I’ve had this song in my head ever since riding in Critical Mass on Friday, so here’s a corny video and an open thread.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.
I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.
Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
Let’s finish the job.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
Come on, man.
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
cathyx
What does pescano mean? It’s not in any of my spanish dictionaries.
Steeplejack
Love that song.
Thread title: you met a fish drinking a mojito? WTF?!
jurassicpork
Ever notice how many liberal/progressive blogs, the ones most critical of BP, are now plastered with BP ads? Eschaton has a banner ad at the top of its index page now it’s Balloon Juice. What’s up with that? Don’t you guys care who pays you?
debit
@jurassicpork: I don’t think Cole gets to picks the ads.
Kristine
I love Michelle Shocked’s voice. Great thing to hear before coffee!
Nothing more to add, except that I often notice ads on prog blogs that run counter to the blog philosophy. I am wondering if there’s a program or something–no clue how any of this works–that analyzes how often a term is mentioned by posters, and runs ads accordingly? So if many people bitch about BP, the algorithm will only see “BP-BP-BP,” and so show ads for BP. It doesn’t measure pro/con or attitude of the posters, just # of mentions.
Since a conservative blog would mention the same company names/politicians/etc in a more favorable light, they would get the same ads, but they wouldn’t run counter to the blog philosophy, so they wouldn’t stand out. And no, I haven’t tested this and have no idea whether it’s true. I haven’t even had coffee yet, a situation I need to correct, like, now.
mai naem
@jurassicpork: You just noticed that? Over the years, I’ve seen anti-union/card check ads on progressive blogs. Ann Coulter ads. Energy company ads. Anti-net neutrality ads. Nothing new here.
Alwhite
@jurassicpork:
I find those ads hilarious! Not only are they supporting web sites that undermine the brain-damaged goals of these morons but they are not farming people that might actually fall for their bullshit. Its a win-win.
One question: Cole, do you get extra money if we click though? If so I’ll click through just to take a few extra cents from the bastards.
mistermix
@Steeplejack: She encountered a wet fish in East LA, meaning she saw somebody who had entered the US by crossing a river, so they were a “wet fish”.
Josie
Except the word for fish is pescado, not pescano.
Scott
@Alwhite: Not sure about the ads on Balloon Juice, but on some blogs, they pay on the basis of page views — every time someone loads the blog. So there may be no need to click.
mistermix
@Josie: Yeah, typo, just fixed it. Thanks.
db
Great song about story and place. For those not from L.A., she nails it.
KCinDC
Leonard Peikoff, head of the Ayn Rand Institute, comes out against property rights in the case of the “Ground Zero Mosque” (the Peikoff part starts a few paragraphs in, after the bit about Pamela Geller). He favors bombing the place if it is built.
Steeplejack
@mistermix:
Humor fail on my part, apparently. I am aware of all wetback traditions.
mistermix
@Steeplejack: Well, title fail on my part. Every blogger needs an editor or commenters, preferably both.
Hob
@mistermix: Not quite– it’s “me encontré”, reflexive, literally “I found myself [being] a wet fish” in the sense that she was one. The joke is that she arrived in East LA by crossing the river, so that makes her a wetback.
Random memory: I listened to this song about a million times when I’d never seen LA and had no idea what the hell any of it was about, and I assumed the Watts Towers must be some huge apartment complex. Heh.
Hob
OK, more Michelle Shocked nostalgia trip: I got to see her in concert twice (not counting the time she did some live music for a dance piece) and damn she has an intense live presence.
#1 was a medium-size show in New York in the early ’90s, packed with folkie fans, and after doing a lot of her standards, she explained that she’d just joined an evangelical church and proceeded to do a bunch of gospel tunes. The audience didn’t know what to make of this at all, but went with it, and it was a great show & generous show – about half a dozen encores, the last one being “Come a Long Way.”
#2 was at the Health & Harmony Fair, a NoCal hippie thing, with a much smaller crowd, and she reduced every person in that crowd to tears when, in “Anchorage”, she hit the line “What was the name of that love song you played” and then segued right into the aforementioned song, which turned out to be “The Water Is Wide”.
That’s all…
Ash Can
@KCinDC: A Randroid ditches everything he supposedly stands for when his personal prejudices are riled? Hoodathunk?
I suppose he’d say he was just exercising his
GodRand-given individual freedom to bomb the shit out of people he didn’t like.