Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

No one could have predicted…

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The willow is too close to the house.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Everybody saw this coming.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open thread

Reader Interactions

376Comments

  5. 5.

    The Moar You Know

    What a sad day for the former Empire, having to sell off the postal service to balance the budget.

    @schrodinger’s cat: Did no one over there take a look at what happened to our Postal Service when it was spun off – in direct contravention of the Constitution, by the way, which explicitly requires the government maintain a postal service – at all? Not even take a glance at Wikipedia or anything? First class fucking disaster for everyone involved.

    The British people are going to regret that move.

  6. 6.

    srv

    Not happy with her eleventy-billions:

    Warner Bros. is betting there’s still plenty of magic left in J.K. Rowling.

    The studio announced a massive new partnership with the the British author to produce a new film franchise set on the world created in the Potter books — with the story kicking off in the most magical of places, New York City.

    The first movie in ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ series will be written by Rowling herself and set in New York City 70 years before Potter’s story.

  8. 8.

    Karen in GA

    Even though it celebrates the awful Roman empire..

    Caliiiiiiiiigula, Caligula!

    What? I have a job interview in a couple of hours and I’m tense. Slack — it, for me, you must cut.

  9. 9.

    piratedan

    @srv: who says she isn’t happy? Can’t she simply be excited to see something else that she created in that world “come to life?”.. Cripes I would love for one of my short stories to be published and then potentially realized into film

  10. 10.

    Botsplainer

    Today sucks. Troubled 19 year old showed her ass for 40 straight minutes last night, wife kept me awake due to being on Sydney time still, dog kept peeing everywhere, and my car tire went flat halfway into a trip to a court appearance 3 hours away. The other front was just as bad, I already had an appointment for ball joints, an alignment and tires for tomorrow morning; I set that Monday.

    The tire shop in the town I was towed to had no new tires to fit, and their deliveries are at the end of the day. I wound up paying $80 for two used tires to get home.

  12. 12.

    The Moar You Know

    “The condition of the frog, however, is uncertain.”

    @scav: Not really. Either instantaneously dead from the thermal blast or instantaneously dead from the physical blast wave. I’m kind of surprised that the frog corpse shown in that picture is still in one piece.

  16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    @The Moar You Know:

    in direct contravention of the Constitution, by the way, which explicitly requires the government maintain a postal service

    False, and not even a good try.

    Article I grants to Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads. Nowhere does it require that that power be exercised. You don’t need to have taken a Con Law course to understand this distinction.

  17. 17.

    WereBear

    @piratedan: Ms. Rowling sticks up for social safety nets there in Britain, “brought reading back” for millions of children, and made lots of Xantian heads explode here in the US.

    Also, she does well, but it’s a teeny fraction of what the Wal-Mart heirs have…

    I will simply say to her “You go, girl!”

  18. 18.

    TaMara (BHF)

    So we’re under water. Four straight days of rain and a heavy downpour overnight caused flash flooding, cutting off a couple of towns, shutting down not only the major interstate (I-25), but many of the smaller state highways, as well. Crazy.

    But Al Gore is fat and the ice caps are growing, so no need to worry. Excuse me while I head out to see if I can locate a guy named Noah. We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

  19. 19.

    scav

    @The Moar You Know: Apparently there is a Goldilocks zone for Orbital Frog Launch as well. I was rather impressed with the odds of him being appropiately oriented over and above the simple in frameness. Focus entirely meets Cole household standards.

  21. 21.

    Belafon

    @srv: She created a rather immense world and only explored a little of it. Look at what Asimov did in his. That she can come back to it isn’t a bad thing. And if someone is willing to pay her for it, good on her.

  22. 22.

    YAFB

    @WereBear:

    She also pays her damn taxes without complaint!

    I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

  23. 23.

    Amir Khalid

    @piratedan:
    I’m curious to see what kind of film gets made out of a Hogwarts textbook on magical creatures, and why it should be set in early 20th century New York. I do hope that Warner didn’t twist Rowling’s arm to get her to set a movie in the US, but then again the arm of the world’s wealthiest writer should be pretty much impossible to twist.

  25. 25.

    Suffern ACE

    @srv: Oh great. Why can’t the damn magical beasts go someplace else? First we get the Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes buying up coops and driving up the the prices so they can have pied-à-terre, and now we have to compete with magical beasts who’ll buy every 300sq studio because they know they can shrink to fit anything in there.

  29. 29.

    piratedan

    @Amir Khalid: supposedly she pitched the idea to WB with a screenplay, and since they already have the background for how to handle the special effects in this world (no small thing there) I would have faith that it should be relatively kid friendly and fun for the fans of the series. Besides, she was pleased with how WB worked with her and Kloves on the screenplays and bowed to her thoughts while the movies were in progress so that the films would have the essentials down right while she was still writing the novels.

  35. 35.

    Jacel

    If you listen to the whole “Arthur” album, Kinks songs written for a never-completed television drama, the concept of imperialism is put through the wringer by songs such as “Some Mother’s Son”.

  36. 36.

    eemom

    @Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:

    I was wondering that too, the question you asked on the last thread which prompted that reply.

    And come to think of it, Zandar has also disappeared.

    What does it say about this, um, community, that nobody even mentioned those departures…..while T&H is referenced on almost every thread, even when he’s not around?

  39. 39.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    And her name is V! I!. C! T! oh oh oh oh oh, r, er ….whatever…. VICTORIA!

    Wait maybe I have the wrong song.

    She comes around my continent. Just around early modern.
    Yeah she make me feel so exploited. She make me feel not at all alright.

    Marchin down my street. Comin in my town yeah. Knockin on my door….

  41. 41.

    muddy

    @eemom: Probably because T&H keeps himself present in people’s minds, the others did not stay here eternally taunting the commentariat. Because class and etc I’m figuring.

  42. 42.

    Cacti

    A hearty congrats to the NY Times for giving Op-Ed space to Vladimir Putin, the president of a country that jails and murders journalists, so that he can spew unchallenged propaganda.

    Obama Derangement Syndrome, does our media has it?

  43. 43.

    Botsplainer

    @piratedan:

    I see a few of Zandar’s and ABL’s tweets over at LGF.

    I always enjoyed Zandar and ABL. Elon was OK, except I didn’t like that libsyn player showing up as if I clicked it, because I don’t do online audio talks.

  44. 44.

    srv

    @eemom: I listened to a few podcasts, blah, not that interesting. Few are. More people joking around than informative. I doubt I’d listen to a JC podcast, for that matter.

    As for Zandar, some good and some weak posts. Other FP’ers have their detractors but they apparently feed on the hate, but no doubt Zandar’s were more vociferous.

    Too many posters as it is. DougJ has gotten too hippie. But John is angry sober now, so that’s a win.

    And y’alls obsession with that commenter, sign of someone’s mental illness.

  45. 45.

    J.D. Rhoades

    I liked Elon, but I come very briefly to this place, often during short breaks in writing and day jobbbery, and I don’t have time or privacy to listen to a lengthy podcast. I think podcasting at BJ was a failed experiment. I’d like to see Elon and ABL back here posting.

  47. 47.

    Cacti

    @Botsplainer:

    I always enjoyed Zandar and ABL. Elon was OK, except I didn’t like that libsyn player showing up as if I clicked it, because I don’t do online audio talks.

    And we seemed to lose our African American front pagers right around the time our bloghost decided to fully submerge his head up the keester of Glenn Greenwald.

    Go figure.

  48. 48.

    Suffern ACE

    So the First Lady is apparently going to be speechifying this afternoon at my old high school. Which is kind of exciting for folks and probably beats the speakers they got when I was in high school by a wide margin. Not exciting enough to make me want to go back to high school, though.

  49. 49.

    Jane2

    @eemom: Re T&H: because some commenters are so involved in online pissing matches, they can’t give it a rest. Ever.

    As to the others, maybe they should say good-bye….I can’t tell if someone has left or not. For example, Randinho is a soccer-season only poster, and that’s great. ABL has her own thriving blog…I’m assuming it got to be too much, and why post somewhere where half your commenters are outright hostile to you?

  50. 50.

    gbear

    Just adding my Kinksbottic two cents that the full name of album that Victoria kicks off is “Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)”.

    ‘Some Mother’s Son’, ‘Shangri-La’, and ‘Mr.Churchill Says’ are incredible indictments against the abandonment of England’s middle class. No one in music was writing better social commentary than Ray Davies at that time.

  53. 53.

    Mike E

    Ray Davies should be declared a national treasure just for making a baby with Chrissie Hynde, IMHO (H=hornay).

  56. 56.

    Jane2

    @J.D. Rhoades: As far as I could see, Elon used this place as a promotion for his podcast. Perhaps too many BJers feel as I do and don’t listen to podcasts, so the promotion wasn’t worth his time.

