I’m off to a friend’s house for cuban sandwiches, so I will be away from the intertrons for a while, so here is an open thread for you.
I think I am also making a command decision and no longer subjecting myself to anything from libertarians. I simply can not read Reason or McCardle or any of these guys anymore. They are as batshit loony as Red State, and there is no point wasting my time. Instead, I am going to my happy place:
I feel better already.
cleek
that is a step i wish more people wold take, and i applaud you for it.
clap clap
clappity
clap
General Winfield Stuck
Soshulist! Stay away from the old ones, hard to chew.
JK
Megan McArdle sent me the following message after I emailed her to criticize her post (http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/are_guns_at_protests_really_da.php) about the gun toting health care protesters
“You are conflating two different questions.
1. Should people openly carry guns to political protests, other than perhaps ones organized by the NRA? No they should not. It is freaking people out, and it is not advancing the cause they say they are interested in: second amendment rights.
2. Are people who openly carry guns to protest likely to prove dangerous? No they are not. All of these people contacted law enforcement ahead of time to notify them of their intention, and in the case of Obama visits, undoubtedly had Secret Service was watching them the whole time—which I am sure they knew. This is not the behavior of a would-be assassin. A would-be assassin picks a distant hiding place, or conceals his weapon until he plans to use it.
Not all people who do things you don’t approve of with guns are dangerous criminals. They’re just behaving boorishly. I’m not defending the behavior. I’m saying that the more hysterical claims about the behavior—that it makes it just a matter of time until someone is shot, that the only reason they could possibly be doing this is to imply that they will shoot anyone who tries to oppose their political opinions—are not based on any factual evidence, only a fervent belief in the bad character of anyone who likes guns too much. Or I should say, anyone on the other side of the political fence who likes guns too much, since at least one of the gun toter was a Democrat who carried a sign supporting healthcare reform, and a pistol strapped to his hip. He says that he was there to support both healthcare and the second amendment. And I have so far found no one making quite strong claims about the intentions of the right-wing heat packers who is willing to say that this chap, too, must have been trying to intimidate people who disagreed with him by implying that he was willing to shoot people if national healthcare failed to pass.
The fact that someone is behaving inappropriately does not mean that it is therefore okay to say any horrible thing about them that you please, nor that anyone who points out that these horrible things are very likely untrue, is therefore savaging the memory of assassinated presidents, or trying to fill our nation’s political rallies with guns.
When George Bush was running for the presidency, the Black Panthers showed up at an anti-Bush rally carrying AK-47s, a phenomenon that does happen from time to time, but is apparently not always as interesting as we now find it, which is why virtually all the people getting angry at me seem unaware that left wing groups occasionally do the same thing. Bush ignored them, which is the proper response to such behavior. And, like virtually everyone else who legally carries guns, even to political rallies, they wandered around with their guns for a while and then went home without harming anyone. I think what they did was fine in the sense that it wasn’t particularly dangerous, and they had a right to do it. I also think they were behaving like jerks. But people have a right to behave like jerks.
I don’t think that hysterically slandering people necessarily discourages them from the behavior. It may just convince them that there’s no reason to listen to you.”
Jay in Oregon
That picture never fails to make me smile.
SGEW
Been waitin’ for an open thread all day.
Has everyone seen this clip of Denis Leary calling a baseball game in 2006, and ripping on Mel Gibson? Funniest thing I’ve seen all week.
Linky
(h/t Drezner)
JK
From now on, I’m going to stop referring to Megan McArdle, Glenn Reynolds, Nick Gillespie and the rest of the Reason folks as libertarians. As far as I’m concerned, they’re Wankertarians.
ellaesther
@cleek: It’s a step I frankly take too often, and I’m thinking I need to pay a little closer attention.
It’s one thing to depend on the folks I’m likely to agree with to feed me my daily dose of right-wing irresponsibility; it’s another to take responsibility myself and occasionally see it for with my own eyes. When I watched that Morning Joe clip from earlier today, I just went: “Wow. They are really like this. They really are!” Not that I distrusted anyone who I do read regularly, but it is somewhat more powerful to see it play out with one’s own eyes. And that segment was pretty mild, all told.
I will confess that I don’t want to start paying closer attention….
Maybe after the weekend!
General Winfield Stuck
@JK:
Dumb as a sack of hatchets. After some pol gets shot, she’ll say something like, nobody could have foreseen that, since they had guns in the open and no forehead stamps saying they were crazy motherfuckers, so duck.
R-Jud
Bunny rabbits in a stroller.
I got a raise today. Planning to take some cash to town tomorrow to spend on
hookers and blowbooks and new clothes for our little Weedling.Is it just me, or do others lust after stationery products in late August/early September even if they’re not going back to school?
gocart mozart
McMegan can go fuck herself. Fuck herself with a hardbound edition of “The Fountainhead”.
In the comment section of the gun post JK refers to:
“Megan McCardle August 27, 2009 6:24 PM
Reagan was shot by a certified lunatic, as was Garfield. Kennedy and McKinley were shot by left wing loners. I give you John Wilkes Booth as right wing in his own social context, but that was a while back, and I think we can forgive the Democrats by now.”
General Winfield Stuck
Am I wrong or does this sound too much like our BoB.
Sentient Puddle
@General Winfield Stuck: More likely I’d think (and as I’ve constantly argued as being the point) is some bystander getting shot as a result of some scuffle, and they’ll argue that it doesn’t count because they were only discussing the likelihood of Obama getting shot, not some random dude.
Not that it makes them any less stupid…
spudgun
I hesitate to post this because firstly, I hate the thought of killing anyone’s Friday Open Thread buzz, and secondly…well – HONESTLY, can you really be surprised?
GOP hints Dems would deny Republicans health care
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/08/28/national/w093733D62.DTL
*sigh*
SGEW
@ellaesther: Speaking from my own experience, I can sincerely say that my mental health has benefitted tremendously since I stopped watching television news. A major, visceral source of agita, dread, and disgust more or less disappeared from my life, and, somehow, I’m a hell of a lot more informed now.
Tho’ I definitely appreciate Media Matters, Benen, et. al., who bravely monitor the madness and report back to us.
As far as the libertarians at Reason (etc.) go, why bother? No one else pays any attention to them either.
JK
@SGEW:
Denis Leary is a godsend. I saw him perform on stage a few years back and he was great. He opened by saying he’d rather have Bill Clinton in the White House getting a blowjob than Dick Cheney in the White House fucking the country up the ass.
Are you a fan of Rescue Me? This past season has been great. Last season was a bit of letdown. I’m glad it’s bounced back.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
I’m a simple man with simple views, so I have to ask: is it too fucking much to ask, is it such an affront to your precious fucking liberty, to ask you to leave the motherfucking gun at home when you go to a political rally?
And with that, I’m done. I’m climbin’ in the bukkit.
DougJ
I love the dog going Galt. Too funny.
beltane
McArdle is a stereotypical pampered, stuck-up rich girl. When I was younger I would have prayed for all kinds of bad things to happen to her. Now I just ignore her. Still, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if the guests at her and her dipstick fiancee’s wedding came down with minor food poisoning, just enough to give them bad gas.
Sorry, I just feel like throwing things today.
WereBear
@R-Jud: Isn’t just you, I still love stationery even though I have gone almost entirely digital.
Cuban sandwiches! Now that’s a gourmet meal that makes me envious. Haven’t had a decent one since I left Florida… though that’s the only thing I miss.
spudgun
@R-Jud: I LOVE stationery products! Oh, and rambling through hardware stores, even though I only live in an apartment and not a house that I could totally go all DIY on.
Am I weird? Possibly…okay, back to lurker land.
General Winfield Stuck
Speaking of Paranoia. My next cue from Netflix and it’s the X Files movie. Everything is so 90’s again. Maybe Mulder and Scully can make a new series about secret witch doctor cults putting Zombie Dust in Republican tin foil hats. The possibilities are endless.
JK
@gocart mozart: Great suggestion for another use of the Fountainhead. Love your screen name.
@General Winfield Stuck: Megan takes my breath away with her arrogance and condescension. To top it off, she’s the person who FORGOT TO REGISTER TO VOTE.
Ceri B.
It helps to remember that libertarian ideas have zero traction in actual American politics. Libertarians are cited when they’re useful to Republican agendas. (A handful are cited when they’re useful to Democratic ones, but that’s really rare.) When they can’t be used that way, they’re simply set aside along with most of the rest of us and our various views.
JK
Rush Limbaugh quote of the day: “Kennedy’s funeral service will be Wellstone’s funeral service on steroids”
Glenn Beck quote of the day: “There are communists working in the White House”
ellaesther
@R-Jud: A) Not just you! Though, if I’m going to be strictly honest, I always lust after such items. I’m a writer, you see, it’s an occupational hazard.
B) Bunnies in a bucket!! Awwww! A couple of weeks ago, my kids and I saw this lovely young pregnant woman out with a sweet curly-black dog on one leash and a little black bunny on another — it was like all the world of cuteness had gathered and appeared before us. Sadly, I have no pictures…. Except in my heart. They can warm me from within!
freelancer
I only read Balko for his War on your neighbor posts, because otherwise, he’s kind of a dick
freelancer
…Just thought I’d throw that out there.
WTF?! I’m a goddamnned space cadet today.
gocart mozart
The General @#11,
“When George Bush was running for the presidency, the Black Panthers showed up at an anti-Bush rally carrying AK-47s”
When did this happen? I’m calling bullshit!
mai naem
@JK:
I heard Denis Leary talk about the British NHS because his kid was born in England with severe complications and how great it was. It was great to have somebody credible talk about it, who also had actually used it.
OT anybody else heard that GHW Bush can’t be bothered to show up for Kennedy’s service because Shrub showing up was a good enough representation of the Bush family. WTF? I am willing to bet both Clintons will show up when really one should be enough to represent both. I didn’t know of any feud going on between the elder Bush and the Kennedys or is Bush po’d because the Bushes haven’t turned out like the Kennedys.
SGEW
@JK: Haven’t seen the show, but I heard it’s good. Like I said, no tv . . . is it on Hulu? (checks) God damn it! They took down seasons 1-4 last month. Missed it! Just my luck.
gocart mozart
“There are communists working in the White House” who think the “Public Option” is too liberal. (fixed)
R-Jud
@ellaesther:
Same here, so I guess it’s to be expected, but come September I want an entire set of notebooks and pencils. I bought some pleasing green sticky notes today to scratch the itch, but I have a feeling I am going to come back with much more than that tomorrow. The one thing I really, weirdly long for at this time of year– a fresh pack of Crayola crayons– isn’t on sale where I live. Oh well.
Warren Terra
I take this as (another) excuse to copy the unforgettable letter from “Dr. Helen”, Galtian Queen Of The Intertrons, published in the current issue of Mother Jones
That sh!t will never get old.
Sirkowski
John Cole, did you eat Cuban Sandwiches when you were a Republican?
R-Jud
@mai naem:
Maybe the old man is sick? He’s in his 80s, after all, and looked like he was feeling his age at the inauguration.
gbear
Reposting this into the open thread:
Someone made a seed art version of Obama’s birth certificate for the MN State Fair. This is one reason to love the MN State Fair.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/43131/obama-birth-certificate-seed-art-at-the-minnesota-state-fair
EthylEster
Nothing like a hot Cuban! Heh.
So…is it a REAL Cuban sandwich?
…on Cuban bread with roast pork and ham?
…and mustard?
…and a (sweet) pickle?
Then it’s the Cuban sandwich I grew up with in public school.
That bread could slice open your gums.
Keith G
@General Winfield Stuck:
You might be wrong.
