I know what trolls want:
For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.
The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.
Trolls like:
A surge of U.S. drone missile strikes that has killed about 40 suspected militants in Yemen over the last three weeks may appear inconsistent with President Obama’s pledge in May to use drone aircraft to target and kill only individual terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to Americans.
White House officials say the targeting rules haven’t changed for the 10 recent drone strikes. But analysts and former U.S. officials say the current campaign, after the pace of attacks had slowed, shows that the standards are elastic.
Trolls like:
If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.
Trolls like me.
The point of this post is that I am sick and tired of every time I post something that isn’t a wet kiss to Obama it’s called trolling. This website- me, the other front pagers, and you all- raised over a hundred grand to elect Obama and other Dems in 2008 and 2012. But that was then, and this is now (and now I want to go read S.E. Hinton all over again). I love the guy. But he’s the fucking President, not the Messiah, and even though I think I would vote for him again in 2016 if I could, it doesn’t change the fact that on some things, mainly the issues listed above, I disagree profoundly with the stance of his administration. Here’s another one:
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that President Obama does not “at this point advocate a change” in how marijuana is classified, despite believing that targeting individual pot smokers was “not the best allocation for federal law enforcement resources.”
“The priority in terms of the dedication of law enforcement resources should be targeted toward our drug kingpins, drug traffickers and others who perpetrate violence in the conduct of the drug trade,” Earnest told reporters.
Why the fuck not, you stoner douchebag turncoat? You waiting on a third term?
Regardless, when I troll you all, it isn’t subtle. But when I honestly state my opinion on things, like the Manning post below, I’m not trolling, I’m just telling you what I think.
Also, too, it wasn’t fucking lox.
Omnes Omnibus
People told you that the trolling they were speaking of was T&H’s and, if it wasn’t lox, why were you putting it on a bagel. Eat it with scrambled eggs like you were meant to do.
I hope the Supreme Court ends up saying that cops need a warrant to go through cellphones. I don’t have much confidence that they will.
ETA: I want some salmon. Now.
The prophet Nostradumbass
The way some people use the word “trolling”, every single post on this site should be considered trolling, because, after all, isn’t the point of these posts a starting point for a discussion?
NotMax
The term trolling has mutated to become as devoid of meaning and cogency as has the term terrorist.
SG
I know it wasn’t lox. It was Norwegian smoked salmon.
And I don’t think you’re trolling your own site.
Maybe you should get a few piglets up on your lap. And give them a bit of smoked salmon.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Welp. Any hope I had on anything happening on the climate change issue is pretty much dead now.
Scientists are more and more sure about AGW, but nope, America is going full bore in the direction of ‘SUPER-MASSIVE GREEN FASCIST HOAX!!!’ and generally believing that scientists are either the stupidest cretins on the entire planet or the most corrupt cretins on the entire planet/
And so we fiddle while the earth burns. Fuck it.
Tommy
John I read your site daily. Have for years. I think I have posted like a handful of times in the garden diaries (I love my garden) and a few times with the whole Apple vs. Microsoft thing.
I wonder if more folks here don’t think what I think and just are not as vocal. Your opinion, as best as I can tell, about the NSA and related issues are EXACTLY the same as mine. I mean how did we get to a place that just cause I decided to fly the TSA can stop me, detain me, and go through my phone, laptop, and tablet. Again, how did we get to this place.
I mean if you think I am a danger to public safety, take your evidence before a judge and get a warrant.
Also not sure how you can troll your own site :)!
NotMax
@SG
Or enclose the cat tower, meld it with one of those meditation waterfalls and stock it with spawning salmon.
On second thought, nah. That would involve using tools.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: People would bleed.
sparky
John, real trolls like the Billy Goats Gruff. (Apparently they’re of Norwegian origin like your “lox.”)
I’m +3 and thinking of embarking on #4 because I lost a sweet subbing job tomorrow and I’m angry like you and foreswearing sobriety. (I needed that PE job to make my mortgage payment, damnit.)
LT
What the fuck is wrong with lox?
(That’s all I’m ever gonna say here from now on.)
WarMunchkin
I’ve been reading this site since.. 2006 or 2007 or so? The commentariat changed a fair amount. I mean, people were always jerks, just ideologically different kinds of jerks.
Villago Delenda Est
Ahem.
Expressing an opinion that others may not agree with is, by modern intertubes definition, TROLLING.
Because you managed to get our attention, and we’re all stupid fish, and we’ve been trolled.
So there.
Also, yes, on the subject of you hating us all.
We know.
(cue Darth Cheney flipping the carbonite switch and Redshirt bellowing out a loud wookiee roar.)
Hunter Gathers
On what fucking planet is it a good idea for the first black president to advocate for legalized weed?
NotMax
@Hunter Gathers
Ganja 420.
Omnes Omnibus
@LT: Nothing is wrong with lox. No one said anything was wrong with lox. Cole wasn’t eating lox. This has been established multiple times. I still don’t understand putting Norwegian smoked salmon on a bagel. Don’t get me started on the sprouts.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers:
Dantooine. He should do it on Dantooine.
Redshirt
Trollin’ every damn day, dawg.
Amir Khalid
This fine establishment has only one troll whom I really detest, who has already been named in this thread. The rest are but pikers compared to him.
For the record, I did not contribute a penny towards either of Obama’s presidential campaigns. Nor shall I contribute towards any presidential campaign in 2016. And enough already about the fish.
Tommy
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I just don’t get it. If you go to a pub in my little rural town you won’t find many liberals. But talk to them, most are farmers, about global warming and they turn into hippie liberals on that topic. I often joke to my not so liberal friends that if you want to learn about global warming first talk to scientist. Then farmers, you know people that work the land for a living. They’ll tell you climate change is a fact and we need to do something about it if we want to keep, you know eating the things they grow.
Redshirt
Also, does Cole not get that everyone was referring to Timmeh and not Cole? Or does Cole get that, and this is another layer of trolling? Like troll folded into sub-troll contained within a larger troll.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: I abbreviated.
xenos
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Well, now that we can get all the methane we want for the small price of poisoning our drinking water until the next glaciation, that AGW problem is pretty well controlled.
Suzanne
Perhaps this is petty and vengeful (perhaps)……but I am so tired of all the handwringing about governmental “invasion of privacy” coming from douchebags who supported the PATRIOT Act. I WANT those people to have their privacy invaded, because back in the early 2000s, when liberals meekly pointed out that maybe we might not want the government all up in our shizzle and were asked WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA in response, those people were really happy to give my rights away for their PERCEPTION OF security. Let those fuckers live with it. Go ahead, read my email. And at this point, I’m more than happy to let it go on, because maybe if this continues, we might remember that making laws while we’re all still changing out of our collectively crapped pants is a bad fucking idea.
But I’m petty.
Triumph
…somebody needs a hug!
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I didn’t support the Patriot Act and I don’t like governmental invasions of privacy. Can I continue to bitch?
dp
I love smoked salmon. But one of the worst experiences of my life was when my mother took us four kids to Washington, DC (single mom, first ride on an airplane, — a BFD, to put it in context), and I ordered bagels and lox in the restaurant at the old Quality Inn on Capitol Hill, and I actually tasted that stuff. My mom still dines out on that story!
(Bear in mind that I live in south Louisiana and will eat most things that will stay still long enough!)
xenos
@Tommy:
One ought to talk to sport fisherman – the temperature zones, and the fish contained therein, have been shifting northward over the last couple decades.
Suzanne
Yes. Bitch on. I didn’t support it, either.
I just suck at taking the high road.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Tommy:
That’s the thing. They actually can see the patterns happening in the long term. But it seems like everyone else just wants to fucking assume that scientists are all massive grifters and want to thieve money from everyone like they were Scientology, and that idea just seems to be snowballing more and fucking more. It comes part and parcel with the exploding anti-academia and anti-intellectualism that basically states that the common man knows infinitely more than academics and scientists who, in their eyes, have been proven to be the stupidest people in the entire world.
And that doesn’t even go into our leaders in Washington, to whom the only farmers that really exists are massive company farms, and the only real scientists are the ones paid for by ExxonMobil.
