If you lived in the Rocky Mountain West in the late 80’s and early 90’s, you heard these guys a few times. Open thread.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
In my day, never was longer.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
This really is a full service blog.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
This fight is for everything.
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Accountability, motherfuckers.
You can’t love your country only when you win.
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.
We still have time to mess this up!
You cannot shame the shameless.
We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.
Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.
Infrastructure week. at last.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
Everybody saw this coming.
BruinKid
So the latest freakout over at the GOS seems to be over a potential debt ceiling deal that involves a balanced budget trigger, which would presumably force deep cuts into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and yet no trigger to force an increase in taxes on the wealthy. Though the trigger wouldn’t take effect until 2014 at the earliest.
So I asked, if we can take back the House next year and hold the Senate, what’s to stop a future Congress from repealing that trigger? Maybe slip the repeal into something like the defense appropriations bill. Seems like it would work just fine, but I guess some think it’s better if we act all freaked out or something over this latest Obama betrayal.
jrg
They were well liked in NC in the early-mid 90’s, as well. I just listened to “Bittersweet”, and got a healthy dose of nostalgia.
NamelessGenXer
These guys got some airplay on NEW in NYC, so much that I ran out and bought Sister Sweetly CD. Listening now (had to blow off the dust :-)
Expiring BushCo Tax Cuts?
RossInDetroit
Broken Hearted Savior is a pretty great song as well. I think I have their first 3 CDs, and discovered them around the same time as Big Sugar and Blues Traveler.
ETA: Yeah, there’s That Guitar Sound.
merrinc
I spent last night in a hotel in Jacksonville, FL and caught part of the local news. Washington is “scrambling” to put together a plan, neither side will budge, and there was a long clip of Boehner giving a blistering speech on the House floor: WHERE IS THEIR PLAN? WHERE IS THE PRESIDENT’s PLAN? Nada from the leader of the free world.
Thank you, corporate owned media, for feeding us a steady diet of bullshit. I love America.
Mustang Bobby
Big Head Todd and the Monsters were regulars at the CU FAC’s in Boulder when I was there in the 1980’s and worked for the UMC Food Service as the payroll guy for the Alferd Packer Grille. Good memories of simpler times.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@1 BruinKid
Good point. Also too, what’s to stop us from waiting for a future president to do all the right things? Also also too, too, to bring back all the dead drone-killed children. Let us not freak out about anything. And anything means anything.
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droog
We need a post co-written by John Cole and Randinho about this story. Maybe ABL and DennisG can also comment about the implications of forced labour.
MikeJ
What a moronic interpretation. The bank owns his contract. Banks aren’t any more evil than football club owners. Players have certain rights to renegotiation, and it wouldn’t be any different regardless of who owns it.
Spouting nonsense like “forced labour” is silly.
Cat Lady
An old friend’s ex-wife went to high school with Todd. He does have a big head. I like their music a lot, but always get them confused with Toad the Wet Sprocket who had a few hits of their own.
El Tiburon
Cat Lady: spot on. For a few years back in the early 90s, big head and toad were on constant rotation in the CD player. Still some of my favorite music.
wrb
Droog:
It is like the time that the American bankers took the sea when the Patriarch did not make his payments
Amir_Khalid
@droog:
I’m curious. If the banks need to realize whatever cash value they’ve put on, say, Cristiano Ronaldo’s contract, how would they do that? Would they force Real Madrid to do a big-money transfer, and collect the transfer fee? Aren’t such transfers subject to UEFA/FIFA regulations, like having to wait for the next available transfer window? And if there were no takers at the banks’ valuation, who would be liable for the difference?
Cat Lady
El Tiburon : Gin Blossoms, also too.
El Tiburon
Cat: mix in some Honeydogs and Wallflowers and you got a road trip mix CD back to the 90s.
RossInDetroit
My favorite late ’80s – early ’90s pop record remains The La’s. Way Out may be the refined, distilled essence of pop guitar sound.
Frankensteinbeck
The last thread I asked this in died before I could get an answer. Most of the cuts in the Reid plan come from outlined future spending caps. This raises what I think is a very important question. How easy are those to override? Do they have any force whatsoever, since the budget passed two years from now when they come into effect will be the legal equivalent of ‘Oops, I changed my mind’? Does whatever’s passed then simply overwrite this rule, or does the rule have to be revoked separately? I’d really like to know if these future cuts are real or if they’re illusions for a gullible media.
