Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

In after Baud. Damn.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Obama on the Snowden Leaks

Obama on the Snowden Leaks

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The mister and I made a big mistake last night: As we were gearing up to watch President Obama on Hardball, we decided to play a drinking game with shots consumed for every time Tweety interrupted the president or worked himself, Tip O’Neill, the Peace Corps and JFK into the conversation. The shots were of a particularly high alcohol content homemade cider.

Well! Tweety compelled the president (and us) to watch a clip of a JFK speech! Which meant we had to chug cider for the duration. Things got fuzzy after that. They’re STILL fuzzy. But I thought the above clip on the Snowden leaks had something for everyone. Cheers!

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  2. 2.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    What’s wrong with Obama? I thought you were supposed to punish yourself during Lent, not during the Christmas season.

  4. 4.

    bnut

    Anyone in my demographic (Millenials) who doesn’t think that texts, FB, Twitter, Vine(?), etc., isn’t a) being monitored, b) going to hurt your future job prospects, c) hurt your social life, and d) going to be the laughingstock of all your children and future generations that will access it are dumber than rocks.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    As we were gearing up to watch President Obama on Hardball, we decided to play a drinking game with shots consumed for every time Tweety interrupted the president

    That was either very brave or very stupid. Not even sure there is a difference. Hopefully your liver will forgive you some day.

  7. 7.

    Cacti

    @Alexandra:

    Yes. Over at Freepervile, some said they’re going to fly the Confederate flag instead.

    How would that be different than any other day for them?

  9. 9.

    Cacti

    Also too, unemployment dropped 0.3% in November.

    Any word from the “Obamacare is killing jobs” crowd?

  11. 11.

    Cassidy

    @Alexandra: @Cacti: Ha! I was thinking the same thing.

    Funny story, since we moved back to the South, one of my daughters asked me what the flag meant, while in a crowded restaurant. The looks on the nearby occupants faces when I said “treason” was priceless.

  13. 13.

    Alexandra

    @Cacti: @Cacti:

    Not sure. Am glad I don’t have to think through the weird prisms of their bitter bigotry. Must be awfully tiring.

    Visited South Africa in the early-70s as a ten-year old. For a couple of days, with the family, walked across the railyard footbridges in Cape Town, to and fro from our ship. Along those bridges were benches to sit upon, most of them labelled with Sleg Blankes (Whites Only)… something I’ll never forget.

    But what I didn’t know at the time, was that only a few miles away, as I was looking at these peculiar signs, in the bay beyond where our ship was docked, Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on Robben Island.

  14. 14.

    bnut

    @Bob: Of course. He could also say that Israel has nukes. That we had Osama at Tora Bora. That Saving Private Ryan should have won Best Picture over Shakespeare In Love. Some things a President won’t say, but we all know are true.

  15. 15.

    Cacti

    And for our friends across the pond…may the world also remember what a little shit the college-aged David Cameron was re: Nelson Mandela.

    Cameron was a member of the Federation of Conservative Students, a group known for placing “Hang Mandela” posters on university campuses, and printing t-shirts bearing the same.

    In 1989, as a 20-something, he also went on an anti-sanctions “fact finding mission” sponsored by the Tory Policy Unit and a Botha-employed lobbying firm.

  16. 16.

    mai naem

    @bnut: Not in your demographic. Yes, I think it will hurt your future job prospects – you have no idea what turns off/on people. It could be something as stupid as a picture of you rock climbing and a future employer thinking that’s a dangerous sport or you being a fan of a future employers arch enemy sports team or you attending some religious event. Why hand info over to a future employer that they’ll use to discriminate against you?

  17. 17.

    mai naem

    @Cacti: Wow, I saw a couple of tweets ripping him a new one but I didn’t know the background. My sister is older than Cameron and went to uni in the UK and even in the mid seventies they had corp boycotts relating to apartheid. My sis never banked with Barclays because they did business in SA.

  18. 18.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    I’m glad to hear you survived your brave dangerous at WTF level drinking game.

  19. 19.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Cacti: Wow. Had no idea about Cameron’s background. Just goes to show that conservatives are douches wherever they are found.

  21. 21.

    Bob

    @bnut: I think your first example, Israel and nukes, is objectively true. The other two, however, are obviously subjective.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cassidy: I’m 5’8 and 150+ (150 is my fighting weight so I say it that way so nobody knows how fat I really am these days), but I get the same priceless reactions when I say those things. People from St Louis thought I was really ballsy having a “Redneck 4 Obama” bumper sticker on my truck in 2011 but it’s not really brave, just acceptance of the price of a new windshield or 2.

