Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

No one could have predicted…

This fight is for everything.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Everybody saw this coming.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

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

Bark louder, little dog.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I really should read my own blog.

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Reader Interactions

99Comments

  2. 2.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I’m going to take this as an open thread and point out that Hondurans are electing their next president today. Rather, I should say, they already have elected the next president, as the voting ended about an hour and a half ago. So far, the National Party candidate (more or less akin to our Republicans, only not as vile) is running about even with the wife of former president Zelaya. She’s running, not as a Liberal Party candidate, as did her husband, but an new party, the Libre Party. The Liberal Party candidate, the son of a president from about 1960, and the Anti-Corruption Party candidate are also running about even with them. Nobody knows which will come out on top, and it may be days or even weeks before anybody knows who won.

    We’re all heading down to Honduras next month. We’ll be there for Christmas. Everybody goes on and on about how Honduras is a violent hellhole and the murder capital of the world, but I have no qualms about taking our two little girls down. Things often sound worse if you don’t know the circumstances firsthand.

  3. 3.

    max

    Should we designate a string of rapid posts like this as a Colegasm?

    max
    [‘Mustard should be involved with this someone. I’m not going to say anything about the pants.’]

  8. 8.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Obviously staged, “but” still super cool?

    Of course it’s staged ;) As opposed to what, a spontaneous outbreak by musicians packing symphonic instruments who just happened to be hanging around a plaza and had rehearsed that piece?

    Europeans are pretty cultured people, but in most public squares like that the most you could dig up who had classical instruments with them would make, oh maybe a string quartet, tops.

  10. 10.

    mai naem

    This has been posted before by one of the front pagers. I personally liked the John Denver West Viriginia song clip with that Westboro church bit. Post that one again.

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Of course it’s staged ;) As opposed to what, a spontaneous outbreak by musicians who just happened to be hanging around a plaza and had rehearsed that piece?

    “Well, I was just out taking my timpani for a walk, and I happened to meet this guy I know with his string bass, and then we ran into this woman with her thirty-person choir…”

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    C-Span 3 running the Kennedy funeral. Very little voiceover; mostly B&W footage of the city. LImos driving slowly to Rotunda at the moment, to meet the coffin and caisson.

    Maybe more funerary than you’d choose for your Sunday, but an interesting picture of fifty years ago.

    Will air through midnight Eastern tonight.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    @scav: Bolero is a good piece for this particular type of performance; one set of instruments after another coming in in that loooooong crescendo. Sucks to be the drummer though.

  14. 14.

    PurpleGirl

    It isn’t a flash mob thing, but the Japanese tradition of performing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is pretty cool. (Started by German POWs during WWI, the Japanese took to performing the Ode at this time of year. This clip is a mixture of professional musicians and some 10,000 amature singers.)

    This is the whole Ode, just under 18 minutes long.

  17. 17.

    eemom

    @max:

    Should we designate a string of rapid posts like this as a Colegasm?

    I was going with a “Cole stomping Cole” sort of concept, and trying to come up with an appropriate visual.

  19. 19.

    mai naem

    I go to the TPM website and they have one of their sidebar stories as “McCarthy Hopes WH hasn’t hatched Iran deal to distract from O-Care” and their main header is a Cruz Filibuster Rule Story and ofcourse the first thing that occurs to me is Joe McCarthy.

    Anyhoo, this O-Care distraction story is reminiscent in a very bad way to the Repubs bitching about Clinton bombing the Sudan Aspirin factory story as a distraction from Monica.

  21. 21.

    raven

    @PurpleGirl: I only had my little nikon point and shoot in my tackle box this evening. Pic take themselves in this place. I surfed fished today and had to repeatedly strip down to my swim trunks, wade out up to my chest and then onto the sandbar to cast. It was about 57 with 28 mph winds so I got pretty chilly. Oh yea, not one bit all day!

  22. 22.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @dmsilev:

    Yeah I mean sitting around your typical cafe in Madrid will be four or five people openly carrying violins, violas, and cellos — but that’s maximum!

    I kind of like the spontaneous fantasy though actually, just as a 10,000 monkeys sort of idea. Of course that means occurrences like the first twelve notes of the Ode to Joy theme and the rest turning into “Yackety Sax” before they get it right.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    There’s a country song, or a CSI episode, somewhere in this story:

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A downtown bar owner told police he fatally shot a country music singer in self-defense after the two got into an argument over the musician smoking a cigarette in a no-smoking area, authorities said.

