Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

White supremacy is terrorism.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

T R E 4 5 O N

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

The words do not have to be perfect.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Republicans in disarray!

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

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Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    Big R

    Dude, Steve already came home. Unfortunately, he was able to bring back neither the car nor the mustard.

  3. 3.

    Botsplainer

    @Big R:

    Dude, Steve already came home. Unfortunately, he was able to bring back neither the car nor the mustard.

    …and Cole still may have avoided going to the ortho, because allowing something to heal poorly (and painfully) is better than addressing it quickly.

  4. 4.

    pat

    Shutting down the computer (Yes, RIGHT NOW) to get out and do some snow moving, then shopping, then something else that is not hanging out on the computer.

    Hope John’s knee turns out to not be as bad as it looks.

  5. 5.

    Comrade Jake

    Trying to get home from ABQ. First message from Delta this AM: your flight is delayed. So I rebooked so I wouldn’t miss my connection, no problem. Ten minutes later: your flight is cancelled.

    Not sure what the deal is, but I guess there are still all kinds of problems with Delta at the ATL airport. Fuck.

  6. 6.

    AdamK

    If only Cole could blog through the pain. If he’d post some pictures we’d all know what his pets look like.

  8. 8.

    srv

    As a member of John Cole’s Death Panel, I’m starting to waver with all his drama.

    Pat Buchannan explains how the GOP lost middle-America

    The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship production abroad – where unions did not exist, regulations were light, taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in America.

    Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American workforce, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign labor.

    While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.

    Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all.

    The comment section is filled with a rage of Teahadi’s vs RINOs vs Blue Bloods vs Socialcons.

  9. 9.

    scav

    @Comrade Jake: Good luck, there might be ripples from ORD as well propagating shortly through the system. Apparently we’ve stolen all the water and they’re even predicting up to 10 inches accumulation by tomorrow PM. But that should be Saturday mostly, don’t know how much they might pre-emptively shuffle things and planes about to cope. Again, good luck.

  10. 10.

    gbear

    @pat: I spent an hour shovelling when I got home from work last night. After about 20 minutes my back was telling me to knock it off, so I went into the old-guy mode of shovelling where I throw about 3-4 shovels full, and then take 15-20 seconds to contemplate how much snow I’ve cleared.

    At about the 40 minute mark someone who doesn’t know how to drive in snow started spinning their wheels trying to get up the hill on my side street. I wasn’t going to take a chance on blowing out my back completely by pushing her car while she spun the wheels, so I just kept on old-guy shovelling and feeling guilty until she finally gave up, backed down the hill and spun her wheels until she got going up the street in front of my house. If looks could kill….

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    Are we going to have an openest thread soon?

    Incidentally, Kuala Lumpur is at its quietest around the Chinese New Year holidays. There are rather more stores closed today than for any other festival in the calendar, even Eid al-Fitri. This year, because CNY is a two-day holiday in Malaysia and the second day, February 1, is on Saturday, Monday will also be a public holiday. (Which means nothing to a medical retiree like me, alas.)

    Idle musing: Why does FYWP put the red squiggle of spell-check under “Lumpur” but not “Kuala”?

  14. 14.

    Gex

    @Belafon: The underlying premise for Pat is that all these high paying domestic jobs should be for white people, but he still ends up hitting the nail on the head as you say.

  16. 16.

    Botsplainer

    @Comrade Jake:

    Not sure what the deal is, but I guess there are still all kinds of problems with Delta at the ATL airport. Fuck.

    Forget it, Jake. Its Atlanta.

  18. 18.

    askew

    My wish on slow news days like this is that Alito and Scalia decide to quit the Supreme Court to become traveling circus clowns. I’d also take another shoe dropping on Chris Christie’s corruption scandals. Either one works for me.

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    @gbear:
    This is something we don’t have to learn in the tropics, of course. But as I understand, in America kids are taught to drive in high school. Doesn’t the syllabus include any theory on driving on snow?

  21. 21.

    Big R

    @srv: Shorter Pat Buchanan: “The quest for power should trump good policy.” In short, the Republican line since 1994.

  22. 22.

    Belafon

    @JPL: I doubt it, because, as srv titled, Buchanan was talking about how the Republicans lost the middle class. And, as Gex points out, Buchanan’s racism currently seems to override any loyalty he has to business.