I honestly just don’t know where this goes except to utter hopelessness, since the more certain scientists become, the more certain America becomes that scientists don’t know that the sun warms things or some stupid simple shit like that they assume these guys simply never thought of, what with that lack of ‘common wisdom’.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
Still counts.
fuckwit
Hahah well played, Though you forgot the pit bull stuff and I’m pretty sure there was one other lit grenade that gets thrown into the room around here sometimes.
Once again, Presidents don’t make laws, nor do they interpret them, nor can they be expected to oversight themselves; that’s the job of the Congress and the courts. So, raise money for 2014 to elect Democrats, and press THEM on these issues, because you know if the R’s keep control of the Congress then ain’t none of this shit getting fixed.
After 2015 with a sane Congress, start with repealng the PATRIOT Act, AUMF, and the horrifying anti-drug laws and all the 4th-amendment-shredding bullshit in them. Then start repealing Cold War era spy infrastructure. Maybe fix net neutrality and eliminate the insane copyright protections, and if we want to do somethign for the real world we can remove some of the drug-war-era minimum sentencing crap too.
Tommy
@Suzanne: Amen. Honestly like 99.9% of Americans I have nothing to hide. If the government wanted to read my email or listen in my phone calls they wouldn’t find anything. It would be a waste of time. And honestly, it would be pretty boring.
And heck I am a tech nerd. I could encrypt and/or hide what I do, or make it very hard for them to monitor me.
But alas that isn’t the point. Last I checked I am supposed to have rights.
NotMax
So has anyone opened up a soup and sandwich place slash brewpub and called it Lox, Stock & Barrel?
If not, I call dibs on the name.
Mnemosyne
Actually, John, the issue is that whenever you post about a topic that is primarily of interest to White Dudes — i.e. Bradley Manning and the NSA — we’re suddenly inundated with commenters who are desperately worried about the issues that mainly concern White Dudes but can never seem to be bothered to show up when the issue is Stop and Frisk or vaginal ultrasounds. If they can’t picture it happening to them, they don’t give a shit and wish the blacks/browns/women would just STFU and talk about the important issues — you know, their issues.
So at this point, I say fuck them. If you can’t be bothered to worry about Stop and Frisk or women’s privacy rights, I can’t be bothered to worry about your White Dude rights. Go find someone who cares and whine to them about how you’re so fucking oppressed because theoretically the NSA might possibly read your e-mail at some point.
You probably won’t want to make this complaint to a black or brown guy who lives in NYC, though, because he’ll punch you in the face, and you’ll never, ever understand why.
(NOTA BENE: White Dudes who do actually show up in the Stop and Frisk and/or women’s privacy threads are, obviously, exempt from the above but, since they’re regulars, it’s usually pretty obvious to all of us who’s interested in civil liberties for everyone and who’s interested in the civil liberties of White Dudes.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: I understand, respect, and agree with Cole’s wide open policy for the blog. I don’t have a pie filter. That guy though….
SectionH
Hmmm, I just got home. FFS, lox is tolerable at best. Scottish smoked salmon rules, but I’m willing to allow that Norwegian might be acceptable. And the salmon my friend’s relative in Oregon smokes himself is very good.
Bagels are also tolerable at best, and aren’t needed around srsly good smoked salmon. But, hey, I really do deal with different cultures. If it’s lox, ok. and I’ve been know to slice a bagel into manageable bits and put whatever smoked fish on that.
FFS, Cole lives in WV. It’s a tribute to modern society that he can has smoked salmon at all. Or lox, or “bagels.” I’ve read Trillan about bagels, and I still don’t get it.
Now I suppose I should go read all the relevant stuff. Sigh. That’s why I’m so often the last poster on most threads I post on because I always read through the comments. And the time zone thing.
+ 2 pints of Strongbow and some Crispin
Omnes Omnibus
Watching Batman Begins. Is Gotham supposed to be Chicago?
Tommy
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: It has not hit the area where I live yet, rural southern IL, but in other states around me (Kansas and Iowa) many farmers are changing their crops (traditionally corn, soy beans, winter wheat). I’ve seen charts (don’t have one at my finger tips) that a lot of the crops we grow here are moving north by 250-300 miles and being grown in areas where they never have in the past.
It is as @xenosk said about fishing. That is another thing that is close to a religion where I live and those folks will tell you things have changed.
Just one other note, and I know you can’t take one weather event or even a few and yell this is climate change, but last year from June into July it was 110+ here for two weeks straight. Now it gets 100+ during the summer often, but never, never anything like that.
burnspbesq
@Redshirt:
A Klein troll?
Damn, I wish you hadn’t brought that up. Too terrifying to contemplate.
NotMax
@Mnemonsyne
If Cucinelli gets in, wouldn’t put it past him to try to one-up Noo Yawk by instituting stop ‘n’ probe.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
I concur 100%.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid:
I hope not, I think that would be kinda illegal.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: New York City.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: I saw Illinois plates on Bruce Wayne’s Lambo.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: Interesting. I had not caught that. Now I am only a little bit of a comic book guy, but my understanding is it is supposed to be NYC. But alas I think the writers never actually say that. Kind of like where Springfield is in the Simpsons.
SectionH
@Tommy: Fuckin’ hey, the gardening climate charts have moved the zones north and norther for years. In the Bluegrass, we used to be Zone 6 and I knew what would survive winters. Now that’s firmly Zone 7, with the added interest of even worse punches of random freezing temps just about when fruit trees are setting.
The garden books merely try to keep up with actual climate change.
LT
@Omnes Omnibus: What the fuck is wrong with lox?
Norwegian smoked salmon and sprouts on a bagel sounds fucking awesome.
What the fuck is wrong with lox?
piratedan
@Mnemosyne: ty for the caveat! nice to be noticed!
Redshirt
@Tommy: Metropolis is NYC
sparky
@fuckwit:
Haha. Made up of Democrats? Seriously dude, we’ve gone around that bend before. Remember NAFTA? Repeal of Glass-Stegall? Welfare reform?
See The Snarxist’s comments about AGW above.
Our progeny are doomed.
Omnes Omnibus
@LT: Are you incapable of reading? I have never said anything was wrong with lox.
But nicely played.
LT
@Omnes Omnibus: What the fuck is wrong with reading?
TheMightyTrowel
OT: interesting Australian perspective on the development and (?) demise of democracy
Tommy
@SectionH: There is a story I tell to folks around me. I grew up in this area, but in 1987 when I went to college I moved away and then to DC for work for years and years. Moved back here in 2003. As you enter my little rural town we have a huge lake. As a kid we used to go ice fishing and play hockey in the winter. Heck folks would pull their trucks on the thing.
Now since I’ve been back it has never frozen. I don’t mean enough to pull a truck on it, I mean it NEVER even remotely freezes over.
I then note that climate change does not mean temps have to change by 10 degrees. Some small changes here or there can have massive affects (see the lake). Sure it still snows here. But you can’t think like Fox Noise where if it snows they mock climate change.
Honestly I don’t think I change anybody by telling this story, but you can see them thinking about it at least.
Pockmark
@Redshirt: Metropolis is NYC by day. Gotham is NYC by night.
Omnes Omnibus
@LT: I merely object to your clear inability to do it.
Note: I left a comment for you on the Manning Verdict thread.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman rescues Gotham City by (SPOILER ALERT!!) flying a nuclear time bomb out to detonate over the sea. Unless I have somewhat misremembered my American geography, you can’t really do that from any city in Illinois.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: I’ve been to a place named that, I think in Seattle.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Interesting. It is neither Chicago nor New York. But it is both. The Simpsons’ Springfield reference is good.
ETA: Lake Michigan is pretty big.
NotMax
Gotham is NYC if they’d hired Hieronymous Bosch rather than Robert Moses.
SG
The lox thing is driving me crazy.
All lox is smoked salmon, but not all smoked salmon is lox. Some smoked salmon is Cole’s Norwegian smoked salmon or other varieties.
Is it all clear now?
burnspbesq
I often disagree with Mark Kleiman, but this seems to me to be just about dead on.
http://www.samefacts.com/2013/08/barack-obama/confessions-of-an-obamabot/
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: I am a little bit of a nerd/geek :). Me and some friends were going to Bonnaroo years ago and we drove by Metropolis in southern IL. I knew the town was there, but never been to it. I take the exit and my friends are like what are you doing? I am like Superman lives here. They thought I was crazy, but did enjoy taking a picture with a huge cut out they had at a gas station. You know those things with the full body, but no head you stand behind.