As much as disagree with the quote you provided, it is coherent. Can’t be BoB.
Also, no racist or sexist references.
EthylEster
@gbear: The crop art exhibit used to be my favorite MN state fair event. There were always several crop art Jesus portraits. The Butter queen sculptures were my next favorite.
geg6
Love the dog-in-a-bucket, John. And what a relief it is after the week it’s been in my world. I’m heading out for a few sambuccas with my man and no fucking politics or students. My version of going Galt.
JK
@mai naem: I hadn’t heard about Leary discussing the NHS. I’ll check it out. Thanks for the heads up.
Second your comments on GHW Bush.
I’m very disgusted that the miserable creep John McCain is supposed to be speaking at Kennedy’s funeral. This guy has been a major league asshole since Obama beat him and he’s doing everything possible to fuck up his presidency. I wish he wasn’t being rewarded with a speaking role. If a Republican senator has to speak at Kennedy’s funeral, I’d rather it be Dick Lugar, Olympia Snowe, or Susan Collins.
@SGEW: You should do what you can to check out Rescue Me. It’s worth the effort.
mai naem
@R-Jud:
He just did a parachute jump for his birthday a couple of months ago and besides if you aren’t feeling good then why not say something. Hell, all he had to say was that Barbara hadn’t fully recovered from her surgery and wasn’t up to it.
General Winfield Stuck
@gocart mozart:
Then you should direct it to MS Megan, my quote box was from JK comment below, which was Mccardle wanking.
@JK:
Warren Terra
@ mai naem, @29
I hadn’t heard this before your comment – all the news stories yesterday said that all five living former or current Presidents would attend. You seem to be correct about the attendance – and, more incredibly, you seem to be correct about the reasoning:
Frankly, I’m surprised. If George Herbert had just begged off on reasons of health, it would not have surprised me – but this chucklehead spokesman of his has gone the record saying that memorializing Teddy isn’t a priority. Either this spokesman was accurately reflecting George Herbert’s views, which would be very unfortunate, or he invented his own deeply inadequate excuse; either way, he is dangerously incompetent in his professional function.
smiley
@gocart mozart: I think I’ve said this here before but The Fountainhead is the only Rand book I’ve ever read. The only thing I remember of the experience is that it made me start to think of architecture as art. Given the “box” school of American architecture in most of America in the ’60s, It really opened my eyes. I even subscribed to a magazine featuring it at the time. Then my sister married into the family of a prominent architect. Eye opening for me.
I really wished I liked pickles but I just don’t. I would love Cuban sandwiches if I did. Sigh…
gbear
@EthylEster:
Do you remember Norm Coleman with a forked snake’s tongue? That was a good one from a while back. When a seed artist gets mad, there’s no telling what might happen.
b-psycho
This is going to sound strange coming from me: too many people call themselves libertarians.
Seriously. Something has gone terribly wrong when both pot-smoking corporatists who think welfare & war are morally equivalent, and anti-state, pro-radical labor leftists claim the same label. Someone has to drop it. I’m sick of having to explain to people the distinction.
SGEW
@mai naem, R-Jud, Warren Terra:
Maybe Herbert doesn’t want to be seen in the same room as his son? Can’t really blame him for that, can you?
General Winfield Stuck
@Warren Terra:
I’d as soon they all stayed away. As per current events it seems a little insincere what with the clapping or crickets from the right on things like death panels, and gun toting at dem pol events. Fuck em. They can watch it on Fox News.
KG
@Warren Terra: maybe GHWB can’t stand to be in the same building as GWB nowadays?
“Son, you ruined the family business.”
KG
I’m (half-)Cuban, I eat my Cuban sandwiches sans pickle. Don’t like ’em, never have, never will.
Demo Woman
When the gun folks show up at President Obama’s events, I start singing “Macho Man” . Granted, my voice is not as good as the Village People but oh well.
Does anyone else have this affliction.
JK
@Warren Terra: Have you seen Dr Helen on Pajamas TV? She’s as nauseating on video as she is in print.
@gocart mozart: On the same day John Cole laments that Obama is continuing a policy of George Bush
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=26087, Glenn Beck is complaining about communists working in the White House. It sucks that this raving, drooling, bedwetter has such a big following.
Name (required)
test
Warren Terra
I was thinking this, actually – but he could always act standoffish, perhaps quietly make a point by appearing to be closer to Bill Clinton than to Dubya. In any case, (1) that wouldn’t be much of an excuse, either; and (2) why did his official spokesperson explain the decision by saying “Teddy Kennedy isn’t worth the trip”? As mai naem pointed out, and as I said, he could have just claimed ill health, but chose not to.
ellaesther
@gbear: Words fail me…!
No wait — I have two: Fucking brilliant!
JK
@gocart mozart:
I don’t believe McArdle regarding the Black Panthers and George Bush. I think she was making that up. If Megan is too clueless to remember to register to vote, I’m inclined not to trust a word she says.
SGEW
@Warren Terra:
It could also just be that GHWB is a real world class jerk, as I’ve always alleged.
(It’s very hard for me to ever forgive him for this, even if it is disputed (but never denied))
gocart mozart
General Winfield Stuck
@gocart mozart:
hen you should direct it to MS Megan, my quote box was from JK comment below, which was Mccardle wanking.”
Sorry you misunderstood. I knew it wasn’t your words. Did not know whose it was. I was only asking if you knew if there was any evidence that the wank was true. I say B.S. I should have been more clear.
gnomedad
@b-psycho:
I thought these guys called themselves anarchists.
Tom Hilton
When it comes to Communist sandwhiches, I generally prefer Vietnamese (banh mi) to Cuban. That said, it’s pretty clear that the Free World is way behind on sandwich technology.
smiley
@EthylEster: I was curious about this so I went alookin’. I went to the chow.com, epicurious and food network sites and they pretty much all said dill pickles. So, your school’s cubans were pretty much like my school’s red beans and rice.
gocart mozart
Whatever happened to preview John?
Warren Terra
@ SGEW, #57
I thought he was supposed to be the total New England Yankee Aristocrat Gentleman, the master of the Thank-You-Note. Indeed, evidence is available, through the medium of the presumptively authoritative random website:
You can presumably find more examples in the book of his selected letters that he published.
I’m not saying that good manners excuse anything he did (my favorite outrage was when he accused Bill Clinton of being a KGB agent in 1992), but they were always supposed to have been impeccable.
General Winfield Stuck
@gocart mozart:
And I could have said it was Megan, or linked to JK comment.:)
SGEW
@gocart mozart: Where have you been, gocart? Preview (and our button crutches, and the edit feature) died an ugly death months ago (there was much gnashing of teeth, and WordPress>Error hijinx, and a mysterious Admin posting, and many threads filled with glorious, glorious snark), but we have been promised that it will return. Any day now.
You hear me, Mr. Cole? Any. Day. Now.
gnomedad
Bestest thing ever: Singing Kitties.
ppcli
@gocart mozart:
I second the bullshit call.
.
But even if this did happen once, there is a huge difference between showing up at some “anti-Bush rally” somewhere with weapons, and showing up at an event where Bush was present. I expect that there have been NRA rallies where some of the people showed up with some serious weaponry and made a big show of it. It’s not showing up at any old rally with weapons that is at issue here.
tess
@R-Jud: Yes. Yes, I do. I bought myself two notebooks a few weeks ago for work, one for each “subject.” It was incredibly satisfying. I wish I had a reason to buy new pens.
gocart mozart
Did the communists in the Obama administration along with their SEIU and ACORN goons take away John Cole’s preview option? Next on the Glenn Beck Show.
General Winfield Stuck
@ppcli:
This is the world of equivilence we live in. Don’t you know that 60 years ago Robert Byrd was in the Klan, so naturally dems are as racist as current wingnuts. You only get one soundbite, so make the best of it.
Cat Lady
@SGEW:
I saw that in real time, and it was even funnier then. Sadly, you can hear Jerry Remy’s cancerous lungs in that laugh. Have you ever seen the clip where the camera catches him smoking in the booth? He tries not to blow out the smoke on camera, and hilarity ensues. Until the cancer diagnosis.
Fuck GHWB and Barbara “Beautiful Mind” Bush, and all their fucking evil spawn. Damn them all to hell forever.
Krissed Off
¡Sanguche cubano! Ay ay ay madre mia del cielo…
Everybody knows this one from old Havana, no? Okay, here goes:
The contra-revolucionario is lined up at the wall. The lieutenant in charge of the firing squad asks the condemned whether he would prefer a blindfold.
Okay.
The lieutenant paces back to the firing line.
“On my command:
“¡Pelotón, preparar!”
The squad snaps to, shouldering their rifles.
“¡Pelotón, apuntar!”
They take steady aim. But as the last conscript lines up his gunsights, back at the wall of death the prisoner rips off his blindfold and cries out with every last energy from his baritone chest:
“¡Que muera Fidel Castro Ruíz!”
At once the leftenant barks the order for the firing squad to lower their weapons and to stand easy.
Calmly he strides up to the prisoner.
In the man’s ear, he whispers:
“Oye chico, no compliques tu situación…”
Brachiator
From the UK Daily Mail, a good series of photos of mourners paying their last respects to Ted Kennedy:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1209603/Thousands-line-streets-mourners-pay-final-respects-Ted-Kennedy.html
arguingwithsignposts
@Warren Terra:
As Nixon said (per James McMurtry): (GHWB) “is alright. He knows how to do his job, but he’s not that interesting. Now, Barbara, she’s interesting. She knows how to hate.”
JK
Book Cover for Glenn Beck’s “Arguing with Idiots”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1416595015/sr=1-1/qid=1251500713/ref=dp_image_text_z_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1251500713&sr=1-1
Comrade Darkness
@gbear: More awesomeness is the link off that to this seed art bumper sticker.
JK
@arguingwithsignposts: Classic quote
SGEW
@gnomedad: Oh crikey, that’s good. Oh cats on the internets, will you never cease to amuse me?
The “drum solo” is particularly special.
Comrade Darkness
@JK: The fact that someone is behaving inappropriately does not mean that it is therefore okay to say any horrible thing about them that you please
This would include people wanting to get gay married, right? Up to and including insisting your old, badly translated book says they are going to hell and damnation?
EthylEster
@smiley: ya know, i’m an idiot. they WERE dill pickles, those slices that go on hamburgers. NOT kosher dills. Heinz 57 dill slices. thanks for bringing me back to reality.
JK
@Cat Lady: Don’t forget Fuck the NY Yankees.
@Brachiator: Those were great photos. Thanks for the link.
Demo Woman
@SGEW: Best blog ever!
JK
@Comrade Darkness:
I don’t know what Megan McArdle would have to say about this issue. I haven’t read her comments on gay marriage. I just wish she wasn’t polluting the Atlantic with her drivel.
SGEW
@arguingwithsignposts:
[My favorite highlights from the Nixon tapes:]
Nixon: On a personal basis, Rockefeller is a pretty nice guy. Reagan on a personal basis, is terrible. He just isn’t pleasant to be around.
Haldeman: No, he isn’t.
Nixon: Maybe he’s different with others.
Haldeman: No.
Nixon: No, he’s just an uncomfortable man to be around. Strange.
. . . .
Nixon: What’s your evaluation of Reagan after meeting him several times now.
Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a–actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.
Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains
Kissinger: Well, his brains, are negligible. I–
Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.
Kissinger: He’s shallow. He’s got no…he’s an actor. He–When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, “Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can’t you find a few good lines?” [Chuckles.] That’s really an actor’s approach to foreign policy–to substantive….
Nixon: I’ve said a lot of good things, too, you know damn well.