  60. 60.

    Cervantes

    Even though it celebrates the awful British empire, this song is so damn catchy.

    I love Haydn’s Kayser Lied despite what the Nazis did to it.

  61. 61.

    scav

    Guard

    Breaking news:
    Women will be allowed to become bishops in the Church of Wales following a vote at the Anglican groups meeting in Lampeter today. More details soon …

    Victoria has options in Wales.

  62. 62.

    dww44

    @Cacti: And then there was the interview this a.m. on CNBC with Jim Inhofe about the Putin interview. Inhofe, who said he wasn’t saying this in jest,told us that it was “Obama’s fault that someone like Putin would even be given a space in the NY Times to critique this country. Amazing.

    The things that Obama is responsible continues to grow. All that is made worse by plenty of pundits on the so called left criticizing Obama for losing control of the message and being so unpopular and listing things he can do to get his mojo back, like refusing to negotiate with the GOP house on debt ceiling and really really doing something about jobs.

    No wonder my far less political husband REFUSES to watch the political opining, even if he always watches the financial stuff and its diffcult to avoid Santelli and interviews with like minded politicians. It’s the reason he opposed the President going to Congress because of the sort of debate it would fuel. Not a constructive one, in his opinion.

  63. 63.

    Redshirt

    @muddy: Well, T&H is worth a 1000 Zandar or ABL or you or me according to John Cole. Soon this blog will be Cole making a one sentence post and then all the comments will be T&H talking up swinging dicks and supporting murderers. Fun!

  64. 64.

    piratedan

    @dww44: gotta love the logical fail that never seems to get challenged…..

    So how exactly is it Obama’s fault, that an independent publishing entity, gives the PR firm of a foreign government the Op-ED space to allow them to chastise our country on our positions regarding foreign policy and the upholding of civil rights….please elaborate on that Senator…..I would love to see you connect those dots…..

  65. 65.

    Suffern ACE

    @dww44: Yeah. They have CNBC on in the lobby. I just passed it. The sound was off, but the banner was “Obama vs. Putin: Who will Win?”.

    Jeebus. I don’t know. If Obama doesn’t end up having to make good on his threats, is that a loss or a win here? I’m having a tough time keeping up.

  66. 66.

    BruinKid

    I see Glenn Greenwald is now promoting the Oathkeepers because they have a pro-Snowden ad. Never mind the fact they are a right-wing militia group getting ready to overthrow our government. It feels like he’s operating under the assumption that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  69. 69.

    Yatsuno

    @Redshirt:

    T&H talking up swinging dicks and supporting murderers and pedophiles

    Just in case you weren’t ill enough. Oh and he’s a 9/11 troofer too.

  70. 70.

    Cacti

    @BruinKid:

    Greenwald’s only “civil rights” lawyering was for a neo nazi and his first amendment right to solicit murder.

    I don’t think he’s ever had much of a problem with groups like the Oathkeepers.

  72. 72.

    Cacti

    @piratedan:

    Things that will never happen in Russia:

    Barack Obama is given Op-Ed space in a prominent newspaper to address the country’s anti-gay laws.

  74. 74.

    ranchandsyrup

    @BruinKid: Glenzilla sez that he neutrally linked to the Reason article and that is not support. Sigh. His twitter feed is full of conservatives sticking up for him. The comments at the Reason article he linked to are fairly unhinged with support for Oathkeepers.

  75. 75.

    muddy

    @Redshirt: I loved it last night when T&H said to Mnemosyne that she would never get unbanned from her home address, like he is in charge of that. Because she is “a menace”, WTF mirrors, glass houses, pot kettle wev.

    And sometimes it seems like he is the boss of John, I don’t get it. If T&H gets into it with another poster and John gives a timeout, he always gives it to both, even tho the shit was wildly disproportionate. This is fine when dealing with children (“I don’t care who started it, both of you stop!) but is kind of fucked up here.

  76. 76.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @Cacti:

    And we seemed to lose our African American front pagers right around the time our bloghost decided to fully submerge his head up the keester of Glenn Greenwald.

    How in the world would those events be connected?

    I think it’s more likely to be tied into the mysterious death of Balloon Juice’s most prominent African American commenter, General Stuck.

    Check the timeline. See if I’m right.

  78. 78.

    Chyron HR

    @Yatsuno:

    Oh, be fair. He’s expressed support for many forms of rape, be it man-on-child, inmate-on-smaller-inmate or multiple-athletes-on-unconscious-girl.

  79. 79.

    Cacti

    In response to the Putin Op-Ed:

    I hope Putin has taken adequate protections. Now that he is a Russian journalist his life may be in grave danger!—

    -Garry Kasparov

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @Cacti:

    Things that will never happen in Russia:

    I can see it happening if Putin thought he could make political hay with it, like having a newspaper burning or arresting the journalists or something.

  82. 82.

    MikeJ

    @Suffern ACE:

    The sound was off, but the banner was “Obama vs. Putin: Who will Win?”.

    It depends on how you define win. I foolishly thought the goal was to get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons. The media seems to believe the goal is to bomb Syria.

  83. 83.

    Suffern ACE

    @piratedan: I suppose that you could argue that if Putin was afraid of Obama, he wouldn’t dare write the piece. Although we didn’t exactly vote for Obama because we preferred a world where everyone was afraid of us.

    We aren’t actually at war with Russia over Syria. I don’t have a problem with the Times publishing it. There have been far worse sorts given space on the editorial page.

  84. 84.

    pamelabrown53

    @Jane2: I wish ABL or Zandar still posted here because it’s extremely important for any productive conversation to have POC as FPers.

    IMO, when the GOS purged many AA posters it started its free fall into white, dudebro extremist land. Conspiracy theorists abound and too often mirrors the teabaggers.

  86. 86.

    Redshirt

    @muddy: Oh, I’m sure that’s just more trolling. It’s a new level though, so kudos to it!

    Cole should really have nothing to do with running this blog. Post all his witty insights, but let someone else manage it. It’s not his Matt Forte.

  87. 87.

    slim shady

    Can we talk about what Cole and his cat had for breakfast? I’m worried about him, since Pittsburgh no longer has a professional football team to follow.

  88. 88.

    Trollhattan

    @TaMara (BHF): Very sorry you’re going through all that–stay safe.

    We could use some o’ dat rain, three states to the west, so maybe we can help one another out?

  92. 92.

    Jane2

    @Redshirt: For a blog that’s getting about 40k visits per day, I’d say Cole’s done pretty darned well.

    Of course, 39k of them could be Greenwald and T&H haters….

  93. 93.

    piratedan

    @MikeJ: well look at it from the media’s POV… disarmement isn’t exactly camera friendly and is a ratings nothingburger, whereas bombing Syria may require a set update, maybe even it’s own special desk, a cool new graphic and a way to use big scary words and practicing our sad faces when we show wanton death and destruction, hell there might even be some orphaned kids or better yet, wounded orphaned kids and if they were Christian, wounded orphaned kids, well hell that means special correspondents and lots of panels where people talk in measured tones about tragedies and outcomes and who knows what…..

  98. 98.

    The Moar You Know

    A hearty congrats to the NY Times for giving Op-Ed space to Vladimir Putin, the president of a country that jails and murders journalists, so that he can spew unchallenged propaganda.

    Obama Derangement Syndrome, does our media has it?

    @Cacti: I never in my life thought I’d see the day when any American newspaper would print an op-ed from one of America’s enemies (hate to say it, but that’s where we are with Russia these days) prior to a military action solely in order to kneecap an American president that they’ve decided they do not like.

    If the NYT has printed an op-ed from Saddam Hussein criticizing Bush before we’d gone into Iraq, the first shot fired in that military action wouldn’t have been at Baghdad, it’d have been at the NYT headquarters. And 90% of America would have cheered.

  102. 102.

    Chyron HR

    @slim shady:

    Can we talk about what Cole and his cat had for breakfast?

    John Cole had eggs for breakfast, which he dropped on the floor, slipped on, and broke his head.

    The cat had ham and eggs for breakfast. Well, sort of ham.

  104. 104.

    Cacti

    @The Moar You Know:

    If the NYT has printed an op-ed from Saddam Hussein criticizing Bush before we’d gone into Iraq, the first shot fired in that military action wouldn’t have been at Baghdad, it’d have been at the NYT headquarters. And 90% of America would have cheered.

    I look forward to future op-eds from Robert Mugabe on clean elections, and Kim Jong Un on the need for prison reform.

  105. 105.

    shelly

    “new film franchise set on the world created in the Potter books — with the story kicking off in the most magical of places, New York City.”
    *********
    Is it really set in the Harry Potter universe? Remember reading a few years back, after the ‘Goblet’ Potter came out, with those visiting wizard schools from France and Germany. Rowling was adamant that there was never going to be a school from America.

