Great Elizabeth Taylor quote:
“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”
(via Simon Doonan at Slate)
***********
What’s the annoying stuff in your corner of the world tonight?
RedKitten
Well, this is pretty annoying.
So a party that runs in one province, and whose interests are solely about one province is welcome at the debate but a party with MP candidates and 1 million votes nationwide isn’t?
That’s utter bullshit. They tried to pull this stunt back in 2008 as well. The Green Party has MORE right to be at those debates than the Bloc Quebecois ever has.
stuckinred
PBS has a Frontline on about March Madness and how college athletes are exploited. All my artsy friends had no idea and now they are ranting away on Facebook. The horror. . .
zmullls
It is a great quote.
This one’s spoken by Malachi Stack in “The Matchmaker” — “Because if a person has no vices, they’re in great danger of making vices out of their virtues, and there’s a spectacle.”
Love Liz, but that’s where she heard it first…
beltane
Elizabeth Taylor was too much of a lady to mention that the people without vices are usually the ones found with two wetsuits and a dildo.
The thing that is most annoying right now is the weather and the three feet of snow that isn’t going anywhere.
gpleigh
Jerry Brown is topped out on right-wing bullshit:
Governor Brown Halts Budget Negotiations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLuZya3tv-Q
This will get interesting.
fraught
I just read the whole thing about the two wetsuits, including the entire autopsy report. Until now I have been under the impression that it was somehow connected with John and his cleaning his bathroom naked and having tripped over Lily and breaking his shoulder-blade. I must pay closer attention when I visit here.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@gpleigh: Thank goodness for that.
David Brooks (not that one)
My keyboard drank a glass of wine last night and now it’s permanently pissed (now using phone). And the doctor’s flunky called in a prescription to the wrong pharmacy after i made sure they repeated the right one back to me. Annoying enough?
jwb
@stuckinred: College athletics is the model for the new gooper economy.
scav
Bravo for Gov. Moonbeam and here’s more on the joy of college athletics with that special AZ twist: “Top executives at the Fiesta Bowl funneled campaign contributions to local politicians, flew other Arizona elected officials around the country at the bowl’s expense, racked up a $1,200 bill at a strip club and even spent $30,000 on a birthday party for the chief executive, according to an investigative report commissioned by the bowl’s board of directors.” No doubt this is big enough to get mentioned elsewhere but . . . it rhymes too well to omit.
Amanda in the South Bay
This is old news, but the GOP is what is annoying tonight. Both at the national level and here in CA, the GOP simply makes it impossible to run a government. And of course since I rely on said government for a big chunk of how I survive…yeah, those fuckwads…fuck’em.
sfinny
Annoying: the fact that many coworkers and business associates are really pissed off about the financial reform changes. And TARP recipients who bitch about the ‘damned bailout’. Seriously.
Doug
“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
-Abraham Lincoln
beltane
@scav: One of these elected officials was arch-racist and neo-Nazi lover Russel Pearce who allegedly attended the strip club with his wife LuAnne. They are not nice people these wingnuts.
jo6pac
5.gpleigh – March 29, 2011 | 9:45 pm · Link
YEP,as is well in Callie, I know the company that let me go has out sourced everything out of state and their main $$$$ come from Callie
TD
That quote, or a variation thereof, is much older. I know that Lincoln used it (at least according to Michael Burlingame).
Edit: Damn, Doug beat me to it.
jurassicpork
Poverty. Joblessness. Eviction, to name but a few. I hate living in fear, especially when I have someone else to be scared for besides me.
BruceFromOhio
What’s the annoying stuff in your corner of the world tonight?
Most excellent grilled pork tenderloin kabobs with potatoes and red peppers, and NO GAIA-DAMNED FLOSS
Dennis SGMM
Once again, the conflating of Social Security and Medicare as causes of the deficit. Medicare relies on Congressional appropriations while Social Security can continue to disburse payments without any additional funding through 2037.
This wouldn’t be a big deal save for the fact that Republicans want to gut the last vestige of the New Deal and people who should know better are repeating the bs.
Anne Laurie
@RedKitten:
Is this a question, do you think, of “Long-established Heartland Canandians(tm) versus dirty internationalist newbies?”
Or is it “Let’s make the Hippies fight the Froggies for the single designated-minority slot”?
Or am I just reading Canadian politics through American political goggles?
J. Michael Neal
Annoying: Getting turned down for even the crappy, underpaid temp job you interviewed for. They said I interviewed well. I have to disagree with them, because if I’d really interviewed well, they wouldn’t have called Accountemps an hour later and said they are going with someone else when they have most of the interviews still to go.
It’s the same old about being overqualified: we’re afraid that this job isn’t analytical enough and you won’t want to do it long term. I don’t have enough accounting experience to get anything other than an entry level position, but I’m too old and have too much education for anyone to want to hire me for those.
