(Signe Wilkinson via GoComics.com)
__
Moar sweet GOP infighting and salty wingnut tears for supper!
Alex Pareene at Salon gleefully fisks a Weekly Standard writer’s “call on the GOP to nominate someone its base will really love — like Richard Nixon“:
… The headline is “Barack Obama and the Triumph of Identity Politics.” “Identity politics” is a conservative term for “attracting the votes of women and minorities.” (Mitt Romney’s explicit plan to turn out as many white people as possible is usually not considered “identity politics” for reasons you can probably figure out on your own.)…
The NYTimes reports on the gnashing of teeth & rending of garments among the Ralph Reeds and Franklin Grahams:
Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them.
They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and saw anti-abortion-rights Senate candidates defeated and two states vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use.
It is not as though they did not put up a fight; they went all out as never before: The Rev. Billy Graham dropped any pretense of nonpartisanship and all but endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Roman Catholic bishops denounced President Obama’s policies as a threat to life, religious liberty and the traditional nuclear family. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition distributed more voter guides in churches and contacted more homes by mail and phone than ever before…
Where are the gullible white people snows of yesteryear?…
And my personal Villager bete noir, Kathleen ‘Silk Magnolia’ Parker, makes a strong bid in her campaign as the next-gen Peggy Noonan:
… The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved. Party nitwits undermined him, and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point — those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn’t find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut. No abortion for rape or incest? Sit down. Legitimate rape? Put on your clown suit and go play in the street.
Equally damaging were the primary leeches who embarrassed the party and wouldn’t leave the stage. Nine-nine-nine, we’re talking about you, Herman Cain. And Gov. Oops? You, too. And then there were Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, who never had a real shot at the nomination and certainly could never win a national election, yet they refused to surrender to the certain nominee.
Did they have a right to persist in their own fantasies? Sure. But not if they were serious about getting a Republican in the White House. Thus, for months and months, Romney had to spend his energy and, as important, his money to prevail in the primaries against opponents who had no chance and who ultimately hurt him. During that same precious time, Obama’s campaign was busy pinpointing specific voters, practically learning the names of their dogs, and buying ads in niche markets…
Shorter Every Rightwinger and/or Media Village enabler: How dare That Black Man in Our White House campaign as though every vote had equal weight? Has he no respect for our hallowed history? Every Serious Person knows that those people‘s votes count for only three-fifths of a straight white well-to-do Christian man’s vote!
*******
On that note, I’m out for the evening — got tickets to see Mary Black, because yes I too am a cliche. What’s on the agenda for everybody else?
cathyx
I’m here so I obviously have nothing to do.
schrodinger's cat
Ruth Marcus warns us that Obama has no mandate. What a hack.
Baud
This election marks the definitive end to the Reagan era. Wherever Republicans go from here, it’ll be a different animal than what it has been since 1980.
Phylllis
Enjoying the Texas A&M/Bama game far more than I should.
Yossarian
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
Maude
@schrodinger’s cat:
Hackette.
Villago Delenda Est
“Christian Conservatives” had better figure out, fast, that we libtards don’t object to them worshiping whatever deity it is they’re worshiping, gathering together in fellowship to do so, as long as they don’t insist on forcing the rest of us to comply with their bullshit.
It’s really that fucking simple. Keep your tired religious dogma off our bodies and out of our lives, assholes. You try, you’ll get resistance. As in slapped upside the haid resistance.
Patricia Kayden
I’d like to know who Parker believes the GOP deserved if a lying con man like Romneybot 2.0 was too good for them.
And will this magical man appear before 2016?
She’s delusional.
MikeJ
Oddly, Parker blames all of the Republican nominees except the one the Romney campaign blames, Newt. Romney’s campaign was stunned that Gingrich would attack Mitt for “being successful.”
Litlebritdifrnt
Pretty much drinking wine and savoring those sweet sweet wingnut tears. I spent time out in the garden today, lifting plants that I am hoping to over winter. I am going to post about it later. Did you know that things that are considered annuals in my area (zone 8 Eastern NC) are actually tender perennials that can be lifted and overwintered in the greenhouse or indoors? Specifically Angelonia and Vinca. I also dug up my caladiums which in years passed I have forgot about and they have ended up as mush. I am on top of the game this year!
Villago Delenda Est
FYWP.
That is all.
feebog
I’m here, but not for long. Leaving tomorrow for our annual golf and poker week in Mesquite and Las Vegas Nevada. Gunna be a blast and I’m not going to think or talk politics (well, not much) all week.
Corner Stone
Where’s the CoverItLive link for tonight?
MikeJ
Thank god the blog only chokes once every four years.
cathyx
I swear I only posted that comment once. I’m not that bored.
Ted & Hellen
As usual, Greenwald has the sane view of the Petraeus flap:
scav
Tears, however bitter, are fresh, aren’t they? I’m beginning to worry about the prolonged immersion of my electronics in them. Pope’s off whining about the dreaded wedded bliss of the gheys bringing down the wrath of the allmighty. Evidently marriages like Petreus and what’s her name’s are the height of Western Civilization ™ and cannot be tampered with or altered without voiding warrenty or some such fine print blahblah inserted into the Holy Writ in the 11th century so that The Smiter and beanied Sidekicks on earth could get on more easily with the all-important smiting.
Maude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Spikes can make it through the winter in NJ. Dusty Miller has done so. It depends on where they are and how cold it gets.
One winter was so mild that Snap Dragons made it through.
Corner Stone
@Phylllis: First, Go Cocks!
And yes, this TAMU v Bama game is keeping me from fixing vittles. Oh well, more ‘shine is in order!
Hal
I actually had some respect for Kathleen Parker for suggesting back 2008 that Sarah Palin was unqualified and should drop out of the race. I guess that moment of sanity has left her brain.
I’m very curious to know if Chris Christie will be able to run in 2016, or if the GOP will fracture into a third party of Tea Baggers and birthers, with the inevitable Donald Trump third party candidacy.
dmsilev
@scav: You’re looking at things the wrong way. 2 days after voters went in favor of Gay Marriage, Petraeus’s marriage was destroyed.
Coincidence? I think not. Clearly, The Gays reached back in time and arranged for this affair, carefully timing things so that it would become public right after Gay Marriage’s electoral triumph.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Patricia Kayden
Repugs better work on more voter intimidation/suppression in 2016.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/what-the-2012-election-would-have-looked-like-with
Corner Stone
@dmsilev: Holy shit! Talk about playing the long game!
The F’ng Gays in the tent with the dictaphone!
cathyx
@Litlebritdifrnt: @Maude: Some plants are true annuals, they complete their life cycle in one year and die, doesn’t matter how temperate the climate is. Some are biennial, they take 2 years to complete their life cycle. Such as snapdragons. But one needs a mild enough winter to live through it for the second year. Then others are true perennials, they will live continually year after year. But some perennials need mild winters to continue living and some are hardy enough that it doesn’t matter. Dusty miller is a perennial, but it does need a mild winter to survive. Same for geraniums. Many plants that we call annuals are really perennials that need warmer winters to make it to the next year.
Felonius Monk
@cathyx: Tunch has obviously been left home alone tonight, so he’s getting even with the owner.
cathyx
@Felonius Monk: He’s probably one of those cats that have opposable thumbs.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
I have a prickly pear cactus that has made it through 7 Detroit winters and comes back every spring more vigorous than before. Gorgeous flowers. And it makes interesting photos in January when it’s half buried in snow. I’ve cloned a number of starts off of it and now my whole family has blooming cacti.