  107. 107.

    Suffern ACE

    @The Moar You Know: WE are not enemies with Russia. And are not going to war with Russia over Syria. Russia has decided to draw a line in the sand over support for the god given right of every government to treat its people as it sees fit You can say this about Russia. It can’t be accused of being hypocritical in its ideals.

  108. 108.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    Who told you all that Captain Mnemo was banned? That isn’t true. She was just collateral damage in a script war Corner Stone and I were running on each other for four straight days. I won, of course. This isn’t my first rodeo.

  109. 109.

    Mike E

    @muddy:

    This is fine when dealing with children (“I don’t care who started it, both of you stop!) but is kind of fucked up here.

    I dunno…it may be a fitting deterrent to even engaging with the T&H ass cleavage. YMMV

  112. 112.

    Ted & Hellen

    @eemom:

    What does it say about this, um, community, that nobody even mentioned those departures…..while T&H is referenced on almost every thread, even when he’s not around?

    That we are all, you included, RACISTS.

    And that I am an honorary front pager.

    I thought everyone knew that.

  114. 114.

    piratedan

    @shelly: just because there isn’t a school, doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be magical beasts living amongst us….after all, we have the Everbloviating BoBo and a McArglebargle McArdle walking amongst us

  115. 115.

    Cacti

    @Suffern ACE:

    Russia has decided to draw a line in the sand over support for the god given right of every government to treat its people as it sees fit You can say this about Russia. It can’t be accused of being hypocritical in its ideals.

    Georgia?

  117. 117.

    Ted & Hellen

    @srv:

    And y’alls obsession with that commenter, sign of someone’s mental illness.

    I like to think I touch nerves that prefer to be left unstimulated. (Insert racist mysoginistic pedo insults here.)

    YMMV

  119. 119.

    Amir Khalid

    @shelly:
    I’d guess that America does indeed exist in Rowling’s wizarding universe. Per piratedan’s comment #29, the New York setting was in the screenplay she pitched to Warner Bros., And since the film will be about magical creatures, I guess no wizarding schools need to be involved.

  123. 123.

    kindness

    So… I’m having Game of Thrones withdrawl. I miss the drama, the fantasy and the adventure. The whole early/middle ages feel is a plus too. With that in mind we’ve started watching ‘The White Queen’ on STARZ. It’s actually been fun. Any one else taken this on?

  126. 126.

    chopper

    @Cacti:

    i did find it funny that the Butcher of Grozny got away with an op-ed asking obama to ‘cool it’ regarding the civil war in syria.

  130. 130.

    Drexciya

    @Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    The problem is somewhat deeper than Balloon Juice’s absence of black posters. More than somewhat, really. This place isn’t really a safe or conscious space for racial discussions or for posters with racially rooted perspectives, nor is it trying to be. Anything that doesn’t reflect the positional and moral ease of calling out Republican racism or doesn’t revive the simplistic triumphalism about how Republican racism will make them lose elections is, at best, met with crickets and, at worst, responded to with obvious hostility. If we’re lucky there will be some vague, tacit acknowledgment of “white privilege” (today’s watered down conceptual starting point for white people) but very few posters and almost none of the front pagers are capable of going beyond that or addressing and highlighting those who do.

    We have a Democratic party that wouldn’t exist without the primary support of people of color – Latinos and black people in particular. We have a Democratic party that was soundly rejected by every white age group and almost every demographic (fun fact: the majority of white women and white Millennials voted for Romney). And a relatively popular blog that purports to exist in the Democratic mainstream is both shockingly disconnected from and not particularly conversant in minority related issues, priorities or perspectives. And that’s in addition to them being underrepresented in the writers linked and the people posting (in comments and the front page). There is absolutely no reason for any liberal blog to be majority white or majority male, and yet, here we are, where most popular, mainstream liberal blogs – who still claim to represent liberals – have front pagers that are…majority white and majority male.

    Usually, this is ignorable and I’ve done a pretty good job ignoring it over the years. But it’s becoming hard to separate the issues we focus on here, the things we highlight, and the things that excite both the commentariat and the front pagers from the overrepresentation of a political vantage point and social perspective that has no justification in the Democratic mainstream. White people’s ability to ignore this is heavily contributing to the – for me – horrifying and growing rhetorical and political alliance of leftists and libertarians. It’s also contributing to the painful absence of social justice rooted consciousness in mainstream Democratic discourse. Balloon Juice has done better than this. It’s capable of better than this. We’re not seeing that capacity demonstrated.

    We deserve better.

    (and no, I don’t have the energy to defend this post right now)

  132. 132.

    Soonergrunt

    @shelly: I believe, but am not certain, that I saw a passing reference in one of her books to “The Salem School of Witchcraft” or some other such. I believe it was in Goblet of Fire, describing the scene at the campsite of the Quiddich World Cup.

  134. 134.

    Elizabelle

    @pamelabrown53:

    Is Zandar gone? I’d not noticed.

    Would love to see more of Dengre too.

    I wondered if people are getting (1) GOP stupidity/intransigence fatigue and (2) beyond bored with NSA and Glenn Greenwald.

    Seems like the blog is going through a bit of a trough, but that will change…

  135. 135.

    ? Martin

    @eemom:

    I was wondering that too, the question you asked on the last thread which prompted that reply.

    And come to think of it, Zandar has also disappeared.

    Yeah, they’ve been thoroughly chased off by the trolls. T&H and some others have chased off a number of regular commentators. Between the periodic bans that I’ve gotten, and Cole’s unwillingness to address any of these problem, I’ll probably wander off here soon as well.

  138. 138.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @? Martin:

    Between the periodic bans that I’ve gotten, and Cole’s unwillingness to address any of these problem, I’ll probably wander off here soon as well.

    Don’t tease me.

  141. 141.

    Baud

    @Drexciya:

    And that’s in addition to them being underrepresented in the writers linked and the people posting (in comments and the front page).

    I don’t know the racial make-up of the commenters here, but blogs generally do seem segregated.

    ETA: Half the time, I guess the wrong sex when it comes to commenters.

  143. 143.

    Draylon Hogg

    Do pay attention Doug l oh seven. Victoria does not celebrate the Empire it’s the first song on the concept album Arthur or the Decline & Fall of the British Empire. The next songs are Yes Sir, No Sir which alternates between the POV’s of an ordinary conscript and the sneering condescension of an upper class General then Some Mother’s Son which deals with the effect of war on ordinary families during WWI. The album progresses through the inter war years with Driving, a celebration of the freedom mass market automobiles gave the working class in terms of broadening their horizons with driving for pleasure, easy picnics in the country etc; Topics such as 30’s emigration are covered with Australia and Shangri La is about the stultifying effects of the British class system on the working class with people rigidly bound to narrow social strata and living in identikit social housing with the only differentiating factor being the names people would give their houses – the titular Shangri La being a popular choice.

    It’s well worth a listen it’s incisive social commentary in a variety of musical styles ranging from music hall pastiche to the Kinks only real dabble with 60’s freak out psychedelia (Shangri La). And unlike Sir Paul and Sir Mick Ray Davies never sold out, still lives in the neighbourhood he grew up in, kept up his progressive beliefs.

  145. 145.

    cckids

    @WereBear:

    Ms. Rowling sticks up for social safety nets there in Britain, “brought reading back” for millions of children, and made lots of Xantian heads explode here in the US.

    Not to mention, she’s stayed in Britain, though I’m sure she could save loads in taxes if she relocated. And she’s very vocal about the fact that she needed & used the safety nets provided by those taxes and that she is more than happy to “pay it forward”. She has also, more privately, done some extraordinary things for children with cancer & other life-threatening issues. She seems to be a great human being, & I say, more power to her!

  146. 146.

    cleek

    @Amir Khalid:

    and why it should be set in early 20th century New York

    because: sexy flappers and dapper gentleman sipping martinis.

    see also: Boardwalk Empire, Gatsby, parts of Vampire Diaries, etc..

  148. 148.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @? Martin:

    Good to know you prefer T&H over me.

    If it was up to me, you’d fight to the death and then we’d execute the winner

  150. 150.

    Mike E

    @Draylon Hogg: Nice critique, tho you had to get a gratuitous double shot in at the Stones and Beatles…I would think with either it takes up all their time just being themselves, but I can never know that. I do know the world is a better place with all three characters in it!

  151. 151.

    IowaOldLady

    @cckids: I love Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard in which she talks about the value of failing (as, she says, she so spectacularly did) and the importance of being able to imagine what life is like for other people.

  155. 155.