Given the way the accounting world works, it *really* hurts that I did my undergraduate degree outside the business school, in statistics. The key element of the accounting job process is the internship you do between your junior and senior year. Since I was technically enrolled in the College of Continuing Education rather than the School of Management when I did my equivalent of undergraduate accounting education, I was not allowed to participate in any of that. It seems like there’s no way to replace that on your resume.
I hate this fucking world. I want a new one.
MattR
@J. Michael Neal: After reading all this, I am hesitant to ask – but how did things go with Eddie?
Mark
@RedKitten: Elizabeth May is a crackpot – the federal Green Party in Canada is b.s. There’s no way I can trust a party that was so recently overrun with right-wing pro-business crap.
You tell me why I shouldn’t vote for the NDP? Why would I ditch a party with an 80+ year commitment to economic justice and has actually proven it once it has power – for a party that was recently led by a Tory?
Martin
@gpleigh: Woo! It’s budgetary thunderdome everywhere!
I better tell the kids to get the veggie garden up and running, I think we’re going to need it.
fraught
@J. Michael Neal: more than annoying. sorry.
Mark
@Anne Laurie: you’ve got it totally wrong.
The NDP is a true left-wing party, well to the left of Bernie Sanders. The Green Party seeks to capitalize on the perception that they’re environmentalists and must therefore be committed to a left-wing agenda. Except they’re not.
Arundel
Former “Real World” star and current Wisconsin Representative Sean Duffy complaining about his $174,000 salary is sort of chapping my ass tonight.
OH, he has to drive a used minivan, he has six kids (irresponsible of him!) and he has a mortgage to pay on both his first and second homes. And he has the balls to moan to an underemployed construction worker about all that and his student loans, even as the constituent says, he makes triple what he does, or what an average Wisconsin family does, but Duffy is quite in line to cut benefits. Yeah, handsome, you are fucking awful. Put a rubber on it, maybe don’t have a summer home. Making $174,000 in Wisconsin and whining about how it is not enough is absolutely egregious and so fuck-you worthy. As you try to destroy workers’ rights. Unbelievable.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
The USDA. I keep telling them they need to come up with a way to get the imported stink bugs and the emerald ash borers to fight to the death but so far my brilliant suggestion has been ignored.
noodler
This can become its own open thread: from WAPO
Justice Antonin Scalia ticketed for GW Parkway fender-bender; will he take it to court?
By The Reliable Source
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/ AP)
Now here’s a date in traffic court we’d like to attend: In the matter of Antonin Scalia and the George Washington Parkway pileup.
The Supreme Court justice was ticketed early Tuesday for his role in a four-car fender-bender. No injuries to anyone but the cars — including Scalia’s, which had to be towed.
The accident happened just before 9 a.m. on what was to be a big day for the jurist: The nation’s highest court was hearing arguments in the massive Wal-Mart gender discrimination case. According to U.S. Park Police, Scalia was driving south on the parkway approaching Roosevelt Bridge when he rear-ended a car that had stopped for traffic, triggering a chain reaction.
Brooke Salkoff saw it all go down. The former NBC reporter told us she was just behind Scalia’s vehicle, a shiny black BMW in the left lane. “It slammed into the car in front of his, which pushed the other two forward,” and caused them all to skew into the right lane, she said.
Now, just as when you’re in a fancy restaurant and everyone turns their head to see who walked in, it’s only natural that everyone driving along a major commuter route out of McLean would want to rubberneck at something like this. Salkoff did, as her car inched past, and was rewarded by a surprising glimpse of a familiar face. Scalia was in a dress shirt, no jacket, with an unknotted bowtie hanging around his neck — and, interestingly enough, turned out to be driving himself. The car in front of his appeared pretty badly banged up, the other two less so. Scalia made it to the bench, though, in time for arguments at 10 a.m., a court spokeswoman said.
No doubt in Salkoff’s mind that Scalia was at fault, as the driver who failed to brake. “I think that’s an originalist interpretation,” she quipped. Indeed, said the Park Police’s Sgt. David Schlosser, the justice got a ticket for following too closely. Fine: $70, plus a $20 special assessment, or, said Schlosser, “he can contest it in court.”
beltane
@Arundel: Why does he have two homes? This man should really learn to tighten his belt and live within his means and stop whining like a spoiled brat. My family lives well on a fraction of what this guy makes and we’re grateful for what we have. No one with a second home will ever get my sympathy when it comes to money problems.
J. Michael Neal
@MattR: Eddie is doing fine. It turned out that the big problem was that he was being extra finicky about his food. I realized that this might be the problem about eight hours before I’d have taken him in to be put to sleep. So, he’s something of a daredevil, trying to see just how close he can get to my pulling the trigger on him without it actually happening.