I went out to an audiophile club meet&greet today to drink beer, eat and horse around with tech nerds. My tribe. Now home and Mrs. inDetroit and I are contemplating a movie & dinner.
gogol's wife
No plans tonight except catching up with the NYTimes and the New Yorker, but last night was a nice dinner party. One of the couples have always been Republicans as far as I knew, but it turned out they both voted for Obama this time. Couldn’t stand Romney. That cheered me up immensely.
Old Dan and Little Ann
This has been a wonderful week thanks to Tuesday. If our nutter friends don’t completely cut ties with my wife and I after this they never will. Fuck. Them. They’ll never understand.
Capt. Seaweed
How dare Team Obama out-work and out-think a Republican. It’s unpossible!
They really don’t get it, do they?
gnomedad
@Corner Stone:
New edition of Clue?
Jay in Oregon
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m confused. Are you talking about Ronald Reagan or Ayn Rand?
Davis X. Machina
Left or right, the answer always is a third party….
Mike in NC
Billy is like 94 years old, so he obviously knows the pulse of modern America.
Ann Rynd
I’m a registered republican (don’t ask) and I didn’t receive a single request for money or help from anyone in that party. I did, however, get endless emails, texts and calls from the Obama campaign. I gave money several times and signed up to go to a battleground state to GOTV. On election day I got a text asking if I would make one call for O, and just after the election was called I got a thank you email from O before he even gave his victory speech. The outreach was amazing and I felt part of the campaign.
Kilks
An author who I like (though I’ve only read a short story by him) has been tweeting in outrage about supposed fraud in Philly that screwed Republicans.
It’s amusing, if sad. (though who knows, maybe its true? I’m not holding my breath)
Best part of the expose was this line,
“In the meantime, back in Philadelphia, Black Panthers were intimidating voters again. Here’s a picture of one man smiling as he intimidates voters”
scav
@dmsilev: ah yes I forgot. The democrats, statisticians, and gheys have the phone box.
Maude
@cathyx:
Dusty Miller isn’t a perennial here. It is an annual.
It can’t survive a cold winter. It doesn’t come back.
Spikes are also annuals. They will not survive a very cold winter.
The past few winters have been less harsh.
JPL
@Davis X. Machina: Haha.. They lost cuz they let Herman Cain define the party.
Chris
@Hal:
If the teabaggers branch off into their own party, they’ll be taking the vast majority of GOP voters with them. It won’t be George Wallace 1968, it’ll be Teddy Roosevelt 1912.
dmsilev
@Mike in NC: It’s more that Billy’s son Franklin is far more overtly a wingnut than Dad ever was (Dad did a good job cloaking his wingnuttery) and at this point Dad is basically being lead around by his son.
Maeve
My 55th birthday was friday – this means screw all of you, I got my medicare – all of you younger folks have “plenty of time to plan for the future” – so screw you. — I’m voting for Ryan next time!!!
Mnemosyne
Lazy day — I’m dressed but haven’t actually showered yet, so I’ll need to do that before we go out to dinner. I’m trying to engineer a knitted goldfish cat toy since I haven’t found any patterns online that I like (and I may want to sell them at the company craft fair, so I kinda need my own pattern) and made my first hexipuff for a potential Beekeeper’s Quilt, which will take about a year to make. I’ve been looking for easy knitting to carry with me and I have a LOT of partially used skeins of sock yarn (as do we all) so it seemed ideal.
Bill in Section 147
@Villago Delenda Est: You could say that again.
Fluke bucket
@Mike in NC: Graham barely has a pulse himself
Chris
@Mike in NC:
I think he’s also in bad health and completely senile. One may fairly question whether he had any idea what he was endorsing (or being made to endorse).
LanceThruster
I hate to be the one to break it to Billy Graham but the answer should be obvious. God is punishing the GOP because Billy Graham Ministries removed its previous claim that Mormonism is not true Xianity but rather a cult. The Lord God is a jealous God and to share the billing of the one true church with the Johnny and the Other Testament of Jesus Christ-come-latelies in a shameless attempt to boost the political fortunes of one of the cult’s most visible adherents in recent memory is not the type of thing that God takes lightly. Clearly, the revealed knowledge put forth by the Creator of the universe that could not be differentiated from the many myths competing for alpha dog status would be an argument that the one true God is not a closer.
Afterall, He’s called ALMIGHTY God, not Mostly-Mighty God. I sincerely hope Billy gets right with (true) God again before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Maude: I have had snapdragons get it through the winter with a foot of snow on top of them. I was amazed. I love Angelonia, and mine made such big hearty plants this summer so that I hated to lose them and have to start again with small ones in the Spring that I did a bit of googling and found out that they are not annuals but tender perennials and the light bulb came on over the head. I’m a slow learner I guess.
My Gazania daisies overwintered in their containers last year but just in case I will bring the containers into the greenhouse for the winter.
Chris
@Bill in Section 147:
The Internets are thine.
scav
@gnomedad: Seriously wouldn’t Clue (or anything) be made vastly more entertaining with a few hidden wormholes? Fall through the Vortex and suddenly you’re in a parallel world playing Monopoly, or the dice are now 8-sided and the community chest cards are in Mandarin and have truth or dare questions on them. Chutes and Ladders with Calvinball and maybe a few angels that stop play for a few moves — roll you back to an earlier state of play.
cathyx
@Maude: You are misunderstanding what I’m saying. Dusty Miller is a perennial in its native habitat. You don’t live in it’s native habitat, so it acts like an annual where you live.
Paul
@Villago Delenda Est:
It is funny how these same people are so against Sharia law that they institute laws against it eventhough there is no evidence of any type of Sharia law. Yet, these very same people are adamant that the rest of us live according to THEIR version of the bible where they pick and choose rules from the bible.
Leaving the sheer hypocrisy aside; how the hell do these people sleep at night?
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Just popped onto the Redstate blog to see if they’re still on the ledge and ready to jump. They had a poll regarding how well readers think Obama is doing. The first option is essentially “strongly agree”. I clicked on it and hit submit. Many times. Nothing happens. I wonder what would happen if I clicked “strongly disagree”. Somehow I’m guessing my choice would register at once.
Does this sound like a system error or intentional voter suppression?
I’m guessing it’s the latter…. A-holes.
rikyrah
needed a laugh, so I watched the video of Karl’s breakdown on Fox.
it’s a thing of beauty….LOL
and, I watched again the opening segment of Maddow’s Wednesday show – it truly was righteous and breathtaking.
Litlebritdifrnt
@cathyx:
That really annoys me with plant labeling in the US. I have NEVER seen a plant labeled as a Biennial, never. They are always either labeled as a Perennial or an Annual. Biennials (like Hollyhock for instance) are in their second year of growth when they are sold blooming in the Garden Centers and therefore will die the year you buy them, yet they are sold as perennials, if they come back it is because of seedlings, not because the original plant returned. Speaking of which my first year Hollyhock seedlings that I sowed last year are now going strong in the greenhouse and should bloom next year.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: I like the Beekeeper’s Quilt. That is a great idea.