    Amir Khalid

    @cckids:
    I trust you’ve read The Casual Vacancy, Rowling’s first post-Potter novel, which is about the fight to preserve a part of the social safety net in a small town.

  156. 156.

    srv

    @Elizabelle: Dennis was/is awesome. His Civil War series was the best thing in the intertubes at the time.

    For those of you butthurt about John’s banning policy. Perhaps you should email him. Maybe it’s time for a petition or something.

  158. 158.

    Chyron HR

    @Amir Khalid:

    I trust you’ve read The Casual Vacancy, Rowling’s first post-Potter novel

    “No.”
    “No.”
    “No.”
    “No.”
    “No.”
    “No.”
    “Yes–I mean, no.”

  162. 162.

    gelfling545

    @srv: I understand that she would be one of the richest women in the world IF she had not given such enormous amounts to charity. I can’t fault a person for making money doing what she has an obvious talent for, especially as she uses her resources so well.

  165. 165.

    TaMara (BHF)

    UPDATE: City I live in has been cut in half by flood waters and we’ve been told to prepare to evacuate. Flash floods are unpredictable and fast. Not sure where we’d go, our neighborhood has been cut off on several sides by road closures. My place is at the top of a hill, but that can be deceptive when there are two rivers close by.

    Not worried, but I’m thinking probably not going to be a recipe thread tomorrow night. ;-)

  166. 166.

    gelfling545

    The cucumber slices are “resting” in ice to crisp before being pickled. I shall rest as well, though without ice.

  167. 167.

    No One of Consequence

    w00t!

    Kinks!

    I offer this: Take a listen to Shangri-La, the song by the Kinks. Pretty good, but notice the drum backbeat going on in like the 4th minute or so (you’ll know it when you hear it). I was floored to learn when that was recorded. So awesome. 1968-69.

    ymmv, but I love that song.

    Peace,

    – NOoC

  168. 168.

    rikyrah

    FOR KAY:

    Public universities ramp up aid for the wealthy, leaving the poor behind

    State colleges, like their private counterparts, are giving a declining share of grants to low-income students.

    Marian Wang, PROPUBLICA
    Posted: Thursday, September 12, 2013, 5:20 AM

    Shauniqua Epps was the sort of student that so many colleges say they want.

    She was a high achiever, graduating from high school with a 3.8 GPA and ranking among the top students in her class. She served as secretary, then president, of the student government. She played varsity basketball and softball. Her high-school guidance counselor, in a letter of recommendation, wrote that Epps was “an unusual young lady” with “both drive and determination.”

    Epps, 19, was also needy.

    Her family lives in subsidized housing in South Philadelphia, and her father died when she was in third grade. Her mother is on Social Security disability, which provides the family $698 a month, records show. Neither of her parents finished high school.

    Epps, who is African-American, made it her goal to be the first in her family to attend college.

    “I did volunteering. I did internships. I did great in school. I was always good with people,” said Epps, who has a broad smile and a cheerful manner. “I thought everything was going to go my way.”

    At first, it looked that way.

    Epps was admitted to three colleges, all public institutions in Pennsylvania. She was awarded the maximum Pell grant, federal funds intended for needy students. She also qualified for the maximum state grant for needy Pennsylvania students.

    None of the three schools Epps was admitted to gave her a single dollar of aid.

    To attend her dream school, Lincoln University, Epps would have had to come up with about $4,000 per year, after maxing out on federal loans — close to half of what her mother receives from Social Security. It was money her family didn’t have, she said.

    Public colleges and universities were generally founded and funded to give students in their states access to an affordable college education. They have long served as a vital pathway for students from modest means and those who are the first in their families to attend college.

    But many public universities, faced with their own financial shortfalls, are increasingly leaving low-income students behind — including strivers like Epps.

    It’s not just that colleges are continuously pushing up sticker prices. Public universities have also been shifting their aid, giving less to the poorest students and more to the wealthiest.

    Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/education/Public_universities_ramp_up_aid_for_the_wealthy_leaving_the_poor_behind.html#xXK1A3u0Xmu760Rx.99

  170. 170.

    rikyrah

    State tells ‘navigators’ to stay away from county health departments

    BY CAROL GENTRY, PATRICIA BORNS AND KATHLEEN McGRORY

    Herald/Times Tallahassee bureau

    The outreach workers known as navigators won’t be allowed to help people sign up for health insurance on the grounds of county health departments, according to a memo from the Florida Department of Health.

    The order from Deputy Health Secretary C. Meade Grigg went out late Monday to the 60 local health department directors across the state.

    Grigg declined to comment on the directive. But health department spokeswoman Ashley Carr said there was a need for “clarity” and “a consistent message” across the agency.

    “Navigators are not acting on behalf of the Department of Health and this program has raised privacy concerns due to the consumer information that will be gathered for use in a federal database,” Carr wrote in a statement.

    Health and Human Services Department spokesman Fabien Levy called the Florida directive “another blatant and shameful attempt to intimidate groups who will be working to inform Americans about their new health insurance options and help them enroll in coverage, just like Medicare counselors have been doing for years.”

    He added that “despite the state’s attempts, we are confident that navigators will still be able to help Floridians enroll” in health insurance plans.

    The move represents the latest hurdle to the new health insurance marketplace, which opens in Florida on Oct. 1. Earlier in the year, state lawmakers declined to expand Medicaid, and passed a proposal prohibiting the state insurance commissioner from regulating insurance premiums.

    Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/11/3621013/state-tells-navigators-to-stay.html#storylink=cpy

  172. 172.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Drexciya:

    Balloon Juice has done better than this. It’s capable of better than this. We’re not seeing that capacity demonstrated.

    So how, given the likely majority male/majority white composition here, does it make that shift? When there are posts from the specific perspective of a POC or other non-dominant group, I read them and the commentary. I, however, have almost nothing to add since I am a white guy. I feel like it should be a shut up and listen time for me. If this is true of a significant number of commenters here, the conversations will be shorter on those topics since fewer people will be participating. I also suspect that those who are more hostile to non-dominant viewpoints would be less likely to be quiet, so the voices heard on such threads would either be those of the non-dominant viewpoint and those who are hostile. This probably leads to a skewed perception of the blog’s readership. Anyway, these are just some random thoughts provoked by your comment.

  173. 173.

    ranchandsyrup

    LOLJets (from ESPN stats): Mark Sanchez will be paid $8.75M by the Jets this season. That’s more than RG3, A. Luck, R. Wilson, C. Newton and C. Kaepernick COMBINED.

  176. 176.

    Mnemosyne

    @Drexciya:

    FWIW, those white Millenial numbers are NOT good news for conservatives. Only 51 percent when my generation (GenX, first post-Baby Boom generation) is voting Republican by 59 percent? The Republicans aren’t going to be able to expect to get votes based solely on racial animosity for much longer.

    I wonder if anyone out there has exit poll numbers broken down by state or region — that didn’t seem to be an option with that poll. From what I’ve seen in the past, I suspect that the numbers of white Republican voters are skewed by region. Here in very blue Southern California, I don’t think I know a single white person who voted for Romney. (Well, maybe the jackass who stole the Obama magnets off the back of my car.) In very red states like, say, Alabama, I’m guessing I would be hard-pressed to find many white Obama voters.

  177. 177.

    scav

    I like Tom when he shows up and Kay and followed Elon over to TWiB although things got confusing there for a bit (so I need to catch up). Here is going through rather an odd phase, lots more personal elbow wrestling and trollish poseur voguing than anything with a purpose.

  179. 179.

    cckids

    @IowaOldLady: Yep. If all rich people acted like her, there would be so much less resentment in the world. Didn’t inherit it, didn’t make it by screwing anyone over, actually produced something that people love & made tons of cash doing it.

  184. 184.

    askew

    @eemom:

    I follow Zander on twitter and have wondered why he hasn’t been around here. Not surprised though. Both he and Zander and ABL took an unreasonable amount of shit here from the trolls. Not surprised they left.

  186. 186.

    IowaOldLady

    @rikyrah: I can’t believe the immorality of these people who are working so hard to be sure folks don’t have health insurance. What is wrong with them?

  189. 189.

    Trollhattan

    Feel the freedom.

    A Pennsylvania judge on Thursday ordered a suburban Philadelphia clerk to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini said Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes did not have the power to decide on his own whether Pennsylvania’s same-sex marriage ban violates the state constitution.

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/09/12/20459332-court-rebuffs-pa-clerk-in-marriage-equality-case?lite

    Whew, that could have been scary for Pennsylvania, like another Gettysburg.

  191. 191.

    srv

    @Omnes Omnibus: You have the frequency, Kenneth.

    John tried to turn this place into something it wasn’t by throwing a few disrupters into the mix and it didn’t work out. Laudable, all that.