EDIT – Do any of our experts on law or the government have a concrete answer on this?
Linda Featheringill
Okay, a bit OT:
Some banks have made plans to advance funds to customers who are dependent on government payments, should the govt not be able to make those payments.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/banks-preparing-in-case-of-goverment-shutdown/2011/07/29/gIQAsmSzhI_story.html
One of the leaders of this movement is the Navy Federal Credit Union [which is the entry portal for part of our income]. They will cover pay for people in active service and those in contracts to the govt.
Other banks are setting up other plans.
Interesting article, by the way.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i remember bht and the monsters, some how i think quarter beers
were involved.
how about this one. L7,pretend that we’re dead
serge
@RossInDetroit…The La’s arced, flamed out, and then disappeared. Their recording, I believe, is maybe the top one-and-done CD ever.
As for BHT&TM, they still play the Windjammer on the next island over in SC, usually for two or three nights, and they still sell out.
Cris (without an H)
Reagan budget director David Stockman is on NPR Weekend Edition talking about the debt ceiling. He says both sides are to blame. Thought you might like to know.
randiego
The Clapton of Colorado. Still touring, still putting on great shows.
Thanks for putting this up!
RossInDetroit
Serge:
I think The Stone Roses could have topped them in the one-shot category if they’d quit when they were ahead. Brilliant first record, long silence with legal wrangling, then sophomore ‘meh’ release.
Paul Belliveau
I saw them in Missoula in 98 or so. Great show. I think I still have the autographed t-shirt.
droog
MikeJ:
If Google owed you money would you take their most valued employees as collateral? Why would you expect them to work for you as eagerly as they worked for Google? What figure would you write in your books? Would it pass an audit?
Technically the bank owns the club’s debt, not the players’ contract. During a default of the club Bankia could gain a share of the club, but they could not offer that to the ECB as collateral. As owner Bankia could seek to monetise the players by trading them, but they would also be saddled with running the club. Any further creditors down the line would also stand to gain a share of the club during a default. But none of them could pass an employment contract along the line in payment of debt. The players would continue to work for Real Madrid and anybody trying to monetise or liquidate the contracts would first have to buy into the inherent risk of owning the club with all of its debt.
By offering the contracts as collateral Bankia are confounding labour with capital. It all rests on the notion that the players would agree to play elsewhere. How can labour be treated as something which can be liquidated as easily as capital?
It’s not that these guys are going to be tied to posts and whipped. It’s the presumption that they have no input in who they work for and their labour is bankable during a default.
Ronaldo famously wanted to play for no club other than Real Madrid. So if Real Madrid can’t pay their debts how are they going to monetise Ronaldo if he proves to be hostile to a trade? Why should he agree to work for another club simply because management can’t balance their books?
Amir:
Kind of my point. It’s crazy and yet the bank is being allowed to slyly write in the contracts as collateral.
Bob
The band is still around. A buddy, that is like totally into blues, was visiting a few months ago and was planning on going on one of those blues cruses. He mentioned BHTATM. Asked if I knew about the band. Sure thing, I said, and proceeded to educate him. Great. Fucking. Band.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I saw these guys at Darien Lake during the HORDE festival. 1994 I think.
Hill Dweller
@Cris(without an H): Stockman was way too honest a few weeks ago, when he went on talk shows and put the blame squarely on the republicans, where it belonged. I suspect someone got to him, and now he is back to the safe option of blaming both sides.
We’re fucked unless Obama starts publicly explaining the situation. And I don’t have any real confidence that will happen.
tomvox1
Here’s an interesting tidbit on the always execrable harpy of anti-Muslim hate via Charles Johnson:
Pamela Geller Edits Post to Conceal Violent Rhetoric in ‘Email from Norway’
Roy G
I think the real liberals are singing ‘Vincent of Jersey’ these days:
Someday, somebody’s gonna love me…
RossInDetroit
I doubt a non-trivial explanation would have any effect. The debt ceiling situation doesn’t have any family budget parallels. The facts would go right over a lot of people’s heads because they’re not engaged enough to pay attention.
What do they need understanding for when the pundits they trust are unanimous in telling them that it’s a ‘lack of compromise on both sides’ that’s the problem.
tomvox1
And some other blogging b*tch trying to out-Geller Geller–it never stops with these hateful wingers. They are beyond shame.
