Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Republicans in disarray!

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

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

In after Baud. Damn.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

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

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

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

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

So very ready.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Marketing

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What’s on the agenda for the evening that doesn’t suck?

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    WereBear

    Mission: Impossible on Netflix. I’ve got a work thing tomorrow evening and I gots to rest up!

    Thanks to all who shared their Netflix joy. It’s all true.

  2. 2.

    Mustang Bobby

    I have a cold, my sinuses are going into business for themselves, so I fail on the “Doesn’t Suck” meter.

    Crawling into bed now. To quote the immortal Carroll Todd, there’s nothing more inconvenient than an old queen with a head cold.

  3. 3.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Well, uh… if we’re talking marketing and it’s an open thread and since you asked…

    My publisher set a date for the release of Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain! They’ve got the cover art up on their website and everything. February 15th! The last year was horrible as an author, and I feel like I’m starting over, in a good way.

    I have a really, really good feeling about this one. Who doesn’t want to read a book about a 13 year old supervillainess?

  6. 6.

    Mandalay

    Most of what passes for politics & policy these days makes way more sense when interpreted as a marketing exercise.

    billmon has a point; it applies to journalism as well.

    Every time I see Chris Hayes he has a new hairdo, and he is reduced to begging us to like him on Facebook. He now shouts, and interrupts his guests, just like Chris Matthews. By the end of the year he will probably be slobbering just like Matthews as well, if that’s what his masters require.

    Perhaps former friends of Chris Hayes wonder “What the fuck happened to that guy? He used to be a normal person!”. Well, he got marketed.

  10. 10.

    TheMightyTrowel

    I stuck this super adorbs video about a cat and dog in love in the last thread, but it’s probably more appropriate here because open thread. I’m in the midst of writing 3 grants (two for Oz, one for Sweden) and it’s destroying my life. On the other hand it is 39 C and it rained last week so the fire danger isn’t very high.

  12. 12.

    Rafer Janders

    I hate these stupid “what’s on the agenda for the evening?” open threads — if you want to put up a post about marketing, put up a post about marketing and let the commenters discuss that. If you want an open thread, just write “Open Thread!” and let everyone have at it. But putting up a post with a real subject matter, and then inviting everyone to write off-topic comments underneath, makes it neither fish nor fowl.

  14. 14.

    IowaOldLady

    We’re heading for Florida tomorrow, the airlines willing. Back in a week. Everybody be good.

  15. 15.

    the Conster

    Chris Hayes just took the AIPAC traitor Dems who are sabotaging Obama for a little walk through the AUMF past with quotes from Clinton and Kerry supporting it, and how that worked out for them. Booker and Gillebrand kneecapping Obama and supporting AIPAC? Cui bono?

  16. 16.

    Anoniminous

    Most of what passes for politics & policy these days makes way more sense when interpreted as a marketing exercise.

    No shit, Sherlock.

  18. 18.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @efgoldman:
    Wait, what? That makes no sense. Marceline and Bubblegum are more popular than Finn and Jake, and popular with male fans at that. Glob, they could make a friggin’ fortune off Simon And Marcy toys. Who in their right mind makes a Beemo toy before Marceline or PB? The fans eat up Fiona, too. Her ‘You know what? I don’t have to fall in love with ANYBODY’ moral was considered strongly validating to female fans.

    EDIT – @Anne Laurie:
    Exactly. We can all empathize!

  19. 19.

    Baud

    Hmmm.

    But at the moment, Schweitzer is rubbing his chin, looking up at the ceiling, searching – unsuccessfully – for just the right words. The question was simple enough: Is there a single thing President Obama has done that you consider a positive achievement?

    But at the moment, Schweitzer is rubbing his chin, looking up at the ceiling, searching – unsuccessfully – for just the right words. The question was simple enough: Is there a single thing President Obama has done that you consider a positive achievement?

    Finally, he spoke.

    “My mother, God rest her soul, told me ‘Brian, if you can’t think of something nice to say about something change the subject,’” he said.

    But he couldn’t help himself, slamming Obama’s record on civil liberties (the NSA revelations were “un-effing-believable”), his competency (“They just haven’t been very good at running things”), and above all, Obamacare (“It will collapse on its own weight”).

    I don’t see how he thinks this will help him, except in Montana maybe, but he’s not running for the Senate.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @Rafer Janders:
    Given the custom here that we comment off-topic or on-topic as we feel like it, does a Balloon-Juice blog post really need to be designated as either fish or fowl?