    This place will always be mostly white, mostly older, and mostly women. Many retired, many part-time, many short of work. Most lurk. Nobody else has the time to hang out, and older dudes die out more quickly and are more biased anyway to be wing nuts. The younger crowd here is probably 80% IT-ish (see all the folks that come out for the techno-religious debates on mistermix’s posts). So how people get confused there’s a few gliberaltarians out there is beyond me.

    What we need here is an Entertainment FP’er. Mnemo’s pre-Code thingy would suit me fine, and might draw in some younger folks if she focuses on all teh sex parts.

  192. 192.

    Ben Franklin

    “This legislation ensures that the tough investigative journalism that holds government accountable will be able to thrive,” Schumer said in a statement. “I’m hopeful that both parties can come together and pass it quickly on the Senate floor.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/media-shield-act-moves-on-to-the-full-senate/2013/09/12/031d7046-1bbf-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html

    We don’t need no stinkin definitions.

  194. 194.

    pamelabrown53

    @Elizabelle: Thank you THANK YOU for reminding me about dengre. He was a progressive hero when he spenat months of his life investigating the Marianna Islands and Jack’s and the Christian rights’ graft with casino/Native American debacle.

    With all his scholarly work, it seems he was STILL thrown under the bus for for being immune to ODS.

    Does it make you wonder?

  195. 195.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Trollhattan: The next step after the DOMA ruling was always going to be a shitload of lawsuits throughout the county that ultimately push the boundaries further back. This is one of those situations. Social justice through litigation is a slow, two steps forward one step back process.

  196. 196.

    Drexciya

    @Omnes Omnibus

    So how, given the likely majority male/majority white composition here, does it make that shift?

    Bring on more non-white men and particularly non-white women as front pagers. Select specifically for social consciousness and passion for/experience with discussing topics from a social justice-rooted perspective. Acknowledge the recurring dialogues going on in radical, anti-racist and feminist spaces, highlight their political issues and concerns and rhetorically incorporate them into the political priorities that get front page attention. Tumblr (parts of which are extraordinarily important liberal bastions that are ignored in mainstream discourse) is full of material and ongoing debates from the perspective of radical feminists, radical POC’s and queers of various stripes (some of whom are all three). There’s no reason for them to go unmentioned or worse, unknown. Make your posts consistent with and inseparable from feminist and anti-racist perspectives. Police your own from those perspectives. As a poster, speak up when a sensible (but radical) feminist or POC is making controversial points and is alone in understanding or defending them and if you disagree with them, go out of your way to let them know that their perspective is valuable/welcome. If you’re a moderator, make sure that racist, sexist and triggering sentiments are vocally walked backed from and/or offenses that lead to banning. Have conversations with the innumerable blogs, tumblrs and twitters that are written by dedicated and informed social justice-types, make sure they’re not only speaking to themselves and aren’t only representing themselves.

    Be an ally, instead of just silently thinking you’re one. The only legitimate exercise of white power is when it’s in support of its dismantling. There’s no better way to do that than to offer, represent and encourage viewpoints that are inimical to its existence. People go to places where they’re spoken to. People go to places where they’re engaged with. There’s absolutely no downside to making Balloon Juice a place where more non-whites feel they can go to discuss things, see issues and learn about issues that directly relate to their priorities and observations. Is that not what the white people here have been getting? Anti-racism is about far more than not saying the “wrong things.” It’s about making the expression of your politics and political discourse reflect your goals – especially when you have the power to do so. Balloon Juice can be such a place. Does it want to be?

  197. 197.

    piratedan

    @cleek: hasn’t been working for me cleek, using Firefox, just redownloaded and reinstalled and restarted FF and placed them again into the filer, reloaded the site and thread and lo and behold, they’re still there.

  198. 198.

    Botsplainer

    @muddy:

    This is fine when dealing with children (“I don’t care who started it, both of you stop!) …

    I always tried to remain uninvolved in those beyond that line. My line always was “sort it out with your sister, I wasn’t there, and don’t want to hear it” if I didn’t see it happen.

  199. 199.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    I feel the pain of all you folks that are just one wrong pseudonymous comment away from ending your virtual lives here. I don’t think you should blame John though. He considers it his life’s calling to make this a safe and special place for you. But you really have to put yourself in his shoes to understand how difficult this is. How does he simultaneously allow each of you delicate flowers to insult with impunity anyone and everyone, including himself, while protecting you and your loved ones from the same horrific treatment? That is no easy feat, my friends.

    In the weekly Balloon Juice planning and strategy meetings, invariably T&H will suggest we just shut down commenting permanently for the sake of everyone but John always interjects angrily, “I’ll wear a sundress with a floppy brim hat and call myself “Beatrice” before I shut down commenting!” Then DougJ will tell Beatrice how nice he looks and then we’ll get on to planning that week’s trolling.

  200. 200.

    cleek

    @piratedan:
    if you go into GreaseMonkey’s “Manage User Scripts”, right-click on the BJ Pie Filter thing, and choose Edit… when it comes up, do you see a line, near the top that starts with “// @version ” ? (should be the 6th line)

    if so, what’s the version # ?

  201. 201.

    Botsplainer

    @srv:

    Mnemo’s pre-Code thingy would suit me fine, and might draw in some younger folks if she focuses on all teh sex parts.

    Are you talking about film clips prior to the Hayes Code? That stuff was great. It was as if the nasty old biddies that brought us Prohibition had to undertake a new project on sissifying film.

  205. 205.

    Ash Can

    @Drexciya:

    and no, I don’t have the energy to defend this post right now

    It’s sad that you should even feel as though you’d have to. It’s an excellent comment. But, then again, I read the responses you got to your Miley Cyrus/twerking comments, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, seriously — you’d think that we supposedly enlightened pasty-white folks would know enough to just STFU and listen when a POC is pointing out an issue of concern. It’s one thing to reply by presenting opposing views and arguing for them, but people just teed off on you. It was embarrassing.

    And speaking of missing MIA FPers, I miss the hell out of Sarah Proud and Tall.

  207. 207.

    pamelabrown53

    @Baud: This thread may be too long for you to read my reply. IMO, Dkos is a toxic mess which breaks my heart because I thought I was joining a place to regain power for a progressive agenda. Since Barack turned out to NOT be “the magic negro”, I’ve seen the site turn into a parody of the movie “Reds”.

  214. 214.

    Ash Can

    @Drexciya:

    Tumblr…is full of material and ongoing debates from the perspective of radical feminists, radical POC’s and queers of various stripes…There’s no reason for them to go unmentioned or worse, unknown.

    I don’t disagree, but, heck, do they even have to be “radical?” I’d say the perspectives of even mainstream/moderate POC would be eye-opening for a lot of us white folks.

  220. 220.

    Baud

    @pamelabrown53:

    I agree 100%. During the Bush years, blogs were like a breath of fresh air — especially in light of how far the regular media had sunk. It just fell apart so quickly after the 2008 elections. I stuck around Kos for a couple of years after that, but after the 2010 elections, I just had enough of that whole scene. I’m still glad blogs exist because we’d otherwise be stuck with the mainstream media, but for the most part, I think of most blogging as little more than a low-budget knockoff of the Village.

  221. 221.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Drexciya: Okay, all fair points. Even if management were to jump on this wholeheartedly, one is looking at a long slow process. Also, there is still very little other than my eyes, ears, and a word or two of support that I can offer – there is a certain arrogance to my pointing people at certain voices and saying you should listen to that person. It is a tough line to draw; promoting and participating without appropriating and taking over.

  224. 224.

    Mnemosyne

    @srv:

    Aww, geez, you guys are going to force me to finish the draft of my essay on Age of Consent, aren’t you? Okay, okay, I’ll try to do it tonight since my home IP is still banned anyway.

    At some point, I’m planning to compare the Pre-Code (Claudette Colbert) and Production Code (Lana Turner) versions of Imitation of Life. When I do, I would especially love to have Drexciya chime in since I’m sure there will be things I end up missing. But the casting alone speaks volumes — in the Pre-Code version, the “tragic mulatto” character who passes for white was played by Fredi Washington, a light-skinned African-American who chose not to pass as white. In the Production Code version, that role is played by Susan Kohner, a white woman.

    (Well, Kohner’s background is more complicated than that — she is actually half-Latina (her mother was Mexican starlet Lupita Tovar) but they definitely would not allow a black woman to kiss Troy Donahue in the 1950s.)

  227. 227.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @Mnemosyne:

    At some point, I’m planning to compare the Pre-Code (Claudette Colbert) and Production Code (Lana Turner) versions of Imitation of Life.

    Careful you don’t cause a stampede of kids to overrun this place with that sorta relevant and edgy fare!