  32. 32.

    lamh36

    Good morning.

    Was listening to my daily radio program this morning and Amd Andrew Young was on talking about Mandela. It was a great chat.

    Afterward Tom posed a very thought provoking question. Nelson Mandela spent all those years in prison and never once renounced his beliefs. He said he was willing to die for his beliefs, even if he died in prison.

    So Tom asked the question, “What is something, cause or belief, that you would be willing to die for or endure 27 years of imprisonment for?”

    The common answer was of course “my children”, but IDK I see that as the easy answer. But what if like me you have no children what then would I be willing to die for?

    I’m still sitting here about 1hr later and I really have no idea what my answer is?

    So I was wondering what’s yall answer? Let’s assume dying for ur kids is a given.

  33. 33.

    draftmama

    We refused to watch since Tweety makes us both barf. Anyway, his thunder was completely stolen by the passing of Mandela – we could imagine him screaming – why couldn’t he have WAITED – no one is paying any attention to ME interviewing the President bwaaa

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    @lamh36:

    If people can’t find a cause bigger than their own family, there is your problem right there.

    I’d say free and fair voting, wresting back control from the 1-5% and corporate media, ridding ourselves (peacefully) of the Roberts Supreme Court miscreants (corporations are people; money is free speech; voting is a privilege but gun arsenal owning is a right).

    What show were you listening to? Sounds interesting.

  35. 35.

    Gene108

    @Cacti:

    Obamacare killed all the jobs. What you are seeing now are the zombies come back from the dead to kill the rest of us.

  36. 36.

    TS

    @draftmama:

    Someone on the ball would have worked out a way to have a tribute to Mandela and played the interview (which presumably was pre-recorded) at another time.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Cassidy:

    Your kid is going to have some great “life with the old man” anecdotes. Maybe enough to turn professional!

    Seeing the confederate flag as treason, and not as heritage, will go a long way to a fairer society. I think the heritage folks are outliers, although they swim together in a smallish pond, so it does not seem so to them.

  42. 42.

    Southern Beale

    Ohio bloggers take note:

    Chris Finney, the high-profile lawyer who is critical of tax breaks for companies in Greater Cincinnati, has apologized for denying in news reports that he sought a tax break for his own business.

    “I did … request that the township grant me that credit, and I presently do intend to accept it if offered,” Finney wrote in a Dec. 5 email whose recipients included the law director of Clermont County’s Union Township. “I am sorry for saying otherwise.”

    The Courier obtained a copy of the email through a public records request.

    Finney requested at least a 10 percent rebate on the bulk of a 1 percent earnings tax that he and his employees will pay when he opens his own law office in Union Township about Jan. 1.

    My Ohio friends tell me Finney is an anti-tax zealot. Tax breaks for me but not for thee, same as it ever was.

  43. 43.

    TS

    @Cervantes: The only people criticizing would be those who wanted to attack anything the President had to say. To me, the whole idea of cable/political media is to react to current events – which should include more than discussing and/or attacking the President of the United States. For the past 5 years the latter seems to be all that they can do.

  44. 44.

    Patricia Kayden

    @draftmama: That made me laugh. I watched half of Matthews’ interview — it was okay. I’m sure it will be repeated on MSNBC in the near future.

  46. 46.

    Redshirt

    @Cacti:

    And for our friends across the pond…may the world also remember what a little shit the college-aged David Cameron was re: Nelson Mandela.

    Cameron was a member of the Federation of Conservative Students, a group known for placing “Hang Mandela” posters on university campuses, and printing t-shirts bearing the same.

    In 1989, as a 20-something, he also went on an anti-sanctions “fact finding mission” sponsored by the Tory Policy Unit and a Botha-employed lobbying firm.

    Many Bothans died to bring us this news.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I think this guy may actually be dumber than Palin, even if he does manage to frame his lunacy in grammatically correct complete sentences

    Like Flypaper for Stupid
    Santorum: Fight against Obamacare like Mandela’s battle against Apartheid.
    — Josh Marshall

  48. 48.

    Cassidy

    @Elizabelle: I try. Growing up was a stressful experience to say the least, so I try to make sure my kids have nice things to say in therapy. When I was a teenager, growing up here, I sympathized with the heritage outlook, but not anymore. Once I was educated on what it stood for and where it came from, there is no way I could keep understanding that.