Sm*t Cl*de
Leaving the sheer hypocrisy aside; how the hell do these people sleep at night?
Beside male hookers.
Mike in NC
I got fired yesterday for criticizing my idiot project manager. What a relief, as I was already thinking about quitting since I despised her, the job, and a number of coworkers. A pink slip will do nicely.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
I think Herman Cain is right. The right wing of the Republican Party needs to split off and form a new Tea Party that will vigorously contest every election where there’s a Republican running. I’m sure they’ll win all the elections in no time flat. Wink, wink, wink.
cathyx
@Litlebritdifrnt: Yes, that’s true. Maybe they label them as annuals because they are in their second year when they sell them so they don’t want to mislead people in to thinking that they will get another year out of them.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Hey, I haven’t heard a peep out of Bachmann since the election. I know she somehow managed to sneak in again. Has she issued a statement? I suppose it’s way too much to ask that she appear just a tiny bit contrite, having barely won a gerrymandered district. I’m guessing she’ll probably say she almost lost only because she wasn’t conservative enough.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I still have snapdragons blooming in pots on the south side of the house where I planted them in 2009. We’ve had several light frosts and they’ll stay cheery until a really hard one hits. Then they’ll be back next year. I could replant those planters with something showier but it’s tough to give up on a flower that tries so hard.
Bill in Section 147
Kay Parker always acts like conservatives are reasonable and pretends she is not partisan.
The Republicans are those folks we saw in the primaries. They are Mourdock and Akin. They are the, “Let ’em die,” audience. They are not reasonable or even rational. And Romney was the perfect candidate to represent their vision.
But thank the FSM she and all her other pals keep f*cking that chicken.
They still believe the crap about Bill Ayers running the White House. George Will cannot figure out how 52% of Americans voted Commie. Whitewater!!! Also. Too. Wolverines!
some guy
Jack Abramoff’s bagman, Ralph Reed, basically admitted his team got out hustled.
and if anybody knows hustle it’s a bagman like Ralph
opie_jeanne
@Kilks: I read something by another wingnut about how the incredibly high number of AfAm voters who turned out in one Philly precinct was impossible to believe, something like 90% of the total voters, and even more unbelievable that 95% of them had voted for Obama.
And he was sure it was evidence of voter fraud.
pk
I love this video. An activist sneaking in to Grover Norquist’s election day party and gloating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=APFPu_l_E4E
opie_jeanne
@Chris: I don’t think those people would appreciate Teddy.
Rosie Outlook
@cathyx: I have loads to do–that’s why I’m here.
Schlemizel
Went to see an exhibit on the terra cotta warriors. That was very very cool.
Turned into a decent day, temps in the upper 60s so we opened the windows & shampooed the carpets. just sitting back resting now.
BTW we had a hail storm last night! HAIL! IN NOVEMBER! What are we all doing in this handcart?
Roger Moore
@Paul:
By not really believing in democracy. They truly believe that we should be living under God’s law as they understand it. That’s their true goal, and all the other stuff is window dressing. They don’t hate Sharia law because they believe in freedom of religion, they hate Sharia law because it’s the wrong kind of theocracy.
cathyx
@Rosie Outlook: I’m sorry that I know what you mean.
gbear
@Mike in NC: I’m envious. I want to tell my supervisor (who hates supervising but loves delegating) to go to hell. I’ve quit a couple of jobs after one week when I found out what I was getting into, but I’ve been at my current job for 8 years and have 6 left to go until retirement. Not sure how I’m going to make it.
opie_jeanne
@Litlebritdifrnt: We had a foot of snow last year (just east of Seattle) and there were pansies that survived being covered for weeks by it, and they were blooming. I don’t know how “pansy” became a pejorative because those things are tough.
NonyNony
@Ann Rynd:
Jeebus. Everyone in this house is a registered Democrat and our land line got an average of 4 calls per day from the RNC and the Romney campaign asking for money and to go out and attend rallies. I believe that the Romney campaign also killed an entire forest to use for direct mail just sent to our house.
My only guess is that whoever was in charge of the Romney campaign’s advertising in this part of the state got paid by the pound for bulk mail and by the call for robocalls.
@scav:
I remember seeing a variant of Clue on the intertoobs years ago that mashed up Clue with the old Space Hulk board game – at various points in the game wormholes would open up and throw alien monsters out on the board to chase down players and eat them. I honestly don’t recall much about it (and I can’t find it now with a Google search) but it was an amusing idea.
I also remember playing a Clue variant years ago that was based on Lovecraft instead of Agatha Christie. Investigators are trying to discover who is going to be sacrificed to which Elder God in which room of the mansion (same board, different cards). If you didn’t find the answer in X turns, the Elder God showed up and ate you.
Rosie Outlook
@cathyx: I have loads to do–that’s why I’m [email protected]Litlebritdifrnt: If you have a sun porch, petunias will go on and on and on and make splendiferous hanging plants.
clayton
I can’t remember where I came across this woman’s twit feed, but she is a piece of work.
Today she has decided that, “I don’t think we will be supporting the U.S. charities anymore. IT’s clear the low income in this country wants govt to take care of them.”
Good christian woman there — and to connect to someone’s comment upthread, she claims to have changed parties due to St. Ronnie.
opie_jeanne
@Litlebritdifrnt: Um, not in Southern California they’re not bi-ennials. You plant the seeds and up they come and bloom…. or maybe some are one thing and some are another.
Pansies are bi-ennials but we always planted the seeds in the fall as a shortcut.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman: That’s just The Man keeping a brother down!
Double nickel
Shovelled snow 2x today. Winter sucks.
Rosie Outlook
Also too (all together now) FVCK YOU WORD PRESS!
gbear
@pk: I’m laughing. What a great stunt. WHOOOOH!!
Groucho48
@Yossarian:
Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?
quannlace
More Shorter Every Rightwinger and/or Media Village enabler: Echoing Ann Romney- You people don’t realize how lucky you were to have a wonderful candidate like Mitt.
Yes, so much energy and money to totally trash his opponents.
NonyNony
@opie_jeanne:
GERRYMANDERING – HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK?
Yeah – shocking if you draw your districts so that you lump as many African American voters together as you possibly can you might just end up with precincts that are 90% African American.
But I suppose if you have a natural fear and hatred of statistics those percent signs look nefarious.
Haydnseek
@Villago Delenda Est: Exactly. Having such stunningly stupid people in control of the content of school textbooks is simply unacceptable. The same redstate idiots who lament “American” jobs (does your job have a passport? Just askin’) going to other countries are in a headlong rush to render an entire generation intellectually incapable of doing those jobs. Unemployed? It’s your fault for not praying hard enough.
Schlemizel
@gbear:
Always better to go out on your own volition. I have managed to quit twice at times most inopportune for the jerks I worked for. Thats a great feeling.
I have 10 years to go and since the place that just hired me gets really upset if too much gets done I am taking inside retirement. I’ll only do as much as they will let me. This is a new thing for me & I am not sure if I will be able to stand it long-term but thats my goal today. Sad but there it is
Litlebritdifrnt
@cathyx:
The opposite is the problem, the Hollyhocks I bought were labeled as perennials, NOT annuals.
cmorenc
@Annie Laurie:
First, I’m with you that Kathleen Parker can sometimes write articles displaying mind-numbing cluelessness induced in part by a perspective centered in a conservative hall of ideological mirrors.