NotMax
@SG
Cold-smoking aficionados, please form a line to the left.
Hot-smoking purists, to the right.
SectionH
@Tommy: I don’t remember Crab Orchard Lake freezing over even when I was a kid. (No problem, I’m just trying to think of Southern Illinois in a bigger context than my 11 yr old mind. Otoh, these days, it seems to mean anything south of the Chicago beltway.
Carbondale? Makanda? Ware? Thebes? (srsly, I got scary So Illinois roots even though I mostly grew up in St. Louis.)
But I srsly think the kind of conversation you’re having is about as good influence as we can hope for, for a bit in places like you and I live in. Mr S and I live in obne of the reddest islands in blue California right now.
Tommy
@SG: OK, got to hop into the bagel thing. Where I grew up you could only buy like one kind of bagel, and they are in the freezer. Nobody eats them. Then moved to DC and had a Jewish deli on the corner. OMG. OMG. OMG. When I had my first “real” bagel with some lox it was like the sky opened up and angels started to sing.
Now for me, and this might be a moral sin, I like an everything bagel with just some butter. Or it I do it at my house, a slab of tomato and some grated cheese.
I don’t dislike lox, but also not a huge fan either.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
It drives me crazy that Henry Cavill’s Superman suit comes without the red underpants. Where do you stand on this very important issue?
Tommy
@SectionH: I live right across the river from St. Louis in St. Clair county. Beleville/Scott Air Force base are the largest towns near me.
TheMightyTrowel
@Tommy: Oh! Right by Cahokia then!
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: You got to have the red underpants. That is just a given :). I’ve not seen the reboot of Superman, but happy with what they did with Batman. I mean I read some of the comics and they are pretty dark. Glad we went back there.
Tommy
@TheMightyTrowel: Cahokia, and one of the coolest places in the world, Cahokia Mounds are about 20 miles from me. I am a little further east, but not much in the grand scheme of things.
NotMax
@Tommy
In the DC universe, there has always been contention about which city or cities Metropolis and Gotham City are meant to represent.
But Star City (Green Arrow’s turf) has consistently been touted as representing St. Louis.
Omnes Omnibus
@TheMightyTrowel: Stop reminding me of 4th grade social studies. I never did build that kitchen midden diorama.
Mary G
Now you’ve given me an earworm.
Tommy
@NotMax: I didn’t know anything was based in St. Louis outside the new Syfy show Defiance. But not sure that counts since, well the city has been destroyed and the Arch is the only thing left, kind of, standing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: This one is better.
BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: Seems right to me too.
Tommy
@NotMax: Oh just as a comic/video game sidebar, I am kind of not that hip. I often come to things late in the game. Normally on my PS3 I play puzzle and sports games. I picked up Batman Arkham Asylum and was stunned. I think maybe a top ten game for me of all time, and that is saying a lot since I’ve had about every gaming system since Pong. Even better since I was so late to the game it only cost is $19.99. It was so good it finally pulled me away from Little Big Planet II, which I have been playing like non-stop for the better part of a year :).
MikeBoyScout
John,
I hope you read this.
I sincerely appreciate your personally authentic (and obviously very public) opinions. I don’t consider them “trolling” because they are authentic. You wear your heart and soul here. Nobody should expect such authenticity to be “perfect” in any way. It is always a work in progress. That you are willing and able to do that work in public and allow us to beat the living shit out of you because our screen has an associated keyboard is icing on the cake.
Like you, I’d not only vote for Obama for a third term, I’d pound the pavement and empty my bank account … again.
But it is not because he is the “messiah”. Obama never was, nor could be.
To the extent we ever get to live in the world we want shall not be because we select our favorite celebrity to govern us.
The world we want shall only come when we, fortunate enough to live in a country with immense wealth and a form of government which allows active participation, are adamant to hold those we select and elect accountable for each and every one of our principles.
John, you are one of a handful of people in this country that’s willing and able to do this. I am proud of you. I am privileged to be part of the community you’ve created and of which you are a part.
I feel I understand you a bit more than those who disagree and accuse you of “trolling” because we grew up in the same area with a specific (and continuously critical) culture. [NOTE to the uninitiated: Steeler fans have one expectation every year; Superbowl victory. Yet, we realize we certainly won’t win every year. The standard is the standard.]
Perfection shall never be attained, but I’ll be GD’d if I’ll not demand we try!
So, after yapping too long, thank-you.
You’ve a lot of balls in the air John, but I sincerely appreciate you’ve always got my back …. even when others would stab you in yours. Thank-you.
eemom
Fuck you, you whining self-absorbed asshole.
Repeating what I said 8 hours ago, I don’t give a shit if you’re trolling or not. And I REALLY don’t give a shit on a night when I’m thinking of a woman who died alone in a Harlem apartment of end stage breast cancer.
SectionH
Oh ah. Mucho family were in Edwardsville for years. SIUE mostly. l was back there burying the last of the older generation in my family (aunt) in May. It’s not a bad little town – even a school like SIUE helps – and Edwardsville was apparently just far enough away from the metro to have kept its old center hanging on by a fingernail at least. The sprawl was a lot worse than I had remembered, though.
I will recc with “only dropped in once, but I liked it” a nice little place in Glen Carbon (no, srsly) with some decent craft beers: the Wooden Nickel.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: I’m pretty much at this point. I also think that for a bunch of people who went apeshit over Bush and rule of law, you’re awful pissy when this president follows the actual laws and when people break the fucking laws and have to face a consequence.
That being said, JC, you’re not trolling in your questions unless T&H is your alter ego. In which case, SPH. Seek Professional Help. Loosen up. Our opinions don’t really mean a damn in your life.
NotMax
@Tommy
Have next to no experience with console games, but a friend loaned me Sam and Max to play on the PC. Decent amalgam of the comic series and puzzle-oriented scenarios, and true to the acerbic slant of the original series.
PsiFighter37
I like it when John Cole does more of these kinds of posts. Not that I don’t mind cat posts, but this is the original reason for coming here.
PF37 +3 (2 cocktails + 1 Big Island Golden Sabbath)
The prophet Nostradumbass
The Waitresses sucked ass.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: That is because you didn’t tip them, you cheap bastard.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus: I see what you did there.
wasabi gasp
That’s not such a swell idea to me, but you may well be right in assuming that John is on board with it. I have trouble reconciling that assumption with this OP, though.
Tommy
@SectionH: I hated this area growing up. When college and then work came I ran as far away as I could. But then moved back and I love it. The cost of living is lower, like next to nothing. People are more polite. The speed of life is slower (a huge thing for me). I LOVE St. Louis. And since I am in the middle of the US, well if I want to get somewhere (also a Southeast hub) it is easy and cheap. Plus, well my family is here.
Don’t get me wrong, I miss DC. I miss being able to get to NYC in a little over an hour. Well what I miss the most is the lack of ethnic food, but alas I guess there are tradeoffs no matter where you live.
SectionH
@Tommy: Been to the CWE lately? It’s my old neighborhood, and omg, it’s still there, and some of the actual businesses are still there. The Rolls Royce dealer is an Interior Design thing, but the curb cuts are still there. I had fun showing the bartender at that Welsh pub that’s been there forever (it’s just down the street) what I was talking about. She saw it, and decided I was ok, and Not Making It Up.
Ok fine, St. Louis is the poster child for suburban insanity, white flight, 1950’s public housing disasters, etc.
Tommy
@NotMax: I am not remotely that dude that screams consoles are better, consoles are better. Play games on whatever machine you want. The only thing I play on my PC is Starcraft. Well I used to play Civilization, but I now can get it on a console. In fact it was the only and/or main reason I got a PS3, to play that game. Honestly my PS2 was more then enough of a gaming experience for me :).
elaine benis
@Suzanne:
I’m petty as well then.
At this point, I don’t give two shits about privacy and spying for the very same reasons. That horse left the barn a decade ago. I remember being met with silence and blank stares back in the day when I asked conservatives how they would feel about these laws under a non-Republican president. And here we are.