  50. 50.

    cmorenc

    @Elizabelle: Seeing the confederate flag as treason, and not as heritage, will go a long way to a fairer society. I think the heritage folks are outliers

    That the confederate rebellion was fundamentally about maintaining slavery is only one part of the perverse, treasonous tragedy of the civil war. The other is the tremendous cost in lives lost, crippled bodies, and harsh deprivation the southern war effort inflicted upon the mass of non-elite ordinary southerners too poor to own any slaves themselves, but who were propagandized and cajoled (sometimes forcibly) into the fight on behalf of southern plantation owners. Many of the bubba-rednecks across the south who sport confederate flags on the back window of their pickup trucks, whose “heritage” might include some great-grandfather or great-uncle four generations back who fought for the confederacy…well, those relatives weren’t fighting to keep their own slaves cause they had none, they were simply cannon fodder on behalf of the elites whose “property” rights they were fighting, enduring miserable deprivation for, and dying and suffering terrible war wounds for.

    Although we don’t currently have any forcible military draft, the heavy preponderance of young men and women who served in Iraq (and Afghanistan) are also very distinct from the elite political classes who initiated, promoted, and prolonged those wars on behalf of their own aims propagandistically dressed in nominal patriotic “serving the country” clothing, not really that much different in kind than the way the civil war sucked in young southern men of analogous social standing back 150 years ago.

    In its own way, who the south sucked into fighting for its “cause” is just as malevolently tragic and treasonous as the “states rights” cause to maintain slavery they were fighting for.

  51. 51.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @lamh36:

    “What is something, cause or belief, that you would be willing to die for or endure 27 years of imprisonment for?”

    Roasting George Lucas over an open pit for his destruction of his own franchise to indulge his love for superfluous special effects over storytelling.

  52. 52.

    scav

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: And doing so to attract the base that has swarmed elsewhere in a brave digital lather because Cruz said something non-ravening about the nasty socialist terrorist communist who singlehandedly brought down the edenic shangri la promised land of apartheid South Africa.

  53. 53.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Cassidy:
    Well, the historical facts are that they declared their whole section of the country was no longer part of the United States, then invaded the United States, because they demanded that black people could not be free anywhere in the United States. Yep, sounds like treason.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    Actually, I think this is the core of current wingnut thought. Obamacare is the evidence and symbol of Obama’s power. If it can’t be destroyed, then a black man is more powerful than they are. In their twisted hate freak minds, that means they’re second class citizens and blacks are about to do to them what they so gleefully did to blacks.

    EDIT – @Villago Delenda Est:
    I disagree. Lucas proved long ago that he will turn his magnum opus into a whore – and a cheap whore at that – for any buck offered. He has no respect for his own continuity whatsoever, creating or allowing others to create hordes of merchandise spinoffs no two of which agree, all with his official approval. He’s even declared some of them officially canon, then gone back on it. As a writer, I loathe him.

  54. 54.

    Patrick

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Santorum: Fight against Obamacare like Mandela’s battle against Apartheid.

    Of course it is. Giving people with pre-existing conditions the chance to finally obtain health insurance is, if anything, worse than apartheid. And just like Mandela, people who are against Obamacare, have been in prison for decades.

    Yes, indeed the fight against Obamacare is exactly like the fight against Apartheid…

  56. 56.

    handsmile

    Two opinion pieces/tributes on the death of Nelson Mandela from writers one would expect to be incisive, reflective, rewarding:

    Gary Younge: “Mandela was never a revolutionary, always a radical”:
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06/mandela-radical

    (The Guardian’s website, of course, is replete with articles, photo displays, live blogs, etc. on the life, death, and legacy of Mandela.)

    Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Apartheid’s Useful Idiots”:
    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/apartheids-useful-idiots/282114/

    (Importantly, Coates punctures the sanctimony and historical white-washing so evident in much of the Village media coverage of Mandela’s death by lacerating today’s WSJ editorial on the subject.)

  57. 57.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Frankensteinbeck: Actually, I think this is the core of current wingnut thought. Obamacare is the evidence and symbol of Obama’s power.

    Obama, President Blackmun, Democrats, liberals, yeah. The roots of the irrational hatred varies, but Republican opposition to Obamacare has little or nothing to do with the actual content of the law. Brian Beutler had a good piece the other day framing Obamacare as the new battlefield in the culture war

  58. 58.

    Chris

    @cmorenc:

    Weren’t a lot of those bubba-rednecks actively against the Confederacy? Especially in the mountain areas like West Virginia, East Tennessee, and the west of Georgia and the Carolinas? I remember reading that it was only after the war that these groups bought into the Confederate mythology. (Makes no sense, but then neither do the people who fly Confederate flags north of the Potomac – and there are MANY of them).