NEVERTHELESS, WADR a key part of her article which you didn’t quote shows that she DOES correctly get it about the problem of the GOP disrespecting minority and women voters:
This is indeed a lot more insightful than “a stopped clock is right twice a day”. Even if Kathleen Parker is only right like this only one out of twelve columns.
cathyx
@opie_jeanne: Snow is actually insulating, so things can survive with a snow cover that wouldn’t usually make it.
@Rosie Outlook: I said that I’m sorry that I doknow what you mean.
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC:
Well, until the whole reference thingie.
cathyx
@Litlebritdifrnt: Then that’s because you live in zone 8. I live in zone 8 also, but those Hollyhocks would usually make it. The zone map needs a lot of work, let me tell you.
ETA: I live on the west coast
mamayaga
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: I also find snapdragons are not all that tender. Several clumps I planted years ago come back every year. At least some overwinter, as they are too large in the spring to be from seed. Did I mention I’m in Chicago? It may be because the winters not so severe anymore. Even my moon flowers (Datura inoxia) have converted to perennialism.
LanceThruster
Romney/Ryan 2012 “Believe America and Clap Louder or the Fireworks Die” (A Division of PreCrime and the Anti-Minority Report).
Roger Moore
Viz agenda: I went and saw Skyfall today. It’s hard to call it the best Bond movie in many a year because it’s so different from the other Bond movies that the comparison is hard. It is the least formulaic Bond movie I can remember, with License to Kill being the only one that’s even in the same territory. If you want to watch a Bond movie because you’re planning on eating popcorn and watching something predictable, this is not the movie for you; if you want to watch a very good move that happens to involve James Bond, you won’t be disappointed.
I’m going out this evening to celebrate the election with a like-minded friend who wants an excuse to go out and have fun.
Corner Stone
@cathyx: This whole discussion has been fascinating for me. I’m wondering if I’m a perennial or annual.
Robert Sneddon
@NonyNony: One of the tabletop card games (can’t recall which one, might have been Illuminati) had a card that when activated allowed you to play a card from any other game — the three of clubs, a Magic: the Gathering card, a chance card from Monopoly, whatever you had to hand. It was up to the player to convince the others what effect this card had.
Litlebritdifrnt
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Ha Ha you sound like me, I hate to give up on a plant, I discovered Torenia seedlings coming up in my containers and in the lawn surrounding them when I was lifting the Angelonia so I decided to prick them out and plant them in flats in the greenhouse. I figured it would be one less annual I had to buy in the spring.
cathyx
@Corner Stone: You seem to come back year after year, so I’m guessing you’re a perennial. A perennial pain in the neck, lol.
Anoniminous
Speaking of WOLVERINES!
Some nuts are re-making Red Dawn. And here’s the trailer to prove it. But this time it’s the North Koreans who invade and conquer All.
PsiFighter37
With FL being called, all that remains is Cantor to shiv Orange Julius.
I should do more predictions, I think.
opie_jeanne
@NonyNony: I think this idiot just couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that there were so many in a single precinct and that so many showed up to vote.
arguingwithsignposts
How is it a cliche to see Mary Black?
Maude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
The Snaps were alongside of a house and quite sheltered. I would walk by there a couple of times a week all that winter and wow. They were in bloom all winter.
I’m surrounded by cement. If I had land, I;d want a greenhouse.
I hope your plants do well.
People bring Rose Trees into sun porches here. They are in containers and they live to bloom another summer.
Rosie Outlook
@gnomedad: Would you like your Internets delivered personally by a friendly samurai lady who makes good tea and better conversation? Once the pot is empty, we’ll go over to Littlebrit’s house and help her play in the dirt.
Suffern ACE
Do states have rules that you can only vote on the same referendum once? If so I doubt were done with the gay marriage issue in those states until it can withstand the off off cycle electoral challenge.
opie_jeanne
@cmorenc:
“Women’s reproductive rights need to come off the table.”
Kathleen Parker said this???? I’m more shocked by that sentence coming from her than anything else I’ve read this week about the Republicans.
Schlemizel
@Anoniminous:
I am reminded of Bobcat Goldthwait commenting on why they made Police Academy 5: “Cuz there was so much more story to tell!”
Really I think the studio knows they can put out a lame product and still collect wingnut dollars. As stupid as the first one was the idea that the NoK could invade us is hilarious but I be the WOLVERINES! will be out in f
aorce for this lemon.opie_jeanne
@cathyx: I know that snow can be an insulation but I thought that just keeps things right at freezing, doesn’t it? That would seem to be cold enough to destroy them, but obviously it doesn’t.
Schlemizel
@Suffern ACE:
Good news here in MN! We flipped both houses so no gooper BS on the ballot in 14 here. It will be interesting to see what else gets done. There is already a law outlawing same-sex marriage that might go away or it might not. The big issue is we have had 5 straight terms of GOP/moran governors. The Moran screwed up during the good times & of course Timmy Pawlenty & the House GOP managed to steal every future dime, “borrow” millions from future education payments and make a mess of the states finances so its going to be a brutal 2 years and I expect the goopers to make hay over it in 14
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
That’s a bit more insightful than the typical Conservative drivel, but it’s still wrong. The problem is that there are actually very few people who are culturally conservative in the abstract, i.e. who want to preserve all cultures equally. Rather, the vast majority of cultural conservatives are interested in the preservation of their specific culture. That’s exactly where the sticking point is with the Republican party. Their cultural conservatives are trying to preserve a culture that’s defined by straight white Christian male dominance. They can’t expand the movement to include those other cultural conservatives without critically diluting the brand.
NonyNony
@opie_jeanne:
You missed the next sentence then where she said “As Haley Barbour says ‘agree to disagree’.”
When Barbour says that what he means is “pretend to be open minded about it until we have a majority, then do whatever the fuck we want”.
Also too – “agree to disagree” on abortion cannot happen from the right. If you reach a position that is “I think abortion is awful, but I understand that sometimes it’s the right decision” then you’re not “agreeing to disagree”, you’re pro-choice.
She’s just pining for the days when it was acceptable for Republicans to not have to say out loud what their intentions towards abortion law were, rather than being part of the purity test for winning a primary.
opie_jeanne
@Suffern ACE: I think they have to phrase them differently, go after one particular aspect, at least in California it seems to work that way.
I haven’t lived in Washington long enough yet to know, but I’ll bet there is another Prop 74 heading our way.
quannlace
I think it was Lewis Black who said that North Korea is where the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz come from.
Maude
Hollyhocks are labeled perennials here from the growers. They do come back. I only know that because I have seen them. I don’t know what what variety they are.
Growers have been sending hardier plants to garden centers.
Annual Loblelia (sp) used to burn in the first week of July. There’s a planter with them still blooming.
Some plants are being made hardier.
The USDA has an updated zone map on their site.
Litlebritdifrnt
@cathyx:
Yeah I cannot believe that someone in Seattle is in the same zone as me, it makes no sense.
When it comes to Biennials though people need to be informed about them, not just plain lied to about the way the plant behaves. Many people with herb gardens for instance do not understand that Parsley is a biennial, and are clueless as to why the plant died in its second year. When you are putting out good money for plants at a garden center it would be nice to know (to the uninformed) that yeah, you might get one year out of this plant, or at the most two then it will die.
opie_jeanne
@NonyNony: I did see that line but missed its meaning. Read too fast.
