Maceo!
BTW- have any websites popped up yet dedicated to the music of Treme?
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
Everybody saw this coming.
Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.
“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.
Republicans in disarray!
In after Baud. Damn.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.
Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.
Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.
You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.
President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.
Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.
“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”
Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.
Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”
rob!
JESUS CHRIST, is Jay Leno not funny.
John Cole
@rob!: Some of us figured that out in the previous 20 years.
Brachiator
Even though it’s stupid and a little dangerous, ya just gotta love these Oxford students celebrating May Day by jumping off a bridge into a shallow stream.
ellaesther
@rob!: Someone I follow on Twitter is doing a whole series of tweets with the hastag #isfunnierthanjayleno. So far they include homework, the SATs, George Lopez….
All true, too!
Steeplejack
Note: Shameless duplicate post. I just got home from work a few minutes ago, and, struggling to catch up with the Balloon Juice cornucopia, I posted this in the other “Another Open Thread”:
Shorter me: I’m with you, Cole, on the love for the J.B.’s, with and without the Godfather of Soul (may he rest in peace).
ellaesther
I was just thinking that I have something to put in an Open Thread, if only there were a fresh one…!
Et voila!
I know some of y’all are into that brewin’ there, and the hops, also. And (again, speaking of Twitter), I have this information for you:
Do you respect beer? Interested in Hops? Subscribe & receive updates about growing #Hops http://bit.ly/MadisonHopsExaminer
I’ll admit it, I neither brew nor even drink beer, but Matt Sweeny, the gentleman in question, is a good guy and well-beloved among those who drink his local stuff in Wisconsin.
He’s @AnotherDesign , if you’re interested in his Twitter feed. And while I’m at it, here’s his blog, Simple Earth Hops: http://www.simpleearthhops.com/
Bob K
You know – I went down to the local purveyor of spirits today. We are not too far away from a local institute of higher learning. You know when you think of Dubya calling Rove “Turd Blossom” and all the miscellaneous frat boy jokes that have been shooting over the intertubes. At least we have this: Buffy and Muffy were shopping for serious spirits for their little party tonight. At least there was this: They were evah so hawt. If they hook up with Tawd at the Pahteh, they’ll mission will be dun. They still are looking for Mister Goodbar with a Doctorate in making lots of Gold. Lovely to look at and lovely to hold, a spirit/brain that’s broken and a heart that’s Ice Cold.
ellaesther
@John Cole: A little kindness for those who take their time in understanding the obvious. I seem to recall you were once a member of the GOP….
burnspbesq
That clip is OK, but what you really want is the 18-minute version with the WDR Big Band, from Maceo’s “Roots and Grooves” record.
tammanycall
Times Square evacuated after a car bomb failed to explode.
BR
We need to start a campaign to boycott BP. Folks boycotted Exxon after Valdez. Time to stop going to BP stations. (Sure it’s symbolic – I know the oil will be pumped from somewhere – but it puts the focus back on the environmental and energy issues rather than the politics.)
rob!
IT WAS A FUCKING JOKE. Way to make someone feel welcome, John.
jeffreyw
Another night of thunderstorms. Jack is on his meds again. I needed em too, last night.
burnspbesq
Frank Rich, as usual, is full of win.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02rich.html?hp
Mike Kay
@tammanycall: let me preempt Rush. This is obviously the work of Teabaggers and Militias.
burnspbesq
@Mike Kay:
Naah. It’s a false-flag operation by the Secret Service and the NYPD, for which a bunch of those fine upstanding Amurkins will be framed based on illegal wiretap evidence and faked emails. Rahmbama can’t silence them any other way.
burnspbesq
Somebody should send Todd Palin a t-shirt that says “I’m with pendeja.”
Bnut
It’s been a long time in coming, but maybe this will force us as a nation to have that serious talk about energy. The global warming deniers will no doubt find a way to spin this, but when this shit hits land in the South, some of these people are going to come face to face with real environmental facts. Fine, you don’t think cars cause the Earth harm. This is different.
Americans have always needed their immediate gratification. Platter, served.