Besides, if you haven’t done anything wrong, then you don’t have anything to worry about. Right?
Tommy
@SectionH: Almost weekly. My favorite part of the town. Flat out love the place. Amazing used book stores. Indie coffee places. And I just have to say Vintage Vinyl, the best record store ever.
I won’t get in the politics of the area, but white flight is an understatement. The city is literally dying. A few years ago I went to a tech conference in St. Louis. When other people saw on my badge I was from the area they asked me to take them on a walking tour of downtown.
They were like where is the dry cleaner? Where is the grocery store? Where are the cars? Where are the apartments …. does anybody live here?
I am like nope.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Nostra is Drew Brees???
(too soon?)
SectionH
@Tommy: I think I’m overlapping some love on your area…
And no, we soooo weren’t shopping at the RR place, but I used to ride my bike past it every time I went between by folks’ apartment and my grandparents’ house. My mom rode the streetcar that ran up Delmar to Skinker to her job and classes at Washington U. I think the light rail uses a lot of that right of way now, yay it never completely disappeared. I took PUBLIC buses to my grade school. Damn, city living was good in those days.
wasabi gasp
I don’t know what you see in him anymore, John.
“He means well” is the best I got.
NotMax
@Tommy
Undoubtedly ultra-primitive by today’s standard, a trailer for one of the Sam & Max games.
Tommy
@SectionH: The current light rail line rocks. Somewhat limited cause it is only a single line, but it has stops for the CWE and Forest Park. In fact the thing ends on the IL side three miles from my house. It also ends at Lambert which is nice cause I fly a fair amount. It is just nobody uses it and it is losing money hands over fist. Outside of a Cards or Rams game, where the thing is so packed you think you are in Toyko, I am often the only person on it until it gets near East St. Louis, where it starts to fill up for people getting to jobs downtown. Then it is empty again all the way to the end.
As a dude that lived 15 years in DC, and often would not drive my cars for days or even weeks, it makes me sad we have such a resource, that is clean and dirt cheap, but nobody uses it.
But I guess we really, really like out cars here.
GregB
You are too Goddamn sensitive Cole. How the hell did you make it through frat rush week without weeping uncontrollably after they named you Flounder?
Hill Dweller
@wasabi gasp: Who do you think would do better?
Keep in mind, the Republicans have become nihilists, willing to destroy the country. We’ll be lucky to get out of this year without a government shutdown and/or default on the debt.
MikeBoyScout
@wasabi gasp: Fair critique. I may well have over interpreted.
Assuming you care.. I’ll tell you that I’d prefer Obama to be that “angry black socialist” but I appreciate his political ability to move at a deliberate pace in spite of deranged wingnut head winds. I’d like something ‘better’, but until I see ‘better’ I’ll ride this horse and do my damnedest to help it to be ‘better’.
Tommy
@NotMax: Nothing wrong with simple. I am a total tech nerd. I work with technology. But I just got a tablet. I didn’t see the point since I have a gaming quality, $4,000 laptop. I mean why get a tablet cause I can just take my laptop with me.
But I got a Google Nexus 7. Been playing games on it more then my PS3, and to be honest the simple, basic games are my favorite. Heck my four year old niece, yes four years old turned me onto my favorite game. Cut the Rope. I would be embarrassed to say how many hours I’ve spent with it. I mean like the best $4.95 I’ve ever spent.
wasabi gasp
@wasabi gasp:
I wanna reel in that “he means well” thing.
He seems like a good dad and he’s not evil. I’ll go with that.
TheMightyTrowel
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s never too late. Upload a photo and I’ll grade it. 40% of your grade will be for quality, 10% for accuracy, 50% for effort. :D
jonas
@Tommy: Then farmers, you know people that work the land for a living. They’ll tell you climate change is a fact and we need to do something about it if we want to keep, you know eating the things they grow.
I think if that were broadly true, you’d have fewer climate denialists in Congress from states like South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. My experience is that a lot of ranchers and farmers can tell you one second about how they’ve never seen a drought like this in their 40 years ranching or whatever and the next be going off about big guvmint and those DFH environmentalists trying to tell them what to do. There’s a huge disconnect between what’s happening in their communities and to their businesses, and their politics on climate change. I don’t know how to change that — a lot of it is a combination of religious belief (Jesus would never let the world get too hot) and Faux News idiocy (sure it may be hotter, but Al Gore is fat and Obama’s coming for your guns). In the meantime, it’s like watching a guy who spends five minutes doubled over with a wet, hacking cough, then lights up another cigarette while observing that he can’t figure out where this danged cough is coming from.
Hill Dweller
@wasabi gasp: Again, who would do a better job in our current circumstances?
How would you proceed with a fucking insane Republican party controlling the House and filibustering every thing in the Senate?
wasabi gasp
@MikeBoyScout: You know, I’m thinking that maybe Obama is being just a little too black sometimes. Maybe he needs to lighten up a little.
Tommy
@wasabi gasp: I’ve mentioned in other comments here I am from IL. I was following Obama before most folks here and in the national media. Now I am a far, far left liberal. Obama was NEVER that. Not even close. He was a moderate when he served in IL and he is a moderate now. There are MANY things he does that I don’t like, but I knew that would be the case when I voted for him each time.
I’ve said this over and over in many places. I just think liberals like myself listened to his amazing speeches and projected who we are and what we think on him, without looking at his voting record.
Now it makes me sad to say this, but long ago I knew and/or have accepted we are never going to elect somebody to POTUS as liberal as myself. I don’t like it, but alas it is just a fact IMHO.
SG
@Tommy:
I get excellent bagels on Long Island at the local Bagel Boss. They run a coupon in the Pennysaver to buy 12 and get 6 free. I freeze the extras. Thaw them for 20 seconds in the microwave, then bake them uncut in an oven until they’re hot and crusty.
To me the perfect bagel is well risen, baked to a crisp, dark shine with small heat bubbles over the surface. The interior is dense and slightly chewy.
Try a bacon, egg and cheese on a bagel in the morning. Yum. I also like tuna salad. How about vidalia onion, beefsteak tomato and mayo?
IOW, anything that’s good on bread is good on a bagel. If it’s a good bagel.
Damn. It’s 3 AM and I’m hungry.
Tim I
I think Kos’ new “Don’t be a Dick” rule may have been fashioned with you in mind, Cole. Can you confirm?
I want you to know that it is quality work like this that makes me wish Charles Pierce was three times as prolific. He agrees with you mostly on the politics – but not the dickish trolling.
Tommy
@jonas: How we solve the problem is key, and these folks I mentioned are all over the place. Where I live is kind of strange. Very rural. If you just look at the R and D after the name of folks in office, you would think I live in like the most liberal place in the country that isn’t a large metro area.
Not even close. It is hard for me to tell the difference between those I vote for and a Republicans in many other parts of the nation. I mean the Congressperson I just voted for 15 or so years ago I think would have been a Republican in most other parts of this nation. I don’t like it, but alas that is the way it is.
I’ve tried to figure out why this is, and the best I can come up with is midwest sensibility. What do I mean by that. A tea party guy ran in our last Congressional election and he was laughed at, even by the Republicans I know. A perfect example is he talked religion 24/7. Well my town of 5,700 people has 14 churches. ONE OF THEM IS A MOSQUE. Nobody cares. Your religion is your own thing and people don’t talk about it. They really don’t when running for office.
He was against unions. I still have picket lines where I live, and I know NOBODY that would cross one.
I know what I just wrote might not make sense. Like those two things can not co-exist, but alas they do.
? Martin
300 billion emails are sent every day. 90 trillion per year. Fuck, I’ve got over 56,000 emails in my work account.
But that’s a 62.2222e-11 error rate. About 1 miss in 2 billion. I dare anyone to find any human endeavor with a better error rate. Anyone getting upset over this has a seriously misplaced sense of priorities for civil liberty abuses in this country.
Tommy
@SG: That Jewish deli I mentioned I think had like 80 different bagel sandwiches. But I really just like a plain bagel with some butter. When I lived in DC I was like 3 blocks from Union Station, that has a huge food court in the basement. I don’t recall the name of the place, and most were chains, but it was a sandwich place that had the most fresh bread I’ve ever had. Baked on site.