Thanks, and that does make more sense coming from her.
Chris
@opie_jeanne:
Depends which part of Teddy. They’d love his racial and nationalist politics, they’d just hate his socialism. I just meant in terms of a third party leaving and taking most of the base with it, though.
cathyx
@opie_jeanne: No, it doesn’t always keep it at freezing. There are a lot of factors involved about how something can survive the winter or not. Some factors include how wet something is before there is a freeze and what the ground temperature is before the snow falls. I have containers that I plant roughly the same things in it. In some winters that seem exceedingly cold, the plants may survive and other winters that seem mild, the plants may die. But what seems to matter is the combination of temperature and wetness, and what they are and how long it lasts. It’s very complicated and I don’t completely understand what the factors are yet.
NonyNony
@Robert Sneddon:
I remember that – it might have been one of the Magic “joke” sets like Unglued?
And I found the variant! It as actually a Clue/Space Crusade variant, not Space Hulk (which was messing up my searches)
http://www.boldhome.freeserve.co.uk/cluedo/cluedo.htm
pseudonymous in nc
The Rev. Billy Graham dropped any pretense of nonpartisanship and all but endorsed Mitt Romney for president.
Billy Graham is barely in a position to endorse his morning bowl of oatmeal; you can barely see Franklin’s lips moving these days.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@gbear:
The technical term for that isn’t delegating, it’s abdicating.
BonnyAnne
@Mnemosyne:
your comment points out to me the deep and abiding need for a semi-regular knitting post. You are not the only one with an abundance of partial skeins of sock yarn, also, too.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
I thought License To Kill and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service were the only two movies that it compared to. Further elaboration would be spoilerish, but suffice it to say it’s a very good movie, hardcore and casual Bond fans I’ve spoken to agree. (Then again, I thought all three of the Craig entries so far were very good, despite all the sadz the previous one caused).
The best part: first movie where Craig definitely IS Bond. In Casino Royale, he was still a noob on a learning curve. In Quantum of Solace he’d pretty much learned all his lessons, but he hadn’t established that with M and the rest of the service and didn’t until the end of the movie. In this one he’s finally back to being Britain’s best, as in all the old movies.
Oh, good villain, too.
Chris
@Anoniminous:
The really sad thing is that it really isn’t any dumber or less plausible than the original movie.
Maude
@cathyx:
At garden centers here in NJ, if there is a frost warning early or late in the season, they time the sprinklers to go on at around four a.m. It saves a lot of plants
Kane
Every republican nitwit was an opportunity for Romney to have his Sister Souljah moment. If those nitwits undermined him, it was only because Romney embraced them.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
VERY well put. That’s exactly their problem.
Also FYWP, you’ve got a response to your Skyfall comment waiting but it won’t be out until the hamsters are done gnawing on it. Shorter me: good movie, good villain, good Bond.
catclub
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): I have not heard a peep from Romney – or the head of the house Budget committee – what’s his name? Ryan
Deep quiet, in order to get the stink off.
They said it was a joke, and I am laughing.
Mike in NC
@Corner Stone:As I’ve been told, NC is a “Right to Work” state where an employer basically cannot comment one way or another on the performance of an employee other than to verify that they were actually employed there. Interesting.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
For what I hope are obvious reasons, I have a long-term interest in James Bond.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Yes, you have that vibe of Bond-fanness about you. It’s hard to pin down, but unmistakeable :D
(More of a Dalton fan myself, but I like all of them, and almost all of their movies).
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
Condolences, man. It’s still a big disruption in the Force. Hope you find something much better soon.
Suffern ACE
@opie_jeanne: if I remember right, in the 1990s there seemed to be some kind of anti gays in r schools referendum in Washington. I think they were usually so draconian that they would lose. There was some guy who just put one on every ballot.
cathyx
@Maude: An ice coating will do the same. The citrus growers in the south are aware of this, and will do this too.
PurpleGirl
@Mike in NC: When companies only verify that you worked for them with dates and salary, they do that because they do not want to get sued because they said something, anything else. They don’t want to take the chance that you to find out they are dissing you.
Mike in NC
@Chris: The crappy “Red Dawn” remake was made 3-4 years ago. Surprised it didn’t go straight to DVD.
PsiFighter37
I am +7 on assorted beers on the West Coast. I do wish I could crash the BJ meetup tomorrow, but I will not be around.
I promise to be for the next one, though.
Suffern ACE
I’m still not certain anyone would rally around Richard Nixon. Don’t we need higher crime rates and some hippies out there in greater numbers than occupy? Where’s the disorder?
Yutsano
@Chris: The original Red Dawn had a long typed out prologue that supposedly set the scenario for the invasion. That told me the rest of the story was gonna be pretty much crap.
Pink Snapdragon
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve knit more than 200 pairs of socks since 2005. I have bins full of leftover sock yarn and I am contemplating how many thousands of these puffs I can make. I also have dogs and cats and I am not sure how well a blanket made of them will survive. But it is fun, isn’t it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Anoniminous:
This time around the Wolverines will unfriend the North Koreans on Facebook and refuse to reply to their Tweets.
scav
I must have good ideas, they’ve usually already been done: I’m just terminally out of the loop.
perenially, zone 3a, not a hope.
And I do so prefer the name Cluedo. Bit more rhythm, bit more judo with the candlestick in the library jazz to it.
Pink Snapdragon
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: Snapdragons are my absolute favorite flower, closely followed by geraniums.
Narcissus
You mean you guys aren’t afraid of the North Korean Navy
Litlebritdifrnt
@Pink Snapdragon:
I absolutely adore you sock knitting people. My mum would regularly darn socks, who on earth darns socks these days? Most people will just toss them, it is sad the way we have become a throw away society.
With reference to your left over yarnd I am sure that the people in third world countries will not care that their “rainbow” socks are not fashionable. Ha reminds me of the Dolly Parton “Coat of Many Colors” song.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
They used Obama’s time machine, of course. The one Obama used to plant his own birth announcement in the Honolulu papers.
CW in LA
@catclub:
Yeah, whatever happened to that guy?
Anyway, I guess this means McCain is still the president of Very Serious Sunday morning talk shows.
Rosie Outlook
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: They will tell you that war is all glory, but I have seen war, and boys, it is all Unfriending.
Mike in NC
@Narcissus: I’d guess the former USS Pueblo is the most formidable platform in the North Korean fleet.
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: Purple hearts are labeled annuals but mine have been came back the last three years. I live north of Atlanta.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
Heard a good dose of that swill today on the bus. He was born in Kenya, his grandmother said, blah, blah blah.
Litlebritdifrnt
@CW in LA: @Litlebritdifrnt:
I should imagine that he is back in one of his many houses being beaten to death by Marie Antoinette for having the fucking audacity to lose a completely and utterly winnable election. “I should be the fucking First Lady elect right now you fucking loser, why the fuck am I not the fucking First Lady elect right now Mitt, why? Why is that Mitt? What the fuck are you good for if you couldn’t make me the First Lady elect you fucking loser, I have earned it, it was our fucking turn and you fucking blew it, why is that Mitt?”
YMMV
Geoduck
@Anoniminous:
It was originally the Chinese, which is slightly less ridiculous, but the real-life Chinese government threatened to ban the film, China’s a big market nowadays, and so North Korean flags got CGed into place everywhere.
