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I was looking for a listenable version of Tom Paxton’s “The Hostage” (for Sunday’s NIXONLAND discussion), and found this instead. For curious youngsters, the song he mentions at the end of this clip is called “Talking Vietnam Pot Luck Blues”…
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hilts
The Mittmentum is building by the hour:
Dr. Psycho
Hey, Mitt, maybe you’ll get even luckier, and there will be a major terrorist attack, huh?
Yutsano
@hilts: Wow. Considering the Mormon history with race relations that’s quite a gaffe. Some enterprising reporter should inquire if Willard believes God punished the Native Americans by darkening their skin like the Book of Mormon says.
Anne Laurie
@hilts: Link, please?
Jebediah
Well, it’s an open thread, and I am feeling pretty good about my surgery, (doc said lymph nodes look good, lab results due Tuesday) so I wanted to celebrate by sharing a picture. My first impulse was to show a pic of the big gnarly traintrack of stitches in my back, but instead I give you something nicer.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
I worked for a while with a gentleman of the African-American persuasion. He converted to Mormonism for his wife. I wanted to ask him how he felt about a church that only really recently allowed African-Americans, but I never did. We got along well, but I wasn’t close enough to him to ask that and not feel very inappropriate.
Yutsano
@Jebediah: Oh anyone could become a Mormon. But up until the 1970’s anyone who was not of the very pale skinned was not allowed to serve as an elder or a bishop. I think also they were not allowed temple visits or marriages. It was very much a second class treatment.
Calouste
@Anne Laurie:
Politico has it.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
Well, I guess I was misinformed… I thought they weren’t allowed in the church at all until the 70’s. Good thing then that I never said anything…
Stuart Philipp
Anne–
Next book? We had been talking about “The Shock Doctrine.” Given what is happening in Canada . . .
Also, a FB friend who is a young Burmese grad student in food policy at the U of NSW(.au) just mentioned it in a post.
Thx
Stu
Anne Laurie
@Jebediah: Congratulations, and many positive thoughts that Tuesday’s news will be even better!
Jebediah
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks- I’m sure come Tuesday morning I will be all nerves, but right now I am feeling pretty positive. Work is done, time to go home and hang out with my cute pups….
(if you haven’t looked, the link is to a cute Otto and Juno pic)
Gina
An application that looked great for the foster Rottie, Gemma, fell through – the woman said her husband didn’t feel comfortable getting a Rottweiler.
Gemma’s super cute, very smart and not a hard dog at all – she’d be a perfect starter Rottie for someone with basic dog experience, so I’m sad he wouldn’t even take a chance to meet her. But, I expect to run into this crap a lot, I’m new to fostering, not new to Rotties.
The conundrum is that there are Rottie fanciers who want big, perfectly conformed specimens, with correctly docked tails and no cosmetic imperfections who won’t bother with one like Gemma since she’s not ginormous, and she’s had puppies and isn’t fully “toned” yet. Then there are the dog lovers like this lady, who don’t care about looks, but who have doubts about the breed so much they can’t defend getting one against even the lamest arguments.
I’m torn, as I really love Gemma a lot, and would like to keep her, frankly, but if I do that leaves me out of fostering any other dogs (we’d have three total, and DH isn’t thrilled with two). She’s not great with cats, but is improving (though for adopters, I have it specified “no cats”). I’m such a noob at all of this.
Gina
@Jebediah: Excellent news, and super excellent photo, they look pretty comfy there. Did you have to take the chair home for them?
Stuart Philipp
What is this “moderation” BS? I’ve posted here many times w/no problem. Is it because I use OPERA now as my browser?
“Moderation” is why 538.com is dying @NYT–pardon the redundancy.
Stu
ZB IV
I’m a first time commenter, so I’d like to apologize in advance if I don’t follow any conventions I should. I also want to apologize for the inevitable length of my screed, but I’ve had enough, and just can’t take it anymore. I’m fairly sure anger is the only reason I’m awake right now.
I’m an engineer by trade. I’m in my thirties. I work with a number of engineers and technicians, most of whom, by virtue of being white, and upper middle class, and older, skew heavily Republican.
What is absolutely amazing to me is:
1) A far too high percentage of people I work with (I’d guess about 50-60%) don’t believe in global warming. This is incredible to me, as we are people that use science every damn day. If you can’t explain climate science to an engineer, what chances do you have of -explaining it to a largely ignorant of science public? Most of the belief in the cases I’m aware of are borne of ignorance, and listening to their own “common sense” that tells them the planet always warms and cools on its own (never mind that it’s currently warming 100X faster than it ever has and that we’re spewing the weight of every man, woman and child in the world in carbon dioxide in less than a week these days). What also kills me in these cases is you would think that the people who have seen how hard it is to make stuff work would be respectful of scientists who spend their careers studying this stuff. Someone as smart as you who studies something their whole lives using the same scientific method as you probably knows more than you about that something than you.