    Pit and Barrel owner Chris Ferrell shot Wayne Mills, 44, around 5 a.m. Saturday, after the bar had closed …

    Police spokeswoman Kris Mumford said investigators are looking into Ferrell’s claim of self-defense. She said no arrests have been made. Ferrell had a valid handgun permit.

    …Mills, a native of Arab, Ala., toured with the Wayne Mills Band, which played college towns for more than 15 years. Country music stars Jamey Johnson and Blake Shelton, as well as American Idol winner Taylor Hicks, all opened for the band in their early careers, according to the group’s website.

    … Pit and Barrel was to have been featured Sunday on “Bar Rescue” on the Spike TV, but the cable network decided to pull the episode, running a rerun instead …

  26. 26.

    Alan

    As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time. So now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on and I viddied right at once what to do.

  27. 27.

    Cassidy

    @RSA: Smokers can be very adamant about their right to smoke anywhere, especially after drinking. They’re not that far behind gun nuts in their ragegasms.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @eemom:

    I was going with a “Cole stomping Cole” sort of concept, and trying to come up with an appropriate visual.

    Coles all the way down.

  34. 34.

    Litlebritdiftrnt

    This and “Ode to Joy” are simply the most joyous pieces of music ever written, you cannot help but feel your heart fill up on listening to them.

  36. 36.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Someone check on burnsie’s pulse. The Vermont Catamounts, who aren’t even very good at hockey are going to the line to try to tie Duke late in the second half.

  38. 38.

    IowaOldLady

    @Aimai: I heard that airlines were considering letting people use cell phones during flight. I try to imagine sitting so close to someone that we’re fighting over the arm rest, and s/he’s talking on the phone the whole trip.

  39. 39.

    PurpleGirl

    @Aimai: May I recommend the highest rated foam earplugs you can get and carrying them with you. I use them to cut the noise of people chewing gum or making other noise while on the bus, etc. Also helps around someone who snores.

    IowaOldLady — I’ve found they cut the level of cell phone noise too.

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    I note that a current NewsMax headline is “FEMA Hoarding This Critical Emergency Item”. Dare we hope that this item, whatever it is, is being used as bait to lure conservatives into the long-promised concentration camps?

  42. 42.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Elizabelle:

    I lived there for two years after college. Still have lots of friends down there, and I work with one of the schools in the town where I lived. I have a non-profit that I set up to help pay for English speaking teachers. (If you feel philanthropic, I wouldn’t mind of you threw a few dollars in for the cause; it’s a 501(c)3, so you can write it off. You can go to the link by clicking my name.)

    The town where I lived is on the north coast, so it’s far from Tegucigalpa. I’m happy to say I’ve never flown into or out of Toncontín. Always San Pedro Sula.

  45. 45.

    Violet

    Who’s this new front pager called John Cole? Did he introduce himself? Does he have any pets? Has anyone given him his salted dick gift basket yet?

  47. 47.

    Anne Laurie

    @Cassidy:

    Smokers can be very adamant about their right to smoke anywhere, especially after drinking. They’re not that far behind gun nuts in their ragegasms.

    Fun fact, nicotine is a mild stimulant for neurotypicals, but it helps ADDers focus (& stay calm). You can draw a lovely curve matching smoke-free regulations and the rise of coffee chains… and adult ADD diagnoses.

    (Lots of ‘self-medicating’ ADD alcoholics, too, but they just get crazier & meaner, mostly.)

  49. 49.

    Calming influence

    As a kid my Mom used to take me to every performance of our local symphony orchestra. There’s something special about people who can produce music like that.

    Also, it was while watching female cellists and violinists that it occurred to me that I liked girls.

  51. 51.

    BGinCHI

    @Steeplejack: A drummer.

    Standard Athens, GA joke, 90s edition.

    BTW, I took bluegrass banjo classes from a guy who was in the Seldom Scene and let me tell you that was one of the hardest damn things I’ve ever done.

  53. 53.

    Nora Carrington

    This is likely kids and lawns territory, but it drives me nuts that anytime something unexpected happens, everyone whips out a cell phone camera/video.

    If I had been lucky enough to have ended up in that plaza, I’d have been dancing and wiggling eyebrows at all the kids having a ball climbing lamp posts and bouncing on their dads, not standing still so I can shoot/tape something I know will be on YouTube in about 15 minutes.