SIA
@burnspbesq: um. OK explain that one to me please?
Bnut
@SIA:
It’s “I’m with stupid” in Spanish.
burnspbesq
@SIA:
It basically means “dumbass” in Mexican-American slang.
Steeplejack
@SIA:
What they said, although the degree of insult varies among Latin American countries. I am not an expert, but my impression is that in, say, Chile, it would come across merely as “stupid,” but in Mexico it’s closer to “asshole.”
ETA: I will defer to any interpretation by George Lopez.
SIA
@Bnut: @burnspbesq: Oh! In that case, ha ha!
Nemo_N
@tammanycall:
Question is: how will this become Obama’s fault?
Bnut
@SIA:
I want t-shirts made up with GOP rep pics with “haras la watani” on them. It’s what Iraqi troops calls traitors. It means roughly “un-national guard”.
Mike Kay
is the times-sq event CNN’s katrina?
msnbc covering, but cnn running 4 year old tape of larry king.
robertdsc
@burnspbesq:
Hahahahahaha. Ha.
An extended family member received a shirt that said “I ONLY LOOK ILLEGAL” for Christmas past. Made me laugh, though I couldn’t wear such a thing my own self.
Comrade Luke
@Bnut:
Good one :)
SIA
@ Steeplejack
Thanks for the extra info. Our childrens IS learning at BJ.
Bnut
@Comrade Luke:
I only meant it in a “the people it’s going to hurt are those who are rooting for it” kind of way. I understand your sentiment. People vote against their own interests all the time, but I still harbor a little bit of hope for us all.
My family has a house in Gulf Shores, Alabama,right on the beach. My step-grandmother bought it in the 60’s, ran a B&B from it for 35 years, then retired to let us step-grand kids have some fun at it. The whole area where she lives is split 50-50 between snowbirds and locals. But even the locals who are all conservative love the area and it’s natural beauty. This is going to change some opinions.
Bnut
Slow night on the open thread, btw. The one night I have neither the gf, animals or bars annoying me.
MattR
@Mike Kay: There is something weird about this whole event. None of the local NYC affiliates are giving it any special attention at all. Fox did not break into their coverage of NASCAR at any point between 7 and 10:30 (don’t judge me). Very strange. Just the closing of Times Square should have gotten more coverage locally, regardless of the cause.
Yutsano
@Bnut: These situations are fixable however. I’m here just not getting too inspired to chime in just yet. See what you made me done do?
EDIT: I am, however, making a late run to the store. I shall be back anon.
Mark S.
@Comrade Luke:
Oh, if they can’t stop it for a couple of months and it gets in the Gulf Stream and deposits sludge up and down the eastern seaboard, I think it will definitely change the conversation in this country.
SIA
Just saw band called Vampire Weekend on rerun of SNL. Nice!
Steeplejack
@Bnut:
Tell me about it. I just got home from a grueling late shift a couple of hours ago, all primed for some late-night Balloon Juice action, and so far . . . nada. Not even a faint clang from AsiangrrlMN and her rusty pitchforks.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Where is your fake wifey, by the way? Aren’t you supposed to keep her on a short leash? Or is that the other hubbie’s job? I get so confused with these post-modern relationships.
Comrade Luke
@Bnut: I didn’t mean to blow you off; I totally get where you’re coming from, and I hope something changes as well.
Unfortunately, when you read things like this it makes it difficult to keep your chin up.
Bnut
Ok, here’s a question. Say this ends up worse than the Valdez. At what point does the national mood change towards Big Oil? I’m not asking for snark. Literally, what is the tipping point?
Comrade Luke
@Mark S.: God, I hope that doesn’t happen. What a terrible thought.
Still, I wonder if *anything* will change the conversation. Or more likely, the conversation changes for a while, until someone actually tries to do, at which point someone looks at the properties of the Word document and sees that the bill is written by a big oil lobbyist.
Mark S.
@Bnut:
See my comment at 34.
Martin
@Bnut: When it no longer serves as a proxy for political ideology. Literally. The wingnuts can’t outscream each other to demonstrate party loyalty, and this will be no different.