  23. 23.

    RSR

    new group exposing intersection of money and politics in education reform:

    salon.com/2014/01/14/the_influence_of_michelle_rhee_and_chris_christie_education_reformers_revolving…

    The influence of Michelle Rhee and Chris Christie: Education reformers’ revolving door
    New group probes connections between for-profit education corporations and federal policymakers

    A new progressive education group, formed to fight business-backed bipartisan education reform consensus, announced Tuesday it was filing Freedom of Information Act requests regarding for-profit groups’ influence in federal policy. The new group, Integrity in Education, says it’s seeking communications between officials with “known connections to for-profit education corporations,” and “any ethics waivers filed for department leaders and staff.”

    “When we see people who are, you know, coming from organizations that are funded by people who can profit from a policy, then serving in an executive role that allows them to carry that out, and then going back to work with the kinds of organizations and the same kinds of funding interests, then that really does concern us,” Integrity in Education executive director Sabrina Stevens told Salon.

  24. 24.

    Anoniminous

    @Amir Khalid:

    Having a Topic opens a space for people to complain others are going off-topic.

    (And is Herr Cole von West Virginia OK? This thread has been up for 25 minutes & he hasn’t big footed her.)

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @Rafer Janders: I think there’s a lot of little quips & nuggets & YouTube videos that don’t really qualify for Big Dedicated Think Posts. And while plenty of BJ commentors are not to be intimidated by the phrase ‘off topic’, there are those among us who’d rather not interrupt, say, a discussion of quantum mechanics with a more personal issue. So I compromise!

  28. 28.

    Hal

    @Baud:

    I don’t see how he thinks this will help him, except in Montana maybe, but he’s not running for the Senate.

    Unless he thinks only older white men are going to vote for him, I can’t imagine what his strategy would be if he’s contemplating a run for President.

  31. 31.

    Redshift

    Ordered a new TV, our first HDTV. We are hoping it gets here before the old one dies; it’s been on its last legs for about a month.

  33. 33.

    mclaren

    Anyone else notice a federal court finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally ruled the goddamn insane “no-fly” list unconstitutional?

    Bueller? Anyone?

    And how about the Democratic president’s 2016 inaugural speech? Whaddaya think that’s gonna be like?

    I think I can predict it:

    Ladies and gentlement, fellow Americans: let us give thanks today because [REDACTED]. Now we can march forward into the sunlight of [REDACTED] in a new dawn of [REDACTED]. From today, for the duration of the emergency, I am hereby suspending election because [REDACTED]. The time is now; the people are us — we have our mission before us, to make America the greatest country on earth once again, and for this reason I am declaring a new Year Zero in which the killing fields will fill with corpses until [REDACTED].

    The lists of the disloyal have been drawn up; the prisons begin to fill. Soon, the dissenters and subversives will learn the terrible cost of their folly when [REDACTED]. For reasons of national security, I am not at liberty to go into further details. Although irresponsible people have talked about “millions of American deaths” after the imposition of martial law and Year Zero, that is patent nonsense — in reality, less than 10% of Americans will be [REDCATED], a small price to pay for our sacred freedoms. Please follow the riot-armored police in front of you into the barbed-wire enclosures, and [REDACTED].

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @the Conster: Good for him, even Dianne Feinstain has come out against this fucking nonsense.

    @Hal: @Baud: As I said earlier, Schweitzer has his finger on the pulse of the Democratic Party of 1927. I was wondering how a prominent politician could be so stupid as to think pissing off Obama Democrats, environmentalists and gun safety activists is the path to the White House. Ed Kilgore sheds a little light on it, Schweitzer takes, or may be taking, advice from someone whose “Dems are the real enemy of progressives!” stupidity is surpassed only by his self-regard:

    “He counters the cultural language of the right, which is not just policy – it’s, ‘Those New York or Cambridge liberals and academics are trying to change our lives!’” David Sirota, a progressive author and activist who worked on Schweitzer’s campaigns, told msnbc.

    ETA: Okay, what word landed me in moderation?

  40. 40.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    testing…
    @the Conster: Good for him, even Dianne Feinstain has come out against this fucking nonsense.