  59. 59.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    That’s exactly what I’m saying. Obamacare IS Obama. It’s a black man in charge who wants to help people, especially the poor. They can’t separate it and him. Obamacare and Obama are everything they abhor, and they’re terrified of this new world that they don’t control.

  60. 60.

    Elizabelle

    @Cassidy:

    My BIL, great guy — truly, still believes the “it was states’ rights” argument. Raised in the confederate states.

    Wonder how long it will take him to lose that one.

    Good on you for evolving quicker.

    (I bought him a copy of “What this cruel war was over” for Christmas, but open to suggestions on a less scholarly book that makes the same point …)

  61. 61.

    Redshirt

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Roasting George Lucas over an open pit for his destruction of his own franchise to indulge his love for superfluous special effects over storytelling.

    I’d go with “Being digested in the belly of the Saarlac for a thousand years”.

  64. 64.

    kindness

    @Cassidy: My family lost kin on both sides in the war (Virginia). I grew up up north so I didn’t have an issue with thinkin’ like a Yankee. My wife’s family does have several good ole Okie boys in it. We’ve come to a truce. They no longer use the N word in my presence and they know I won’t take any of their shit when they say the brain dead things they say. So they don’t say all that much at the family gatherings any more. Took a while to get to this spot though. They did not like hearing what I had to tell them. Too bad for them.

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    They might get some fight out of Kentucky. Bluegrass State denizens are thrilled to get some decent healthcare.

    A Democratic governor saw that their state website works well, and word is getting out.

    Hope that causes conniptions for Turtle McConnell.

  67. 67.

    Chris

    @Elizabelle:

    Good read (TNC). Glad that there are people calling out the assholes who supported Apartheid and are now canonizing Mandela for the lying sacks of shit they are.

  69. 69.

    Elizabelle

    How does the wingnut Americanus, confederate class, square characterizing Nelson Mandela as a communist terrorist, now to be reviled on [unmoderated] newspaper comment sites and wingnut blogs, when he went on to become a beloved president of his nation?

    While also characterizing Robert E Lee as a patriot, and a soldier’s soldier, noble cause, blah blah blah.

    One of these is not like the other.

  70. 70.

    Betty Cracker

    @handsmile: From TNC’s piece:

    Not all prominent conservatives were so dishonorable. When Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of sanctions of South Africa, Mitch McConnell, for instance, was forthright—”I think he is wrong … We have waited long enough for him to come on board.”

    I didn’t expect that from the senior senatortoise from KY…good for him.

  71. 71.

    hitchhiker

    @Elizabelle:

    Which right were they trying to protect?

    I’ve had this conversation with a number of friends raised in the south, and I always ask this question when the states rights/not slavery rationale comes up.

  72. 72.

    Cassidy

    @Elizabelle: Like Betty said. There’s too many records and archived correspondence to say it wasn’t about slavery. I’m of the belief that anyone who says otherwise knows that, but they’re still trying to convince themselves otherwise.

    @kindness: I’m a first generation Southerner. My family is transplanted from Ohio thanks to the US Navy, but I’ve been raised here. That has a lot to do with my evolution as the bigoted aspects of being Southern wasn’t in my house growing up.

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty Cracker:

    For you to understand, maybe. (sigh)

    [memo to self: hunt down CSA constitution, if only for entertainment value]

    To give my BIL props, he did vote for Obama in 2008. And then back to Romney in 2012, because Obama had not solved all our problems in the time allotted him. By my BIL.

    Not a gentleman well versed in historic or current events, but a fine person, even so.

    (He voted Democratic in our recent Virginia gubernatorial elections. FYI, formal recount for AG to begin around December 18, I believe.)

  74. 74.

    Elizabelle

    @hitchhiker:

    Um, tariffs, right?

    Agreed. It’s like debating whether water is wet. He’ll get there one of these days. If we all live long enough …

  75. 75.

    Drive By Wisdom

    I see Obama has rediscovered the illegal alien uncle he lived with that he says he never knew.

  77. 77.

    different-church-lady

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Brian Beutler had a good piece the other day framing Obamacare as the new battlefield in the culture war

    Mustard was once a new battlefield in the culture war, simply because the black president liked it.

  78. 78.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Elizabelle:
    I live in Kentucky, and spent all of my adolescence here. The state seethes with hate. My guess is that the majority will cling to what Obamacare has given them while still frothing at the mouth about the need to repeal Obamacare. They won’t see any conflict.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    @Cassidy:

    Maybe I’ll give him a DVD of “Django Unchained”. Gets past the moonlight and magnolias real quick.