Comrade Luke
@Bnut: I don’t see how it changes. As soon as someone tries to change things lobbyists start screaming that the economy would collapse and gas would hit $5.00 per gallon.
I don’t think government cares about what the people think any more; they run the government more for their donors than their constituents.
Sure they care about getting re-elected, but voters are easily swayed by PR/advertising, which is funded by the donors and lobbyists.
Universal health care isn’t considered an inalienable right, but cheap gas is.
ETA: I don’t know what to think about the 2mo oil spill scenario. That would be so catastrophic I can’t even get my head around it.
John Quixote
Well, the oil spill in the gulf being ‘Obama’s Katrina’ meme has spread to my little corner of the earth. And I don’t have the energy to de-bunk this shit anymore.
de stijl
@MattR:
MSNBC, and now, CNN are giving it the full court press. Well, arguably it cannot be really called a full court press since there is almost no information and that lack of information is being rehashed over and over and over.
This type of “news” situation is the least appealing aspect of 24/7 coverage. There has been a situation, but no one really knows what is going on so the newsies keep repeating the same scuttlebutt over and over along with incredibly uninformative stand ups with random folks who can’t get back in their hotel rooms. They don’t want to be caught napping in case it turns out to a big and real deal, but the fact remains they don’t have fuck all to say about it.
In an odd way, I’m glad they’re “covering” the situation, but I’m not gonna watch unless something actually happens or they learn some salient information.
Can one of you suckers give me a quick heads up if something actually happens? Thanks!
de stijl
@Bnut:
I’m really trying not to be bleak and misanthropic, but the tipping point is about $3.50 a gallon.
de stijl
@Comrade Luke:
I’m really trying not to bum you out but that looks like the most likely outcome.
Comrade Luke
@de stijl: Then WTF is this guy talking about?
AhabTRuler
This is gonna be so much worse than Valdez. If the wellhead opens up completely, it will be insane. Supposedly, wells in that field output ~30,000 barrels/day (although under control), and that would be a Valdez about every 10 days. If the wellhead goes, the output could exceed that. This is a total nightmare situation.
These are all numbers I have pulled out of articles, but if they are even remotely close you can begin to imagine the horrific scale.
Martin
@Comrade Luke: Congressman pretends he’s a scientist? Yeah, what could go wrong. Let’s listen to the experts, please?
Martin
@AhabTRuler: Some scientists are estimating that’s it’s already cranking out 20K per day and is around the size of Valdez, just that so much of it hasn’t had a chance to surface and spread out yet.
Too many conflicting theories still. Bottom line is it doesn’t matter how big the shit pile is, it’s still a big fucking shit pile.
The bad news is that it’ll be bad – really bad. The good news is that we’ll find a way to make it not as bad as it appears it ought to be. That’s the here-and-now. The really big question is what do we do from here on out? Business as usual? Change the industry?
Yutsano
@Martin: Business as usual shouldn’t even be a consideration at this point. I mean, two states (and possibly more) are about to have major chunks of their economies wiped out. Unfortunately I never underestimate the inability of the Senate (Nancy SMASH gets some shit done at least) to act, and I never underestimate the power of the dollar to influence votes. Trust me, there are too many Republicans indoctrinated with Reaganism to even consider any sort of regulation tightening. It will be a majorly rough road even if the oil starts showing up in Maine. Of course if it hits Canada I hope they sue our asses.
Bnut
@Yutsano:
One of my fears is that this becomes a state/federal issue. The GOP govs don’t want to ask for alot of federal help in that it hurts their campaigns. The left will be spouting “You didn’t want the stimulus money, go fuck yourselves”.
Yutsano
@Bnut: Governors are funny critters like that. They know that, no matter how ideologically pure they might be, if they don’t meet the needs of their state they’re out of a job come next election. Witness how many of them were pleading with the Senate to get the stimulus bill passed in the first place. If they need the help they will have zero issue with asking Washington. If they refuse and their state goes down the shitter the voters remember that. In a time of crisis ideology doesn’t save your residents, you take whatever help you can get and the teabaggers can just kvetch about it.