Kissinger: Well, that too.
. . . .
Nixon: Can you think though, Henry, can you think, though, that Reagan with certain forces running in the direction could be sitting right here?
Kissinger: Inconceivable.
(sources here and here)
Comrade Darkness
@R-Jud: Is it just me, or do others lust after stationery products in late August/early September even if they’re not going back to school?
Oh yes… and I loves to shop for these in Japan or Hong Kong, because the shit they sell there for office/school supplies makes our nicest stuff look like crayons and newsprint pads. Oh, nice sleek office supplies are to die for!
Jay in Oregon
@gocart mozart:
About the Black Panther thing, the closest I can find to a primary source is a Fox News clip over at NewsBusters:
http://newsbusters.org/people/black-panthers
Watch and decide…
GP
How many days did we all have to mourn Reagun?? A whole damn month.. God bless Ted….
freelancer
@JK:
Fixordz.
someguy
Libertardians
Fixed.
With apologies to my friends with cognitive impairments. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m conflating your unasked-for conditions with self-inflicted mental illness.
The only good thing you can say about the libertardians, really, is they’re in favor of pot and butt sex. Say what you will about the libertards, Dude, but at least it’s an ethos.
ellaesther
For 14 years, I lived in Israel. I’m a big old stinky leftie who moved to America with her husband (well, stayed here. We were here for me to get my Masters, but meant to go back) because of the dreadful Israeli response to the second intifada, and the fact that we didn’t want to raise children in that atmosphere. I’ve gone through many, many emotional ups and downs about it in the meantime, and right now, I’m fairly at peace with where I live and why.
But Friday afternoon and evening in Tel Aviv in the early fall, when the days are starting to cool off, and it’s getting dark a little earlier, and the smell of guava is in the air is a lovely thing. And this Friday afternoon/evening, I really miss it.
Damn occupation and over-the-top nationalism! Sigh.
Jay in Oregon
@Jay in Oregon:
I should point out that just about every single reference to this incident is a link back to, or a report of, the NewsBusters story.
ellaesther
For 14 years, I lived in Israel. I’m a big old stinky leftie who moved to America with her husband (well, stayed here. We were here for me to get my Masters, but meant to go back) because of the dreadful Israeli response to the second intifada, and the fact that we didn’t want to raise children in that atmosphere. I’ve gone through many, many emotional ups and downs about it in the meantime, and right now, I’m fairly at peace with where I live and why.
But Friday afternoon and evening in Tel Aviv in the early fall, when the days are starting to cool off, and it’s getting dark a little earlier, and the smell of guava is in the air is a lovely thing. And this Friday afternoon/evening, I really miss it.
Damn occupation and over-the-top nationalism! Sigh.
And I thought I’d share.
GregB
Glenn Beck must be at the phase of his mental illness where he’s plastering his bedroom with hundreds of newspaper clippings and writing the name Obama over and over again with grease pencils on anything that he can reach.
-G
ellaesther
Aaaand on a lighter note, riddle me this:
Why is that every single thing that I have ever bought frozen from Trader Joe’s tastes better than anything I have ever bought fresh from the Whole Foods deli?
I think Trader Joe’s may have struck a deal with Lucifer, himself.
Comrade Darkness
@Warren Terra: And when those who like to live off others’ labors complain about this resistance, well, that’s what slave masters do—complain that their chattels are lazy and undisciplined.
HELEN SMITH,
And every time you get in a car and drive on a public road, ms. helen smith of knoxville, Tennessee, that’s exactly what the f*ck you are doing. Better stay home, all the time. While you are at it, better duct tape the windows, just like President Cheney ordered you to.
Litlebritdifrnt
@GregB: and slicing off his fingerprints with an exacto knife.
stinkwrinkle
Don’t forget the other Cuban sandwich, the thrice-blessed Elena Ruiz. Turkey, cream cheese, and strawberry jam (although I think it’s better with guava paste). Yum, yum, gimme some! The only thing I really miss about living in Miami, seeing as I’m too old for cheap coke :(
Cat Lady
@JK:
My DNA has Fuck the Yankees encoded in it. I don’t know much, but I know that the Yankees must always be the fuckees.
gbear
@JK:
1. His eyes don’t match.
2. What a pud (Beck, not you).
3. Better Beck. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG3sS8RBdms
Comrade Darkness
@Warren Terra: George HW Bush was a placeholder and always will be one. I’ll give him credit for philosophical consistency on this one.
JK
@SGEW: @arguingwithsignposts:
Speaking of Nixon and Reagan – Time Magazine article about Reagan comparing JFK to Hitler and Marx in a letter to Nixon
The grammar and punctuation at times were—well, unconventional. And so were the thoughts in at least one passage of the three-page handwritten letter, dated July 15, 1960, and addressed to Richard Nixon (as “Dear Mr. Vice Pres.”). Discussing Nixon’s opponent for the presidency, the author wrote:
“One last thought—shouldn’t someone tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with it’s proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his ‘State Socialism’ and way before him it was ‘benevolent monarchy.’ ” The signature—”Ronnie Reagan.”
The letter was unearthed from a trove of Nixon’s papers in a branch of the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Last week Walter Mondale read the passage to campaign audiences to back up his charge that Reagan is guilty of “political grave robbing” when he invokes the names of such Democrats as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman—and, yes, John F. Kennedy. Presidential Spokesman Larry Speakes replied that Reagan “had been pleasantly surprised to find the difference between Kennedy the candidate and Kennedy the President.”
In other respects, though, the Reagan of 1984 sounds exactly like the Reagan of 1960, when he was the host of TV’s General Electric Theater. Who could figure out which of these three statements was made in 1960 and which 24 years later? “I am convinced that America is economically conservative . . . I’m sure the American people do not want the government paid services ‘at any price’ . . . If we start down the road to statism it leads to socialism.” Answer: Reagan made the third statement last week, commenting on the 1960 letter; the first two are from the letter itself. Nixon evidently was impressed by Reagan’s letter. At the top he scrawled a note to a campaign aide: “Use him [Reagan] as speaker whenever possible. He used to be a liberal!”
h/t Dear Mr. Vice Pres.:From Reagan to Nixon, Monday, Nov. 05, 1984, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,954438,00.html
related article http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19841024&id=bGgVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=deEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6581,5894242
Max
Not sure how many of you are watching the memorial, but it’s making me wish I was Irish. Irish wake’s are fun.
protected static
@Jay in Oregon: Including opinion pieces, there are 7 articles dealing with the incident in the Houston Chronicle’s archives.
Max
@Max: Oh, and every speaker has mentioned health care.
Go Dems!
gocart mozart
Jay in Oregon
About the Black Panther thing, the closest I can find to a “primary source is a Fox News clip over at NewsBusters:
http://newsbusters.org/people/black-panthers
Watch and decide…”
Thanks Jay, I did. Republican 2000 convention anti-death penalty protest. Guns in public in Texas! I thought FOX was a big defender of peoples right to carry arms at a protest rallies. Must be a black thing.
The fastest way to get gun control legislation passed is to have Black Panthers legally carry guns in public. Just ask Ron Reagan, Gov. California circa late 60’s.
gocart mozart
Would not have happened when Bush was President. Also.
JK
@gbear:
@GregB:
Glenn Beck is ready to be fitted for a straitjacket.
@freelancer: Thanks for the fix.
@Cat Lady: I hear ya. My DNA is similarly anti-Yankee.
ruemara
I wholeheartedly support you in this endeavour. You should just post some recipes when you get an urge to go to Reason or read Megan MuchMoran.
freelancer
@Max:
Can’t watch it, stuck at work. Lemme know if they break out the Pogues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOZHwWFjb30
Demo Woman
@Max: Chris Dodd’s speech is wonderful.
shelley matheis
b-psycho
@gnomedad: The two terms had been treated as interchangeable historically.
Max
@freelancer: One of the Senator’s former aides just sang, it wasn’t Danny Boy, but I’m gonna need a shot to forget that one.
shelley matheis
Max
@Demo Woman: My favorite part of Dodd’s speech…
“John Kennedy inspired our America. Robert challenged our America. Our Teddy changed America.”
dmsilev
@Demo Woman: It was a great speech, but you just know that the Outrage-o-matic is spooling up as we speak. “How *dare* they eulogize Kennedy by talking about his work on health care?”. Etc.
Sigh.
-dms
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
And then comes Mcnut Maverdick who will likely inform us that Teddy would have wanted by-partisan compromise and he’s concerned, I mean REALLY concerned, that Ted’s wishes will not be followed by soshulist libtards.
mai naem
I supported Edwards last year even though I wasn’t looking forward to having yet another southerner in the WH. I love the New England accent. Why do New Englanders just sound so much more intelligent?
A Ghost To Most
@Max:
Not that I don’t wish to be Irish (although part of this mutt is), but I am really proud tonight that I never denied that I was a liberal, even in the face of terrible insult from “those people”.
Thank you, Teddy, for making me happy I stood by my principles in those dark days.
Max
Deval Patrick… My momma used to say “I love me some Kennedy’s”
Crashman06
@Max: Are they drinking? It’s not an Irish wake until someone gets completely wasted.
JK
@General Winfield Stuck:
If God existed, John McCain would have caught a bad case of laryngitis last night and we’d be spared the spectacle of this miserable liar from Arizona faking piety and statesmanship and winning kudos from the nailbiters and bedwetters in the MSM.
Max
And here’s President McCain….
Jesus I loathe him.
arguingwithsignposts
For those like me without a TV, MSNBC is streaming it live. Of course, I have to jump in during Jackass McLame’s speech.
General Winfield Stuck
Alvin the Chimpmunk/
New Libby photo.
General Winfield Stuck
New Libby Pic
Alvin the Chipmunk
mai naem
Lots of I, we , Me, My in John McCain’s speech. Isn’t it supposed to be about Teddy and not me?
Max
Smart of McCain to steer clear of health care and to mention immigration instead.
General Winfield Stuck
testing
General Winfield Stuck
New Libby Pic
arguingwithsignposts
That Burns video – wasn’t it played at the Dem convention?
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
Just temporary. He’ll be wanking the spirit of Kennedy deal making theme later on, as soon as he can get to a mic.
arguingwithsignposts
Just watching the Kennedy video brings tears to my eyes. I don’t think we’ll see the likes of him again. I hope we do.
Demo Woman
Some days there is just not enough tissues.
Cat Lady
@mai naem:
Because we are. Duh.
SGEW
@freelancer: I see your Body of an American (appropriate!) and raise you U.S.A.
JK
John McCain –The Make Believe Maverick
h/t http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain
I wish there excerpts from this RS article could magically appear in a crawl at the bottom of the tv screen while this hypocrite McCain delivered his pack of lies.
Max
The MC Guy introduces him as…
Senator John Kerry, the now Senior Senator from Mass.
Poignant.
Origuy
@Comrade Darkness: There’s a Japanese chain, Daiso, that has opened a few stores in California and Seattle. They have a great selection of Japanese stationary and other stuff. It’s like a dollar store, only most things are $1.50.
Max
P.S. Vicky Kennedy went to hug McCain after his speech and he walked right by her. I am going to try to convince myself that he was so overcome with grief that he didn’t see her.
chuck
Ah I remember The Fountainhead. Listening to Rand lecture us on architecture was really precious.
“The Greeks used those columns because they were just like the tree trunks they used to use, and they couldn’t think differently unlike the great _artiste_ that is moi.”
Actually, Ayn, it’s because something needs to hold up the fucking roof, and they didn’t exactly have steel beams back in the day. Note that some of their buildings are still standing.
smiley
Kerry too, so far. I think it’s a senator thing.