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Tech question: I bought a new iPad Air last week (after I dropped my old iPad 2 on the pavement and shattered the screen to smithereens). Got everything migrated from old device to new, thanks to a friend who knows how to do that stuff. All has been well for several days, but today all of a sudden I have no sound! I’ve rebooted, I’ve checked settings, I’ve checked the little switch on the side above the volume controls (which I use as a screen lock).

    I can always go to the Apple Store now that the roads are clear, but I’d sooner not if I don’t have to.

    Any thoughts or suggestions? Please keep in mind that you need to explain tech things to me as though I were in kindergarten.

  26. 26.

    slippy

    @srv:

    The comment section is filled with a rage of Teahadi’s vs RINOs vs Blue Bloods vs Socialcons.

    Buchanan actually admitted that the GOP’s entire playbook is centered on the theme of punishing and insulting the working class? And that this might have a negative consequence for them, eventually? And that the GOP might be the ones gradually taking a cheese shredder to the American Dream?

    I looked outside and cats and dogs were in fact sleeping together.

  27. 27.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    Idle musing: Why does FYWP put the red squiggle of spell-check under “Lumpur” but not “Kuala”?

    Not on my machines, so perhaps it’s specific to your set-up. (I do not get a squiggle under either word, joint or separate.)

  28. 28.

    JPL

    @Comrade Jake: My neighbor was suppose to return from Chicago yesterday at six pm and her plane landed at midnight. The snow is about gone so the conditions should improve.

  29. 29.

    jeffreyw

    Waiting for the local Rural King store to unload the sunflower seeds. Mrs J had run us plumb out and the birds are pecking on the window, causing the cats no end of bother.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:

    Why does FYWP put the red squiggle of spell-check under “Lumpur” but not “Kuala”?

    It’s probably your browser that’s doing the spell checking, not FYWP. And it’s probably a sign that you should change your browser’s spell check dictionary from en_us to en_my (assuming en_my is available).

  34. 34.

    Ernest Pikeman

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Any thoughts or suggestions? Please keep in mind that you need to explain tech things to me as though I were in kindergarten.

    Sorry, that’s not how it works. You need to go FIND a kindergartener to FIX your iPad. Ask her (or maybe her third grader sister) to explain it to you like you were really old, like 35.

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @askew:

    My wish on slow news days like this is that Alito and Scalia decide to quit the Supreme Court to become traveling circus clowns. I’d also take another shoe dropping on Chris Christie’s corruption scandals. Either one works for me.

    How about combining your wishes and discovering that Scalia and Alito are deeply involved in the Christie scandal somehow? And can we add Thomas and Roberts while we’re at it?

  38. 38.

    srv

    @slippy: Always be careful when approaching the Wingularity.

    My theory is that the closer we get, crazy people start saying sane things and sane people start acting crazy.

    Like the House Republicans a few weeks back who said they understood that the immigration bill would be good for Walmart, but it was still a bad deal for purity.

  39. 39.

    scav

    Interesting little side view into the habits of the seriously wealthy international set: Inside ‘Billionaires’ Row’: London’s rotting, derelict mansions worth £350m.

    The empty buildings include a row of 10 mansions worth £73m which have stood largely unused since they were bought between 1989 and 1993, it is believed on behalf of members of the Saudi royal family.

    Exclusive access now derelict properties has revealed their condition is so poor in some cases that water streams down ballroom walls, ferns grows out of floors strewn with rubble from collapsed ceilings, and pigeon and owl skeletons lie scattered across rotting carpets.

  40. 40.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:

    But as I understand, in America kids are taught to drive in high school. Doesn’t the syllabus include any theory on driving on snow?

    In places where it snows regularly, that may be included in the syllabus, though the weather may not cooperate in providing practical experience. More important, though, is that experience shows that people don’t remember stuff unless they practice it regularly, so all that teaching about what to do in the snow will be forgotten by the time many people actually have to use it.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    The two things that come to mind are:

    Make sure you didn’t turn the volume all the way down using the buttons on the side of the gadget.
    Re-check your settings and make sure that the little button is still set to freeze your screen and not to mute it. If you did any kind of software update, that setting may have switched itself back to the default.