Oh and the Democrats would never tell them to go fuck themselves. They’d end up on the wrong end of the blame game even if they had nothing to do with the situation in the first place. Remember we are dealing with the masters of prevarication here.
Martin
@Yutsano: Obama has the power to shut all offshore drilling down. That’s a really big fucking stick to wield against the moneyed interests and makes real change a lot easier to achieve. But the willpower to change it by Obama and the Dems needs to be there.
If the southern GOP wants to keep shutting down this debate, Obama also has the power to tell the states to fund the cleanup from their budgets. I don’t think he’ll do that, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to do in the face of opposition to a policy change.
Bnut
@Yutsano:
Never assume southern voters have sense. Bob Riley, Gov of Alabama was elected on a platform of a state lottery to fund education. He was elected, yet the state voted down the lottery. I love Mad Men. People in the South remind me of people who lived in 1962.
de stijl
@Comrade Luke:
Probably the same thing this guy was talking about.
Yutsano
@Martin:
It would be the next logical step. Doesn’t this happen when an accident occurs in the North Sea area? Plus he could (and should) make it mandatory that all those safety valves go on every rig NOW. That would more or less have the same effect. I wonder if that will finally make Rush’s head asplode.
You could have stopped right there. No way Obama would do that. Not only is he not that cold-blooded (we could say it’s Louisiana’s problem but this will affect us all for a very long period of time) but he would lose every state this applied to forever, and not just for him but for every Democratic candidate. He’s too politically astute for that.
Steeplejack
How in the hell did this open thread with Maceo Parker at the top–Maceo fucking Parker–and an Evony ad, I might add, devolve into a wonky discussion of energy and environmental policy?! I am seriously disappointed with Balloon Juice right now.
[Storming off to fix another drink. Steep + some
smallinteger number]de stijl
@Yutsano:
I haven’t researched this, but I would assume that retrofitting existing undersea oil wells with the automatic shut off valves is not a trivial endeavor.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: I could always make some cookies, even if I did forget to buy the damn chocolate chips at the store (dammit!)
@de stijl: Ummm…if that was supposed to make me feel sympathetic you’re gonna have to do better than that. If they’d done things right in the first fucking place we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
AhabTRuler
@Yutsano:
To be accurate, the device in question is a switch, not a valve. The switch in question would only have duplicated other switches on a number of panels, including on the BOP itself. It’s the valve system itself which appears to have failed, and it is quite likely that the safety device in question would not have made a difference.
I still think that they should be mandatory, but I don’t think we should fool ourselves into seeing them as a panacea. I have no doubt that a number of safety improvements can be made, but how rare is a rare accident when its on this scale?
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Why the hell did you even bother to go out, then? Dude.
I am dangerously close to checking out Alien Sex Files III: Alien Babes on HBO. Nothing is going on tonight.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: I’m about to get flogged again huh? Sheesh I can’t do anything right today I swear!
fucen tarmal
@de stijl:
but don’t they do tons of fluff ads about empowering progress, and making the impossible happen every day, i don’t have any specific b.s. ads in mind, but this seems to be the theme of the ads oil companies put out there when they want to sell the audience on how vital and positive their corporate image is./believing everything i see
de stijl
@AhabTRuler:
Absolutely agreed.
In fact, reading the non technical press it looks like the Brazilian and Norwegian devices have never been tested in the real world. Also, the Deepwater Horizon rig, although lacking the acoustic switch, reportedly had a shut-off switch that should have activated.
I wonder how many folks in the offshore oil biz are rethinking their position that a $500,000 switch is too expensive. Short term motherfuckers piss me off in general, but when you try to rationalize away risk in this egregious manner, I am am absolutely gobsmacked at their idiocy. And their idiocy is our catastrophe.
Martin
@de stijl: Compared to cleaning up 10M gallons of crude across 4,000 square miles? Yeah it is trivial.
de stijl
@fucen tarmal:
I don’t want anyone to think of BP sympathetically nor do I excuse any of their behavior in squelching the acoustic switch rule in US offshore rigs. They and their oil company cohorts are to blame as are the regulators that failed to regulate and failed to quantify and deal with the risk to the environment and to the people of the Gulf Coast and the economy.