2) These people spend an unbelievable amount of effort worrying that some poor bastard might be not working hard and be living off the system, and by extension, their tax money. You liberal types (sorry, I consider myself a moderate) may think that people would live under a bridge with a cardboard box as long as the other guy doesn’t have a box (or whatever that saying is) but for the people I know, the point is they personally know somebody who is getting some form of public assistance and IT PISSES THEM OFF TO NO END. They’re so worried about somebody not pulling his/her own weight, and living off THEIR taxes, they can’t even begin to see how hard they’re getting S-K-rewed by the upper 1%. Yeah, I know Clinton reformed welfare. Good luck explaining this to people. Democrats will always be the softy party of welfare queens to these people. The soft racist undertones just make the optics of an African American presidency worse with this demographic. Racism is still alive and well among 50+ year olds and will be a factor in 2012.
I try to engage people on politics, but it gets to the point that their refusal to think past the talking points they’ve already created/learned pisses me off to no end.
I remain convinced that, to paraphrase, the greatest trick the Republicans every pulled was to convince people that they are going to make over $250,000 a year.
Unless you were the top .1% in money, brains, freakish talent, or looks, and you’re not willing to dedicate your entire 24/7 existence to the proposition, that ain’t gonna happen.
/rant over/
Apologies again for the length. Thanks, I feel much better.
Jebediah
@Gina:
Naw, they were pretty understanding about leaving it where we found it.
Sorry about your Gemma travails. I get very frustrated with ill-informed breed biases…
stuckinred
TooManyJens
I got up at 5:30 this morning and I’m about to go run 13 miles. And I’m sitting here reading BJ to help me wake up. God help me.
bestmishu
has it.
Villago Delenda Est
@ZB IV:
I don’t know how to respond to your quite righteous rant, ZB. All those things are mysteries to me, as well.
This country has a serious problem with people who are worried about others living off their taxes, but look in the wrong direction to find them. They look down, not up. You’d think that people trained in hard science would have the critical thinking skills necessary to see this going on around them, but they do not.
I don’t know what solution there is, if any exists, to this conundrum.
debit
@Jebediah: Those dogs are adorable!
@Gina: Really, it’s probably for the best. If the husband isn’t fully on board, every time the dog did something it could foster resentment and make the home unwelcoming for Gemma. Good luck on placing her. She sounds utterly sweet.
gnomedad
@ZB IV:
Welcome, and thanks! Good stuff.
c u n d gulag
I know I’m waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay late to the “Nixonland” conversation. I read it when it first came out. But, a while back people were wondering what book to follow it up with.
My recommendation would be late, GREAT, Hunter S. Thompsons great book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.” You could see the same cast of characters, but from the viewpoint that only Hunter could give you via his ‘Gonzo Journalism.’
I just reread his “Songs of the Doomed,” and not only was it great, LOL funny, it was very prescient.
“When the going get weird, the weird turn pro.”
Josie
@Jebediah: Love the Mutt and Jeff dog picture. Here’s hoping for good news for you.
Phyllis
The new hubby and I are in Charleston SC where the weather is beautiful. Another day of sightseeing, shrimp, and sun.
JCT
Welcome ZB IV — while you’ll find most people around here are “liberal” we have been discussing many of your concerns daily. Quite frankly, your “rant” falls nicely in place, maybe you aren’t quite as “moderate” as you think? .
There is a terrible strain of “I’ve got mine and screw the rest of you” running through this country at present. It is usually backed by, as you point out, the belief that “I got mine” with no help whatsoever (who, me Medicare?) and the “rest of you” is comprised of lazy people of color who have never worked a day in their lives.
The entire concept of empathy or “there but for the grace of g_d go I” in this country seems to have disappeared.
Most of us have been gnashing our teeth over what to do, but one definite answer is to get the guys who think like this out of office, no matter where they are.
In NYC today it is beautiful — I am planning on a long bike ride at some point and then some work. But the main goal is to start going through my house room by room and start getting rid of things as it is time to put it on the market after 20 years. After 30 years in NY I am moving back West to take a new job. Tons of work ahead!
Ming
@TooManyJens: Good luck! Imma be at the finish — too bad i don’t have a Balloon Juice t-shirt!!
@ZB IV: That *is* discouraging… I speculate that doctors and engineers, in particular, tend to be Republican despite having college degrees because they have only technical post-high school education, and have mostly spent their lives competing against other middle class folks, earning what they have *relative to their peer group* through hard work. They may have no conception of what it is like to grow up without the advantages they had. I think it’s a bridge too far to try to change their view of the world; all you can hope to do is look for points of agreement (investment in U.S. competitiveness?) and be sure to be knowledgeable and articulate about them. And focus elsewhere, on people who are reachable. good luck!
Tom
I feel sorry for Grace Van Cutsem
For the rest of her life, no matter how many Olympic medals/Nobel prizes/elections she wins, she will always be referred to as ‘the girl who covered her ears when Will & Kate kissed’
Scott Supak
Tom Paxton from “Talking Pop Art” (my favorite):