    Other than that, you may want to wander into the closest Apple store.

  43. 43.

    Origuy

    @Amir Khalid: A lot of high schools have dropped drivers’ ed. Budget cuts, don’t ya know. Better to spend the money on new football uniforms. Anyway, even if they did discuss driving in snow, they probably didn’t practice it. Most of the drivers’ ed I took in high school was devoted to scaring the kids away from driving drunk.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gex:

    Well, I thought I did (that’s what I meant by “reboot”) but I will try again and maybe leave it off for a few minutes.

    So it can think about its sins.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Ahhh, driver training. We did sort of learn to operate a car, how to use a clutch and shift. A little pencil/paper time on the basic laws, but how to actually drive, not so much. What to do in the case of a skid or slide out? Nope. What it’s like to drive in rain or snow? You must be kidding.
    The fact that more people don’t kill or maim themselves or others operating a motor vehicle any more often than they do is pretty amazing to me.

  48. 48.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:
    There is such a thing as en_my (Malaysian English), though it’s obviously less popular than en_us (US English) and en_gb (British English). Even en_sg (Singapore English) might help. My computer at home once had the unfortunate habit of changing my spell check dictionary to en_za (South African English) at random intervals.

  49. 49.

    Anoniminous

    @Comrade Jake:

    In order to increase economic activity in New Mexico the ABQ airport has an app that grounds all outgoing flights until a sufficient number of passengers have purchased:

    1. Navaho jewelry

    2. Pueblo pottery

    3. Statues, wall hangings, coffee mugs, etc. with Kokopelli predominately displayed thereon

    4. And the total number of chili ristras equals the number of passengers divided by two

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @Roger Moore:
    This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’ve never had it on any machine I owned, or used at work. I’m not sure if anyone really needs an en_my, anyway; everyone here uses British spelling.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @frank in midtown:

    Thanks, no, I use that side switch for screen orientation lock. I double-checked anyway but that’s not it. And I did the complete shutdown and restart that Gex suggested, but to no avail.

    Sigh.

  55. 55.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:
    Really? When I looked at the language settings on my Windows box, I saw an “English, Malaysia” setting. I don’t know if that changes the default dictionary, but it does change other default settings like the date format and digits separator. It doesn’t look like Firefox has a Malaysian English dictionary, but I know such things are available elsewhere. I run Fedora Linux at home, and it has en_my available as an option. Score one for Open Source Software.

  57. 57.

    Gene108

    @srv:

    Pat side stepped the role of Reagan in green lighting the M&A activity that led to businesses screwing employees for the sake of their EPS.

    Bush, Sr just inherited that culture and let it run.

  58. 58.

    rikyrah

    Koch-Tied Groups Funded GOP Effort to Mess With Electoral College Rules

    Last election season, a shadowy nonprofit pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign to change how electoral votes are counted. The group didn’t disclose who was funding its efforts—a fact that Mother Jones highlighted in a story titled “Who’s Paying for the GOP’s Plan to Hijack the 2012 Election?” But now, thanks to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan government watchdog, it’s clear that organizations with ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch footed at least some of the bill.

    Each state and the District of Columbia has a certain number of electoral votes, based on their population, and they get to decide for themselves how those votes should be allotted. Currently, every state except Maine and Nebraska gives all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote. But in 2011, GOP lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin introduced bills that would divide electoral votes among candidates based on how many congressional districts they won. Because Republicans drew the boundaries of the districts in those states, this scheme would be almost certain to hand Republican presidential candidates the majority of their electoral votes—even if more voters cast ballots for Democrats. (Read more about how the plan would work here.) Presuming the race is close enough, this could decide the nationwide outcome.

    In the case of Pennsylvania, a mysterious nonprofit called All Votes Matter spent large sums lobbying for these changes. Local officials wondered about its funding sources. “They raised an awful lot of money very quickly—$300,000 in just a few days,” Democratic Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach told Mother Jones at the time. “We’re all curious where that level of funding comes from.” But All Votes Matter didn’t disclose its donors, nor did it have to. The group is organized as a 501(c)4 “social welfare” nonprofit, which means that it can spend money on politics while keeping its donors secret. (Such groups are not supposed to spend more than half of their budget on political causes, but IRS enforcement is slack.) Thus the public knew little about the agendas behind this effort to upend the mechanics of presidential elections.

    http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/koch-brothers-change-electoral-college-rules

  59. 59.