But let’s not fool ourselves, if Obama or whomever mandated the use of acoustic switches tomorrow, it will take years to implement and wishing otherwise won’t make it different.
JeremyH
I saw Maceo play at the Jazz Alley in Seattle a few weeks ago, and he ROCKED. Awesome gig.
Just wanted to tell y’all that. You can now return to what you were doing.
Martin
@de stijl: Security comes from overlapping layers. If you have 3 devices in series, each of which will fail 20% of the time, the system will fail 20% * 20% * 20% = .8% of the time. So yeah, you put on the regular switch *and* the acoustic switch.
de stijl
@Martin:
Apparently you all think I’m apologizing for BP.
I’m not.
And I never would.
They are entirely to blame for the spill and should pay for every cent of cleanup. They should be and will be sued and will probably go out of existence to which I say good riddance.
I’m sorry I gave you that impression because it means I was not writing very clearly.
All I’m saying is that retrofitting existing rigs will not happen overnight just because we want it to because it will be a freaking difficult engineering feat.
New rigs, no problem – you build it into the well head.
In existing wells it will be very difficult.
Yutsano
@de stijl: The reason why this doesn’t wash with me is the oil companies had a chance to do this right from the start. They chose to be short-sighted, and the results are affecting all of us. If they have to take all their rigs offline to satisfy the new regulatory demand, oh well. It’s their fault for choosing short-term gain over long-term environmental impact. There is room for compromise here, they can shut a certain number down to install the equipment, then rotate in the next batch, until all are compliant.
Martin
@de stijl: Oh, I don’t think you’re apologizing for them. BP employs people and pays them good money to know what the consequences of not spending the money on safety equipment is. Management didn’t listen to those people enough.
Yeah, it’s half a million dollars to retrofit each of those wells. That’s a one-time cost. They earned $6.1B last quarter. Had they retrofit 1,000 wells, their profits would have dropped by 8%. Beyond the cleanup costs for this, the PR cost is going to be monumental. The cost to the industry as a whole even more.
Quiddity
David Broder wrote this:
de stijl
@Martin:
I should have been clearer. The $500k figure is the cost of the acoustic switch if installed when the well was initially drilled.
I have no idea what the cost will be to retrofit the switch on existing wells.
de stijl
@Quiddity:
A big part of me wants to tell the Tea Partiers that if you failed to protest Medicare Part D (aka MMA 2003) then you need to catch a big dose of STFU.
All of me wants to say to David Broder to STFU.
Mark S.
@Quiddity:
Even though Broder is 257 years old, he giggles like a schoolgirl at the thought of Pete Peterson.
de stijl
@Mark S.:
In Broder’s defense, have you seen Pete Peterson’s tushy?
My theory is that David Broder, at his most impressionable age, had a torrid – a love that dare not speak its name – type of a thing with a Rockefeller Republican type. My guess is DDE.
On a more serious note, I actually do miss the Rockefeller Republican types not for their tushies but for their politics.
burnspbesq
@AhabTRuler:
“but how rare is a rare accident when its on this scale?”
Rare. Don’t conflate probability and magnitude when talking about events like this – down that road lies mushy thinking.
It’s perfectly OK to conclude that given how horrific a bad outcome can be, even though the probability of a bad outcome is vanishingly small we want to force the operators to invest in new technologies and/or beef up existing safety features in order to make that probability even smaller. But let’s be clear: only an outright ban on offshore exploration and production can move that probability to zero (no matter how good your systems are, you can never completely eliminate the potential for human error). And the likely ripple effects of a shutdown (start with $7/gal gasoline and go on from there) make the politics of an outright ban difficult.
Right now, I am tentatively in the outright-ban camp. Ask me again in a week, when we have more data, and my answer might be different.
Chuck Biscuits
Here’s a Tumblr devoted to music from Treme:
http://songsfromtreme.tumblr.com/