    @Hal: @Baud: As I said earlier, Schweitzer has his finger on the pulse of the Democratic Party of 1927. I was wondering how a prominent politician could be so stupid as to think pissing off Obama Democrats, environmentalists and g u n safety activists is the path to the White House. Ed Kilgore sheds a little light on it, Schweitzer takes, or may be taking, advice from someone whose “Dems are the real enemy of progressives!” stupidity is surpassed only by his self-regard:

    “He counters the cultural language of the right, which is not just policy – it’s, ‘Those New York or Cambridge liberals and academics are trying to change our lives!’” David Sirota, a progressive author and activist who worked on Schweitzer’s campaigns, told msnbc.

  41. 41.

    dmsilev

    @efgoldman:

    I must have missed the last quantum mechanics thread. Maybe it got lost among the cats.

    Live cats, dead cats, or cats in some indeterminate state?

    (in the unlikely event that anyone actually does want to talk about quantum mechanics, let me know. That’s no-fooling part of my job description)

  44. 44.

    ruemara

    @Baud: he’s being an asshole.

    @Frankensteinbeck: I want to read this book and I haven’t been able to see the cover. I do hope ebooks are part of the release.

    Grats to efgoldman, I was outraged at McDonald’s slight against girls, both as characters and as fans.

    My head is hurting, my neck is stiff, my ears hurt. My goal is to rest up and not have this continue into the morrow.

  47. 47.

    Mike E

    @Redshift: I’m thinking of getting me one of them newfangled rectangles…what tv would you suggest for someone on a budget who is thinking about streaming content more than cable consumption?

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @the Conster:

    Sam Stein ‏@ samsteinhp 36m
    Am told POTUS made a forceful case for not voting on new Iran sanctions to Senate Ds tonight. No one pushed back.

    Good for BHO. I read today– on the ‘net, according to sources, FWIW– that Booker (among others) does not fear push back from “the Left”. If I lived in New Jersey, I’d do my best to teach a Booker, or Menendez, staffer some new words.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    Different people say different things about the place, just like any other place. On the whole, though, I’d say it was no worse, and in some ways rather better, than it was cracked up to be.

  52. 52.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:

    I must have missed the last quantum mechanics thread. Maybe it got lost among the cats. I certainly wouldn’t interrupt it.

    We know exactly how fast the quantum mechanics thread is traveling, but as a result, we have no idea where it is.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid:

    it was no worse, and in some ways rather better, than it was cracked up to be.

    Yay!

    That should actually be one of the rotating tags here.

  55. 55.

    Cain

    Intel is no longer going to have a plant in Arizona. That gives me so much happiness. Fuck that state. Really. Fuck them and their shitty politicans. They are expanding in Oregon instead. Intel has turned into a dirty hippy company and I for one am glad.

  57. 57.

    Citizen_X

    @efgoldman:

    I’ve still never seen a front pager here (not even Prof. Levenson) put up a quantum mechanics thread.

    I have. Unfortunately, it was entangled with a Snowden thread.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @dmsilev:

    I heard that they made some new discovery about black holes recently — that the event horizon isn’t actually invisible to the observer falling through it but has an energy layer or something. Do you know anything about that?

  62. 62.

    the Conster

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Booker’s too slick by half for my taste, but PO is the best advocate for his own argument in the whole world – literally – and the Dems are at least rational, ergo convinceable. Clearly AIPAC’s influence is out of all proportion to the constituents they represent and PO is a bulwark against them exerting more. I’m sure he was passionate in his authority and understanding of the actual reality with Iran, not the neocon spin. It’s like he and Pope Francis need to be a progressive Voltron.

  64. 64.

    max

    @Amir Khalid: Given the custom here that we comment off-topic or on-topic as we feel like it, does a Balloon-Juice blog post really need to be designated as either fish or fowl?

    Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, maybe instead of saying fish or fowl our hosts could just say ‘Fish or Fowl?’

    max
    [‘Check please!’]

  66. 66.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    Well, that one time in Rochester, winter was officially over. But the temperature was around 0 C, and there was still much snow on the ground. When I was in Boston, the weather was kind enough to wait until my last day before it got really cold

  69. 69.

    dmsilev

    @efgoldman:

    I’ve still never seen a front pager here (not even Prof. Levenson) put up a quantum mechanics thread.

    He did actually at least once. Some of his students made a video explaining some nifty games you can play with lasers and atoms (nifty games which happened to have won a Nobel a few years back) and Tom was justifiably bragging about the video.