    We don’t live life anymore; we document it.

    One of the zillion and one reasons I will never own a smartphone.

  59. 59.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Mumphrey, et al.)

    @The Ancient Randonneur:

    I believe I’m going to be a Democrat.

    That right there is what’s scaring the shit out of Republicans. They don’t care about all the sob stories of people losing their insurance. All they give a shit about is that more poor people who vote Republican–against their own interests–are going to wake up, see that this helps them, and they’ll go over to the Democrats. That’s all this is.

  64. 64.

    Nora Carrington

    @raven: I got no problem with photography. I enjoy it quite a bit, more as spectator than creator, but I’m a word nerd, not an art geek.

    See?

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/elba3/with/10736101353/

    Pictures of my home town, in B&W, taken with a Leica. Not by me but I love those pictures.

    I think of it as the George Pelecanos portfolio of DC.

    I think the guy who took them spent a lot of time on those streets and in those spaces looking with his eyes, smelling with his nose, and listening with his ears before he ever picked up a camera.

    That’s all I’m sayin’.

  67. 67.

    Cassidy

    @Nora Carrington: I think you’re missing the bigger picture. People aren’t simply documenting, as opposed to living. They’re sharing. No one who recorded that experience hoarded it. They showed it to someone else. They posted it on social media. Other people were able to experience something, albeit digitally, that they would have never heard about. Isn’t the essence of living to reach out and touch others?

  69. 69.

    Mike E

    @raven: My 8MP droid is a godsend, you’ll prolly see some of my handiwork in the upcoming pets calender. And I’m no tech wiz by any stretch. Also, swapping pics with Miss E who is wrangling her freshman year at school…priceless.

  71. 71.

    Baud

    @efgoldman:

    We don’t need to rebrand, we need to be more forthright about talking about our principles,”

    I hope they record the “why you are better off with no health care” presentation.

  74. 74.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    But I see all of these as part of the same universal human urge: It’s all just a conversation. We all like to talk with each other about the things that interest us. When we can’t connect in the “mass media” (whether for political reasons or the desire to find People Like Me), we find alternate ways to do so.

    From the review.

  76. 76.

    Ash Can

    Georgia GOP minority outreach: “Whut thuh hail’s the matter with yew stupid lazy ni*CLANG*s an’ wetba*WHOMP*s? Vote fer us, dadgummit!”

  77. 77.

    Nora Carrington

    @Cassidy: You’re right, mostly. I mean, I know that’s what people who “share” everything think they’re doing. And I sometimes benefit from those who do, so a generalized “thank you” for that.

    I’m still going to push back on two points (and the first is a real question): Why do so many people think that their experiences are worth sharing? I am the most intensely private person I’ve ever known, so I don’t understand “sharing” in this sense. Like at all. Talk to me like I’m from Mars about this. Most of most people’s experiences are dead boring, and you know that’s true. So ‘splain that to me, Lucy. Srsly.

    Second, I’ve studied enough philosophy, specifically aesthetics, to have a whole raft of theory under my belt about detachment and the viewer’s eye and all that stuff. I’m not sure how much of any of it I buy, but it does at least raise the question about whether it is possible to be in/of the moment and standing apart taking pictures at one and the same instant. I don’t think it is possible and if I have to pick I’m going to opt for experience over detachment. But I could be wrong. Don’t think so, but it’s possible. What do you think?

  83. 83.

    Cassidy

    @Nora Carrington: Well, I think your not making a distinction regarding context. Do I care what Bib had for breakfast? Not really. I barely
    Knew the guy in High School. Same in the other direction; no one cares what kind of day I had. OTOH, seeing a professional orchestra bust out Ode to Joy flash mob style is something worth recording.

    Secondly, as a private person myself, I’d rather maintain slight contact on social media or texting than get sucked into a vapid conversation on the phone. I like my friends and family and they’re nice enough people but I hate idle chit chat. So, social media gives me just enough contact with people I don’t want to lose touch with, but don’t need to talk to all the time either.

    Lastly, I’m not a big philosophical person. I think most if it is navel gazing. I will say that my connection to a moment is defined by myself and no one else. How I connect is my prerogative. Personally, I think nostalgia for simpler times is overrated.

  85. 85.

    raven

    I fished on the beach for hours today. Lot’s of people ask “catch anything”? I some instances I end up talking to them for quite a while about all kinds of stuff. In most cases I can find something to relate to in damn near anyone.