    FlyingToaster

    @Amir Khalid: Most schools no longer have drivers’ ed.

    Mine did (back in the Carter Administration), and I lived north of the Manson-Nixon line, so I did learn to drive in snow. HerrDoktorToaster, OTOH, grew up in sunny Flah-ri-dah and got to learn as a grad student here in the Hub of the Universe.

    Unless you live where it snows every winter, and you take drivers education during the winter, you won’t learn winter driving until you actually do it. And driving in snow ain’t that hard; driving on half-centimeter thick ice is the real test of driving ability.

    That and hydroplaning on the LIE.

    I am a decent driver (I can get out of an incipient spin on ice, and didn’t go off the road during the aforementioned hydroplaning incident), but I’m not a pro. I wouldn’t get on the interstate WestaWoostah* these days for love or money.

    * in actual non-Boston Brogue, “west of Worcester”; one cartoony Boston map shows the pike to Worcester, then the Berks, New York, a Lake with Chicago on it, flyover country (illustrated with Wheat, Corn, Cows and Mountains) and then California.

  60. 60.

    Ernest Pikeman

    Dammit, I put a hummingbird feeder out like fifteen minutes ago and NO BIRDS! Lazy bastards.

    I need a hummer. Now.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    IRS rules change seen as limiting free speech for nonprofit organizations

    Conservatives say they’re muzzled

    Conservative groups are mounting a major resistance effort against the Internal Revenue Service’s post-tea party targeting scandal rules, which are designed to clamp down on outside groups’ ability to organize as nonprofits and still play a role in political conversations.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fired a major shot Thursday, taking to the chamber floor to say the rules amount to a declaration of war on free speech and vowing the GOP will try to block them.

    “Every American needs to know about this abuse of power,” said Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican. “Let me be clear: What the administration is proposing poses a grave threat to the ability of ordinary Americans to freely participate in the Democratic process.”

    Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which has faced IRS audits, said the rules would give the Obama administration more power to muzzle its critics.

    “We have seen that this administration cannot be trusted with the authority they have,” he said. “Why give them more?”

    But Stephen Spaulding, legal counsel at Common Cause, a nonprofit that advocates government transparency, said the rules apply to groups on both the right and left, and called the idea that they are anti-free speech “laughable.” He said they stemmed from a “kind of paranoid vision that the president is after them.”

    Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/30/irs-rules-change-seen-as-limiting-free-speech-for-/#ixzz2s0UiA5fa
    Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

  62. 62.

    jl

    I read that the police investigated Rep. Michael Grimm’s threat to reporter that he would throw him off a balcony and break him in two, “like a boy”. But, no charges filed, partly because reporter would not file a complaint.

    So, is that just routine police work, or more politically motivated persecution of ideological opponents by the Obama junta?

  63. 63.

    Served

    Well, the Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary is blowing up nicely today: http://www.suntimes.com/25299488-418/rutherford-charges-rauner-behind-allegations-against-him-rauner-denies-it.html?utm_term=via+bla+bla

    Bruce Rauner is our local bajillionaire now playing the common man with a fresh crisp Carhartt an an $18 watch (who of course made his money off investing public employee pensions, and is now campaign to destroy said pensions).

    And now this tweet from Rich Miller, who runs CapitolFax.com, the best IL politics blog:

    Rich Miller ‏@capitolfax 12m
    As I chase this story, there could be some really bad stuff coming out. And not necessarily on Rauner, either. Oy.

  65. 65.

    wenchacha

    Has anyone addressed the “Obamacare hurt me” ad that is about Emilie Lamb, a woman with Lupus?

    Daily Caller and some other RWNJ site are promoting her story as proof that Obamacare is hurting people. CNN is airing it, don’t know who else may be.

    I hope it’s incorrect, but I understand that some people will pay more. But I want to crush this kind of crap if it is just more fakery from Koch Bros & friends.

  67. 67.

    ThresherK

    What does it take to get a motorcycle license where you live, fellow BJers?