It took about 24 hours for him to be back to normal. Well, as normal as a three-legged cat with lymphoma, hepatitis and some sort of serious skin allergy can be. He’s chugging along.
Suffern ACE
@Arundel: Given our current political culture, if he can’t, as a representative of the people, figure out how to supplement his meager salary by funneling graft through his wife, then he has no business being in office.
MattR
@J. Michael Neal: I am incredibly happy to hear that. Best of luck to both of you.
Dennis SGMM
@J. Michael Neal:
You are singing my song. I went through the aging out, overqualified, bs during the Bush years. Hang in there; you can and will find something. I volunteered and found many somethings.
Anne Laurie
@J. Michael Neal:
Oh, that sucks. Don’t blame you for being angry about the unfairness of it, especially since the “criteria” being used is so arbitrary and so evanescent at the same time.
I’m certainly not an authority on this, but two possible “defenses” I’ve read about (as an unemployed 55-year-old who’s lucky enough not to be looking right now):
“Now that I’m older, and no longer interested in competing for the corner office, I want a lower-stress position where I can give my full attention to the job and not to office politics.”
“I decided to take up a whole new career path, and start again at the bottom, because I finally realized how much I really love just being able to point to a good stack of output at the end of each day and see that I’ve accomplished something concrete.”
Very rough outlines, but if you’ve still got access to the state UI counselors, maybe they can help you refine a version of one or both of these, using all the latest buzzwords in combination with the job-appropriate jargon?
Omnes Omnibus
@Arundel: It really pisses me off that he got Dave Obey’s seat. His opponent last fall, Julie Lassa, is the pregnant member of the WI-14 and would have been a good replacement for Dave.
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
@J. Michael Neal:
This is why when I was unemployed that I wanted to personally tear people in two who claimed that the long-term unemployed were so only because they were too lazy to take a job that might make them work harder for less pay. When employers have a surfeit of applicants, OF COURSE they’re not going to gravitate towards those obviously overqualified, since it’s a no-brainer that these folks will be the first out the door when a better opportunity comes along.
Gaahh…
Anne Laurie
@Mark: Fair enough. I don’t know shite about Canadian politics, I’m ashamed to admit. But I figured if I asked, a better-informed commentor would be willing to explain for me & the rest of the underinformed Americans here.
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
On a non-annoyed note, have I gushed recently about how Rachel Maddow’s show has become *the* go-to newscast at the end of the day for in-depth analysis of the bulls*t that passes for politics in this country? Hell, when the right-wing think tanks are singling her name out in FOIA requests, you gotta figure she’s touching a nerve…
mark
@Anne Laurie: no worries. The ndp brought the country single-payer health care among 9 million other things. The green party? Not so much
Nutella
@J. Michael Neal:
Wow, JMN. You’d think knowing statistics would make you a stronger candidate for any job dealing with numbers.
I’ve seen examples of this in other fields: There is some ‘standard’ career path and anyone who didn’t follow it exactly is looked on with suspicion even if their particular path might have been better preparation for the job.
But hang in there. Smarter employers exist. Not very many of them but surely one or more will turn up soon.
joe from Lowell
I just got back from a left-wing blog with a commentariat that…well, let’s just say that, should Joe Beese find his way there, he’d end up being carried around on their shoulders within the hour.
One guy, after being slapped around a few times, started writing “He’s a Kossack!” and linking to diaries I wrote. Not denouncing the diaries; just outing me as someone who’s written diaries at the GOS. I don’t exactly know what to make of that.
Martin
Ok, my annoying thing is that I just put a huge gash in my thumb with one of my just sharpened chisels. Wasn’t chiseling – I simply dropped it on my thumb.
All that time with the power tools, and my injury comes from a case of the dropsies.
J. Michael Neal
@Dennis SGMM: I’m not so sure. Throw in that I’ve been unemployed for 5 1/2 years, and things look pretty grim.
Frank
This needs to be promoted and put on the internets to do it’s magic. For Unions to work over here we need them to work worldwide.
GM could fire all workers at Striking Indian Auto Plant
beltane
@joe from Lowell: The Kossacks Are Coming! The Kossacks Are Coming!
Elliecat
@Arundel:
Reminds me of little Ricky Santorum back in 2004 I think it was. He was promoting his book about how everyone should have huge families, although he admitted it could be hard to afford—why, his Senate salary of something like $169,000 was just not enough for a family with 6 kids so he had to get financial help from his Daddy and Mommy (who, IIRC, were both retired public employees).
I think this used to be called narcissism.
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
@joe from Lowell:
Busted!!!—wait, since when has putting diaries on GOS been a source for using “gotcha!” techniques around the lefty commentariat?