I like “simple” stuff and I’d always get their roast beef with Swiss on white bread. They’d stack the roast beef like 5 inches high. The bread was so fresh you’d leave your finger prints in it as you ate .
Now I am hungry as well …..
LT
@Omnes Omnibus: Please tell me you know I’m fucking with you.
max
The point of this post is that I am sick and tired of every time I post something that isn’t a wet kiss to Obama it’s called trolling.
Posted in that style, it’s just flamebait. At which it has been very successful. The point of an actual troll is to fool people into believing you’re serious while leaving a clue about what a big joke it all is. I haven’t seen any real trolling around here in awhile. Shitloads of flamebait though.
Not the NSA story of the day though:
This, in the WSJ, is what now qualifies as a friendly article!*** (‘reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic’ should be ‘capture roughly 75% of all IP traffic’)
The new new talking point is that need to scan the Atlanta IXP (for example) to capture ‘foreign traffic’ and they have a hard time tellign the difference between foreign traffic and not-foreign traffic. Nonsense: to capture traffic that crosses international boundaries (and thus, by definition, one end of the other of the connection is foreign) that need to scan traffic traveling over fiber cables where it enters the United States. They said that’s what they were doing, but the only reason to capture traffic at the Atlanta IXP (for example) is to store point-to-point traffic between Americans (inside the US).
Besides the fact that they’re acting like they’re talking to three-year-olds, all it means is they’re capturing traffic and filtering out the stuff they don’t want. In theory, they dump traffic between Americans. (Ha. Ha.)
They collect it, they store it, they read it without a warrant. Then they go to the FISA court and go, ‘oh, sorry, our bad’ afterwards.
That would be ‘direct access to servers’ if you’re keeping score at home. The NSA manages the filters at the telecoms. Woo.
By ‘U.S. internet communications’ they mean ‘IP packets traveling across IXP routers’. The other 25% of traffic consists of IP traffic constrained within one corporation or one house. (If you send a document over your network at home to your printer, the NSA can’t see it, because it never travels upstream.) They chose the 75% number, because it sounds a lot better than ‘the NSA captures & filters 100% of public IP traffic’. It gets better. Way down in the article…
Got that? They were scanning all traffic in & out of the US, and they didn’t see the 911 hijackers.
So they went to Bush, and told him they have to scan for traffic inside the United States, so he issued an executive order directing them to do so (just like the one authorizing torture), and they’ve been collecting American traffic ever since. When we went through all that hullabaloo in 2008, they weren’t restricting the NSA, they were legalizing the already existing programs and allowing the NSA to pass info to the FBI, the DEA and so on.
They don’t want to respect the 4th Amendment and you can’t make them, and if you try they’ll hold their breath until they turn blue, or they can dig up some good blackmail material on you.
The intelligence committees in Congress, the previous administration, and (sadly) the current administration have been stone cold lying to the courts, other members of Congress, the press and your face.
max
[‘Hello, suckers!’]
*** Having looked at the documents that Greenwald’s boyfriend possessed they now know for sure Snowden wasn’t bullshitting, and that they are burnt. This is going to be one of a series of ‘soft roll-out/damage control’ stories to appear as they try to soften the impact of assorted revelations.
wasabi gasp
The thing just ate my comment.
It wasn’t anything great or nothin’, but jeez.
SectionH
@Tommy: I guess that’s kind of why I used to think Missouri (pronounced Mizourah, right?) was a not-insane state.
I don’t have many chances to get back to STL, but damn, nostalgia… after we buried my aunt in Edwardsville [Pro Tip: cremate! will save you big $$ and you can spend the savings on scattering their ashes someplace cool like Haleakala] we went to the Missouri Botanical Gard – oh fuck, we went to Shaw’s Garden. I love that place so much.
? Martin
@max:
“The capacity to reach.” I have the capacity to buy a Ferrari, but I don’t own a Ferrari. The NSA isn’t capturing and scanning 75% of traffic. The NSA can’t capture and scan 75% of traffic. That’s literally impossible to do. But we want the NSA to have that capacity. They can’t execute a warrant against something they can’t reach.
And? How are the subpoenas supposed to be executed without the filters?
Actually they did see the 9/11 hijackers. They just didn’t quite know what they were seeing nor could they get anyone in the WH to pay attention. You don’t think our capacity to do this stuff hasn’t improved massively in the last 15 years?
Considering how much of this stuff you seem to get wrong, I’m not sure you’re the best person to measure how much lying is taking place.
wasabi gasp
If you’re out there AL, I think the spam filter got it.
New Trolls – Tempi Dispari
Tommy
@SectionH: Missouri was that way. I mean as bat shit crazy as Todd Akin might have been they still elected Claire McCaskill to the Senate. Jay Nixon is a Democrat and Governor.
But the state is getting more polarized then most. You have Kansas City and St. Louis, the only large metro areas that vote Democrat. Also Columbia, where the University of Missouri is located.
The rest of the state is like Alabama. Which is sad, cause when you lived here I don’t know how much you traveled the state, but the south of the state is as poor as anyplace in America. Makes parts of Appalachia look “rich.” I am not making this up when I say fair parts of the state don’t have running water.
Poverty at a level that I can’t put to words, but they vote for folks like Akin.
I worry IL might move in this direction. But we do have a lot more commerce so maybe it won’t.
Tommy
@? Martin: I think you are mistaken in your analysis. I used to work as a consultant for some of the largest tech firms in the world. Those that the NSA use as contractors. CSC, SAIC, EDS, well a lot more.
If you think we can’t gather 75% of Internet traffic, you are wrong. We have known since 2006 that in at least one AT&T NOC (San Fran), the NSA ran everything that came through that place through their servers. This is dumbing it down, but just split the line like you’d spilt a line in your house to get cable on two TVs.
Now where I will somewhat agree with you is that analysis as you gather more and more info gets harder. That we want to grab everything, and we can, it brings up if we can review the data in a timely fashion.
IMHO the government is so worried they might miss the next 9/11 they will just grab anything and everything. Not targeted. That is a huge issue and one folks should be screaming about.
SectionH
@Tommy: Ok, I dealt with srs lack of plumbing 20 years ago in KY. … oh. You mean Hayti and such? I was gonna say, No Way but… when I was just starting to work in Housing, I was on a survey team which found houses without running water, inside Lexington city limits. In the late 20th century.
You don’t need to put that level of poverty into words. Been there, done that.
Also too, I was born in Cape. As it turns out, my mother loathed his father…
SectionH
@SectionH: And just to be clear, Lexington fixed its small bits of ghastly housing.
SectionH
@SectionH: And just to be clear, Lexington fixed its small bits of ghastly housing.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Lemme clear up the confusion, John. “Trolling” is a fishing term. You drop a line with a shiny lure behind your boat and putter along at low speed. You’re objective is to get the fish to react to the lure the way you want them to by biting, then you haul it into the boat, take it home and cook it or mount it. Your intention when trolling is to conquer the fucking fish through trickery, not to attract the fish in order to have a conversation with it and convince it to get in your skillet.
You lay that bait out a lot. I’m not one of those people who bitches about it, but I see you do it all the time. You drop a lure in an attempt to dominate, to win rather than win over.
NotMax
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Might one tactfully suggest “or have it mounted” instead?
“Mount it” is a whole ‘nother, um, kettle of fish.
TriassicSands
@NotMax:
But…but, trolls are terrorists.
@Hunter Gathers:
Earth? Yeah, that would be a good place to start. And he certainly doesn’t have to advocate legalizing it, but simply put an end to the blatant lie that marijuana is a Schedule One drug with NO legitimate medical use. That isn’t true. Doctors know it’s not true. And Obama unless he’s a complete idiot, and we know he’s not, knows that isn’t true.
One can make a rational case for not legalizing marijuana, but one can’t make a rational case or an honest one that marijuana has no legitimate medical purpose.
TriassicSands
@Hunter Gathers:
That was weird — I got a kind of “auto-post,” before I had finished.
Anyway…
I can imagine you were making the exact same argument regarding same sex marriage a couple of years ago. The extreme ends that people go to in order to defend the indefensible regarding Obama is quite unfortunate.