  70. 70.

    dmsilev

    @Baud:

    I heard that they made some new discovery about black holes recently — that the event horizon isn’t actually invisible to the observer falling through it but has an energy layer or something. Do you know anything about that?

    Doesn’t ring a bell, I’m afraid. It’s a bit far afield from my own area of specialty (I tend to study objects that I can pick up and hold with my hand) and I haven’t seen anything of that sort in the general literature.

  72. 72.

    joel hanes

    @Citizen_X:

    entangled with a Snowden thread.

    Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

    POZZO: He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig, the fandango and even the hornpipe. He capered. For joy.
    Now that’s the best he can do.
    Do you know what he calls it?

    ESTRAGON: The Scapegoat’s Agony.

    VLADIMIR: The Hard Stool.

    POZZO: The Net. He thinks he’s entangled in a net.

    _Waiting for Godot_

  74. 74.

    Suffern ACE

    @Baud: you know, I kind of don’t want to vote for a democrat promising more healthcare reform in the near future. I don’t want big plans and I don’t want to vote for someone who is worried about the weight of our complicated healthcare system. He sounds like the type of guy who’d promise to “reform” with a two paragraph bill full of awshucks slogans.

  75. 75.

    scav

    @Baud: & @dmsilev:
    Utterly clueless here, but I did remember seeing this at the BBC recently, which at least involves black holes being visible: Black hole’s ‘big meal’ could spark fireworks which inevitably brings to mind the black hole of the impossible planet gobbling up systems. Looking for that link caught this one in the net too: Oddly Quiet Black Hole Spotted Around Fast-Spinning Star so, that make for Burpy and Sneaky and five more to go. If only they were from dwarf stars . . . .

  76. 76.

    joel hanes

    @amk:

    What is so profound (or even humorous) about billmon tweets that they need to be constantly fp’ed?

    When you can snatch the answer from my hand, you will yourself be a front-pager.

  77. 77.

    Lolis

    @Baud:

    Wow, what an idiot. I will actively work against Schweitzer if ever tries to run for president. His schtick feels tired just reading it.

  81. 81.

    NotMax

    @mclaren

    And how about the Democratic president’s 2016 inaugural speech?

    In this dimension, the next scheduled presidential inauguration is in 2017.

  82. 82.

    rda909

    @amk: Dood. C’mon…”All politicians SUCK!” is a winning formula in the poor, oppressed white person milieu. Obama is the lesser of two evils, dontchaknow. Nevermind he’s easily the most liberal president since FDR, and a strong case can be made for ever, if one considers the overall context President Obama is dealing with.

    But yea, billmon, whoever that is, apparently thinks President Obama is simply serving his billionaire masta’s. 10s of millions of people, mostly the poor, across the world are benefiting RIGHT NOW from President Obama’s actions, but the “Stand with Rand progressives” think President Obama is the billionaires’ puppet. No credit can be given to him for running one of the most effective and unique campaigns in history which resulted in his two easy wins….no, it was the billionaires who ALLOWED President Obama to become president, since he must have a deal with them, ‘natch.

    Note: billmon seems to be a groupie of The Snowdenwald. Quelle surprise?

  83. 83.

    Schlemizel

    @scav:

    I have not done any real studying of black holes but it is my understanding that as you pass the event horizon you are pulled into a single thread of atoms and then the atoms into a single thread of component parts of atoms. At the same time, time itself slows. If you combine those two things it seems like you are stretched on a cosmic rack for eternity. You would never actually die just suffer for ever.

  84. 84.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @RSA:
    I hope you like it! It’s just your average romantic coming of age story about a nightmare who lives in the world of dreams.

    @ruemara:
    My publisher deals primarily in ebooks, although print copies can be ordered as well. You’re good!

    @Citizen_X:
    It’s true. I’m hot.

  85. 85.

    scav

    @Schlemizel: Something to look forward to. Although, if all my neurons were pulled into a single thread of atoms, that might be the first linear thought I’ve managed in a very long time. But, then, I would be having that single, linear thought for a very very long time to it would all even out in the end. I’m not entirely sure if the neurons would be communicating to each other though under the circs. All depends on the two neighbors they end up with I guess.

  86. 86.

    NotMax

    Billmon worked much better in the (relatively speaking) longer format of a blog. The old Whiskey Fire nearly always offered something delightful.