Litlebritdifrnt
@CW in LA:
Yeah and Rove and Morris have both been on the TV giving advice as to “why Obama won” when they were both totally and utterly fucking wrong about the result. I despair, I really do.
Anoniminous
@Schlemizel:
@Chris:
The critics are being less than kind.
In more RW movie news … to the interest of absolutely no one and to the scoff & scorn of the critics Atlas Shrugged Part II skyrocketed to a whopping $3.3 million gross. The distributor got the thing onto a respectable 1,012 screens. How? I do not know.
peorgietirebiter
Maybe Parker will read Garry Wills latest on Romney’s campaign.
Anoniminous
Damn. I forgot the 3 link rule.
JPL
The GOP is trying to win back minorities but they also lost the under forty crowd who believe in climate change. They believe in planned parenthood. Their friends are all colors and shapes and nationalities. Sure give green cards to a few here and there. That won’t help.
The GOP knows they have to assign electoral votes to anti-Obama districts to win and they will.
JPL
whoops double post… fywp
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Ha. I see it the other way around. I never thought Ann wanted him to run, but she went along because dutiful wife and all. After he flubbed the third debate so badly, I could just see the “Oh, crap, I’ve got to put up with his crap after this disaster” face she had. I got the impression she wanted to win so she wouldn’t have to deal with whatever crap he deals out when he loses. I don’t think he handles it well.
He’s got plenty of homes and money to console him, though. And she can always go dance with her horses. So they’ll be fine. I spare no tears for them.
Thlayli
When this Red Dawn was filmed, the bad guys were Chinese. But the producers decided this might hurt ticket sales in China, so the “Chinese” were changed to “North Korean” in post.
Thlayli
I hate when someone else says the same thing I was going to say while I’m typing.
I also hate that FYWP won’t let me edit on the iPad.
JPL
Raven must be having a nice b-day.. GA is winning by quite a lot…
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
IIRC, the designer (Stephanie Dosen) is a professional musician, so she was looking for small projects that could be done during a few stolen moments during the day. I’ve gotten good enough to be ambitious but don’t really like making socks, so this will be perfect for a take-along project for me.
Dosen seems to be this year’s Ysolda Teague because she’s turning up in all of the magazines, but I’m happy to say I was buying her patterns from Etsy before she was cool.
;-)
@BonnyAnne:
Ruemara in the thread below was asking for an arts & crafts thread — maybe we can pressure a front-pager into creating one on the next lazy Saturday?
@Pink Snapdragon:
Have you ever tried donating extra socks to Afghans For Afghans? They do campaigns every few months and are always looking for socks, hats and mittens. I have a pair of mittens I made that I forgot to send to the last campaign, but they’ll e-mail me when the next one starts. They can only accept wool or other animal fibers, though — cotton and manmade fibers just aren’t warm or durable enough for the mountains of Afghanistan.
Suffern ACE
@JPL: well, what they’ll want are young white people to join. I mean, that is usually the point of holding a CPAC with GOProud as a sponsor. It’s not that they want more gays. They want their own next generation.
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC:
HAHAHAHAHA
Not in any way to make light of your situation because it sounds like that fucking blows.
And I’m not stressing on you and don’t mean to be a dick this one time out of a million. But, yeah, that never actually is the case.
CW in LA
@Geoduck: I have a certain horrified fascination with North Korea, and I might have been interested in this flick if it had found a way to present the invaders as a plausible facsimile of a North Korean force. But it sounds like what it’ll be is a dumb film-maker’s idea of a Chinese invasion hastily gussied up as a bunch of North Koreans.
Chris
@JPL:
For a definition of “trying to win back minorities” that seems to mean “saying all the same things you say to the people who hate them, but enunciating them really slowly and with a big smile in the hopes that that’s all it takes to make them LIKE it.”
Someone remind these fecking pillocks that when they won the Southern Democrats over, they had to repudiate all their previous pro-civil rights stances in order to be liked. They could do worse than to do something similar to get women, young people and nonwhite people back.
redshirt
I unironically enjoyed the original Red Dawn back in the day; now I really ironically enjoy it. Don’t think I’ll be catching the remake.
“….700 million screaming Chinese…”
“I thought there was a billion Chinese?”
“… there was.”
Also too – the original movie is like a mash up of Dirty Dancing, Breakfast Club, and Platoon.
? Martin
@Anoniminous:
They’ll re-remake it before release, with Obama telling the admirals to stand down as the North Korean ships approach, while the wingnuts counter-invade North Korea and form the new country of Whitistan.
Mnemosyne
@Mike in NC:
California is definitely not a right-to-work state (we still have the “anything over 8 hours in a day is overtime even if you don’t work 40 hours in that week” rule) but most companies have the same policy. It’s more of a way to cover their asses in case you find out they bad-mouthed you and then sue them.
Corner Stone
@CW in LA:
Jesu de Cristo! The original had freakin Cubanos running shit in Colorado!!
I am loving this.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
lawyer recommended, MBA approved.
Mike in NC
@CW in LA: Google John Milius. All you need to know.
BonnyAnne
@Mnemosyne:
we should definitely hassle someone into letting us chat about yarn and patterns and WIP that will never ever ever be finished. I cannot think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
(I myself finally finished a shawl I had been knitting off and on since before school started — now that I’m all graduated I decided to push through the last few rows. I blocked it out this afternoon… and I don’t like it. Oh well.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Litlebritdifrnt: Can we make that into a Lifetime movie?
“I won’t be ignored, Mitt!”
Villago Delenda Est
The thing is, the original Red Dawn had a few very insightful lines that the wingnuts seem to miss. Like the Cuban commander remarking to the Russian commander that he’d seen this all before…as an insurgent. Then there are the American teenage guerrillas fighting because “we live here” which is something that Iraqi insurgents might very well say against their own occupying foreign adversaries.
The wingtards missed some key truths…because, of course, they don’t conform to ideological purity. They’re basically the Russian commander.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@JPL: It is very entertaining watching the Repubs explain what went wrong.
The theories are:
Mitt wasn’t conservative enough. Obama kept people from voting. They were out-spent. Blah people want free stuff and won’t vote for anyone but a Dem. They had too much redmeat in terms of social issues to keep the fiscal conservatives in play. They didn’t have enough redmeat social issues to keep the evangelicals interested. Ballots from active-duty soldiers were magically left uncounted. The mainstream media was against Mitt. The polls were biased and thus disheartened the conservatives of the country. Hurricane Sandy fucked things up. Chris Christie fucked things up. Single women fucked things up. White people voted for Obama only because they were afraid of looking racist.
I’m sure the list goes on, but I have heard all of these.
PurpleGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt: Further:
Why the fuck do you think I bound myself to you at 16! You were supposed to be the one to bring about the White Horse Prophecy. I put up with having 5 kids because I wanted to be something important. I wanted to be the First Lady.
Mike in NC
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, for a time I had to observe CA rules for my time sheets, where you had to include that the company gave you time off for lunch.
Raven
@CW in LA: Spend some time living just across the Imjin from them, you’ll be even more “fascinated”.
Schlemizel
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, I got fired when I pointed out that the very large consulting firm I was contracted to was swindling the very large client we were at. The were ACCENTUating their billing and adding unnecessary head count.