JK
@Max: John McCain was simply revealing himself to be an unrepentant prick.
mai naem
@Max:
The MC guy is Paul Kirk who I am pretty sure is the same Paul Kirk who was the DNC chair during the eighties. The only thing I remember about Paul Kirk who BTW looks really good for his age(he’s got to be in his late 60s) was that he used to come on the Louis Rukeyser show.
JK
@mai naem: Yes, it’s the same Paul Kirk.
arguingwithsignposts
@smiley:
I admit I didn’t hear all of McCain’s speech, but Kerry’s personal anecdotes are light-hearted. He’s turned the corner to Kennedy’s accomplishments, now. But, yeah, the senate is the most exclusive (white) club in the world.
WereBear
@Max: Oh, yeah, class act.
One thing I always remember about the Presidential debates last year was the way Barack always knew where Michelle was; he helped her up and down the stairs, and after speaking, he would look at her to see how he did. Always on each other’s wavelength.
While McCain would totally ignore Cindy; she might as well have been a chair.
Considering it was her money that has funded every single ever-loving thing he’s done since marrying her, I find that both ungrateful and crass.
But then, if I were a beer heiress, I would kicked him out the first time he called me the c-word (and that recorded incident was not the first time, I’d bet the grocery money on that) and seen how many times his flabby ass could have bounced on my immaculate driveway.
Max
@mai naem: He’s the Exec Director of the JFK library, but has made very partisan statements this evening.
Former head of DNC makes those comments make sense.
Thanks for the insight.
Lots of health care mentions tonight.
Hopefully, Obama will drive it home tomorrow morning.
RedKitten
I’d like to say that he should have caught laryngitis long ago, but then again, I think it’s probably good that so many people, who may have formerly thought of McCain as an okay guy, have realized what a hateful sonofabitch that man is.
arguingwithsignposts
Isn’t it odd that Hatch was the poor one and Kennedy was the rich one, and yet Kennedy helped the poor, while Hatch helped the rich? Oh, irony, have you no end?
Max
@RedKitten: McCain makes it hard to be sympathetic to the Hanoi Hilton stuff. That’s how much of a mean-spirited prick he is.
Demo Woman
CNN online has two different viewing screens, one being the audience. When Dodd made a comment about Kennedy’s family and how Ted was the one that changed America, McCain sat and blinked a lot. I felt as though I was watching someone unmasked. McCain is a phony and he knows it.
Mike in NC
Cat Lady
@Demo Woman:
Do you think when McCain dies the streets of Phoenix will be lined with throngs of humanity holding Thanks Mac signs?
Me neither.
General Winfield Stuck
It would take a butt rash to shut Maverdick up.
JK
@Demo Woman:
“McCain is a phony and he knows it.” That’s why it’s so damn frustrating to see David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, George Stephanopolous, John King, et al continually treat this lying SOB with breathtaking reverence.
Rey
I had to make sure my tv had not swicthed channels, is Orin Hatch trying out a comedy routine?
Demo Woman
Hatch is not my favorite person, his speech is pretty touching. Hatch obviously cared for him deeply..
asiangrrlMN
Fucking Megan McArdle can go fuck herself–I can’t finish the thought. JK, I shouldn’t have read that deeply idiotic email message from her because now I’m in a really bad news. Fortunately, I’m going out in half an hour, and I will be drinking and smoking. That will be good.
Oh, and I echo the bullshit call on the Black Panthers showing up with AK-47s to W.’s events. If that had happened, every fucking so-called liberal media outlet would have had the vapors and clutched their delicate pearls. Oh, and the jackass who supports healthcare reform and brought a gun to the town hall can also kiss my flat ass. They are all fucking stupid. The ONLY reason to bring a gun to a town hall meeting is to intimidate.
I may have to stop reading even shorter MM because she is the stupidest female blogger out there.
@gbear: Thanks for the seed art. That made me proud to be a Minnesotan, and it made me smile.
JK
@Mike in NC: Thanks for the corrections. I was being too charitable to the McCainiac.
Origuy
One of the roots of my logon name is orienteering (the other is origami.) It’s a sport that involves running cross-country while navigating a course using only map and compass. At the international elite level, it’s highly competitive, with the top runners going full-speed through the forest. Suffice it to say that I’m not at that level.
Anyway, at the World Championships Relay in Hungary last week, something happened that should get wider recognition. During the anchor leg, the leader, Martin Johanssen of Sweden, got a stick 10cm into his thigh. Thierry Gueorgiou (France), Anders Norberg (Norway), and Michal Smola (Czech Republic), who were close behind, stop to help. Other runners were out of earshot and unaware of what was going on.
They managed to stop the bleeding. Norberg ran straight to the finish, while Smola got a cellphone from a hiker. He didn’t know a way to contact the organizers, so he called a friend in CR, who called the Czech coach. An ambulance came quickly and got Martin. The three who stopped, any one of whom could have won the race, ran the rest of it together and finished 25th-27th.
There’s a lot of controversy about whether the results should have been canceled, but everyone agrees that these guys are champs. A severe injury in the middle of the forest could have been a tragedy.
http://news.worldofo.com/2009/08/28/wrap-up-woc-2009-relay/
(By the way, the USA finished 24th, Canada was 29th.)
SiubhanDuinne
Orrin Hatch is telling me a great deal more about Mormons than I really wanted to know.
RedKitten
@Max: Exactly. I respect that he served his country, unlike the Boy Blunder ex-President. But there is a difference between respecting that one action, and respecting the actual person. And everything that man has done and said since then has only served to reinforce my opinion that he is a mean, grasping, avaricious, hateful, misogynistic, power-hungry asshole.
mai naem
@Cat Lady:
John McCain will probably die during one of the summer months and trust me, nobody is going to be standing there on the Phoenix streets in 120 degree heat .
I am pleasantly surprised at Orrin Hatch’s speech. I have never liked him because of the stuff he’s pulled in the Judiciary Committee.
SiubhanDuinne
But I don’t mean to be snarky. I do get the sense that Hatch really loved EMK and really grieves his death. I got none of that from McCain.
General Winfield Stuck
Has he got to the Mountain Meadows Massacre yet. That one’s a real stemwinder.
I’m not watching the service, obviously.
JK
@asiangrrlMN: I didn’t mean to put you or anyone else in a foul mood. Hopefully, a good buzz will wash away thoughts of McArdle.
Poopyman
I’ve seen a side of Orrin Hatch tonight that few, I think, ever see. Few politicians would want to, or be able to, lay their heart out for all to see like he did tonight.
Hat’s off to you, Senator Hatch.
El Cid
Hatch was wonderful, except when he was being a dick about this bullshit line of Teddy Fucking Kennedy being some principle-free compromiser. Yeah. Like he would have been pushing the Voting Rights Act if segregationist Democrats had insisted that Southern states be exempted, because, you know, all he wanted to do was compromise. Etc.
SiubhanDuinne
Oh god. “The Impossible Dream”. Waterworks time.
Max
So, I’m betting that Biden cries during his speech. Anyone wanna take my action?
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@arguingwithsignposts: I turned on MSNBC while Hatch was talking, and for a few minutes thought, how nice, the amusing stories he was telling. Suddenly I felt this intense anger and thought “This rich white fuck’s insurance is paid by my tax dollars and he’s trying to take down health care”. Had to turn it off.
I miss TK already.
Of Books and Bugs
My random conflation:
If, as J.K. says at #3, Megan McArdle believes:
. . . Are people who openly carry guns to protest likely to prove dangerous? No they are not.”,
then it definitely shouldn’t be considered dangerous for me to attend her wedding with an AK (after submitting the long form of my permit, of course).
Demo Woman
@SiubhanDuinne: Well duh! I’m not sure McCain loves himself..
Comrade Darkness
@WereBear: she might as well have been a chair.
A chair . . . at a dining room table, perhaps?
@Origuy: Thanks. I will be on the lookout for them. (Noms stationery to make space)
Rey
@Max
Yeah, I’m fully expecting The Biden to have everyone in tears. Brian Mitchell was awesome.
steve s
Index cards are pathetic. I started to say pathetic ‘these days’ but typically when someone’s whining about how much worse things are than at some point in the past, that just means their memory’s bad, they’re afflicted with nostalgia, or they’re ignorant. So let me say that however they were in the past, I find index cards today to be terrible. Thin, flimsy things, with no sturdiness.
I mentioned this to my girlfriend and she said “Go to Office Max or one of those places and get 100 lb card stock.” I haven’t tried it yet. Does anyone have any familiarity with paper / card stock? Would this stuff make a good sturdy index card, yet still not be too card-boardy?
Of Books and Bugs
(Resubmitting with Active X controls enabled).
My random conflation:
If, as J.K. says at #3, Megan McArdle believes:
. . . Are people who openly carry guns to protest likely to prove dangerous? No they are not.”,
then it shouldn’t be considered dangerous for me to attend her wedding with an AK (after submitting the long form of my permit, of course).
Demo Woman
The only problem that I have with Hatch is I know he’ll filibuster the health care bill.
lamh31
Okay,
that was a Damn fine rendtiton of “Impossible Dream”
1 word 3 syllables…..A…MAZ…ING!!!
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@Max: Biden will definitely cry.
Ted is the only politican I’ve ever shed a tear over, (except BHO winning in Nov), and Mr Screaming and I said a prayer for him before dinner Wednesday night.
arguingwithsignposts
@steve s:
I used to work in a print shop. 100 pound (100#) is pretty fucking heavy. it won’t run through a copy machine – has to be run on a press, and the press has to be adjusted. But it’s a few steps short of cardboard. Most of the time we used 70# card stock.
Poopyman
Not a chance. Hatch was crying through about 2/3 of his talk.
It’s almost your standard Irish wake. Tears are only optional, but when the Irish get up there to reminisce they’ll revert to what they grew up with.
Cat Lady
@mai naem:
Mumbles Menino – we do not claim him as one of ours. Also. What did he even say?
Max
Damn, we should have had a “Health Care” drinking game with shots of whiskey.
We’d all be loaded after the mayor’s speech.
A Ghost To Most
Is my ear untrained to the Bahston accent, or did the mayor sound half in the bag?
arguingwithsignposts
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta:
That’s a good question. I’m sure I might shed a tear over James Clyburn or John Lewis, but just because of what they had to put up with in the civil rights movement. They won’t get nearly the send-off, though.
Perhaps Jimmy Carter, but not necessarily for his presidency, but for his work after he left.
Can’t think of any others right now, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@ Demo Woman
Thanks, that made me laugh and I’m still mopping up from “Impossible Dream.”
I love the way all these pols in their anecdotes are tidying up Teddy’s shall we say salty language for the teevee. You just know at that Bosox game with the mayor he said “I’m freezing my nuts off” not “my bottom” or whatever the euphemism was. Several speakers tonight seem to have taken a deep mental breath before quoting the Teddy punch line.
steve s
@chuck:
” Listening to Rand lecture us on architecture was really precious.
“The Greeks used those columns because they were just like the tree trunks they used to use, and they couldn’t think differently unlike the great artiste that is moi.””
The greeks couldn’t think creatively…got it.
Boy, Ayn Rand musta been some kind of Cro-McMegan.
Keith G
@steve s: Yup, when I taught, I used card stock a lot to print out study-help cards for my kiddoes.
steve s
@arguingwithsignposts: Do you think 70# would make a good index card?
wasabi gasp
I generally don’t care about McArdle or her haphazard opinions, but I’d be curious to know her source for the Black Panther story. If she has none beyond the blog post/comment circle jerk about the topic, she should be fired. A hack of that caliber deserves to have their career started anew as a guest blogger at Debbie Slushpuddle’s House ‘O Spittle.
