any braise are about 1/3-1/2 too long. Just check.)
Travel: Not to be missed are oldy but very goody Mark Twain products — Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It. John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra is a classic made more poignant when you know it was written in his old age in L.A. when he was too infirm to mountaineer and deeply saddened by the loss of the Hetch Hetchy battle.
A delightful food and travel book I read recently was edited (I think) by my own (now sadly, former) editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Becky Saletan. She turned me on to Jen Lin-Liu’s Serve the People, Lin-Liu’s account of being an American who looked local trying to learn Chinese cookery high and low in Beijing, Shanghai and the provinces. Fun to read and recipes too.
Modesty forbears the mention of anything recent I might have written, except to note that some reviewers have very kindly emphasized how my science-and-history take on Isaac Newton’s detective career is good beach reading.
asiangrrlMN
Anthony Bourdain. Yummy.
@Montysano: Seriously? Someone seriously posted that on a FB page? I got an FB warning for ‘misuse of certain features’, but they refuse to tell me which one, other than, “It could be you’re posting on your friends’ walls.” Duh! Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?
Yet, someone can write that kind of shit and not be warned? Good lord.
Aaaaaand, to totally alienate myself from the BJ crowd, I don’t think Sedaris is funny in the least (but his sister is).
Chris Andersen
Who in their right mind over at the Post ever even thought this would be a good idea?
cleek
@Original Lee:
you might not be surprised to learn that this is being pushed by none other than Alan Keyes
on the other hand, it was pretty common to hear people all over the left-o-sphere speculating that Bush was going to cancel the 04 election over a phony terrorism scare.
cotton_don
@A Mom Anon
I just got “Serious Barbecue” by Adam Lang Perry. Many recipes have 4 or 5 layers of marinades, rubs, glazes, butters – brushed on with an herb bundle and sliced on an herb-sauced cutting board. Mashed sweet potatoes and banana with brown sugar. Melting garlic. It’s the right title.
Emily
@A Mom Anon:
Maybe something related to gardeny things or travel or food.
I keep a blog of reviews of books my daughters and I have read and liked.
You should check out: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Elegant essays about how humans and plants affect each other’s evolutionary histories.
Also, The Invention of Air, a really well written biography of Joseph Priestley.
And, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard’s beautiful yet clear-eyed vignettes about the resplendence and horrors of the natural world captivate me.
The main blog page is here: http://www.armadillosoft.com/blog
arguingwithsignposts
Re: Sedaris’ books – It did just occur to me that he does write about his life in France in a couple of books, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames includes a large portion of the book about his time living in Japan trying to quite smoking, so I guess that could be considered “travel writing.”
And I think it’s Holidays on Ice which includes his classic take on a “serious” theatre critic reviewing children’s Christmas plays.
Rosali
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