  86. 86.

    max

    @Nora Carrington: Pictures of my home town, in B&W, taken with a Leica. Not by me but I love those pictures. […] I think the guy who took them spent a lot of time on those streets and in those spaces looking with his eyes, smelling with his nose, and listening with his ears before he ever picked up a camera.

    There’s some of that, no doubt. Of course there’s also the 7500$ full-frame camera too. (That’s skipping over the 2300$ lens the guy used.)

    max
    [‘I suspect that I too could take some great pictures of my trashcan with that camera.’]

  87. 87.

    max

    @eemom: I was going with a “Cole stomping Cole” sort of concept, and trying to come up with an appropriate visual.

    There is NO appropriate visual.

    He engaged in Colebation!

    max
    [‘Two-handed even.’]

  88. 88.

    James E. Powell

    @Nora Carrington:

    With respect to your second point, I have no theories of aesthetics under my belt or anywhere else. But in my life experience, anecdotal as it is, there are moments when one can be in the moment and document the moment – they are a matter of luck. Other than that, I agree with everything you said.

    With respect to your first point, I do not think that most people who share are in fact sharing. I think they are reaching out for validation. They are unsure whether their choices are good ones. They need to feel less alone.

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    I sort of get her point. Listen to the people who have to fire up their cell phones while getting off an airplane. At least 95% is, I’m opening the luggage bin, I’m standing in line, I”m at the door of the plane, I’m walking down the hallway….. Who the fuck cares, including the person on the other end.
    But you are right, so much of the world is opened up by the level of communications we now have. You just have to filter out the fluff to find the good stuff. And there is lots of it. You, Jeffery W, I seem to recall the General, among others take some great pics and find some great stuff out there. Have a friend on FB who is a prolific poster and some of the things he finds are amazing. I also have friends who have to tell me about every meal. I’m afraid that at some point they will tell me about the results of said meal and I really, really don’t need or want to know that.

  90. 90.

    Nora Carrington

    @raven: Think of the most interesting person you know. Get him/her to let you follow him/her around all day. No notes, no pictures, just observe.

    How much of what happens is *interesting*? On a good day I think anybody’d be ecstatic for 10%. We eat, we shit, we drive, we naval gaze, we eat some more. We have a productive conversation with a colleague. We study documents. We read a bit. We drive and curse at the traffic. We take a phone call from kid/spouse/parent/friend and firm up plans for X. We pull a weed going into the garage/pick up a can/bag/newspaper and toss it in a bin on the way into the bodega. We watch some TV/catch up with email/catch up with social media/watch some video. We sleep. Times X to get anybody’s full day.

    Saying that much of that is boring isn’t a diss, it’s just a fact. My life is much more boring than most people’s. *Much* more boring. That’s neither a brag nor a diss, it’s just a fact.

    If we’re very, very lucky, our lives are interesting *to us*. At least much of the time. I think that’s the best that can be hoped for. If we’re very, very, *very* lucky, some part of our life is interesting to some other people.

    I think everything I’ve written can be true, and it can also be true that other people have something to say. I see no contradiction between those two at all.

    Signing out. Thanks for the convo, all.

  91. 91.

    raven

    @Ruckus: I worry about that FB stuff and then people tell me “I really like the stuff you post”. Of course I basically have ended my relationship with a half-brother over his reaction to my post about Allen fucking West.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    I think you guys are being a little hard on Nora Carrington. I take her point to be that all too often people are not “in the moment” of their experience because some portion of their attention is focused/distracted on “documenting” the experience for later consumption.

  94. 94.

    scav

    Thing I find is, much of the stuff on social media is, see above title, obviously staged, even when superficially impromptu. Social signalling in hyper-concentrations — when not actual staged austroturf, which is increasing. And then there are the people that just never know when to shut up, quantity over quality. Interwebs enough of a firehose. I just pull a digital Amish and think hard before connecting to the network.

    “It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in “It’s a nice day,” or “You’re very tall,” or “So this is it, we’re going to die.”

    His first theory was that if human beings didn’t keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up.

    After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this–“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”

  97. 97.

    Nora Carrington

    @raven: We’re good. The only silly comment anybody made was about book reviews. The rest was, well, interesting ;-)

    ‘night all.

  98. 98.

    None of your beeswax

    nice, but if the boys from clockwork orange came out at the end and beat them all bloody, now that would be awesome/gruesome

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