Of course, this would require McArdle’s communications with JK to have also been expressed at The Atlantic. But, I’m not about to start digging through her pixel vomit to find it.
Cat Lady
@Cat Lady:
For those of you who wondered “Mayor Menino WTF”:
http://www.mumblesmenino.us/
Poopyman
I’m not that accustomed to the accent either, but I don’t think a sober Bostonian sounds like that.
I might add that I’ve known several Bostonians, but I’m struggling to recall if any of them were sober.
JK
@steve s:
“Cro-McMegan” – That’s priceless
Poopyman
Culver knows how to tell a story. He’s got a great deadpan.
General Winfield Stuck
@Demo Woman:
If he doesn’t, his name will show up on Malkin’s Political Death Pool, and Limbaugh’s, and Hannity et al./ These critters are now masters of the wingnut circus. Not even the ladies from Maine will chance it, if there is any type of government involvement into health care, other than already exists.
It is their Waterloo, or ideological Alamo to fend off the final sealing of The New Deal./ And any one who breaks ranks and votes yea, had better be sure they don’t plan to run for re-election. And maybe should leave the country if they do.
Max
I like this John Culver. I’ve never heard of him. Went to Wiki to look him up.
He was a Senator from 1975 to 1981, when he was defeated by… wait for it… Chuck Grassley.
I fucking hate republicans.
Rey
Culver is killing me. I’m sure those salmon sandwiches were actually
double vodkas.. lol…
Demo Woman
@Max: I’m watching online and CNN has an audience only view. Vicki’s daughter is wiping tears from her eyes. It’s pretty special.
JK
@Poopyman:
Sober Bahstin accent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbK4cL3QSc0&feature=related
Sober New Yawk accent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8qTMtr8pE4
SiubhanDuinne
@ Poopyman
Culver is hilarious. Wonderful raconteur. NOW it feels like a proper wake.
Cat Lady
John Culver – a star is born. Grassley replaced him? More Republican FAIL.
Crashman06
@Poopyman: We call him Mumbles Menino up here in Boston. He always sounds like that.
Max
From the Twitter…
Culver and Teddy played football at Harvard.
Linky to picture..
http://tedkennedy.org/gallery/photos/growing_up#/page/-/legacy/galleries/growingup/Image7.jpg
arguingwithsignposts
@steve s:
well, it’s been a while, but if you want any bend in the card, 70# is better than 100#. Either will probably be better than the normally available commercial cards.
I don’t know about office depot, but if there’s a print shop near you, they have all sorts of paper samples that you can use to get an idea what works better. I used to love those – like carpet samples or paint chips. Also, you might be able to talk them into cutting the card stock into smaller portions for you on their industrial cutting machine (you can probably get this done at Office Depot, too, but shop local, and all that). If you really enjoy paper products, spend some time with a printer, not the minimum wage clerk at the box store.
IIRC, the weight varies a little depending on what brand and treatment you get (glossy, semi-gloss, or flat).
General Winfield Stuck
Nice photo. Number 88, I guess he was a tight end, or defensive end.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
This is shallow, but TK as a young man is my beau ideal – perfect.
And I wish someone would explain the XHTML tags to me so icould italicize the French term. Is this an under 50 thing that you all learn how to do in high school?
arguingwithsignposts
@Max: Amen. Grassley can kiss my assley.
Poopyman
@ Max:
Culver’s #31? Well, it was a long time ago.
BTW, the preceding pic might be The Boat.
General Winfield Stuck
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta:
Do you use firefox, and if not, be willing to?
Cat Lady
Sing Him Out Ladies! Teddy’s getting down with his bad self..
Poopyman
Here comes Biden ….
MikeJ
And I wish someone would explain the XHTML tags to me so icould italicize the French term.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4763
General Winfield Stuck
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta:
for italics type what you want italicized
Cat Lady
@Poopyman:
who knows the meaning of literally…
General Winfield Stuck
I’m an idiot. best just to get firefox and then the addon Mikej linked to.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
And what is it with these mincing, tidy, groomed, sexless Republican men? Hatch, Grassley, McConnell, Frist, McCain, Kyl. Ugh. I could name some Dems too. One of the things I admire about Ted is he showed that testicles and liberalism are not mutually exclusive.
gnomedad
@b-psycho:
Well, I’ll have to study up, then. It always puzzled me that what anarchists say they want seems a lot like sociali$m.
lamh31
Question,
Has a VP every gone back to his “day job” after serving a term or two. I ask because I just wonder if it is possible for Biden to go back to the Senate if he doesn’t serve in Obama’s second term (or if God forbid, Obama is not re-elected).
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@MikeJ: @General Winfield Stuck: I have tried to use Firefox but always have run into a problem. Will go to the link and see if I can understand it. thank you.
Cat Lady
It just started to downpour. Waterworks!
Poopyman
@ScreamingInAtlanta:
That’s one of those Internet Traditions that you need to know to qualify for commenting here at Cute Overload With Pottymouth.
Max
@lamh31: I think Biden’s son will be the Senator from Delaware by then.
Biden’s no spring chicken.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@arguingwithsignposts: Jimmy Carter is the Howard Dean of past presidents. Huge contributions, and gets almost no credit.
John Lewis is my congressman, and he does choke me up sometimes. I admire Clyburn too.
Saxby Chambliss (gag) and Johnny Isakson…not so much.
lamh31
Watching an a Jonathon Ross interview on BBC America with Lady Gaga.
OMG, she is being so obnoxious.
gbear
@lamh31:
Yes, it’s possible. Walter Mondale replaced Paul Wellstone in the senate race after the plane went down.
Persia
OT, sort of:
Do the Redskins always suck this hard, or are they just being special this year?
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@General Winfield Stuck: Looks so easy when you do it! :)
wasabi gasp
Joe Biden is a very literal guy, literally.
Max
I’ve developed a fondness for Biden’s overuse of literally.
Demo Woman
If you go on CNN.com, you will see McCain’s picture on the front page. After all the touching stories, what does CNN.com highlight? Gee
Poopyman
@Max:
A literal fondness?
General Winfield Stuck
For next FNS. Cheney still partying like it’s 2002/
That’s right, King George was the top law enforcement dude in the Land. And Vice King was the top torturer dude and purveyor of lots more other evil shit.
Poopyman
What just happened to Joe?
tripletee
@steve s:
It’s like you’re channeling BoB, and it’s freaking me out. Stop it.
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta:
Just wrap whatever word you want to italicize in em tags, like so:
{em}this is the text you want italicized{/em}, except replace the braces with arrows ().
General Winfield Stuck
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta:
It really isn’t hard, and is very easy with firefox and it’s addon.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Winfield Stuck:
Will it never stop! Teh evil stupid! Will. It. Never. Stop!?!?!?
Rey
@Demo woman
yeah I know, clicked on by mistake. I really hate CNN.
Max
This has to be like losing her father all over again for Caroline.
She’s been through a lot of bullshit. She’s one tough broad.
SiubhanDuinne
@ SIA aka
I share your admiration for Jimmy Carter. Is he going to the funeral tomorrow? Is it all the living former presidents except GHWB?
You are really fortunate to have John Lewis as your representative. I have John Linder. Ugh.
lamh31
Missed Biden, how was he?
Demo Woman
@SiubhanDuinne: I have Price.
arguingwithsignposts
I think I would have preferred Hatch to McCain on the front page of MSNBC. Totally tacky.
Max
There’s a leprechaun singing on my tv!
Demo Woman
Now tissues aren’t helping. I need a bucket.
Poopyman
“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”?
Oh please.
I guess I should be happy it wasn’t “Danny Boy”.
Poopyman
Clearly, more Jameson’s is called for at that wake.
arguingwithsignposts
@Poopyman:
Would you have preferred “Dirty Old Town“?
SiubhanDuinne
@ Demo Woman: I’m trying to think if there are any GOP officials in Georgia I have any use for.
(Thinks)
(Thinks some more)
(Scratches head, thinking)
Nope.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@tripletee: I wish I hadn’t typed I could as icould
Demo Woman
@arguingwithsignposts: It doesn’t make sense unless MSM media has decided that McCain is going to be some type of bearer.. LOL
Hatch gave a speech from the heart, McCain read words.
b-psycho
@gnomedad: For many it is soshulism, just the preferred variant of it. Personally I don’t care what the resulting economic system is called.
dcBill
Libertarianism is just a dodge for being a jerk.
Poopyman
AWS:
Teddy K doesn’t strike me as a Pogues kinda guy.
“The Rising of the Moon” would do it for me, but probably not so good for TK.
The Moar You Know
Given the unending line of journalists that seem willing and ready to fellate McCain at any possible chance, I’ve gotta conclude that the SOB must make the best goddamn barbeque in the history of the world. He sure doesn’t seem capable of doing anything else that would merit any kind of adoration.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
Thanks Tripletee! I am learning all of the Internet Traditions!
ellie
That dog is holding onto the side of the bucket like he has hands! Oh my God! That is the cutest thing!
JK
@Poopyman: @arguingwithsignposts:
What about The Hands that Built America by U2 or Into the Mystic by Van Morrison?
Demo Woman
@SiubhanDuinne: I am hoping that Barnes can win. The only way possible is for a large turn out. I heard him speak a few times and was not impressed, then I heard him speak at a small setting and walked away very impressed.
I grew up in MA and Ted spoke at my high school and no one can compare to him.
Comrade Darkness
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta:
On the mac it’s Opt e e for an accented é thåt wîll work øñ the intertübes. (Opt ` e for the è)
Rey
@lamh
Biden was wonderful. He spoke mainly to the family. He made the point of telling them to ignore the fact that people are saying the Kennedy era is over. It is not over because they live on, they are a wonderful family and should never forget it. I think we sometimes forget that even the Kennedy’s are human. Caroline always breaks my heart when I hear her speak. She seems so shy and really sweet. Teddy was the surrogate father to all these kids that lost their fathers so tragically and he stepped up and did what he had to do for them. He was not perfect but, who the hell is.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know. I think Carter and EMK despised each other, but I would think he would attend because it would be good form. Carter’s a gentlemanly sort of person.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@Comrade Darkness: Huh?
Poopyman
Oh, now here’s some shocking news:
Gun Rights Groups Oppose Pittsburgh’s Proposed G-20 Rules
Never mind that the rules might be sensible or anything.
JK
@arguingwithsignposts: @Demo Woman: @The Moar You Know:
I think there’s a requirement that every member of the Washington Press Corps must have a pro John McCain microprocessor implanted into their brain.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@Demo Woman: Price? Well…could be worse – could be Broun. He elevates himself to national embarassment level.
Other stellar GA pols: the Newt, Cynthia McKinney, Zell Miller. But of them all, Saxby is the most vile.
Max
Bill Myers on Bill Maher.
@ Siubhan D – yes, all living Presidents, except Poppy Bush. His statement was something to the effect of “W can adequately represent the Bush family”. He and Kennedy were close, so I’m guessing he or Barbara is not feeling well.
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
I was thinking “And the Healing Has Begun” by Van Morrison. If you want something uptempo. (lyrics – since VM is almost as bad as Dylan about mumbling)
freelancer
@lamh31:
Try this on for size. I think this convinced me that she’s nothing more than an evil replicant. Nexus-FAIL model.
Hat Tip MikeJ for the add-on.
arguingwithsignposts
I should note that now Biden is up on the FP of MSNBC, so at least that’s going better. Fox News.com has a photo of a murdered high school football coach and some football players. CNN has some mug shots of a couple of kidnappers.