    Many yeasr ago, I had a permit and some off-road kicking around on a little bike which I almost outweighed. I took a little test in a parking lot and side street, and the inspector gave me my “M”, which I had for two years before adding the automobile part.

    This was back aways, when a “big bike” wasn’t capable of 0-60 in four seconds, and would shake like hell instead of effortlessly delivering you to 110mph, when a “midsized bike” meant a Japanese steed of some 400-500cc, not a modern-engined cruiser with 900cc, 50hp and 60 ft-lb of torque on a vehicle weighing ~650lb.

    I’m glad I came to the life when I did. Part of me is surprised there isn’t a higher rate of motorcycle deaths and severe injuries among the newer pilots today.

    (Very, very loosely related to the “driving in snow” bits of this thread.)

  68. 68.

    Amir Khalid

    @jl:
    From what I saw on the video, it was all there, the threatening gestures and language. Michael Scotto would have had Grimm dead to rights, had he, Scotto, decided to press charges. So now it’s Grimm who owes Scotto one. How must that feel, I wonder.

  70. 70.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’m not sure if anyone really needs an en_my, anyway; everyone here uses British spelling.

    A good localized dictionary would include the most frequently encountered proper nouns, such as the name of your city.

  71. 71.

    catclub

    @Suffern ACE: Irs needs to drop the ~1958 ‘adminstrative ruling’ that predominantly means ‘some’. and Replace with predominantly means all. I.e. Public welfare organizations benefit the public, not their donors privacy concerns.

  73. 73.

    Mnemosyne

    @wenchacha:

    I found a reference to her in Politico (sorry):

    Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has invited Emilie Lamb, a constituent who suffers from lupus who was previously insured under CoverTN, the state-administered health plan that ended coverage for 16,000 consumers because it did not meet the minimum services required under Obamacare. While Lamb has since been able to enroll under the Affordable Care Act, her monthly premiums are quadrupling to $400, a Blackburn spokesman said.

    Yes, that’s right, a woman with a chronic immune system problem is going to have to pay $400 a month for coverage in the private market when before she couldn’t get any private company to cover her and had to go into the state plan for people who were otherwise uninsurable. Sorry, but cry me a frickin’ river.

    (Also, as with many of these sob stories, I wonder if she actually bothered to shop around and compare plans, or if she just accepted the scare letter that the insurance company sent her upselling her to coverage she may not even need.)

  75. 75.

    jl

    @Amir Khalid:

    I guess the PR blowback on Grimm is pretty bad. I also read Grimm apologized to Scotto, and is arranging and make-up luncheon.

    @wenchacha:
    I watched the ad, which is misleading in some ways. The ACA did not cancel her policy, the insurance company decided to cancel, for whatever reason. But I don’t know if her premium had to rise from $57 per month to about $350. Some kind of Tennessee program was involved, so it might be a complicated story, which just might involve TN’s refusal to expand Medicaid.

    Maybe contact Richard Mayhew and bring he issue to his attention. His email is not in the contact drop-down box in the upper right hand corner of the blog page.

  76. 76.

    coin operated

    @ThresherK: The best way IMHO is to see if you have a training/certification course in your state. The one in my neck of the woods, Team Oregon, will give you a certificate upon completion that you take to the DMV and they put the M on your license.

  78. 78.

    Bill Arnold

    @Amir Khalid:

    Doesn’t the syllabus include any theory on driving on snow?

    Theory, sure, but the only thing that matters (for human drivers) is practice. My driver ed class (a long time ago) we went out in a practice drive in a car with dual controls on a snowy day, and instructor controlled the brake and accelerator while we controlled the steering.
    This was a very good start, but most people need more practice. Some of people in the northeast (probably elsewhere in snow country (*)) find a deserted snow-covered parking lot and practice, or have their kids practice.
    (*) How much snow it takes to cancel school, by county

  79. 79.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks. I looked at a Poltiico link, but the one you found had more information.

    The ad would be more accurate if she had said “I am very disappointed that the caveman pinheads that run TN did not chose to cooperate with the Obama’s health care reform so that I could retain affordable health care with my condition, which totally excluded me forever from private insurance before the reform”.

    I’d be interested to know what RM has to say. The story behind the TN program that was involved is probably interesting and instructive.