    Now with 250% more blood splatter too.

    “12 Years a Slave” is harder to watch, because not the humorous deflections and killer soundtrack. [ETA: Duh. And a real story based on a real person.]

    It is something to marvel at, romanticizing a society based on slavery. Yet it was accomplished.

  81. 81.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    OK, we may not concur entirely about the nature of the crime (but you make a strong case for your indictment) but we do agree that some sort of sanctions are required here?

  82. 82.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Elizabelle:

    It is something to marvel at, romanticizing a society based on slavery. Yet it was accomplished.

    Four words:

    Gone With The Wind.

  84. 84.

    handsmile

    @Betty Cracker:

    Agree on both the expectation and the kudos. Now I wonder if Matt Bevin will attack him for the heresy. (and if so, whether McTurtle will reconsider)

  85. 85.

    Cassidy

    @Elizabelle: Yeah. Fiction and nonfiction both depict the generals as educated noble gentlemen fighting for what they believe in and all that garbage.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @handsmile:

    Reading about Mandela today, many conservatives were and still are in denial about what his actual aim and goal was: racial equality, not revenge. Mandela stayed focused on that goal his whole life and was willing to use any means (including, yes, violence) to reach that goal.

    As I said yesterday, what conservatives are so pissed off about is that they were wrong about Mandela and his ability to negotiate peace. Wrong in every part, on every count, absolutely and indisputably wrong. And there is nothing they hate more than that.

  88. 88.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hitchhiker:

    They certainly weren’t in favor of the rights of states that prohibited slavery from imposing their laws on escaped slaves.

    So much of the modern popular notion of the Civil War (aka War of Northern Aggression) was shaped by revisionist crap that was offered up before the ink was dry on Lee’s signature at Appomattox.

  90. 90.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    One of these is not like the other.

    One fought to change the status quo, the other fought to preserve the status quo. Therefore, the preserver of the status quo is the hero. QED.

  91. 91.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne:

    Well, let’s be brutally frank here.

    The “conservatives” don’t like the idea of egalitarianism, be it based on skin color, place of birth, whose uterus you popped out of, or how big your daddy’s bank account is, one bit. And that’s what Mandela was obviously aiming for.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Honestly, I don’t think they are used to being proven wrong, because they almost always manage to find some loophole, some wiggle room to prove that they were the ones who were right all along. Look at the post-Iraq the dirty hippies were right for the wrong reasons rationalizations. There’s always some secret reason or way that conservatives were the ones who were right the whole time.

    Unlike, say, their claims about abortion or evolution, we have factual proof that they were wrong that they have no way to contest. That’s what’s pissing them off.

  94. 94.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @burnspbesq:

    “Hosed” is not strong enough. Germany is certain death.

    As certain as the Chudley Cannons finishing at the bottom of the league.

  95. 95.

    Chris

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    So much of the modern popular notion of the Civil War (aka War of Northern Aggression) was shaped by revisionist crap that was offered up before the ink was dry on Lee’s signature at Appomattox.

    The ability of losers, let alone separatist traitors, to write the history books and claim uber-patriot status remains one of the weirdest and most fucked-up aspects of American politics for me.

    Say what you want about the tenets of Corsican nationalism, Dude, at least I don’t have to listen to them talk my ear off about how they’re the Frenchest Frenchmen who ever French’d (let alone write the history books for the entire republic). Ditto their Irish, Basque and other counterparts in other countries. There’s something truly bizarre about the level of American deference, even subservience, to the country’s most infamous separatist movement.

  96. 96.

    Elmo

    @Chris:

    I usually counter with, Which states were trying to impose their values on the others by force of law? Does the Fugitive Slave Act ring a bell?

    People in the North were subject to forcible conscription, dragooned into service to find and return Southerners’ escaped property – against their will and against the laws of their own states. Tell me again about states rights.

  98. 98.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Betty Cracker:

    Indeed, that is a very laudable position, and a laudable statement.

    Wonder what happened to him since then? Re-education camp? A trip to Manchuria to rewire his brain?

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Actually, it’s more recent than that — the Dunning School of revisionism about the Civil War arose during the wave of white supremacism that happened in the early 1900s. That’s also when the worst of the Jim Crow laws were passed. Virginia didn’t codify the “one drop rule” until 1924, in large part because of the new “science” of eugenics.

    Revisionists like to pretend that it’s all oh-so-historical, but most of it happened well after the war ended.