Even great presidents (FDR) have been horribly wrong (Japanese Internment, court packing, for example) and deserve to be criticized and even condemned for those actions or policies. Obama’s record on human and constitutional rights, as well as the War on Drugs is abysmal. I can imagine all kinds of reasons why he thinks it is politically advantageous for him to take these positions (like how insane the Republicans are), but I can’t think of any reason — NONE — to continue to support and defend a policy (Schedule I) that is clearly a lie. With more and more states easing penalties for marijuana possession and Washington and Colorado legalizing it, the president has ample political cover to take the baby step of treating marijuana honestly and at least reclassifying it as a Schedule II drug.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NotMax:
I thought about that and left it as is on purpose. Consider yourself trolled for humor’s sake.
TriassicSands
@Tommy:
Yeah, but the way the wingers respond to that is simply to say: Well, it may be real, but humans aren’t causing it and even if humans are causing it, if we try to do something about it (which won’t work), we’ll destroy the economy. Watching the snakes on the Right slither from 1) not happening to 2) not anthropogenic to 3) economically disastrous to try to deal with has been pretty disgusting, but it’s business as usual for the Republicans.
TriassicSands
@MikeBoyScout:
Well, he could have been if his mother, like the woman in Tennessee, had chosen to name him “Messiah.” We can be thankful she didn’t, because I’m fairly certain that name would have eliminated any possibility that he could become president.
Note to mothers and fathers: If you don’t want your child to grow up to be president, name him (or her) “Messiah.”
TriassicSands
@SectionH:
As someone who once had a summer job working for the Army Corps of Engineers moving a cemetery that was going to be flooded by the construction of a dam, there are better reasons than saving money for not being buried. Let’s just say that the greater the effort to “preserve” the body, the bigger the mess we found. The most recent burials were in “vaults” (concrete or steel enclosures for the casket), but those before that were not something you want to view at dinnertime.
Cremation is forever. Burial may not be.
danielx
@Tommy:
At this point I’m waiting for a TSA spokesperson to proclaim that since legs and feet are integral to walking (a form of transportation, amirite?) that anybody may be searched at any time they are outside their own homes. Hey, why not?
David Koch
UR Troll-fu is weak, Colehopper
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s10balloon&r=36
This months traffic is projected to fall 11% from last month and plunge a whooping 40% from last August.
Pretty soon they’re rename this blog “Heaven’s Gate”.
Face it Colehopper, the dawgs ain’t eat’n da new nsa dawg foo
Marc
Yeah, I wonder what was driving traffic in August of an election year?
Did somebody steal our favorite Koch brother’s handle? Not up to your usual standards.
sherparick
I believe one can criticize the President from the left (and in that sense move the Overton Window somewhat in the right direction on the National Security and Economic issues (where his repeated swallowing of neo-liberal Rubinomic tropes and affection for the members of Robert Rubin’s boy club has both Paul Krugman and me hitting our heads against the wall), but still ultimatelly support him since he is our Leader. I read two other blog entries that feel an affinity with on this matter. First Steve M. at “No More Mister Nice Blog.” http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/08/in-defense-of-emoprogs-and-o-bots-but.html#links
“…I think that’s a distorted portrait of Obama’s most fervent defenders. Yes, it describes some — but many of his defenders sincerely believe the Greenwald/Snowden narrative oversells the intrusive nature of what the NSA is doing.
Beyond that, there are people who see the Obama presidency as perpetually hamstrung and under assault by the right — which it is. They look around the country and see voting rights and abortion rights and the social safety net under assault in every state controlled by Republicans — and maybe Obama hasn’t exactly made his presidency an oasis of progressivism, but they see that he’s at least holding the line against the worst the Republicans would do if they had the chance. They’re weighing NSA surveillance and drones against all that — against the fact that we still have a health care law and Medicare hasn’t been voucherized and gay people can serve openly in the military and President Romney didn’t get to sign the Paul Ryan budget. I think that’s why they’re “O-bots.”
In my initial response to the Greenwald/Snowden revelations, I guess I was one of them. I didn’t want this presidency brought down or hamstrung further by the NSA story, especially given the unlikelihood of any actual changes to the surveillance regime.
I feel I have a foot in both camps now — I’m angry about what the NSA is doing, but I still want to defend this presidency, if only because of the vile nature of its enemies. But I understand the fervor of both sides.”
And Mark Kleiman at the Washington Monthly and Reality Based Community. http://www.samefacts.com/2013/08/barack-obama/confessions-of-an-obamabot/
“…My support hasn’t stopped me from being bitterly critical at times. The pre-trial maltreatment of Bradley Manning was a crime, a disgrace, and a blunder, and if it wasn’t ordered from the White House it still should have been stopped from the White House. The obsession with leaks strikes me as both misplaced and weird. And both seem more surprising from Obama than they would have from, say, Bill Clinton. And while I understand the political landmines surrounding drugs and crime, the President could have done – could now be doing – more to make the public aware how stupidly evil it is to keep 1% of the adult population behind bars.
On surveillance, I’d be happy to see a clampdown on what the NSA is allowed to vacuum up and whom it’s allowed to share it with. (And I don’t sense that Obama would be especially unhappy, though he’s clearly not going to lead the charge.)
What the emo-progs refuse to remember – now, and in the run-up to the 2010 election – that I never for a moment forget is that, whatever the failings of Barack Obama the human being, “Barack Obama” the political persona is the leader of the Democratic Party (and thus, effectively, of the entire progressive coalition) in a battle with a well-organized, well-funded, and utterly dedicated plutocrat-theocrat-racist-misogynist-obscurantist-ecocidal Red Team, whose lunatic extremism is now actually a threat to republican governance. If I’m reluctant to help Rand Paul and Glenn Greenwald add NSA! to Benghazi! and IRS! and Solyndra! and all the other b.s. pseudo-scandals designed to make Obama into Richard Nixon, it’s not because I’m in love with “The One:” it’s because, for good or ill, the political fortunes of the cause I care about are now tied to Obama’s political fortunes…”
Finally, Kleiman goes on to quote Winston Churchill on what should be the general policy of those who support the leader of a political party that represents our interests and ideals:
“Again, this isn’t hero-worship, though Obama is, in fact, one of my heroes; it’s just practical politics. As Churchill said,
“The loyalties which centre upon Number One are enormous. If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed. But this last extreme process cannot be carried out every day.”
What makes me want to punch the occasional hippie or emo-prog is their tendency to carry pole-axes with them at all times. The catastrophes of 1994 and 2010 resulted in part from that tendency, and the resulting depressed Democratic turnout.
I still have hopes for 2014 and 2016, and I’ll be damned if I’ll do anything to help the Red Team win.”
Ultimately you have to support your team and your team’s quarterback, even if he calls a shitty play from time to time.
MomSense
Jeebus Cole but you are really missing the forest for the trees with this. This President called for repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force in fucking May and you have ignored it completely in favor of following whatever laser light toy Snowden, Greenwald, et al have dangled in front of you. Meanwhile Republicans are disenfranchising people from the fundamental right to vote and enacting laws that make women’s uteri the property of the state to barely a murmur from you.
As someone who was actually caught up in George W’s warrantless wiretapping scheme because of my involvement with a bunch of mostly septuagenarian peace activists, please excuse me for not freaking out now. Simply put, I survived Bush’s warrantless wiretapping and you will survive Obama’s legal program.
And quit it with the Messiah thing. It is just meant to be condescending. As my Mom said about the President (to prove her bona fides for you nincompoops, she was shot at while pregnant with my sister and holding my hand for her opposition to the Vietnam war) “he’s a good man and the best one we have had in generations so we should get behind him and fight”.
As progressives we hadn’t made much progress on important issues since fucking Nixon. The 80s and 90s were a disaster even before W smashed everything to hell. So excuse me if I don’t bash the President and the most productive years for making actual progress in decades.
different-church-lady
As far as I can remember, the person who calls you a troll the most is you.
sherparick
Also, Greenwalds and Julian Assange’s favorite American politician, Rand Paul, states that Bradley Manning should enjoy his next 35 years at Ft. Leavenworth.