This is why I have even less patience for idiotic lefties than I do die-hard righties. I *expect* the righties to do all their thinking with their lower intestine. We *need* lefties to offer cogent arguments, and no, “pie” does not count.
Arundel
This might be obscure to some, but once upon a time, MTV’s “The Real World” was an authentically interesting show back in the 90’s. Sean Duffy was sort of unmemorable in his Boston season- kind to children, like most decent people I guess.
It was his wife Rachel who was the Big Misunderstood Republican Booster in the show’s deservedly famous and dramatic San Francisco season in 1994. The one with anarchic Puck and the one with Pedro, who died tragically young of AIDS and was eulogized by President Clinton a year later.
MY point: Rachel’s gung-ho Republicanism, conservatism in SF, was presented as a bracing and refreshing point of view in the mix. Fair enough. She treated Pedro like a leper, but fair enough. Sure, get all points of view, conservatives deserved their place on MTV too. She married Sean Duffy , they were drawn together by their conservative principles and aversion to contraception I guess.
And here we are in 2011, and Sean Duffy is a Republican Representative activally working to fuck over ordinary people in his home state of Wisconsin and deny them even the permission to speak. While he complains about how hard it is to get by on $174,000 a year with six kids and two mortgages and OH student loans. That last bit must be a joke, some grasping at youth appeal or some fucking thing.
My stupid point is this- those of us who were lightly lectured about such groaningly awful people like Rachel and Sean when their seasons aired and they were on TV in the 90’s- DFH’s were told we were being intolerant of conservative young people, we needed to listen to them too. We did, and fifteen years later we have these two activally horrible “Real World” alumni working to absolutley fuck working-class people over in Wisconsin. Yeah, our impressions at the time were utterly fucking right the first time, MTV!
Yep, they presented Rachel and Sean Duffy as conservatives, and now they are absolutely doing the ferociously destructive and antisocial things that conservatives do. And bitching about their $174,000 salary while they do it.
I just have to laugh at MTV’s attempts at “balance”, way back then. Yep, they turned out just as horrid as their stoned DFH contemporaries said they would, even then (like myself). Yeah, you go Sean Duffy. I suspect, hope and pray he will be on the wrong side of history in this matter in Wisconsin. The nation is watching. And a hearty ha-ha and fuck you to MTV for trying to present conservatives as just “another point of view” way back then. I’m enjoying following Sean Duffy’s career, sheer ignorant selfishness with orders from his masters. And he’s bitching about that salary. Laughable and rotten.
(I’m really sorry this was so expansive and long. Yikes Please forgive. It just hits this spot where what’s going on in WI meets my memory of being told not to be so PC in the 90’s, and here’s Duffy being such an oblivious and destructive asshole.)
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
@Elliecat:
“Santorum” having become a less-than-ideal word to use in polite company, I prefer to refer to him as “His Frothiness.”
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
My Democratic congressperson gave another crazee anti-President Obama firebagger rant today –
.
.
Dennis SGMM
Last post of the evening. After administering every test known to man our excellent care providers (And I mean that with no snark) have determined that my dear wife’s symptoms aren’t caused by any physical problems. She had a very tough life before we met and it is coming back to trouble her now that things are okay otherwise.
Thank you to everyone who extended us your prayers and good wishes.
Anne Laurie
@Martin:
Not that it’ll help your thumb, but a professional carpenter once told me that amateurs hurt themselves with power tools, but professionals hurt themselves with hand tools. So, I guess you’re a professional now… :}
joe from Lowell
@Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload:
It’s tough to tell, but I think they were using “He’s a Kossack!” as shorthand for “He’s a reflexive supporter of Obama and a conservative!”
Which is very odd to me.
Anne Laurie
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: Serious question: Got a link?
Mr Stagger Lee
Light’s Out will be cancelled, and History Channel does nothing but stupid reality programming.
joe from Lowell
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: If firebaggers wrote and spoke like that, they’d get a lot more respect.
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
@joe from Lowell:
I recall that at one point, Kos decided to rid his site of some of the moonbats by banning 9-11 “truthers.” Has there been a new purge? Cuz last I visited it (which hasn’t been for quite a while, now), the variation on differences in progressive stripes was as “vibrant” as it had ever been. I mean, that site is what gave us the phrase “pie fight” as a term for ongoing flame wars (see, also: Juice, Ballooon).
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
(Apologies for the blog pimp.)
@Elliecat: But he only had all of those children because he cares about the elderly!
piratedan
If the Citizen’s United decision by SCOTUS was the judicial “jab to the face” of the funding of political campaigns then here’s the shot to the lower rib cage:
http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2011/03/supreme-court-arguments-on-arizona-clean-eelctions-its-not-about-first-amendment-speech-its-all-abou.html
essentially, we’re about protecting the rights of money, not speech, you don’t like it? get rich friends before running for office.