  100. 100.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Patrick:

    Indeed.

    For Team USA, it’s kick the ball around a bit when required to, and seek out as much local tail as possible when not kicking the ball around to make for a good experience.

  101. 101.

    handsmile

    @Elizabelle:

    Don’t know (but suspect not) if this is any “less scholarly,” but this book comes highly regarded from my American historian friends, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South:

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-House-Dixie-Transformed/dp/1400067030

    I’ll assume if your b-i-l has an interest in the Civil War, he’s read/familiar with James McPherson’s magisterial Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, the one essential book on the subject.

    And while not specifically on the topic of its causes, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight is my own favorite book to give to those with that interest. Blight examines social/cultural interpretations of the Civil War in both the North and South (and now nation-wide) from the immediate postwar period to the present day.

    http://www.amazon.com/Race-Reunion-Civil-American-Memory/dp/0674008197

    Also too, your link (#60) goes to the Ambrose Bierce Project! I am absolutely thrilled to learn about this!

  102. 102.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne:

    Oh, I meant that the foundations for all those events were laid right after the conclusion of the suppression of the rebellion, in which the existence of the “peculiar institution” was merely a sideshow to the legitimate grievances of “state’s rights” and oppressive tariffs harshing cotillions.

    It was an ongoing process.

  104. 104.

    ? Martin

    @Cassidy:

    There’s too many records and archived correspondence to say it wasn’t about slavery.

    FFS, most of the articles of secession specifically and unequivocally say it was about slavery. Here’s what Florida had to say:

    By the agency of a large proportion of the members from the non slaveholding States books have been published and circulated amongst us the direct tendency and avowed purpose of which is to excite insurrection and servile war with all their attendant horrors. A President has recently been elected, an obscure and illiterate man without experience in public affairs or any general reputation mainly if not exclusively on account of a settled and often proclaimed hostility to our institutions and a fixed purpose to abolish them. It is denied that it is the purpose of the party soon to enter into the possession of the powers of the Federal Government to abolish slavery by any direct legislative act. This has never been charged by any one. But it has been announced by all the leading men and presses of the party that the ultimate accomplishment of this result is its settled purpose and great central principle. That no more slave States shall be admitted into the confederacy and that the slaves from their rapid increase (the highest evidence of the humanity of their owners will become value less. Nothing is more certain than this and at no distant day. What must be the condition of the slaves themselves when their number becomes so large that their labor will be of no value to their owners. Their natural tendency every where shown where the race has existed to idleness vagrancy and crime increased by an inability to procure subsistence. Can any thing be more impudently false than the pretense that this state of things is to be brought about from considerations of humanity to the slaves.
    …
    Last and not least it has been proclaimed that the election of a President is an authoritative approval of all the principles avowed by the person elected and by the party convention which nominated him. Although that election is made by little more than one third of the votes given. But however large the majority may have been to recognize such a principle is to announce a revolution in the government and to substitute an aggregate popular majority for the written constitution without which no single state would have voted its adoption not forming in truth a federal union but a consolidated despotism that worst of despotisms that of an unrestricted sectional and hostile majority, we do not intend to be misunderstood, we do not controvert the right of a majority to govern within the grant of powers in the Constitution.

    The Tea Party vocabulary today is different, but the message hasn’t changed one iota.

  105. 105.

    scav

    Well, the nice safe thing about having Lost that War and Cause is all the low caste crackers can imagine the lost golden age that never really was when the gennelmen with the acreage and porticos accepted them as social equals instead of the barely noticed paler riff-raff trusted to go off and tote rifles for the propertied class.

    and OT Brilliance! in Climatology Today award goes to Profs Lunt and Radagast the Brown of Bristol University for modelling Middle Earth climates and providing Dwarvish and Elvish translations of same.

    Continuing to speak of mythical lands, bien sûr. The other, of course, involves Orcs.

  107. 107.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mnemosyne:
    Conservatives like to pretend that their ‘family values’ are traditional, but they’re all products of the 1950s. Before the 50s extended families were the norm, not nuclear. Homosexuality was an embarrassment, not a horrible crime. We’d already had the sexual revolution around 1920, and while women weren’t economically or politically equal, they had sexual freedom that rivals (although very different in details) today. Only those evil papists were completely freaking out about sexual degeneracy in our culture.

  108. 108.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @scav:

    all the low caste crackers can imagine the lost golden age that never really was

    The essence of modern “conservatism”…the pining to “get our country back” from its resting place in the fiction section of the local library.