Stay classy, folks.
arguingwithsignposts
@freelancer:
Is she just a cheap Amy Winehouse?
steve s
I’m channeling BoB? Well, I wasn’t planning on hanging myself this weekend, but I guess circumstances may warrant…
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@arguingwithsignposts: ha! Haha!
freelancer
@arguingwithsignposts:
How dare you disparage Amy Winehouse like that. At least Winehouse is an addict. I don’t know WTF is wrong with gaga.
Comrade Darkness
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta: I was trying to say, if you want an accent mark on the web you don’t need anything webby and special. Just type it on your keyboard. I don’t do windows, but I gotta guess it lets you do the same thing. If I hit Option key and the e key together and then the e key again I get é. When I first hit option-e I get a floating magical accent mark, and it gets attached to whatever I hit next. So if I want á for example, that’s just as easy. Option-u gives me a floating umlaut for ü or ö or ï (don’t know what language that last one’s from, though…)
This isn’t an XHTML thing. It’s just a know your keyboard thing.
arguingwithsignposts
Well, both to wash that Lady Gag- out of my brain, and in memory of Sen. Kennedy, I have to listen to some Billy Bragg.
Yes, I think we’re all still waiting for the great leap forward.
gbear
@JK:
I was thinking of ‘When I Get To The Border’ by Richard Thompson. It’s a great song but the only version on YouTube is a crappy cover by M. Ward.
Comrade Darkness
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta: Oh, jeez… I just realized you said italicize, not accent. Beau Ideal is ideally (ehem) Beau Idéal so I spaced out there…
(insert rosanna rosanna danna here…)
Mike in NC
Not if we can help it. At mom’s wake at Christmas last year we manged to get the family to put away three bottles of Kahlua in the funeral home, against state regulations.
Anne Laurie
@mai naem:
When that was mentioned on the local news last night, the Spousal Unit said, “Well, that settles one question — Shrub lost the coin toss.”
The Bush family in general is only “nice” to people they intend to find a use for, and the Kennedys are not the kind of people who let themselves be used by WASP “aristocrats”.
JK
@arguingwithsignposts: On some songs, Van Morrison mumbles, but on others I think he’s pretty good. I feel the same about Dylan. I love Dylan’s work up through Desire, but I can’t get over how horrible his singing and speaking voice has become with each passing year. I can’t listen to anything he released after the early 1980’s.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@Comrade Darkness: Oh, I see. Merci beaucoup!
JGabriel
mai naem:
Perhaps I’m being naive, or overly generous, but given GHW’s age, mightn’t there be health concerns?
.
JK
@gbear:
I wish that YouTube could once and for all reach a full, complete, and final resolution of this copyright issue with the music industry. I’d love to hear the original versions of And It Stoned Me by Van Morrison and Stolen Moments by Oliver Nelson instead of these nauseating, putrid, and horrible cover versions.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@Comrade Darkness: ha! Think I’ll just stick to good ol’ merrikin from now on.
Max
So, peeps…. are we back at 10am Eastern to cry at the funeral?
From the reports, Obama is in Boston, and still working on the eulogy. I hope he brings it.
It’s very hot here in the Bay Area. I’m headed to the front porch to drink.
gbear
@JK: I’m not so sure it’s a copyright issue. It looks like most of the other songs from that record are represented with live versions by Richard and Linda T. If it was a copyright issue, wouldn’t any version of the song be banned anyway? I guess I don’t know much about it.
Poopyman
@Max:
Bah! Nuts. I’m just gonna call it a night & go to bed.
-Poopy + ZERO
JK
Mike Huckabee’s Latest Cheap Shot
“Mike Huckabee claimed Friday that under the health-care plan proposed by President Barack Obama, Sen. Ted Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Huckabee made the remark during his radio show Friday while accusing Democrats of trying to use Kennedy’s death to marshal support for the president’s reform package.
“Senator Ted Kennedy’s death had barely hit the news before we started hearing calls that Congress must hurry and pass a health care reform bill and do it in his memory,” he said. “That not only defies good taste, it defies logic.””
h/t http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26554.html
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
Agreed. They are both from a similar mode in terms of singing. I love me some VM and Dylan, but they both like to mumble too much.
arguingwithsignposts
BTW, Billy Bragg and Bill Bailey – Unisex Chip Shop. the best faux Billy Bragg song evah.
JK
@gbear: I’m no copyright expert either but there a number of videos on YouTube containing messages to the effect that audio has been disabled due to copyright violations. I don’t think copyright applies to cover versions. The copyright issue is a giant clusterfuck. It would be nice if an agreement could be reached. With YouTube and Google Books and other related projects, we’re as close as we’ve ever been to realizing Ted Nelson’s dream of making any book, record, movie, whatever available online. It’s frustrating to see publishers, music labels, and movie companies behaving like dickwads.
Mike in NC
Said it before and will say it again. The Bush blood line needs to die off in a big fucking fire. Cocksuckers and Nazi sympathizers.
JK
National Review Defends Its Segregationist Roots
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2009&base_name=national_review_defends_its_se
tripletee
Happy to help. You’ll be misspelling “is” and using 1s as exclamation points in no time.
@steve s:
Well, if you are channeling BoB, a little auto-erotic asphyxiation wouldn’t seem out of character…
Didn’t mean to be insulting – the index card thing just seemed like the type of anecdotal musing that BoB uses as a palate cleanser between the racist and/or creepily misogynistic stuff. If you start talking about trapezoidal lunch room trays, then you can start to worry.
gbear
@JK: Is Ted Nelson’s dream to make all that material available online for free?
I’m an old guy who still likes to have the CD or vinyl album. My boss and I like a lot of the same music and every time I borrowed him an album, he’d rip a copy of it for himself, and I know that he gets all of his music thru file sharing. I’ve stopped loaning him my CDs because it bothers me that he’s not providing any financial support to the bands by actually paying them for their music.
I’m sure that I’m comparing apples to oranges somehow, and I know that the major music labels suck donkey dicks (most of the bands I like have moved on to indy labels), but if an artist doesn’t want to give his stuff away, seems to me that he should have the right to pull it off YouTube.
JK
@gbear: It’s been a long time since I read his work, maybe I inaccurately stated his position or maybe he’s changed his position. My last recollection was that he wanted everything available online.
Comrade Kevin
@lamh31: Lady Gaga? I had never heard of her, and just googled her. Ugh. I don’t think I’d want to listen to Wossy interview her, or, come to think of it, anyone else for that matter.
JK
John McCain is as big an asshole as ever despite his acting performance at Kennedy’s funeral
McCain Throws in With Sarah Palin: Agrees That VHA Pamphlet is “Kind of a Death Panel”
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/mccain-throws-sarah-palin-agrees-vha-pamph
FUCK John “Get Off My Lawn” McCain
jeffreyw
Shuttle launch in a few minutes, @11:59ET.
wasabi gasp
I have a slightly different take on Musicians and file sharing. It goes something like this: tough shit. They can always get a gig where it’s more difficult to copy their product if they want, like running a hot dog stand.
jeffreyw
And here’s a fun clip via Dependable Renegade (h/t Duncan)
spank the kitteh
The Moar You Know
@wasabi gasp: As a musician, in all honesty, I couldn’t agree with you more.
Or, if making hot dogs or lattes is too hard for you, and you wanna make money, learn how to play live and quit giving the labels 95% of your money and 100% of the control.
gbear
@JK: but there’s a huge difference between buying a download and peer-to-peer filesharing.
Would YouTube (or whatever) ever move to a system where each listen would trigger a royalty payment to the artist? And could that ever be arranged without the record companies and publishing houses gobbling up 99% of the royalty? The only way to keep the companies out of this is for bands to sell directly to the listeners and the listeners have to pay the bands for the music, like Radiohead and a few other bands seem to be doing.
Oh, and I agree that Dylan’s voice has gotten too irritating to listen to now. Tom Waites is in that category for me too.
General Winfield Stuck
@JK:
When you think about it, what route to electoral success does the RW have left. Their economic theories have run the country into a fiscal ditch/ And as older whites die off, the old wedge social issues of gay marriage etc,,,,, are dieing off with them as younger voters take their place with more acceptance,
They have completely screwed themselves with HIspanic’s ,with all the Xenophobic wingnuttery, and blacks have long since slammed the door in their faces, despite the RW intelligentia efforts to make the GOP a more welcoming place for them, only to be undercut by the anti-affirmative action crowd hollering about white mans angst.
Might as well go all in for white power to save their raggitty asses from a permanent minority. I look for more and more desperate devolution to past racial and ethnic roots, and maybe even sectarian anxieties of the white populace. Especially in the south, in an attempt at electoral evening out since white anglo saxons are still the majority in this country.
They will succeed only in paring down the remaining faithful to an even more distilled wingnut, but they will be loud and increasingly more seditious. There is really no other course other than to split the GOP into two separate parties which would further isolate them in a static minority, at least in the short term. They cannot ever coerce the screaming teabaggers into moderation because they currently have the numbers to beat back any effort to do so.
Rock and a hard place for the right, and a damaging course for the country as a whole to have one third of it’s citizens afflicted with the rage virus.
gbear
@wasabi gasp: I love your band but I hate giving you money. Hope your favorite bands like their day jobs.
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
LOL. Cats are weird/
steve s
is the + thing the number of drinks you’ve had? Then sadly it’s been Steve + 0 all week. But tune in tomorrow when it’ll be
Steve = no uh = no dammit + 115 shit i mean 1% goddamit 15teen zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
JK
@gbear:
I don’t object to paying. It just annoys me that one day something great is on YouTube and then it vanishes into the ether. Hopefully, in the next few years, things will get sorted out and eventually consumers will be able to buy whatever music or video they want.
I never thought Bob Dylan had an outstanding singing voice, but I never thought he had a horrible singing voice either. I think his singing on Nashville Skyline is outstanding. I can’t get over how fucking horrible his SPEAKING VOICE is today. Yesterday, Rachel Maddow played a clip of him talking on his satellite radio show and I changed the channel in a nanosecond. His voice is unbearably atrocious to listen to for even a second.
General Winfield Stuck
Alvin the Chipmunk
gbear
@The Moar You Know: Try walking up to a lunch wagon and telling the vendor you want a hot dog but you don’t want to pay for it. Just set it somewhere where you can take it. That’ll work.
wasabi gasp
@The Moar You Know: I’m a musician as well. Back in the day when I did the whole band thing, no amount of money could buy the joy experienced when pulling songs out of my ass, the joy of recording and listening back to the final product, and the joy of getting a “wow, man” from a stranger. If after all that you find yourself bitchin’ about coin, gimme one with mustard.
freelancer
@steve s:
Yes.
freelancer +0
tc125231
@JK: I try not to refer to them at all. Why should people who are completely unibterested in reason be grented respect –or even attention –in the public discourse.
Both the Libertarians and the Republicans need to suffer the fate of other parties advocating utter nonse. You know, like the Larouchies, the Luddites, and the American Communist Party.
Functional extinction.
John Cole
I’m reading this thread and wondering why people do not have comments. Why blog without them?
JK
@General Winfield Stuck:
I think the Republican Party has sunk as low as humanly possible in terms of its chief spokesmen.
Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are malignant and virulent media carcinogens who are as poisonous to public policy discourse as a toxic waste dump is to the human body.
Out of curiosity, I tuned in Glenn Beck tonight and this raving, drooling, bedwetting lunatic is doing some paranoid sociopathic version of Mort Sahl free associating by spitting out whatever names and groups he can think of like Van Jones, Mao tse Tung, Students for a Democratic Society, the Weathermen etc. The truly sick part is that this asshole is getting big Nielsen ratings.
wasabi gasp
@gbear: How many people really like their day jobs. I, for the most part, do find my job enjoyable, but most of the time I’d rather be doing something else.
