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What can I say? I’m genetically inclined to prefer men who look good in a kilt. And it’s good to know that Fran Lebowitz has a fall-back career in percussion if the NYC litcrit market crashes.
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Yutsano
Fran makes one helluva sardonic TV judge. That is all.
roshan
Wouldn’t this be just another reason to clone Digby? Even her music tastes are exceptional. Clone her already, I say.
Yutsano
@roshan: Oh just admit you want her to have your anchor babies. It’s okay man we’ll support you.
roshan
Yutsy, you can’t foil my plans unless I tell you about it and I’m not telling. Do your best.
Yutsano
@roshan: :: whistles innocently ::
Oh don’t mind me I’m just an evil agent for the gubmint.
Origuy
Tempest was at the Highland Games I went to last weekend. I was on stage in a kilt, too. I’m the one with long hair.
(The dancing starts about a minute in. I didn’t bother to edit out the intro.)
Yutsano
@Origuy: It could just be because I’m tired, but watching you I was somehow reminded of Benjamin Franklin. Since from my perspective that’s a compliment, I think that’s a good thing.
Zuzu's Petals
So, the GOPers are being uhm, “creative” per usual:
Republican Runs Street People on Green Ticket in Arizona
Stay classy, guys.
Zuzu's Petals
@Origuy:
Kewl. Which tartan are you wearing?
Origuy
@Yutsano: Much of Scottish country dance comes from 18th century France. I don’t know if Franklin danced during his time at Versailles, but he likely saw people doing similar figures. The footwork, though, is particularly Scottish.
Origuy
@Zuzu’s Petals: It’s the Mackay Blue, also called the Morgan. I have a McCoy ancestor, whose daughter married a Hatfield. Both well before the feud started.
roshan
ZuZu, it’s called ratfucking, not “being creative”. Update your lingo if you don’t want to be left begging in the streets by these assholes.
Zuzu's Petals
@Origuy:
Very interesting.
I have Crawford and Feguson and probably a couple of others.
Along the lines of my comment in another thread, re “official” ghost towns:
Did you know California has an official state tartan? Yep…based on the Muir tartan.
Zuzu's Petals
@roshan:
Sorry if my snark escaped you.
El Cid
Republican party hack is recruiting homeless people to run as Green candidates for statewide office so as to try and split Democratic votes. The Green Party has made clear that this is not in any way connected with their actual work and have urged members to avoid these fake campaigns.
El Cid
By gaining just two MP’s, Australia’s labor leader Julia Gillard can now form a government (albeit a minority government). Apparently in hard bargaining each gained strong backing of programs they were pushing, including rural development and digital infrastructure.
[The two members were the final needed; without the Green Party given a heavy role in the new government and thus drawing their votes to form a government, Labor wouldn’t have achieved the government.]
So thankfully we don’t have to yet see Australia go conservative, and maybe moving in the opposite direction based on their coalition.
bemused
@El Cid:
I’ve been shocked in the last few years at the increasing number of incidents of blatant, unapologetic flouting of rules/regs in campaigns, etc. People aren’t bothering to cover their tracks anymore. It is more and more right out in the open with a smirk and basically saying what are you going to do about it and just go ahead and try to stop us. I probably shouldn’t be shocked when R leadership rarely publicly condemns it, actively encourages it and/or do it themselves because anything goes to win.
They still claim to have the patent on morals and values and I want to scream.
El Cid
This is a huge scandal, intersecting Rupert Murdoch’s media empire deploying corporate for-profit wiretapping and privacy invasion of hundreds of the UK’s aristocracy, politicians, celebrities, police and military officials etc., and the major outcome has been a push to cut the BBC’s funding.
Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid News of the World, earlier caught hacking the phones & data of the royal family apparently has had a much, much wider range of targets, perhaps hundreds, and perhaps with the help of police who didn’t want to fall out of favor with Murdoch’s news empire, and targeting not just royalty and celebrities but politicians and businessmen.
(I guess maybe News of the World wanted to imitate Colombia’s national intelligence agency, which did the same, although hopefully NOTW won’t be passing along the info to right wing death squads to assassinate opposition figures and human rights leaders.)
Funny enough, the NOTW editor whom was blamed by the various reporters interviewed with creating the hyper-crazed feeding frenzy coverage needing juicy results every 2 seconds, and who has since resigned from his wonderful position in Murdoch’s empire and has signed up as the Conservative Party’s media strategist and now the Prime Minister’s communications director.
In an unusual gesture (in my view), the New York Times manages to credit the liberal daily UK paper The Guardian for having been the ones who kept investigating and covering the broader issue, not just the instance of the two found guilty of hacking the princes’ phones in 2007, leading to parliamentary investigations and a generally broad scope, not just those initial incidents.
Of course, everything all worked out for the best.
Exactly. What we should all learn from finding out that a right wing billionaire’s billion dollar media empire systematically employs, well, wiretapping, it’s time to crack down on that awful public broadcaster BBC for wasting so much money that maybe could be vacuumed up by Murdoch’s empires.
El Cid
@bemused:
Remember, whether they’re the government in power and wanting to use unstoppable force to torture or spy on anyone, they are the patriots who are moral and in the right, or whether they’re the heroic rebels screaming how the government is an illegitimate repressive junta and how they need to overthrow it one way or other, they will always be the braver, purer, more moral party.
bemused
@El Cid:
The ends justify the means no matter how despicable and immoral because they have God and money/greed on their side.
Wow, the News of the World story is huge but Foxbots won’t hear about it. Most of them have probably never even heard the name Rupert Murdoch and his history but if told would dismiss it as liberal conspiracy to take down their cherished fair and balanced channel.
I get email from the Friends of the US Chamber of Commerce. I have no idea how I got on that email list but I haven’t opted out because it’s interesting to see what they are up to. One time, I was urged to send them money and get Laura Ingraham’s book “Obama Diaries” free! Yesterday, the Chamber email was “Honor America’s Workers by Fighting for Jobs”
“Support Our 60-Day, Post-Labor Day Push” with $60 donation, of course.
wilfred
Meanwhile:
This is not a combat troop.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100905/D9I204T00.html
El Cid
@wilfred: There will soon be a new strategy introduced which will fix this situation and it will have a name very much like THE SURGE but maybe with a gooderer name.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Is it the end of December 2011 yet?
cleek
@bemused:
i wouldn’t get too self-righteous about this stuff. cause, Dems aren’t above doing it too
bemused
@cleek:
Of course but nowhere did I say only R’s do it. However, I don’t buy the equivalency game that rightwingers love to play on cable tv, that D’s are doing it just as much as R’s.
Jay in Oregon
I’ve gone to the Pacific Northwest Highland Games for years to hear Tempest and some other great bands. This is the first summer that I’ve missed it.
Here’s Tempest and another band I love, Wicked Tinkers, jamming onstage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwEsadb8UY8
Breth
Interesting that the flute intro is really an old tune called “The Otter’s Holt”. Lovely song.
celticdragonchick
@Jay in Oregon:
I love good Celtic rock. It would be nice if I could see Tempest here at Grandfather Mountain.
One of the best Celtic/Americana/Klezmer/punk fusion bands I have ever heard at the Grandfather Mtn Highland Games was Scythian.
Youtube here of the wedding/concert at Sunflower Fest last year. “Dance all night” must be experienced in person at least once in your life. It is electric.
shortstop
I couldn’t find any in this video.
Steve M.
You all do realize, of course, that Creed Bratton from The Office played on the original version of this song, right?