  109. 109.

    handsmile

    @burnspbesq: et al

    Hard to see how it’s not three games and home. June 26 (USA v. Portugal) will be the key match in all likelihood.

    Argentina, Belgium, and France all blessed by the football gods in the group stage draw.

    And whether it will Spain or Holland atop Group B is the tastiest dish of all.

    ETA: Martin (#105): with respect, um, no.

  110. 110.

    srv

    Just have any states-rights nut read these articles of secession:

    http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

    Georgia:

    The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

    That would be slavery.

    MIssissippi:

    n the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

    Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

    Slavery too.

    SC:

    The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

    And on and on and on…

  111. 111.

    scav

    @Villago Delenda Est: True, but it’s more likely to be in with the old videotapes, not those complicated elitist things with spines ‘n’ letters ‘n’ all — and that’s if they’ll patronize the socialist shared-thing community institution at all! Minor quibble.

  112. 112.

    Another Holocene Human

    @bnut: Any Millennial that can’t manipulate the fuck out of privacy settings IS an idiot.

    My generation used munging and pseuds.

    Isn’t your generation rather ambivalent towards Facebook (which is constantly dicking with those settings without user consent) also, too?

  113. 113.

    Betty Cracker

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    We’d already had the sexual revolution around 1920, and while women weren’t economically or politically equal, they had sexual freedom that rivals (although very different in details) today.

    LOLWUT?

  115. 115.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Betty Cracker:

    I understand about flappers and all, but it wasn’t until the birth control pill came along that freed women from their own biology in regards to sex.

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    You wouldn’t believe it after the crackdown of the 1950s, but he’s right. The Pill of the 1920s was the diaphragm. The organization that would become Planned Parenthood was founded in 1916.

    It’s the strong media censorship that started in 1934 that makes you think differently about the past. In practical terms, a woman in 1930 had more sexual freedom than one in 1950.

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I understand about flappers and all, but it wasn’t until the birth control pill came along that freed women from their own biology in regards to sex.

    Nope. It was the diaphragm. The Pill gets more press because it was invented after the Comstock Laws that prohibited distribution of information about birth control were repealed, but the diaphragm was the first real step in separating sex and pregnancy.

  120. 120.

    MikeJ

    @handsmile:

    Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight is my own favorite book to give to those with that interest.

    For people that are really interested, Blight’s lectures from his class at Yale are all available online.

  122. 122.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mnemosyne:

    In practical terms, a woman in 1930 had more sexual freedom than one in 1950.

    That may be so, but to claim sexual freedom in the 1930s rivals today’s strains credulity. Mine, anyway.

  123. 123.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Betty Cracker:
    Why? If you want to see social attitudes in action, compare television and books now with movies and books in the 30s. Lots of women flirting with the specific intention of non-marital sex, and without the constant implication that women who have sex are sluts. Go back before the Hayes Commission, and you’ll see a lot more than just flirting.

  124. 124.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Come read my blog! No, seriously, the films of the early 1930s are pretty shocking to today’s eyes, because you have women who have sex (and even babies) out of wedlock who are not punished at the end of the film. Sympathetic prostitutes, and not because they have hearts of gold. Barbara Stanwyck spitting, “I’ll hate you till the day I die!” at the father who’s been prostituting her since she was 14.

  125. 125.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne:

    Revisionists like to pretend that it’s all oh-so-historical, but most of it happened well after the war ended.

    That makes sense to me. I would imagine that in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the memory would probably still be raw enough that Northerners, particularly all the veterans, would be infuriated to see a popular narrative coddling the traitors that they’d just spent four years fighting and bleeding to put down in order to save the Union. The farther the memory of the war, the easier the revisionism.

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Absolutely.

    Had a thought last night about the term linked. As in we are all linked together in life. Thinking only of one’s self breaks that link. Conservatism breaks that link by only looking backwards towards what might have been or never was, and never forward about what could be, and be better.
    The broken link is much harder to repair than to maintain a continuous link. And that is where we are as a country now. The link between all of us is broken, by the last 60 yrs of conservatism, not that it wasn’t always trying to break it. I’ve just never understood what the point of conservatism is. Because it never looks forward, like time or life actually work.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Heck, there’s a whole slew of early 1930s actresses who are mostly forgotten today, led by Norma Shearer. After seeing her in films like The Divorcee or A Free Soul (where she sleeps with gangster Clark Gable for kicks, refuses to marry him, and is exonerated at the end of the film), her role in The Women looks like punishment.

    ETA: I really need to get back to my Pre-Code blog, don’t I?