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/08/so-would-president-rand-paul-pardon.html#links
“Sen. Paul reasoned that there need to be some laws that protect certain secrets and that Manning put many lives at risk by releasing millions of pages “willy-nilly”. His main concern is that whistle-blowers break laws in order to reveal state secrets.
“There do have to be laws to protect some secrets. I think if you’ve got the, you know, the plans on how to make a nuclear bomb that is a state secret. If you give that to the enemy, that is being treasonous,” said the Senator from Kentucky, “Even if you reveal it, you just have to have laws against that. What Manning did was just willy-nilly, just released millions of pages of things and I think some people have said there is potentially some harm from that. You know individual agents that could have been killed or put at risk from this. So there is a problem with that. So I just can’t support that.”
I think the strongest argument for clemency in Manning’s case is comparison of his sentence to the sentences and out right acquittals for various Marines and Soldiers who have committed war crimes, and this does not even take into account the CIA and civilian contractors who tortured and unlawfully killed hundreds, or the Bush-Cheney officials who sanctioned these actions.
Baud
@MomSense:
Good comment.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Recursive trolling is the most difficult and sophistated trolling ever invented.
Another Bot Splainer
@sherparick: Great comment. I read somewhere at the beginning of this whole mess that it would divide the Republicans. I don’t see it, seems as if its dividing the left way more. So prepare for a depressed 2014 turnout. I don’t think we want to see what will happen if the Republicans regain the majority in the Senate.
Baud
And now I’m going to have this goddamn song stuck in my head all day.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: Interesting diatribe. I won’t speak for others, but on threads about Manning or Snowden I comment about Manning or Snowden. On threads about the Zimmerman trial, I comment on that.
There are a lot of things going on that I have strong opinions on that I have not commented on because the opportunity has not presented itself. without hesitation I look forward to engaging in conversations on the topics you have brought up. I hope those threads appear soon. Why don’t you email John and ask him?
I so look forward to your always entertaining interpretation of my comments.
Keith G
@sherparick: Your analysis of the 2010 is not correct. Democratic turnout in that election was fairly normal for a midterm election. It was not depressed. Unchallenged assertions of incorrect information allowed the GOP to energize its base and other low information voters.
gogol's wife
@MomSense:
Excellent comment.
In the original post — “I would probably vote for him?” That makes me sick.
ETA: I mean, “I think I would vote for him.” Same difference.
hoodie
@sherparick: Are you saying Obama is the Joe Flacco of politicians?
Emma
@MomSense: I was planning a rant but between the Kleiman link and yours it’s all been said. Thank you.
jonst
thank you John…been waiting for this from you for a long time. I salute you.
cleek
waahhhhhh
don’t antagonize your readers and they won’t antagonize you back. it’s really pretty simple.
chopper
apparently, trolls like ponies.
LAC
@fuckwit: a double men to that! It is called reality and time to wake up. If you do not understand that, then blog bitching – as entertaining as it is-is just that. Pointing out facts or political reality is not accusing Cole of trolling.
Rex Everything
This is the truth, which you, Cole, will never be forgiven for stating plainly.
OH AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT: I’ve been reading this blog awhile, and someone needs to point out plain English, just once, that T&H is hated because he’s about six times as intelligent as most any other commenter here, and his posts have this irksome tendency to cut through bullshit like a knife through butter. Seriously. I’ve seen the guy be a genuine asshole like, maybe, once.
(And also: he once brought up the rather inconvenient fact that statutory rape does not necessarily, always, de facto = non-consensual sex. That the Balloon Juice faithful by and large took this as an opportunity to label him a child molester, and have tried their damndest ever since to make the label stick, speaks volumes about the Balloon Juice faithful.)
It’s a fine thing when Cole and Anne keep right on “trolling” despite the wrath of a shitass commentariat that’s utterly unworthy of them.
LAC
@Emma: Ditto! Momsense, you said exactly what I was thinking.
T. Scheisskopf
There is Lox, and then there is Lox. Katz’s Deli makes that abundantly clear, in practice.
While you are there, try the chopped liver, too. Oh hell, try everything. It is well worth the pilgrimage.
On the other hand, Scottish Smoked Salmon on toast points can be used in favor of the argument that God Loves You and Wants You To Get Fatter.
Joey Giraud
@NotMax:
The word “trolling” was intended to describe someone posting “Linux Sucks” on a Usenet group devoted to discussing kernel configuration.
A troll must distract from the serious, rational business at hand with an emotional bomb. It’s almost impossible to do that here.
LAC
@Rex Everything: Seriously, this is the funniest thing I have ever read here. Are you high?
BWHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!!
Rex Everything
@Joey Giraud: Fag!
Joey Giraud
@Rex Everything:
Heh. I see what you did.
Carry on with your serious business now.
Jane2
So much melodrama. Your corner of the blog is turning into a defense of what you think and some are falling on you like a pack of rabid baby squirrels on their momma who’s trying to wean/outrun them.
If your commenters don’t like what you’ve posted, fuck em….they can start their own blog. If some commenters hate another commenter, fuck em….they can relive high school elsewhere.
kindness
I propose we have a Balloon Juice 4/20/XX celebration held in multiple locations in honor of John’s trolliness. God know I’d fire up to honor that.
burnspbesq
@Rex Everything:
So, have you missed the dozens of times he has called soonergrunt a murderer? Or do you consider that not offensive?
Please.
hildebrand
@Rex Everything: Ted and Hellen is a plant. Pure and simple. Always has been. He and Cole are like the seeming rival speakers in Speaker’s Corner – after they are done, they nip off to the pub for a few pints and to laugh at the rubes who get riled listening to their shtick.
Think about it, it is August, the doldrums for the politically slanted universe, people are bored, numbers are sagging, excitement is low, so what better way to get everything percolating then to step out with a good bit of chum (I love this, I can mix so many metaphors, it is not even funny – woo hoo!) to get the blood in the water and set off the frenzy.
Cole’s latest is no different then when we used to throw rotten apples at cars – you wanted to get their goat (and rotten apples never did any real or lasting damage) and get them all pissed off – it was fun.
That these are serious issues worthy of serious discussions is completely besides the point – this is a blog, in the summer, when the heat and boredom has completely short-circuited our ability to think rationally, about anything. Check back in few weeks when everything is getting back to normal. Also, check back in when all of the ‘revelations’ have finally been dribbled out and we can get some real perspective on the NSA mess. This is one of those moments when our collective political ADHD is not helping. We need to get the whole picture, and this slow leak is not helping anybody but the cable news channels and the blogs prop up their low summer numbers. We need everything out there, then we can start to talk about all of this stuff sensibly. Likewise, we need to wrap this stuff up into the larger conversation about all civil liberties, but we will not be able to do that until we get past the sensationalist part of the tale. In many ways, we are now at the point where we are all following the White Bronco down the highway. Commenting and theorizing now is almost pure guess work, we simply don’t have enough to work with. We have some, but it is the very beginning of the research, and you can’t jump to conclusions yet. You can set up your hypotheses, and get a sense of where you are going, but it will take some time to be thorough, and accurate. Patience, though, is not our collective strong suit, and it doesn’t drive the numbers in a very satisfying manner. So, instead we get what we have been getting.
Cole is a businessman, first and foremost, and while this blog isn’t his livelihood, it still does spin a bit of money, and for blogs, that only happens if the people play the game, and people only play the game if they are invested. This is not trolling, it is seeding the investment.
Lastly, just remember folks, T&H is a part of the show. He is the heel. Its his job to get everyone going.
Rex Everything
@hildebrand: You have the knowing-&-savvy pose down, but your stuff like just doesn’t have the juice, man. “T&H is a part of the show. He is the heel.” —Nah. That’s not it at all.
Citizen_X
Ooh, ooh! I know who’s responsible for most of the violence related to the drug trade! As a matter of fact, I have their very phone number right here! Are you ready to take this down? It’s nine. One. One.
NR
NOTHINGBURGER!!!!!!!!
Ted & Hellen
@NotMax:
And don’t forget the word RAPE. Everything is rape now so nothing is rape.
And don’t forget the word RACIST. Everything, including criticism of BO, is racist now, so nothing is racist.
LAC
@NR: Exactly… I know you are praying and hoping that someone – anyone – in NSA read your emails and is sending black helicopters to your home, but ” To: NR From:Mom Re: Not dating? Why?” isn’t going to get it going on.