But a couple of the salesmen are well connected in the cities here. They did a pretty decent job of making sure I couldn’t get hired in at a lot of places. Nothing I can prove of course but people talk. I was lucky to fall into an Indian consulting firm so they had no mutual friends – did a job that absolutely blew the client away, better than they expected, sooner than they planned and much less than they had budgeted. That sort of got me rolling again & they can’t touch me now
JPL
@Raven: How was your birthday?
Maude
@Schlemizel:
They tried to destroy your credibility and you kept it.
We are all alone here without FPs.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet:
From the insider stuff I have read (how reliable it is who knows) Anne INSISTED that he run, it was their turn, she WANTED to be First Lady, when Mitt told her how hard it might be to beat an incumbent POTUS she said “talk to the hand”. She would not hear anything other than he was going to run and he was going to win. It was Anne that was the driving force. As I said on another post, I should imagine that she is madder than a wet sitting hen right now. (A good old North Carolina saying that can’t be beat).
The Other Chuck
@NonyNony:
Hell then, just call down an Exterminatus on the house then. Imperium of Man. On the planet. With the cyclonic torpedo.
Southern Beale
Talk about damning with faint praise. If that’s true, it doesn’t say much for the GOP.
My birthday is tomorrow. The hubby took me to dinner at The Palm tonight, where I ate lots of high-calorie food, drank a delicious bottle of wine, and am now home, stuffed, watching a movie on HBO. Not bad.
Chris
@JPL:
Anybody seen Scalzi’s take yet? Post-Election Notes for the GOP.
The money quote: “I am a white, well-off, college-educated man married to a woman. And in my family and close circle of friends I have Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, gay, bisexual and trans people, religious, agnostic and atheist, able-bodied and disabled. You lose me when you classify any of them as the other. They’re not the other; they’re us.”
Speaking as another straight white college-educated male (“well-off” – heh, I should really see about that brilliant GOP plan about “making my money the old fashioned way, inheriting it,” eh?) I can only say amen and I am in complete agreement.
Southern Beale
I can’t tell you how interesting this post-election has been, BTW. Family, neighbors, everyone wants to talk to about it .. more so than after 2008. It’s really something to behold.
Raven
@JPL: The wedding celebration was really nice. A touch of sadness that one of the bride’s dad died this year but otherwise a sweet event. It’s a goddamn shame that these two wonderful, loving women are going to have to leave this country to be together. The loss is ours.
Corner Stone
I’ve worked with local, national and global HR departments during my career. And let me tell you, they speak a different vernacular.
For those who aren’t familiar with how it works let me tell you:
“Hi Suzy. I’m calling to ask about a former employee. Can you confirm Dr. No worked there from X to Z?”
“{pause}…yes?”
“Ok…thank you.”
And that’s the actually most 100% legal version of that conversation.
Litlebritdifrnt
Okay this has got to be the best thing I have read in many a year, gay penguin dads get to adopt a chick.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/stacylambe/gay-penguins-become-dads
Read it and weep peeps, best thing ever.
Raven
Auburn’s defense is putting them in a non-competitive situation”! No shit.
Corner Stone
@Maude:
I feel so…
Bill D.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
The West Coast is extra mild and all the zones go way north. However, out west the USDA zones become pretty inadequate to describe our climates as other factors like maritime vs. continental climates become really important in gardening. I’m in USDA zone 10 but our climate is nothing like the the climate in Miami- we’re 20 degrees cooler in summer with no rain and lower humidity. Ditto for Seattle and eastern NC- just different worlds in the garden. The USDA zone system only allows reasonable comparisons of gardening climates in the eastern third of the country where all areas have relatively moist, humid summers, and even there it does not capture some differences such as between the Midwest and the East Coast.
? Martin
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): Bottom line, all of the voter growth has come on one side of the wedge issues that the GOP has relied on for the last 3 decades. The strategy to get people to vote against their economic interests only works for older white men.
They’re really in a pickle. They’ll back immigration reform, because they have no choice now, and that reform will create even more nonwhite voters as a path to citizenship opens up. I don’t think they have a clue where to go after that. They have to lose the culture war issues to a fair degree. They can probably keep most of the economic stuff if they just soften it a bit. They’re going to have to lose most of the neocon shit too. They could adopt a rational drug policy before the Dems do – that would be a useful positive step for them. They could do the same for a variety of other issues that the Dems have mostly stepped aside of.
I don’t see it happening.
opie_jeanne
@Suffern ACE: Every year. Sounds about like California and the interference from outside the state (Utah, I’m looking at you!).
Chris
@? Martin:
Because most of those steps would involve seriously pissing off their own base (dropping neocons = pissing off the nationalists, dropping drug war = pissing off the God-botherers, immigration reform = pissing off virtually the entire base). And I don’t think they’d get enough votes from the new and growing demographics to make up for all the Angry White Conservatives they’d lose, not for several election cycles.
As you say, they seriously are in a pickle, not to say up a creek.
Mr Stagger Lee
@CW in LA: The original remake was to be about the Chinese invading, but the studio was warned that if they went through with this, good bye to trying to market future films in China. Money talks and it speaks Mandarin!
Corner Stone
@Chris:
Is that the constituency that’s really against dropping the drug war?
I don’t know and am asking.
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone: My Doug, My Doug, Why have you forsaken us?
Chris
@Corner Stone:
Well… God-botherers (for moral issues, the modern-day Prohibition freaks) and “tough on crime” assholes, I suppose, who think legalization would be capitulating to the dark-skinned gangland scum threatening our Law and Order. Not sure which of those two carry the most weight.
Corner Stone
What’s hilarious about the Red Dawn remake is just the simple timing of it.
Instead of the virtuous home grown rebels/insurgents fighting against an invading force, back when RD was made, we’ve now been the blatant hegemony for over a decade.
The film should have simply made liberals from CA and NYC acting in concert to overtake the flyover heartland areas.
Effete math lovers and pot smokers could have been portrayed as trying to steal family farms and shut down job creating coal mines. Starving hard working real Americans out of what’s rightfully theirs.
Corner Stone
@arguingwithsignposts: “My Doug…it’s full of stars!”
Corner Stone
@Chris: I’ve always considered it a for-profit zone. Where the people who want it the most have something monetary to gain from it. The prison-industrial complex.
The moralists were just the mouthy stooges, like they always are.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Chris:
Everybody knows that if the Devil’s Weed is legalized our precious young people will spend all of their time getting high and then listening to that jungle music while they bang on each other like a Gypsy banging on a tambourine. Sheesh.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Is this party still going on?
We just watched Wes Anderson’s movie Moonrise Kingdom. Like every Wes Anderson film it’s quirky, charming, colorful and very very symmetrical. But it would be a mistake to judge it by its highly attractive surface. The oddly unrealistic scenarios and script bring out the reality of the characters. More dramatic and emotionally true than most dramas, I’d say.
Anyway, past bedtime.
Cheers.
Corner Stone
Well, I have a juicy ribeye I’m about to cook and I spent $8 on some damn asparagus, so I don’t really care what the rest of y’all are doing.
BTW, has anyone bought asparagus lately? Good sweet jeebus but it’s insane. If I didn’t have a serious craving I would’ve skipped it. Gott damn but that pissed me off.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@? Martin: I know the theory is that the Latino and black communities will come rushing to the Republican party because these groups are both socially very conservative and those whacky Dems keep pushing for equal rights for the LGBT community and legalized abortion and access to birth control. The Repubs also seem to see green energy (and acknowledgement of global warming) as eventual quagmires for the Dems.