If you’re a musician who enjoys being a musician, but is cursed with too many people around the world downloading your songs, my tiny violin is gonna slap you upside the head.
gbear
@John Cole: Because some bloggers don’t want to waste their beautiful minds on stuff like that. (lookin at Sully…)
JK
@tc125231:
The sad fact is that Glenn Reynolds is regarded by legions of followers as a brilliant thinker. I’ve never been a fan of libertariansim, but the nonsense Reynolds, McArdle, and Gillespie have been spouting since Election Day has me as disgusted and sickened by them as I am with Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, Mark Levin, and Lou Dobbs.
Fulcanelli
Some of the recent comments in the media by Grassley, Inhofe and a few other GOP Senators have been such pathetically weak political sauce I have to believe they were puked up solely as red meat for the wingnut base back home to keep their in-state offices from being torched or their staff’s families back home from being lynched over this health care bill. Or can sitting US Senators be that fucking ignorant, even red state ones? Well, I mean besides McCain…
If I was a Senator, I’d confront them on the floor of the Senate from the podium and shame them for being as flat out ignorant and dumb as the worst of their constituents and demand their resignations and then rip their entrails out with my teeth and eat them on C-Span. On the record. But I guess that’s the difference between me and Ted Kennedy, which was also the secret of his success.
I’ve never in my life heard such gushing praise for any man and his family from his friends, foes, peers or complete strangers as I did tonight watching that memorial service. And one thing that ran through it all with every story from every speaker was how he personally reached out and was there for people whether he knew them or not.
From the stories of him calling every single Massachusetts 9/11 victim’s family and every single Iraq War (both) victim’s family to how he took Biden under his wing when he came to the Senate to the family stories recanted by Caroline.
Tragic flaws and all, he had no equal and I don’t think we’ll see the like of his kind again. Ever. Fuck, I wish I was Irish tonight.
ImJohnGalt
@John Cole: I’ve just spent the last 20 minutes reading this thread and wondering exactly the same thing.
It’s 12:30 AM, I’m still at the office, and find myself inexorably being drawn to finding the full wake footage, based just on the comments being made about them here.
Plus, I’ve learned what constitutes an authentic Cuban sandwich.
And a Cuban joke that my grade-school Spanish does not equip me to understand.
I can’t say enough times how grateful I am for you, DougJ, Tim F, Anne Laurie and most of the commenters here. I learn something new here every day, and so long as that keeps happening, this place will always be my first read every day.
jeffreyw
I’m starvin, need a snack.
gbear
@wasabi gasp:
The thing that bugs me is that listeners think of music the same way that libertarians think of roads or fire service. It’s just there for me to use and I don’t have to pay for it. Why should musicians just be expected to put it all out for free?
You know why? Because people think musicians are not really working anyway. They think that you’re ‘pulling songs out of your ass’ and partying and going ‘wow, man’. They’re not thinking about the gas money or van repairs or recording costs.
I’ve been in bands that tried to plan trips out of town around five day jobs and never took a dime out of our gigs because we needed it for equipment and recording. It most definitely has it’s rewards but it’s unsustainable. I played full time for about three years and would have liked to keep going, but, like you said, everyone winds up having to find a day job they like.
Anne Laurie
@ellaesther:
Probably just my personal prejudices, but there’s a certain sector of the Pure Organic market that seems to believe food with too much flavor is somehow politically incorrect. Salt is bad, sugar is bad, butter is suspicious — they’re the natural heirs of the fin-de-last-siecle creative geniuses that Alma Mahler was asked for her memories of. She replied that since they were so suspicious of “foreign” spices they added too much garlic to everything, so her main recollections of those witty dinner salons was that everybody’s breath stank…
More generously, their rarified un-additive-addled taste buds may just be too refined and discerning for us proles to appreciate, I suppose.
Desert Rat
It ‘s all so understandable when you realize that Libertarians are Republicans who smoke dope, and watch porn.
Oh, and never realized that Atlas Shrugged is work of fiction, and a pretty dull, badly written work at that.
Beyond that, there really isn’t a difference.
Chuck Butcher
What I wonder is if the “pass health care for Teddy” gains any steam which RW loon will be the first to ask “who murdered Teddy so conveniently?”
Not that I think it will get any traction, that bunch will happily say srew Teddy and the rest of you commies.
What I think will come of this is a new coat of paint for the same old whorehouse, with a new sign out front and the same screwing inside. I’d like to be wrong….
wasabi gasp
@gbear: Look, I do get what you’re saying in that tightly wrapped guilt trip, but any musician bitching about too many illegal downloads is bitching about the wrong thing.
And, BTW, If a songwriter can’t pull songs out of his/her ass, they can’t write songs.
Anne Laurie
@arguingwithsignposts: I think Hatch was scheduled expressly so the older mourners could take a potty break. Or to make McCain’s less-than-bipartisan speech look better by comparison. I swear, after
several hours20 minutes of Orrin smarming his smarmy smarm about himself, the Mormons, the greatness of his Mormonism, his wonderful career, and how Mormonism had made Senator Hatch even more wonderful than even Orrin expected himself to be (with an occasional aside about how even Teddy Kennedy, that fat rich Irish libertine liberal naughty-part, found Orrin Hatch simply fascinating), I wanted to go down to Belmont and throw rocks at the godsdamned temple. (Which, in case anybody cares, is obtrusively ugly and overlighted 24/7 like a maximum security prison, the form of architecture it seems to have been based upon. You can see the dam’ thing polluting the skyline from Route 2, and it looks like a bad photoshop. Anybody else here remember the original Howard Johnson diners, with the ‘distinctive’ orange roofs and the Simple-Simon-and-Pieman weather vanes? Imagine a version of that designed by George Lucas.) I try not to be prejudiced about an entire religion based on a few prominent adherents, but between Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney and Hatch’s disgraceful performance tonight, the average Masshole is not getting the best impression of the Salt Lake City ‘saints’.Anne Laurie
@steve s:
Standard index cards used to be 60-lb stock — now the ‘generic’ makes are 40-lb, or even 20-lb, which is barely stiff enough for stationery. The 100-lb stock is probably your best compromise. Do you remember when libraries had card catalogs? Those were normally 100-stock, and the only complaint I remember was that you could only fit half as many cards in a file drawer as with the 60-lb version.
Anne Laurie
@Cat Lady:
Well, it was very nice to hear that they’re naming the new medical-tech charter high school after Teddy. Also, it remains an amazement to Dah May-ah that somebody should be so fluent as the late Senator, but I think I picked that up more from the hand signals than the actual words, such as they were. Nice man, Tom, but in no sense a natural politician.
Indylib
@Anne Laurie:
Geezamacrud, that makes me glad I muted Hatch after 30 seconds. I grew up with Mormons and half of them are the nicest, most earnest people I have ever met and the other half are the most self-righteous sanctimonious up-tight prigs I have ever met. I listened to everyone else, even McGrumpy. But Hatch’s smarmy tone had me reaching for the remote.
And yes, Mormon Temples are the some of the fugliest architecture around and they never blend in with anything. The one in San Diego sits off the freeway in the middle of a commercial area and as you approach the glow you start wondering if they moved the frikkin’ airport and didn’t tell anyone.
gbear
@wasabi gasp:
Keep your day job.
JK
@Chuck Butcher:
“Which RW loon will be the first to ask “who murdered Teddy so conveniently?”
Glenn Beck or Michael Savage.
Anne Laurie
@lamh31:
Ex-President John Quincy Adams went back to the Senate, and frankly did much better work there than he managed from the White House. It was kind of a scandal at the time, at least according to JQA’s many enemies, but he established a precedent. Ex-President Taft was appointed to the Supreme Court, where IIRC he was a far-right nuisance. Biden’s considered “too old” to run for President in 2016, but if he wants, name recognition alone would probably let him re-claim his Senate seat, unless his current replacement is very well liked indeed.
Anne Laurie
@arguingwithsignposts:
Shipping Up to Boston – Dropkick Murphys
wasabi gasp
@gbear: I don’t know what that means. But, I sense I may have offended you and that wasn’t my intention.
Little Macayla's Friend
@John Cole:
Appreciation here also for efforts of all, progressive / personal combination works for me.
Can’t speak to any blog’s comment policy. While I’ll confess to reading satirical political blogs for the extremely ‘rustic’ comments, it’s comedy. On the other hand, a few years ago at Angry Arab the homicidal racism in the unmoderated comments sounded dead serious (correlation with peak U.S. military deaths?) – and they knew his name and where he works. I can’t find comments over there now, just ‘Comments are closed for this entry’. Just my computer set-up?
Here and most of those places, the regular commenters have lately been eating trolls like Pringles, but lately it’s also the proverbial low-hanging fruit, plus Google. They make many of the MSM pundits look inexcusably bad. It can’t be for lack of qualified humans.
gbear
@wasabi gasp:
Too much caffine this evening. I’m making assumtions from what you’ve written that you’ve only been a hobby musician, that you’ve always had a good day job with disposable income to indulge your musical muse. I’m probably wrong…
I spent much of my mis-spent youth trying to survive full time as a musician. All other jobs were temporary. My band spent one summer staying in KOAs on the road because it was cheaper than a motel and we weren’t stuck five in one room that way (we all already owned small tents). It was a struggle to get by sometimes and we were definitely living hand to mouth. We were driven to keep the band going so this is what we did. Eventually our singer got tired of it and decided to go teach high school music and we all went our seperate ways.
When you said ‘tough shit… go run a hot dog stand’ (back at 300) about bands and musicians expecting to get paid for their songs, I felt offended. For most bands, gigs don’t pay well at all and traveling is expensive and hard to arrange around their shitty day jobs. Bands used to make a few bucks by selling their records or CDs at gigs. Now one kid buys the CD and makes copies for his friends (I’m playing my fucking tiny violin).
I’m wondering if you think that every musician should just be a hobby musician and should post their music, enjoy the feedback from listeners and never make a dime. 10000 hits on YouTube and four bucks will buy you a Mocha at Starbucks.
Apologies if I’m wrong about everything. It was a rough week and I was crabby this evening.
wasabi gasp
@gbear: It’s all good, gbear. And, I believe if the world was freely sharing your music, you probably wouldn’t have been here to write that. ;)
JK
@gbear:
@wasabi gasp:
I don’t remember if either of you took part in the musical discussion a few nites ago and don’t have the patience to scroll that thread. Who are your 3 or 4 favorite bands?
Chuck Butcher
@JK:
I’ve never had a or a couple favorite bands. A close friend of mine played for Canned Heat and now has a blues band and by virtue of that might qualify as a favorite.” If cornered the first to cross my mind would be the Stones and then twenty others would crowd in…
JK
@Chuck Butcher:
1) The Beatles 2) The Rolling Stones 3) The Who
4) The Grateful Dead 5) Pink Floyd
After my top 5 it’s about 150 other bands tied for 6) including the Clash, the Byrds, the Velvet Underground, the Allman Brothers Band, and U2
Speaking of Canned Heat, did you watch Woodstock Now and Then on the History Network? I thought it was outstanding.
Chuck Butcher
@JK: did you watch Woodstock Now and Then
Haven’t seen it. I’ll try to catch it. Two friends of mine tried to get me to go, but since I was 16 and in Ohio it wasn’t happening – parents are like that and I wanted a place to live…
Chuck Butcher
Somewhere in the later 70’s my tastes drifted more to the blues than anything.