A Humble Lurker
@Omnes Omnibus:
It was shot in Chicago, I know that. Heh, in the second movie, there’s a chase through a train station me and my family have frequented for years. We got a kick out of that when we saw the movie in the theaters.
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: And don’t forget “NOT SOLD” because everything you paint falls under that.
Jane2
@Ted & Hellen: Isn’t that the truth. Today, I read a story about a woman complaining that someone telling her that her skirt was riding up or some such helpful comment was “body terrorism”. “Bigotry” has become “racism” and every damn thing that upsets someone or other is a “tsunami”.
Ella in New Mexico
Those two quotes pretty much came out of my mouth the other day. I continuously amazed at how you, a chunky-ex Republican white dude with no kids living in West Virginia mirrors my own feelings on so many, many things. God love you, John Cole.
Anna in PDX
@Keith G: I also felt troubled by that. I usually lurk, and seldom post unless it’s a subject I feel I have something valuable to contribute about. I have some areas of specialized knowledge and/or experience. Civil rights issues are not one of them because I am white and while an ally on those issues, I tend to think my job in those issues is to shut up and listen to people of color. Therefore I am silent. But I still read the threads. So how will anyone know I am there? And how will anyone know I am not?
Ripley
Preach it, Brother Sandusky!
NobodySpecial
@Rex Everything: Actually, yeah, it is, if anyone paid attention. Why do you think he and Cole exchange emails so much? Cole knows who T & H is, and that’s why he gives T & H a far longer leash than Matoko ever had here.
T & H is ignorable. Better trolls are JSF and Corner, who do it pretty much without official sanction, and still get away with it. And the conservadems/Reagan Democrats who flocked to this site during 2008 and tried policing it the first time under the benevolent gaze of Lord Stuck get irritated as all hell when someone pokes their balloons.
BobS
@eemom: You’re one hateful piece of work. How did your husband make his escape- did he pack up his shit and drive away or did he just figure ‘fuck it’ on his way to the car and hang himself in the garage? @Rex Everything: I agree with you about Ted & Helen. He & She are the source of some of the better comments on these threads and any assholish behavior Him & Her display are usually in response to assholish comments of Obama buttsniffers who take offense at being reminded their guy has a flaw or two.@hildebrand: That’s funny, “plant” is exactly what I’ve thought of when reading your comments.
A Humble Lurker
@Rex Everything:
T&H used to be this guy. And in all ways except his name still is. Would you like to retract your statement?
TriassicSands
@NotMax:
Police officers performing vaginal ultrasounds…what could possibly go wrong with that?
MCA1
@Omnes Omnibus: Winner right off the bat. I fully trust it was smoked salmon, but neither the texture nor the taste of same fits with bagels. Gravlax I could see, since it’s closely related to lox or Nova, but not smoked salmon.
West Virginians, man. What shall we do with those people?
MCA1
@SG: Clear, but, alas, incorrect. It is NOT true that “all lox is smoked salmon.” Nova lox is cold smoked after brining. Plain old lox lox is not smoked after brining. In that way, it’s closer to Scandinavian gravlax, which is sort of brined, if salt curing under a brick can be considered brining. Gravlax, then, is essentially the same as Scottish smoked salmon except for the smoked part and the specific spice mix in the dry brine. In other words:
– wet brined, then served = lox
– wet brined, then smoked, then served = Nova lox
– dry brined, then served = gravlax
– dry brined, then smoked, then served = Scottish or Scandinavian smoked salmon
NobodySpecial
@BobS: Un fucking cool. Eemom might be a jackass, but you’re so far out of line you’re perpendicular. Or perhaps you’d be brave enough to share YOUR personal life for someone else to mock?
Zerotense
@hildebrand:
If you guys want to see trolling, how about this response to the above:
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.”
Now that’s trolling!
Ted & Hellen
@Hunter Gathers:
Christ.
What could be more racist than this moronic question?
So not only should BO be constrained by the irrelevant fact of his racial makeup in what policies to promote/adopt, he should go another step and take into account the fee fees and bigotry of insane right wing nutjob racists when doing so.
Idiot.
Rex Everything
@A Humble Lurker:
Yeah. I know. Hence my comment “he once brought up the rather inconvenient fact that statutory rape does not necessarily, always, de facto = non-consensual sex. That the Balloon Juice faithful by and large took this as an opportunity to label him a child molester, and have tried their damndest ever since to make the label stick, speaks volumes about the Balloon Juice faithful.”
What are you, brain damaged? You just proved my entire fucking point. Tool.
Ted & Hellen
This is@LAC:
Brand new…and SOLD
Crayons and velvet make business good. :D
Sorry you’re bitter.
wasabi gasp
@Hill Dweller: I tried replying to your question twice, but something in it is triggering the filter. Fuck it, I’m done.
Parrotlover77
The NSA story and the recent big reveal of 0.000000007% of domestic emails accidentally captured AND DISCOVERED BY INTERNAL AUDIT is as big of a nontroversy as Bengazi.
The “dronez” issue is at least three issues. CIA drones probably even amongst the obotiest commenter would best be described as a necessary evil. I personally don’t like it but it’s easy for me to criticize from my couch because I don’t follow the whole thing closely enough. I’m a bad liberal like that.
The domestic drone as surveillance SLIPPERY SLOPE POLICE STATE argument is just silly on its face. Sorry, it is.
The cell phone thing is actually really bad. I wouldn’t expect any justice department to take the other side, but I hate they are making an issue of it and disagree completely that they are trying to get the courts to allow that.
And the pot thing was unnecessary. Changing the federal policy is probably impossible right now at this point but Obama could have dodged the question without blowing the DEA.
BUT I GUESS IM JUST A BOTSPLAINER AND HOMOPHOBE FOR THINKING GG IS AN IDIOT ABOUT THE NSA
In case that went over your head, THAT is the trolling part of your posts, John. Not the content, the assholishness.
Still love you and your pets.
Ted & Hellen
@A Humble Lurker:
Proudly so, homophobe troll.
Why don’t you enumerate for me in detail what you think is wrong with that very clear, concise statement, moron?
Let’s go full Sandusky here tonight and take the thread to 600, me versus the panty sniffers?!
BobS
@NobodySpecial: I don’t know the first fucking thing about her personal life, however judging from the never-ending bitterness I read here she’s probably fucked it up the way most people with borderline personality disorders fuck up their lives and frequently those of people around them, and I’m pretty sure that if I ever had poor enough judgement to end up in a relationship with someone like her I’d either be inventing a new identity to hide from them forever or killing myself.
mclaren
Goddamn trolls. Those bastards have been trolling us for 240 fucking years with shit like “He who gives up liberty for security gains neither” and “Government is not eloquent, it is not reason, it is force — like fire, it is a fearful servant and a terrible master.”
Troll motherfuckers!
They even wrote this damned piece of trolling called “the constitution” and it’s apparently still around. We need to get rid of these trolls once and for all. Burning the fucking thing.
That’ll teach those troll bastards.
mclaren
@NobodySpecial:
No, actually, he’s right on target. John Cole has remarked on eemom’s cruelty and sociopathic hatefulness.
At a certain point, you don’t need to eat a whole egg to know it’s rotten. A sufficient dose of the envenomed spite dripping from eemom’s fangs provides a good enough portrait of her character as a failed human being to draw solid conclusions.
mclaren
@Parrotlover77:
And how do you like your job in the basement of the Pentagon astroturfing justifications for the unjustifiable police state America is turning into?
I really have to wonder about guys like this, who are obviously enlisted pfc noncoms sitting around sipping Fresca in some SCIF in the Pentagon, frantically trying to gin up some way to justify all this Stalinist police state so they can get their ticket punched and make it to corporal…do these guys ever, like, look in the mirror in the morning when they shave and wonder “How did I turn into such a fucking quisling?”
Either way, tell your superior officer it’s not working. The American people are onto this astroturfing horseshit. We know when some military pfc sitting in front of some Pentagon computer is spewing out bullshit because he wants that promotion and desperately needs to make master sergeant so he and his girlfriend can afford the rent on that great new Georgetown apartment they’ve been looking at.