  229. 229.

    cleek

    different perspectives are great. the more the merrier.

    but, only speaking for myself, i stopped going to Pandagon when it changed from a wonky partisan Democratic blog to the feminist identity politics blog that it is today. likewise, DKos was once a Democratic grass-roots strategy blog, but is now a cesspool of butthurt conspiracies and self-righteous lefty crybabies.

    there’s a reason i come here and do not go to “radical feminist and queer” blogs. but again, that’s just me.

    perspectives, fine. but what BJ is is why most of us come here – even if the content thins out now and then.

    ( i assume this comment will be interpreted with the full assumption of good will normally associated with BJ comment threads )

  230. 230.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    To add to the confusion, we “browns” vary a lot in skin tone, even within a single family. I’ve come across “white” people who were tanned darker than I ever get, and my shade of brown is about average for an ethnic Malay. My late mother had fairer skin than a lot of white people.

  231. 231.

    muddy

    @schrodinger’s cat: It was dreadful hot and humid yesterday, a bit better today but still unpleasant. I was putting laundry away and had these 2 pairs of summer pants, identical except one is black and one white. I was momentarily stumped as to whether either or neither should be in the current season clothes area (it’s the time of year for changeover). Decided I was asking for more disgusting humidity by putting the white ones away, so they remain.

  233. 233.

    Ben Cisco

    @pamelabrown53: You hung out longer than I did. I remember trying to let folks know that the racism was about to get dialed up (even though I couldn’t have possibly known just HOW bad it was going to get). Couldn’t see it. Didn’t get it. Thought we were overreacting. You know, the usual – “YOU cannot possibly know how people are going to respond to someone like YOU holding the highest office in the land.” I knew I wouldn’t be there long after that.

  236. 236.

    Another Holocene Human

    @srv: The first movie in ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ series will be written by Rowling herself and set in New York City 70 years before Potter’s story.

    Fuck yeah, I smell Batman crossover.

  239. 239.

    askew

    @pamelabrown53:

    @Jane2: I wish ABL or Zandar still posted here because it’s extremely important for any productive conversation to have POC as FPers.

    IMO, when the GOS purged many AA posters it started its free fall into white, dudebro extremist land. Conspiracy theorists abound and too often mirrors the teabaggers.

    Yeah, GOS is pretty much a ghost town now. They driven off almost everyone who disagrees with their libertarian point-of-view.

  240. 240.

    Ash Can

    @raven: It seems to me that they often do when they comment on issues related to race. Whether or not they do is, of course, up to them. But it happens often enough that I’m definitely more enlightened now than I was before I started reading blogs. (That’s not saying much, but still.)

  242. 242.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Ben Cisco: I thought it would get dialed up but never imagined that they would double down on the crazy in the way that they did (5 years later?!) and that decades of consensus on “civility” whatever that means would get repealed (because liberals compared Bush to a chimp so obviously it’s not racist to be a pig-in-shit racist). I’m almost happy they showed us their true colors but part of me seriously, seriously thought that after the Secret Service foiled their assassination attempts and sent some white identity yokels to Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison that they’d accept defeat AND FUCKING SHUT UP FOR A WHILE. But, noooooooooo.

  243. 243.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @Mnemosyne:

    Hey, if you don’t want to see Claudette Colbert bathing nude, I got no time for you.

    I probably don’t have to tell you that tomorrow is her 110th birthday.

  245. 245.

    Ash Can

    @Ben Cisco: I recall the predictions by POC that white America would completely flip its shit when Obama was elected in 2008, and thinking they sounded a bit hyperbolic. Did I ever learn my lesson in that regard. Never again will I consider such predictions hyperbolic in any way, shape, or form.

  247. 247.

    srv

    @cleek:

    but, only speaking for myself, i stopped going to Pandagon when it changed from a wonky partisan Democratic blog to the feminist identity politics blog that it is today

    I should get FP rights for the wayback links:

    Posted by John Cole at 7:45 pm
    Aug 08 2005

    Dumbest Persyn On the InterTrons:

    Amanda Marcott

    Sorry to be a Debbie-Downer, but blogs are the new Facebook. Which means, if your insight doesn’t fit into 140 characters, theres no there there.

  250. 250.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ash Can: I think that most commenters tend to self-identify with EEO information when commenting on related issues.

    @srv: A post from pre-conversion Cole is going for the low hanging fruit though, isn’t it?

  251. 251.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @Mnemosyne: It’s still her birthday, whether or not she’s alive. We don’t throw away the calendar because someone dies.

  252. 252.

    Another Holocene Human

    @askew: I wish ABL or Zandar still posted here

    I haven’t seen a #TWIB post in a long time, either.

    I tried to get my fix by reading thegrio but despite its intellectual image via MSNBC it’s like 50% entertainment posts (yes, of course, I had to read all the twerking posts, I am now at least 5% dumber than I was before) and the commenters are … well … I think I’ll stick to reading comments on NYDN.

    At least I’m glad somebody other than myself pointing out how problematic the whole “kings and queens” polemic is, for all the various reasons (how these forms of government are exploitative, how they devalue the historical contributions of working class people, etc).

    Why is it that white guys run around trolling every subculture blog, whether it’s feminist, African-American, GLBT (although trolls are less of a problem these days, probably because it got so widely known that gay-baiters are secretly attracted to their own sex, tends to shut those types up and send them running–they used to troll and troll hard about 20 years ago… they in person trolled our marches and rallies too), and so on?

  255. 255.

    Chris

    @The Moar You Know:

    I never in my life thought I’d see the day when any American newspaper would print an op-ed from one of America’s enemies (hate to say it, but that’s where we are with Russia these days) prior to a military action solely in order to kneecap an American president that they’ve decided they do not like.

    And the biggest lunacy is that no matter how blatant they get, at least half the country will continue to maintain that the NYTimes is “liberally biased” and that the media “gave the election to Obama.”

  261. 261.

    Gravenstone

    @askew: I rather got the impression that both Zandar and ABL had semi-permanent trolls who migrated to the site with them (often posting solely on posts from the objects of their personal animus). Unfortunetely, those imported trolls seemed to act as a signal for our native fauna to dogpile on the posters.

  263. 263.

    askew

    @Ben Franklin:

    Wow, that is excellent news. There are rumors Kathleen Kane is going to run for governor. She sure seems like she’d be a huge improvement over Corbett.

    @Gravenstone – you could be right about that. Unfortunately, the trolls stuck around after AWL and Zander left.

  266. 266.

    Ben Cisco

    @Another Holocene Human: In fairness, many of them have been nursing generations-long grudges going back to around 1865 or so…

    @Ash Can: And I think a great many people learned the same lesson. Further, I’d posit that anyone saying they DON’T see that now is either willfully obtuse, politically motivated, or actively engaged in devolving.

  268. 268.

    askew

    @Ben Cisco:

    @pamelabrown53: You hung out longer than I did. I remember trying to let folks know that the racism was about to get dialed up (even though I couldn’t have possibly known just HOW bad it was going to get). Couldn’t see it. Didn’t get it. Thought we were overreacting. You know, the usual – “YOU cannot possibly know how people are going to respond to someone like YOU holding the highest office in the land.” I knew I wouldn’t be there long after that.

    What was frustrating was that Meteor Blades, the kos moderator at the time, is a minority and he provided a lot of cover for some of the worst racists on that site. You are still more likely to be banned for calling out racism than for being a racist there. Fucked up site.

  269. 269.

    Chris

    @cckids:

    Not to mention, she’s stayed in Britain, though I’m sure she could save loads in taxes if she relocated. And she’s very vocal about the fact that she needed & used the safety nets provided by those taxes and that she is more than happy to “pay it forward”. She has also, more privately, done some extraordinary things for children with cancer & other life-threatening issues. She seems to be a great human being, & I say, more power to her!

    I know it shouldn’t matter what the belief system of writers/actors/singers/wev is as long as you enjoy their products, and by and large I pretty much practice that… But it still gives me a happy when I find out that an actor or author I liked is one of the good guys in the real world too. J. K. Rowling is a huge case in point.

    (Harrison Ford is another. He rarely gets in the public’s face about politics, or anything for that matter – which is another thing I like about him, actually – but his “you can’t get to where I am without bags and fucking bags of luck” speech is a keeper, and a huge breath of fresh air compared to the whining we usually get from people at his income level).

  271. 271.

    Gravenstone

    @Drexciya:

    If you’re a moderator, make sure that racist, sexist and triggering sentiments are vocally walked backed from and/or offenses that lead to banning.

    I’m well behind the conversation here so this may have already been raised, but this is not a moderated site. Some FPers take an active hand policing the occasional post, but normally trolls are allowed to run rampant. As a result, it is exceedingly rare that posts on any contentious subject remain unmolested and on topic.