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:
    Hard for them to see the error of their ways with their heads up their asses.
    Shorter:
    When you have shit in your eyes the whole world stinks and you hate the color brown.

  132. 132.

    handsmile

    @? Martin:

    This isn’t at all important and you may have well left the premises, but the flippancy of my reply to you (#109) began to bug me (in defense, it was the last seconds of the WP edit limit) so….

    While I don’t have a high opinion of the USMNT, their chances of success at the 2014 World Cup could have been much improved by being part of a less competitive group in the initial stage of the tournament. e.g., Group C:

    http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/dec/06/england-world-cup-2014-draw-brazil-italy-manaus

    Germany is, by all accounts, at least one of the two best teams in the world now and Portugal is a stronger, better-balanced, far more experienced squad than the US. There are a number of other nations who have qualified for the tournament (e.g., Australia, Iran, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Cameroon, Honduras) against which the US would be much better matched for victory. As Ghana has had a poor qualifying campaign, it is now expected that the US will end up third in that group next summer.

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    @Frankensteinbeck: Short answer (because I’m too busy for a longer one at the moment — stupid job!): Without economic freedom, there’s no real sexual freedom, at least not for us ladyfolks.

  134. 134.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Even that was (a little) better pre-1950s, though. A little worse during the height of the Depression, much better during the war when employers couldn’t be picky about the gender of their employees and still meet wartime production goals.

    Post-War, women were pressured to leave the workplace to make room for returning veterans, and a lot of them were vocally unhappy about it, to no avail at the time. Stephanie Koontz has some really good books about this, especially The Way We Never Were.

    ETA: To be clear, the 1930s and 1940s were economically better for women than the 1950s, not better than today. Though a lot of women war workers were nostalgic for the free daycare their kids got during the war.

  136. 136.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne:

    The arc of history is long, but it’s not an arc – it’s a fucking zig-zagging line that’ll make your eyes bleed if you look at it for too long, where you hope that the average point on the zig-zagging line bends more in a justicey direction than not over the long run.

    Same with rights for black people. Things are shit during slavery, then get much better during Reconstruction, then much worse during the Gilded Age, then even worse than that during the early twentieth century, then better with the civil rights victories of the fifties and sixties, then reverse course again with the white backlash, the war on drugs, the rise of the prison-industrial complex, and then you get to the present day where there’s a black man in the White House and nonwhites, if not blacks, are becoming a voting force too large for white racists and milquetoast moderates to ignore anymore.

    The basic idea is to make sure that the “backlash” periods don’t take you so far away from the “justice” direction that they completely overwrite the “victory” period that came before.

  137. 137.

    ? Martin

    @handsmile:

    This isn’t at all important and you may have well left the premises, but the flippancy of my reply to you (#109) began to bug me (in defense, it was the last seconds of the WP edit limit) so….

    Don’t worry about it. I didn’t take it personally.

    My attitude here is that if the likelihood of a team making it to the end depends on a weak draw and a sufficient layout such that the other stronger teams take each other out before you have to face them, then you were fucked before you showed up. You aren’t the best team if you are relying literally, on the luck of the draw to get you to the end.

  139. 139.

    Kathleen

    @Southern Beale: Finney is a teabagger who has insinuated his way into Cincinnati City government via Councillman Chris Smitherman and new “Democratic” mayor John Cranley. Finney’s anti-tax group COAST has been actively campaigining against Cincinnati’s streetcar, which now has been put “on hold”. Stopping the street car was the platform Smitherman and Cranley ran on. COAST also provided money (as did Rethuglicans) to elect Cranley, who has been trying to distance himself from both. It will be a very long 4 years.

  140. 140.

    Socoolsofresh

    Ha, amazing. No one on this thread is talking about the subject of this post. I guess you guys feel if you ignore it enough, the issue will go away. Or I guess people are so upset with Obama admitting that Snowden might have raised legitimate concerns that people just can’t handle it since it doesn’t fit their narrative. Whatever, you guys continue to be hilarious.

  141. 141.

    jc

    What’s really scary to think about is what that interview would look like if Bush were president when Snowden revealed his secrets.

    And how do you trust someone who had a huge secret that they had no intention of telling you? Oh, I forgot to mention that I’ve installed a telescope that looks into your bedroom, but I promise I’ll never peep at you late at night. Trust me.

  142. 142.

    liberal

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Before the 50s extended families were the norm, not nuclear.

    Yeah. My dad was dealt a real blow when his grandmother died when he was 13, because she was to some extent the person who raised him, not his mother (who was around but working).

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