Anti-Muslim Blogger: Slain Norwegian Teens Were ‘Hateful, Privileged Brats’
catpal
[email protected] – yeah because it has always been so easy to repeal laws in Congress.
Hey but it only took 18 years to fix DADT so No worries needed. After all that was ONLY 18 years of ruining the lives of those in the military and many who were not able to serve if they wanted to.
So No Worries about screwing over the Elderly, the Poor, and the Disabled in a few years — cause we Might be able to fix that 20 years from now.
Maybe it IS a good idea to prevent That catastrophe Now.
RossInDetroit
What I mean about more explanations of the debt impasse being pointless is that it’s been going on for long enough for people interested in the issue to be well informed. Anyone not up to speed by now has tuned out and is unreachable. It’s not an issue where more education will help at this point.
dopealope
Their “Sister Sweetly” album was the soundtrack for my first months in California in 1993. I heard a song by them when I interviewed out here, and then bought the album when I relocated here a month later.
Emma
We’re fucked unless Obama starts publicly explaining the situation. And I don’t have any real confidence that will happen.
Do I live in a different world than the rest of you? The president has been on tv almost every day talking about this. The president has been on the web, on the radio, everywhere, pushing the story that it’s the republicans to blame. He has tried to get the message about what this is and who is to blame for the past week, AT LEAST, over and over and over again.
And we still find a way to blame him for the failures of the press.
Emma
Catpal: DADT is absolutely the wrong comparison. A large percentage of Americans were, until recently, either actively opposed or at least amenable to anti-gay in the military arguments. Obama came at a time where the social worm was turning, and he worked with the military to do it in a way that Congress would find it difficult to reinstate.
Grandma’s checks getting cut? That’s something that touches all of us.
wrb
@tomvox1:
Wow
He said:
and she said:
Conspiracy?
Frankensteinbeck
Droog:
Your comparisons are not equal. Sports players’ contracts are already tradeable items. It’s weird to trade them to a bank, but unlike a regular worker the precedent of being able to trade those contracts as assets is well established.
Catpal BruinKid:
Repealing any cuts this commission made would be terminally difficult, yes. The question is if it has any chance of making any cuts. The ‘Catfood Commission’ as people love to call it turned out to be a cruel joke not on us, but on Simpson and Bowles, who got to concoct their master plan for screwing the poor only to have it be completely ignored. When the time came, it turned out that their ‘promised up and down vote’ had so many catches built in that they never had a chance of passing it. There are a loooot of catches in the concessions the Dems have made to Republicans lately. The latest round seems to be ‘Give us the debt ceiling now and we’ll totally make budget cuts three years from now, honest and for sure this time!’
EDIT – Emma:
No, I live in the same world as you. The one where he said the deficit should be fixed by raising taxes on the rich and regulating the medical industry until prices stop spiraling upwards. The inability of people to give the man credit for what he’s already done is stunning and depressing.
Emma
Frankensteinbeck: I’ve finally figured out that a large proportion of Democrats who screamed rule of law! and the constitution! during the Bush years really meant I want a democratic Bush!.
I haven’t been happy about all of Obama’s policies, especially internationally, but let’s face it, I never expect a President to have me specifically in mind when he’s dealing with one darn thing after another. But the man has tried to carry out his job as the Constitution sets it out. And instead of the craven Congress Bush had he’s been fighting every step of the way. Every.Step.Of.The.Way. And yet we all have emo attacks because he doesn’t just go over there, grab the gavel, beat Boehner over the head with it, and orders them to do what he wants them to.
Cay
Boulder, CO, 1987. House party. Big Head Todd. Some guy brought me beer and asked me out, and we’ve been together ever since then. :)
droog
Frank’:
Athletes and clubs have to agree to the trades. These are employment contracts, particularly volatile ones at that. Which is why you can’t pass them off as payment of debt.
Even if Real Madrid are totally subservient to their creditors in executing a deal, the creditors can’t impose their will on the player. If the creditors stand to make the most money by trading to club X and the player refuses to go there, you have a problem. This is the risk inherent in sinking a ton of capital into labour agreements. You can stand to make a lot of profit that way, but you can’t write the labour agreement into your ledger as capital which can be used to pay creditors.