  272. 272.

    raven

    @askew: Wait, you mean POC have different perspectives? So not only do POC have to identify themselves as such they also have to point out the place on the political spectrum occupied by said POC?

  273. 273.

    burnspbesq

    @Ted & Hellen:

    And that I am an honorary front pager.

    Neither the word “honor,” nor any derivative thereof, belong in any sentence of which you are the subject.

    Mom wants another baby carrot. Take your pants off, ya whore.

  275. 275.

    burnspbesq

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    He is wearing a sundress and floppy hat according to JSF,

    I have no problem at all with Cole marching in a Pride parade, but if he’s going in drag he’s going to need serious help with hair and makeup, and with shaving his legs and armpits.

  276. 276.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gravenstone: I think Drexciya is suggesting that the blog requires a heavier moderating hand in order to be the kind of space suggested. This, of course, runs Cole’s free speech space philosophy right up against his attempts to bring in wider view points.

    There are First Amendment theorists out there who suggest almost an affirmative action program for speech.*

    *Grossly simplified.

  279. 279.

    Chris

    @cckids:

    Yep. If all rich people acted like her, there would be so much less resentment in the world. Didn’t inherit it, didn’t make it by screwing anyone over, actually produced something that people love & made tons of cash doing it.

    Yep.

    I don’t begrudge rich people their success. As long as they made their money honestly, as long as everyone who participated in the making of it was well paid for their part in the process, and as long as they don’t skip out on their obligations to the society they live in – after that, keep the money and go wild.

    What’s always mystified me about reptiles like Romney who make their money by destroying people’s lives is that they still sincerely expect all the goodwill that’s directed at people like, say, Rowling, to come their way – and are bewildered when it doesn’t come. Like, just how far does that entitlement mentality go? I mean, common muggers don’t usually walk up to their victim the next day and say “hey, wanna come to my birthday party? Huh? Wait, what’re you so mad at? What did I do?”

  280. 280.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @burnspbesq:

    I have no problem at all with Cole marching in a Pride parade, but if he’s going in drag he’s going to need serious help with hair and makeup, and with shaving his legs and armpits.

    Or he can just affect a female Russian accent.

  282. 282.

    Amir Khalid

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    As it is, John Cole’s application of his free speech principles has had a less than desirable result, in light of a few who, like the one at #275, run rampant with abuse and hostility towards certain front pagers and fellow commenters. I have no problem with anyone else here, but that heavier moderating hand needs to be applied to such commenters, and with great force.

  284. 284.

    Botsplainer

    @Chris:

    http://gawker.com/the-family-not-the-company-could-give-every-single-wa-1300819880

    Four members of the Walton family, heirs to Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart fortune, are collectively worth more than $100 billion— more wealth than the entire bottom 40% of Americans. They are doing everything in their power not to give up a penny more than they have to.

    The Waltons are the richest family in the world. They are the new Rockefellers, the modern synonym for “vast wealth.” And indeed, income inequality in America has reached levels not seen since John D. Rockefeller roamed the earth. The Waltons are the kings and queens of our new Gilded Age.

  288. 288.

    eemom

    John always interjects angrily, “I’ll wear a sundress with a floppy brim hat and call myself “Beatrice” before I shut down commenting!”

    Copying this here so I can keep giggling my ass off without having to scroll upthread.

  290. 290.

    Chyron HR

    @Chris:

    I mean, common muggers don’t usually walk up to their victim the next day and say “hey, wanna come to my birthday party? Huh? Wait, what’re you so mad at? What did I do?”

    It depends–in this scenario, is John Cole standing nearby whining that the mugger is such a nice guy and that he just likes to “get his troll on”?

  291. 291.

    Steeplejack

    @Elizabelle:

    Yes, it is nice. I went down to roll up the car windows about 15 minutes ago because it was so dark and I could smell it coming. And now there is a steady but peaceful downpour here (Falls Church), with notes of thunder in the distance.

  293. 293.

    Mary G

    @Drexciya: You are making a lot of sense today. I am also afraid to comment sometimes because I might say the wrong thing and so pass over the comments entirely because I don’t want to get angry at the assholes who come out of the woodwork. I will try to change that behavior and offer support instead of averting my eyes.

  294. 294.

    Elizabelle

    I don’t understand why people here engage with people who are trolling.

    Take away the reaction, you take away the fun.

    Let some trolls exist in a cone of silence troll echo chamber. Put them in your own timeout.

    I don’t use the pie filter (for all I know, people use it against me for “insipid”), but you get a sense for who’s just dramawhoring, not adding a thing to the discussion, or subverting it.

    Scroll on past.

  297. 297.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Has anyone here mentioned the massive molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor? Some 233,000 gallons, with a devastating fish and marine mammal kill. It happened Monday but until a couple of minutes ago I hadn’t heard or seen a thing about it.

    I believe NotMax lives in Hawaii, yes? (Although maybe not in or near Honolulu.)

  298. 298.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @muddy:

    As opposed to a male Russian accent.

    I included that for Baud because he’s sexually confused.

  304. 304.

    Steeplejack

    @eemom:

    So sorry you have to commute. The rain makes people crazy. For some reason my imaginary back-story had you working closer to home.

  306. 306.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven: Thanks. Sad to say, I’ve never been to Hawaii and don’t have a very solid grasp of the geography of the islands. Hope to remedy that situation sometime in the next couple of years.

  311. 311.

    Keith G

    @Elizabelle: I with more had access to your wisdom.

    So much silliness on this thread. lordy.

    First, I am glad that I had a chance to read Putin’s editorial. Isn’t that what we want out of a free society? For those of you complaining….Why do hate America? What are you scared of?

    Second, there are actually folks still complaining about how John does things….Are. You. Fucked. In. The Head??? This is his house. Do you not read the tag lines: A refuge for a howling pack of vitriolic jackals.
    My, my such tender flowers. How can anything else you type be taken seriously after that?

    Thirdly, If you don’t like T & H then just do not respond (as was already mentioned). Maybe that commenter is pure performance art, maybe not, but if you spend more than two seconds thinking about it then that’s on you. FWIW, there are times when his piercing of the bubble of conventional wisdom is needed; yet personal attacks weaken the punch.

    Fourthly, if any FPer gets “run off” then A) they missed the “Introduction to the Internet” lecture, B) they weren’t much of an advocate to begin with, and/or C) they might have only been here for a bit of self promotion and they got what they needed and then bugged off.

    Finally, so many statements up thread were written using the vocabulary of victimhood. How uninteresting. If you see something wrong, be an advocate . Make an affirmative case for what you believe instead of whinging about what others have typed. Participate in the fray; don’t complain about the mess.

    /rant….Time for chores.

  312. 312.

    raven

    @Keith G: “Second, there are actually folks still complaining about how John does things….Are. You. Fucked. In. The Head???”

    The whole idea of what this blog “should be” is a joke.

  316. 316.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    To add to the confusion, we “browns” vary a lot in skin tone, even within a single family.

    Years and years ago, I worked with an AA woman who had her, I think, third child during the period I knew her. When she showed me pictures of him, she said “Isn’t he a pretty color?” which was the first time I had heard a PoC address the subject directly (he was, too, a glorious café-au-lait shade). She also told me that one of her (much darker) older children kept asking why his little brother was so light, and her answer was “Because that’s one of the colors babies come in.” I’ve never forgotten that, although it must be a good 40 years ago.

  317. 317.

    Captain C

    @Shakezula: And after that, movies based on Harry Potter fan fiction!

    If someone wants to take on “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality,” I would definitely go see that.

  319. 319.

    jl

    @raven: The field of vitriolic pack of rabid jackal commenter / poltitics / books / sports / music / gardening / pets / cooking / trivia / John Cole house keeping diary / anything else that catches FPers attention blogs is crowded.

    Balloon Juice really needs to find a way to distinguish itself, IMHO.

  328. 328.

    Chyron HR

    @Keith G:

    So when people say that David Brooks and Tom Friedman are full of shit, is that also a violation of everything America stands for? Or is this a special standard that applies only to Pooty-Poot?

  329. 329.

    Thlayli

    @Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:

    How in the world would those events be connected?

    At a guess, I would say it was Greenwald’s statement to the effect of “If Obama raped a nun on live TV, ABL would defend him”.

    Cole never gave any indication that he had a problem with that.

  330. 330.

    Jane2

    @Keith G: This. FFS, it’s a blog….if you don’t like the writers or posters, go elsewhere to one of the eleventy gazillion other blogs out there.

    ETA: “you” = “the offensorati around here”.

    @Baud: I thought the mustard was located in someone’s furminated cat.

  335. 335.