JK
@Chuck Butcher:
I highly recommend it. It offers a great narrative from the principal organizers, interviews with some musicians, and impressive cover versions of some Woodstock era music from teen musicians.
I like some bands from the late 70’s and early 80’s, but my heart is with the music of the 1960’s.
Did you watch the Kennedy memorial service?
The Moar You Know
@gbear:
@wasabi gasp:
Got a nasty case of reflux so it seems I’ll be up for a while, and realized that it might be worthwhile to explain myself.
I cheered the day file sharing came along. I hoped that it would cure what I’ve seen as the defining illness of modern music, the worship of the recorded piece of music over the thing that defines musicians and makes them unique; their ability to play live.
I suppose this comes from my classical background – in the classical world people, in general, don’t produce CDs. You make your money as a classical musician by playing concerts, and there’s not very many classical musicians who have the chops to play at the symphonic level, and not that many composers who are able to break new work into the genre. It’s gotta be good work to do that – and I see that as a blessing, not a curse. You can’t bullshit your way onto a symphony stage. Nor can you lip-sync or multitrack over deficiencies in your playing.
I see the CD as, at best, a promotional tool – something to bring the rubes out to the tent and get them to listen – not as the artwork in and of itself. I’ve never understood the worship of an album as a work of art in and of itself.
The Grateful Dead, a band I absolutely despise (sorry, John) figured this out as well. The money and the art wasn’t in their albums or the sales thereof, the money and the art was in their live performances, shitty and unprofessional as most of them were. And the amount of money they made playing live was incredible, hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the last decade of their career – and not one dime of that cash every made it to a overpaid mogul, smug A&R agent, or
secretaryon-staff sex toy. It was theirs, all theirs, to do with as they pleased.Any band who sold the numbers of albums that the Dead did would be literally bankrupt if they toured as little as your average band nowadays does. The Dead never sold that many records. But then again, they didn’t have to, they made it live.
Thankfully, they are no longer a singular anomaly. Pearl Jam has figured this out. So has Phish. Others are starting to as well. Mind you, I am not a fan of any of these bands’ music, but they have figured out how to bring music back to the way that it was supposed to be since the first cavemen carved up bird bones into flutes – an interaction between performer and artist, not an interaction between a playback machine and a gape-mouthed, passive listener who is listening to something because he’s been told by a record company marketing department that the latest CD by Disposable Act #26B is cool.
I hate Bill O’Reilly with the white heat of a thousand exploding suns, but “Fuck it, we’ll do it live” are words to live by. Even if they were uttered by a raging idiot.
JK
@The Moar You Know:
I disagree with your take on the Grateful Dead and Phish, but appreciate your honesty in giving them credit for the way they pursued their endeavor.
Wholeheartedly agree with your take on Bill-O the Clown O’Reilly.
gbear
@JK:
The Beatles and The Who have to be the top two, although ‘Squeeze Box’ is one of the most grating songs ever recorded.
The Kinks up to and including Muswell Hillbillies.
XTC once David Gregory joined.
REM until Bill Barry left.
List also needs to include The Four Tops, Aretha Franklin, CCR, Jefferson Airplane, Fairport Convention, Big Star, two dozen others I’ll think of while lying in bed tonight.
(damned caffine)
Chuck Butcher
@JK: Did you watch the Kennedy memorial service?
No. I find them tedious and loaded with hypocricy.
Did you know that Michael Jackson is still dead? I get tired of t
JK
@gbear:
Agree with many of the artists you’ve mentioned, but what about the ROLLING STONES?
JK
@Chuck Butcher:
I see your point, although I’m more comfortable with wall to wall Ted Kennedy coverage than I am with Michael Jackson covergae.
Hypocrisy – see under McCain, John
gbear
Rolling Stones are a force of nature and I used to play a lot of their music in bands, but I never really listened to their albums much. Nobody should be without a copy of the two Hot Rocks albums. I mostly stopped liking them after Sticky Fingers though. Hubris and had set in.
gbear
@gbear:
Gahhh. Hubris had set in. I think the caffine is finally wearing off.
JK
@gbear:
As much as I love the Rolling Stones and the Who, I think the Beatles did it the right way by going out on top and leaving millions of fans clamoring for more music from them.
gbear
@JK:
Yea, The Who would have done well to stop when Keith died. I think the main reason they started touring again was because Entwistle was going broke. Sooo much money being offered for reunions.
Oh, Add Faces (with Rod Stewart) to my list. They used to come thru Mpls about every six months on tour and they were a great band live. I like their records too.
arguingwithsignposts
Rising on Saturday morning to find the thread shifted to file-sharing and musicians. As I mentioned previously in another thread, I mostly go see regional acts, or independent artists (bluegrass and folk will do that to you), and always try to buy the CD from the band that’s playing. My girlfriend and I will share the CD, but that’s it.
I don’t share music in general, and I buy most music from emusic or iTunes (although not so much iTunes now that emusic has some contracts with major labels – dylan, husker du, willie nelson, cash, etc.) $10/mo. subscription is great.
Maybe I’m just getting older, but I don’t see the prob. paying for music online. I’d rather be “legal” and put at least a little money in the musicians’ hands.
That said, I wouldn’t give a dime to an eric clapton or a rolling stones or any major record label act at this point in their careers. They don’t need it, and they don’t earn the $70-$100/seat prices they charge for fans to watch a TV screen in an overcrowded arena.
The acts I see usually have a very strong connection with their audience (a la grateful dead, etc.)
Another one of those acts that figured out the touring thing is Donna the Buffalo. Highly recommended Video of Family Picture. Saw them once and the show was sold out and people lined up for an hour beforehand to get a good seat. Robert Earl Keen, also. Five Pound Bass.
Svensker
@arguingwithsignposts:
since VM is almost as bad as Dylan about mumbling)
It was years before I realized the song I called “Oh Shadow Vays” was actually “Ancient of Days”.
satby
@JK:
Sorry guys: “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” IS a wake song if you’re Irish; and often sung at funerals too.
painterboy
about copyright and Youtube (and other asspects of the whole copyright tangle)
like a lot of legal rights, protection of one’s copyright is almost always a matter of private litigation… private litigation tends to be very expensive (e.g. the average cost of litigating a defense based on fair use is around $100K) …therefore, when protectionist demands, usually in the form of a C&D or take-down notice, come from a well financed source, they’re far more likely to be taken seriously. When youtube gets a take-down notice from BMG, they play ball because they don’t want the headache, and they don’t want to be put in the place of defending the alleged infringer. It’s just far easier for them to use a better-safe-than-sorry private policy than to wade into the expensive and blurry world of actual copyright law.
As for cover songs, they are expressly allowed by copyright law (there is a compulsory license, so the original composer, or whomever they sold the rights to, can get paid, but they can’t horde the expression). Recorded songs actually have two separate copyrights, one for the “musical work” …what the composer composed, sheetmusic being an example…. and one for the sound recording …the fixation of a performance, or compiled performances, of a composition. Without the compulsory license, a cover song would infringe the composition, but not the recording (because it is creating an entirely new sound recording, unlike sampling).
Personally, while I am a strong believer in protections for the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations, I also see that the current enforcement regime in copyright law is dominated not so much by those creators, but by the content distribution industry. These aggregating content providers tend to leverage away the rights of the creators in exchange for a ticket to ride. The severe differential in bargaining power means that for most entry level artists, the industry can buy the work cheap. However, with the emergence of digital tech, it has become possible for work to be disseminated without a top-heavy infrastructure to distribute physical objects. But large entrenched and self-interested entities tend to resist change… they will cling to their out-dated business model. It is this protection of business model that has been driving copyright law of late, with concern for the creators being used as a beard (newspapers are also using this same tactic, but with the addition of invoking traditional journalistic hierarchy).
oh, and I like kitties
wasabi gasp
@JK: I’ll pick three, four opens a whole can of worms.
Pink Floyd
The Beatles
Pavement
jjcomet
The AK-47 charge IS bullshit. More than likely they are referring to a rally in Houston in 2000 (when Clinton was still president) where marching Black Panthers carried guns, including what some observers claimed were AK-47s, a claim that the Houston police who were monitoring the march denied. Funny how the right sees black people carrying such weapons as a threat to society but consider whites who carry them to be patriotic Americans defending their Second Amendment rights.
And we’re still waiting for the f***ing cite…
Mantar
b-psycho: Yeah, but that’s not really our (the leftists little-l libertarians) fault. They stole our friggin’ word. OTOH, we only invented the term “libertarian” because yellow journalism transformed “anarchist” into a slur* like they did with “liberal” in the 80’s, causing many liberals to come up with “progressive” as a replacement.
* (With the aid of the propaganda-by-the-deed types. They should have known that their justifications would be omitted and ignored, leaving the public to think of them as bomb-throwing loonies who attack without reason. And then there’s Leon Czolgosz, who actually kinda was a looney — he got his ideas on what anarchism was from the aforementioned yellow newspapers.)
wasabi gasp
@The Moar You Know: I agree with all that you wrote. Scary agree, even down to the reflux…too many late night chips.
Mantar
Ah. I see the asterisk bolds the text. Oops!
Well, at least the software closes the tags automatically.
wasabi gasp
My last bit on file sharing, and maybe this will make some musicians who fear profit loss breath a little easier. Most of the stuff I’ve downloaded, I’ve erased, the free sectors were more valuable.
gbear
@arguingwithsignposts: Agreed.
FYI, The Coailition of Independent Record Stores has put together a website and a store for downloading music. It’s a good model to let indie bands get their music out without having to give it away.
Coalition home page- http://www.cimsmusic.com/
Download site- http://digital.thinkindie.com/
Mike in Elay
So, I suppose if the Black Panthers did it, then it’s okay. I didn’t know that libertarians and right wingers think the Black Panthers exhibited behavior to be modelled.
arguingwithsignposts
@gbear:
thanks for the links. I’ll check them out.
Harry R. Sohl
“OT anybody else heard that GHW Bush can’t be bothered to show up for Kennedy’s service because Shrub showing up was a good enough representation of the Bush family.”
You haven’t noticed that no one’s ever, Ever, EVAR(!) seen Babs and Teddy K in the same place yet? Just sayin’.
Beaver Falls
Libertarians are Republican who don’t want to take the blame for conservatism’s bankrupt ideology and the horrors it creates when given power – see last 8 years. Most of them like to sit on the fence and point fingers, knowing their “cures,” which would be worse for the country than Republicans, will never be enacted so they are safe.
Denis Leary –
This from wiki tracks with what I have often heard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks#Hicks_and_Denis_Leary
For many years, Hicks had been friends with fellow comedian Denis Leary. However, in 1993, Hicks was angered upon hearing Leary’s album No Cure for Cancer. While he had laughed off similarities between the two comedians before, the parallels between the album’s content and Hicks’ own material (including jokes about smoking, Jim Fixx, and Judas Priest) and tone were clear. Reportedly, upon hearing a tape of Leary’s album No Cure for Cancer, “Bill was furious. All these years, aside from the occasional jibe, he had pretty much shrugged off Leary’s lifting. Comedians borrowed, stole stuff and even bought bits from one another. Milton Berle and Robin Williams were famous for it. This was different. Leary had, practically line for line, taken huge chunks of Bill’s act and recorded it.”
The friendship ended abruptly as a result. At least three stand-up comedians have gone on the record stating they believe Leary stole Hicks’ material as well as his persona and attitude. In an interview, when Hicks was asked why he had quit smoking, he answered, “I just wanted to see if Denis would, too.” In another interview, Hicks famously told an interviewer: “I have a scoop for you. I stole his (Leary’s) act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”