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    @Cervantes:

    A good localized dictionary would include the most frequently encountered proper nouns, such as the name of your city.

    Plus other local dialect, like loanwords from Bahasa and Chinese. For example, my en_US dictionary doesn’t include “Bahasa”, and I doubt an en_GB dictionary would either, while it ought to be in any halfway decent en_MY dictionary.

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Here’s the CoverTN website — basically, they shut down their AccessTN program that helped otherwise uninsurable people get insurance, but didn’t make any other provisions for them:

    For current members who are above the federal poverty level and/or are NOT currently receiving premium assistance, your coverage will end April 30, 2014.

    So her state decided to fuck her over, but it’s all “Obamacare”‘s fault because Reasons.

    ETA: And, like so many of these stories, I would not be surprised to find out she falls into the “donut hole” between 100 percent and 133 percent of the poverty rate and is not eligible for a subsidy because her state is run by assholes.

  85. 85.

    S. cerevisiae

    For learning to drive in snow I always recommend going out in a big open snowy parking lot and doing some spins and slides. I still do this when I get a new car.

  86. 86.

    ThresherK

    @coin operated: Oh, thanks. But I’m not moving. I just wondered if the average “motorcyclist people notice” (i.e. the one who does stupid stuff) is less trained in my state than elsewhere.

    I took the MSF “beginner” course before upsizing from a 200cc to a vintage Honda CB750, and it was a world of useful, even though I had a nice clean record beforehand.

    @ranchandsyrup: Interesting–one dab at walking speeds. I’m curious if people go out of their way to bring their actual bikes to the test. Everything is easier on a 250 dual-sport.

  87. 87.

    Amir Khalid

    @Roger Moore:
    Ah, it’s a Control Panel setting. Mine is set to US English, as on every Windows machine I’ve ever used in the past three decades. I think I’ll just keep it there for now.

  88. 88.

    askew

    @Roger Moore:

    How about combining your wishes and discovering that Scalia and Alito are deeply involved in the Christie scandal somehow? And can we add Thomas and Roberts while we’re at it?

    I’ll take that. If we could only tie in Gov. Walker from Wisconsin and Scott from Florida, then we’d have the perfect scenario.

  89. 89.

    Anoniminous

    @catclub:

    Somewhat. Relative to 5 years ago the market for hand crafted decorative arts has deflated for both first and secondary markets. We joke about it but we’re hurting; a friend who has a very good, high quality, arts and crafts store is facing bankruptcy as his business has dropped 10% year/year and 50% from 2007. Another friend who ran a high-class quality Art and Antiques store did go out of business and since that was the “anchor” store for the street the rest of the businesses are having difficulty.

    All in all, tourism sucks as an economic mainstay.

  90. 90.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anoniminous:

    The market for all art and collectibles had the bottom drop out in 2008. It’s been good for my office, because now we can buy back artwork that made its way out of the studio and onto the private market for less than we had to pay before, but it really sucks for artists trying to sell their own work.

    ETA: To be clear, what we’re buying is artwork that was “work for hire” while people were here as employees that they took home, but it wasn’t technically stolen because studio policy was different in those days, so we have to purchase it back on the open market.

  91. 91.

    burnspbesq

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Thanks, no, I use that side switch for screen orientation lock. I double-checked anyway but that’s not it. And I did the complete shutdown and restart that Gex suggested, but to no avail.

    Genius Bar. If they can’t figure it out in five minutes, they’ll give you a new one.

  92. 92.

    burnspbesq

    I was kinda hoping Darrelll Issa’s head would essplode yesterday when he had to say nice things about Henry Waxman, but no such luck.

  93. 93.

    burnspbesq

    I have spoiled my kitteh beyond redemption. It is now impossible to eat cheese in our house without her showing up and demanding her fair share.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @catclub:

    I try not to talk about where I work too much, because it’s a small office within a large corporation and it would be easy for someone to figure out who I am. But the short version is, yes, the bottom fell out of the art market and people like Anoniminous are paying the price.

  99. 99.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @ranchandsyrup:
    Thanks! I take it the cutie-patootie in the second picture is giving her approval? They sure do look good.

    Maybe someone could do a little Wooderson/True Detective mashup…

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