    Tweeting, he more often just comes across as a crank. Based on the examples which have been pasted here over the past several months, too often a smug crank.

  87. 87.

    Citizen_X

    @Baud:

    his competency (“They just haven’t been very good at running things”)

    Fucking seriously? Compared to any conceivable next Republican? Or compared to Bush? Compared to Bush and the bloody, drowned, verging-on-global-depression disaster that bastard left behind, you fucking fuck? Fuck you, Schweitzer.

    Sigh. On a lighter note, I’m loving the new (to me) tagline: Let’s just call the organism what it is: an androgynous metrosexual hermaphrodite.

  89. 89.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    O’Donnell just played a clip of Uncle “We’ve Got To Stop Giving People Free Stuff” Brokaw (R- Morning Joe) whining that Chris Christie wouldn’t be getting this kind of attention about this trivial matter if he were some obscure flyover governor. Or if all your Greenroom Professional Centrist* Pals hadn’t been pimping him as The One who can beat the Hildebeast and restore the Reign of McCainism. I have really come to hate that fucker.

    * “Centrist” defined as “cut my taxes, slash that safety net and do stop talking about all this Church basement stuff”

  90. 90.

    cokane

    kind of getting annoyed with the pithy wisdom of billmon tweets. I mean NPR for example does not follow this model, nor do the majority of daily newspapers, nor do the majority of magazines that remain. the subscriber model has proven effective.

  91. 91.

    Cervantes

    @efgoldman: Your daughter did a nice job.

    On the other hand, improving the toys given away with McDonald’s Happy Meals is several degrees away from attending to the real problem, sort of like re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

  92. 92.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @dmsilev:

    in the unlikely event that anyone actually does want to talk about quantum mechanics, let me know.

    Can you get me a deal on a left-handed quark wrench?

  93. 93.

    Origuy

    @Amir Khalid: I interviewed at the IBM Rochester plant in 1978, in my senior year of college. I remember two things about it: the requirement that desks had to be cleared and locked before you left for the day, and what the guy driving two other guys and I told us. He said that with the Mayo Clinic in town, there was a surplus of single women. It wasn’t enough to push IBM over Control Data in Sunnyvale, CA, though.

  94. 94.

    divF

    @efgoldman:

    It was actually a superposition of a cat thread wave packet and a quantum mechanics thread wave packet. When you looked at it, the wave packet collapsed and you ended up with the Kitteh.

    ETA: dmsilev got there first, but this is at least different.

  95. 95.

    burnspbesq

    New music! Springsteen, Rosanne Cash, and a great new recording of Verklarte Nacht and the Berg Lyric Suite with FOTM cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Ensemble Resonanz.

  96. 96.

    burnspbesq

    @the Conster:

    Cui bono?

    Booker and Gillibrand have to raise money in NY and NJ. Pandering to contributors who think Bibi is the shiz is part of the deal. Sucks, but unless you’ve got an alternative source of big dollars it’s going to continue..

  98. 98.

    gian

    @Lolis:

    if you won’t say “he got bin laden” as a good thing about Obama
    then you don’t want to say any good things about him.

    or you wish he hadn’t gotten bin laden.

  100. 100.

    Mandalay

    @Hal:

    Unless he thinks only older white men are going to vote for him, I can’t imagine what his strategy would be if he’s contemplating a run for President.

    He’s a DINO. He would be more at home in the Tea Party, or maybe the KKK….

    “People say to me: ‘Brian, you lived in the Middle East, you understand the Middle East,’” he told msnbc. “It’s confusing to most people, you know? The uniforms that they wear, some have got towels some don’t, some hang down, some are white, some are Shia, Sunni, Wahhabi, what are all these things, how are the Kuwaitis related to the Saudis, blah blah blah.”

    He added, “Look, let me get this clear before you say that you understand: Good guys and bad guys in the Middle East? There are no good guys. It’s bad guys and allies.”

    He sounds like a nasty redneck with a fat mouth on him.

    ETA: On reading his quote again, I think I was too kind. Schweitzer is a dumb, vile piece of shit. Fuck him. Democrats don’t need filth like him.

  101. 101.

    Herbal Infusion Bagger

    @Mandalay: Every time I see Chris Hayes he has a new hairdo, and he is reduced to begging us to like him on Facebook.

    He never should have left the weekend slot.

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