I’m of the mind that as the science continues to pile up on global warming, Repubs will eventually have to at least be less obstructive on progressive policy on this point.
What you say is true about Republican policy favoring white America (and the wealthy of any color), but I am not as certain as you seem to be that that is the reason Repubs seem to be on the decline with voters. Have you encountered any research to support the claim? I’d love to see it. (And I don’t mean that in a confrontational fashion.)
I’m inclined to think the Repubs are losing in part because their party is short on a basic ingredient to enthusiasm: hope. A lot of people do vote out of anger, but for those who are disenfranchised (people of color, the poor, the LGBT community, those who believe in science and education), hope is a big part of what keeps them (us) going. I have hope that we take global warming seriously — and soon — because failure to do so will be catastrophic. As a teacher, I have hope in the chances of the next generation to improve upon things in this world.
In short, the Repubs appeal to the uber-wealthy, the fearful, and the very, very angry.
Corner Stone
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
God, but I remember those times so fondly. Not the weed exactly, or the banging like a drum I guess either…
But I cranked some fucking Chuck D and NWA up to 11 back in my day!
? Martin
@Chris: They have to piss off their base – at least part of it. They have to accept that they aren’t worth keeping because the populations they’re losing are bigger, and are growing.
I don’t think the drug war is just the god botherers. Much of the problem is that the drug war was turned into a wedge issue by the right as a ‘weak on crime’ position. Democrats never figured out how to address that, so they just skirt around it. Until we find a way to reframe the discussion around drug policies, it’s going to stay that way until enough voters provide a safe space to work in.
opie_jeanne
@Bill D.: We have a gardening book with about 25 zones describing just the west coast, and we use it as our garden Bible. It’s the one from Sunset. We live in Woodinville, on Hollywood HIll, and our climate isn’t the same as areas nearby, not even the town of Woodinville which is down the hill from us, about a mile but that little hill makes all the difference. I think we’re only 200-300 feet higher than the valley.
We got a new dryer last year in January and the delivery guy drove out from Seattle. When he got to our neighborhood he was amazed to see snow everywhere, and quite a bit of it because there was no snow anywhere else. We usually take the forecast for Lynnwood seriously and consider ourselves to be in the convergence zone. If it might snow there it might snow here.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Corner Stone:
Santa Cruz, CA, Sixties. I wouldn’t trade those memories for a four foot cube of solid platinum.
PurpleGirl
Happy Birthday to Raven and Southern Beale.
OT: I’m watching Untold Stories of the ER. Situation: a woman is having her first child and didn’t make it to the hospital in time. They are in the parking lot and a doctor is coaching the birth. The baby is out. The doctor gives the husband a pair of scissors to cut the umbilical cord. The husband see the amount of blood and gore in the car and says “this is our new car, it’s a special order interior. You couldn’t wait fifteen minutes.” The wife, while holding the baby, pulls her arm back and hauls off and punches him in the face. He falls down, out like a light. Can you blame her for punching him?
redshirt
Commie Pot for Gay Illegal Mexicans!
MikeJ
@redshirt: You need some abortion in there.
mamayaga
@? Martin:
The results in WA and CO this year give reason to hope voters will do just that. We could even make it a twofer by using the right wing ploy of putting social issues on the ballot to turn out your base. Maybe a few more pot referenda in 2014?
Yutsano
@mamayaga:
Not to get all stereotypical, but wherever Washington goes Oregon usually soon follows. And vice versa.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@MikeJ:
And more cowbell.
redshirt
@MikeJ: Atheism, also too.
PsiFighter37
OmNOM NOM Feed Mah Bellah!!!1111
+10
Castigate me, pepps
arguingwithsignposts
I ended up in Washington state this weekend. I already feel more gay and high. I figure by the time I get back in the Midwest tomorrow, it will have worn off.
? Martin
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): Well, those groups are socially conservative, but they don’t believe in legislating that position – or at least those issues are very low on the list relative to things that the Democrats promote – economic opportunity, equal rights, etc.
The problem with many of the positions on the right is that they are internally contradictory unless you see them as proxies for issues of race/religion/etc. If they were honestly rendered race- or religious-neutral philosophies, they wouldn’t be so inconsistent – and they’d be actively working to reconcile those inconsistencies. And that’s what so many people that have flocked to the Democrats are witnessing. It’s impossible to look at voter fraud as an honest position on the right when the only outcomes from that crusade have been to make it harder for minorities to vote. The same goes for an enormous number of Republican positions.
Geoduck
@arguingwithsignposts:
Oh well, we tried our best.
arguingwithsignposts
@Geoduck: LOL
MikeJ
@arguingwithsignposts:
Leviticus says that if you have gay sex, you should be stoned. We had to pass both laws at the same time.
Carla H
thanks for keeping me entertained tonight. i am laid up in bed with a cold. but as I fortunately live in glorious Seattle, I too have a contact gay and high. woo :)
at least this week was wonderful, and we all got to share in the world’s largest rainbow cake:
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/politicsnorthwest/2012/11/09/free-cake-at-cupcake-royale-to-celebrate-marriage-equality/
Mike G
@Thlayli:
North Korea invades the US? Makes about as much sense as the other magical fairy tales Repukes believe.
redshirt
@Mike G: They all know super martial arts and have been stockpiling magic weapons for 50 years.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@MikeJ:
Now THAT was funny! I hadda walk upstairs and read it to my wife.
Ken
He couldn’t. He was busy running for Congress. As a Republican. Remember?
Interrobang
@cathyx: I have Dusty Miller in my garden in southwestern Ontario that has been there successfully for four years now. It’s definitely quite convinced that it’s an annual, even despite the cold winters here (and we have had a couple of cold winters in that time). Usually what I do is before the snow comes, I rake a big pile of leaves into the garden overtop of the Dusty Miller, and it seems to go dormant under the snow, and grow back again in the spring. Some of it does die back a little, but most of it has made it through.
Did you know that if you grow it long enough and it gets big enough, it’ll make little yellow dandelion-looking flowers?
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Mike G: Well not just invades, but no one bothers to do anything about it. We’re all so weak willed. Thank god for those wolverines. We’re just to busy being self absorbed to do anything disruptive, like field an army.
Susan K of the tech support
@PurpleGirl:
Yours is the second emergency deliver baby in the car story I’ve read tonight. Here’s the other one — a Sandy story, a traffic story. And yes, there’s even a bit of car mess to it, but with a much happier outcome overall.
Nurse delivers baby in gridlocked station wagon
Lojasmo
@Corner Stone:
Yes, actually, it is the case in many cases.
Marcel Kincaid
Republicans have only one path to success: They have to stop being assholes.
Oops.
RMD
Hey! I was at that Mary Black concert. Good stuff – I hadn’t heard her before. Her daughter needs to tighten up her mic distancing, but overall, a great evening.
J R in WV
@Mike in NC:
Congrats on getting fired rather than quiting… quiters have a really hard time collecting unemployment now-a-days. I hear 43% of the national work force doesn’t work! Welcome to Willard’s fantasy world!
J R in WV
Awaiting moderation – maybe I didn’t use the required amount of profanity?