    Josie

    @Keith G:

    These are some good points. When I first started reading BJ a few years ago, I was appalled at the level of discourse at times (old English teacher and librarian here) and wanted John to tell all those unruly kids to shut up and sit down. But, over time, I have seen the error of my ways and appreciate the free flow of ideas and attitudes that he permits. I also scroll through certain posts and commentors and don’t feel the need for a pie filter. Trolls can’t bother you if you don’t engage. The only thing that slightly bothers me is unequal treatment of commentors, but it’s not my blog and I can’t do anything about that.

  336. 336.

    bemused

    @Baud:

    Same here. When you know your neighbor routinely cooks two week old road kill, you ignore the invitations to drop in for a bite and keep on walking.

  337. 337.

    burnspbesq

    @Josie:

    The only thing that slightly bothers me is unequal treatment of commentors,

    Cole thinks Animal Farm is an instruction manual.

  339. 339.

    joes527

    @Chyron HR: If you make it a habit to hang with bobo and the ‘stach, and use your hang time to bitch about what assholes they are then yes, you may be the asshole.

  341. 341.

    Keith G

    @Chyron HR: A bit of a false equivalency ya got going there.

    I was reacting to those who were criticizing the publication of the editorial at all E.g.

    A hearty congrats to the NY Times for giving Op-Ed space to Vladimir Putin, the president of a country that jails and murders journalists, so that he can spew unchallenged propaganda.

    God help us if we have too much free speech, right?

    As is the case with Brooks and Friedman, let Putin’s words be distributed and then evaluate their worth.

  343. 343.

    EthylEster

    @eemom: It says that it is easier to tear down than build up. Thus has it ever been. But now it seems that some people really get their rocks off attacking, etc.

  346. 346.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jane2:

    Why should he have? ABL can take care of herself quite well in any Twitter war.

    I’m not sure you were around during that — IIRC, Cole actively took GG’s side, which pissed off ABL and caused her to leave until Cole apologized to her.

    So, no, it wasn’t just “why aren’t you supporting me?” it was “why are you taking that asshole’s side?”

  348. 348.

    EthylEster

    @Jane2: I didn’t know Stuck was. Or maybe that’s just Fuckhead yanking our chain. Who can tell these days?

    I can’t even understand many of the comments here and it’s not just because of multiple typos, missing words, etc. I think posting from iPhones contributes a lot to the incoherence. But there also remains a large body of big mouth morons. My patience is wearing thin.

  350. 350.

    Amir Khalid

    @EthylEster:
    General Stuck was definitely white. As I recall, at least one of his obituaries that were found after he passed away had a photo of him.

  351. 351.

    eemom

    @Keith G:

    I am totally with you on this.

    Also can’t believe this “NYT published it because they hate Obama” crap — absolute fucking idiocy.

  353. 353.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    Rowling was adamant that there was never going to be a school from America

    ‘Cos they’d have to rent space from the Demigod in the camps in Rick Riordan’s books.

    Although, in terms of adolescent bildrungsromans about adolescents getting AWESUM magik powers, Riordan and Rowling are thin stuff compared to LeGuin or Susan Cooper’s books. Voldemort’s a carnival clown compared to Ged’s shadow.

  356. 356.

    EthylEster

    @? Martin: Wow, Martin. I have to say that I almost always enjoy your comments. I don’t always agree but that’s something else.

    As for banning, I knew you were involved in dustups several years ago but haven’t noticed recent ones. Probably because I don’t pay much attention these days. And I thought I was the only dissatisfied “old timer”.

  361. 361.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Since this is the latest Open Thread here:

    I have read this thread from one end to the other, deciding to wait to respond to anyone after I was done. I am glad that I did so because what has been discussed has brought me to a decision I have been putting off for some time now.

    I found this place in 2005 via a link at the GOS, where I was a member (not anymore, since 2006). Someone there said to check out the conservative John Cole’s blog because he had brought in a filthy librul as a FP’er. I didn’t join in the conversation here until late 2006 when I decided to quit the GOS because the place was going to Hell (and has gone waaay deeper that that since). John was interesting in that he was undergoing a transformation in his political views and had some interesting things to say as he was undergoing this change. There were some good discussions that John kicked off with some excellent opinion writing, engaging people in substantive conversations, which I enjoyed. There was no TL:DR, it was mostly really good stuff. Of course there were the usual trolls but these were nothing like the trolls that reside here today. Same with much of the FP here, the substance is largely gone. Kay and Tom bring it, sometimes TimF, but the FP here has been largely uninteresting or flat out flamebait.

    Today I realized that the Balloon Juice I came for no longer exists. Places change, people change and so it is with this place. Thinking back, the change started pretty much after Obama was elected and it has slowly slid downhill ever since. I used to write TL:DR posts here, one of which John quoted part of for a FP post. I haven’t done that in some time and the reason for it is that this place has been making me feel the same way I did when I quit the GOS; angry. It’s hard to write something substantiative when you are constantly pissed about what you read from trolls who flood the pages here with their insipid shit. There are those who say to ignore the stupid fucks who have been trolling but that is not a solution that I care for. It’s like saying you can drive a car and close your eyes every time you pass by something objectionable. I can’t do the ‘Sometimes you just have to walk on by’ bit because in a way it is granting silent approval for what has been said.

    IOW, I have become a part of the problem here and I no longer want to be a part of what is dragging this place down. I know John is wrestling with a monkey on his back and I recently said something about it that was unconscionable. I apologize for that, it was uncalled for. After my GBCW at GOS, I walked away without further comment. I disappointed some people who I had never met before but enjoyed engaging in good conversation, even being accused by some of giving up and letting the trolls win. No, you can’t win against trolls who run rampant, unchecked in the name of open discussion. They exist to destroy, to derail, to wreck any semblance of civil discussion. I have been slowly sucked in to their game and now I have become a part of what is wrecking this place. Some good bloggers have left here and I honestly can’t blame them one bit, not after witnessing the quietly condoned behavior of the trolls who plagued them.

    Unlike my past with the GOS, this is not a GBCW post. I think there is a chance that one day John will pull the place out of the tailspin it is in and if that happens then I will gladly return, so it’s (hopefully) TTFN. I do know that if there is any change here it will be a slow change, as change usually is, so I don’t anticipate returning for some time. Sadly, my leaving here will decrement my participation on political blogs from 1 to 0 but I just can’t find any place that fits me like this place used to. With the poisonous atmosphere of politics today, it has become impossible to find any place that doesn’t suck.

    A lot of water has passed under the bridge since I first came here and I hate ‘giving up’ on that but it is what it is. I want to wish John all of the best in whatever he does, especially with the monkey on his back that he is currently wrestling with. I also want to thank the FPer’s and many commenters here who have written substantive posts I have had read and enjoyed, sometimes engaging in. Like the GOS, I will come here regularly to read what good stuff there is and will skip right over most everything else. As with my GBCW post at the GOS, I will not be responding to anything that anyone here says about my leaving as it only prolongs the pain of the decision I have made, so thank you in advance to those who have anything kind that you want to say on my departure. Best wishes and good luck to you decent people here, you’re going to need it.

    Take care.

  365. 365.

    TooManyJens

    For the people who were wondering where Elon has been: This Week In Blackness has been on hiatus since … well, since shortly before or about a week after the George Zimmerman verdict, depending on how you define “hiatus.” Elon’s been traveling and Dacia’s been finishing her dissertation. Whether they’ll come back when the shows come back, I don’t know.

  369. 369.

    Corner Stone

    Everyone…EVERYONE!
    Once again I find myself in the unenviable position of apologizing for being late to this thread. It was +200 last night and now it’s +300. I feel so dirty.
    If I had been doing what needs must be done, what I’ve been called to do, I could have easily killed this thread long ago and made absolutely sure that no one here could be having the discussion they *truly* wanted to have.
    This is a failing on my part. I have no one else to blame but myself.

  370. 370.

    Corner Stone

    @Drexciya: The intertrons are a wonderful place. They provide for many unsatisfied demands, and niches.

    Anyone know where I can find a blog that discusses both origami and also how to properly fit athletic shoes?
    Thanks in advance.

  371. 371.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    Got an aftermarket AC condenser and dryer for the 96 subie.

    The condensor flanges were wider than OEM, and so I bolted one side, and zip tied the other.

    The dryer was clearly the wrong part (missing a pressure sensor) It cost eighteen bucks at the auto store.

    OEM part costs $240

    Guess it gets fixt in the spring.

  375. 375.

    peachkfc

    Oops, that’s embarrassing I started a comment, got distracted for a minute then discovered I had inadvertently posted my unedited comment. Anyway, my point is that there are some “regulars” who treat the comments here as a kind of fraternity and they put you through nasty hazing if you dare to try to contribute. I fully expect to be attacked for my mistake and what i just said but my phone is fucking up can’t fix it.

Comments are closed.