Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

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

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Republicans do not trust women.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

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Reader Interactions

62Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I don’t get it.

    An observation tho: Anyone who was once 30-10 and ended up at 38-25 was still boxing long after dementia to set in.

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Who are the white guys? Are they also Bert Coopers? They don’t look like boxers to me.

  3. 3.

    Tommy

    I did something Friday I am so happy about. I cancled my cable TV and VOIP.

    Now I know you might be like, so.

    Well until about 10 years ago I never had cable TV (often not a TV). I am 44. When I got it I went all in. I ended up getting every channel. A DVR (started with TiVo). I found if I took the time I could find a lot of good television. Even easier when you had never really watched much TV so there were so many shows I’ve never seen or even really knew about. I got to really enjoy my time with AMC, HBO, and something like reruns of Homicide Life on the Street on some obscure station.

    But I have a business grade Internet connection (60MB), the top-of-the-line TV package, and one VOIP line (I used to have two). I had the “bundled” package before my cable company (Charter Communications) even called and sold it as a “bundle.” They never give me a price cut. I keep seeing these ads running, for “new customers” close to half of what I pay. The cost was just too much, and I can afford it. I just can’t justify it! I also find myself watching TV when I would/should have been cooking, reading a book, playing a video game, getting better with my PHP programming, or doing anything more constructive.

    So I got rid of cable TV and my VOIP line and will save $178/month. Let me say that again I will save $178/month, and that includes me discounting a monthly Hulu, NetFlix, Amazon, and Pandora account.

    Look I KNOW I am not the first to do this. Nor I bet the last :).

    But it feels so good. I feel free from that darn bill which I hated each time I paid it. $178/month in savings. Oh all the things I can buy …..

    My only concern is college and pro football (but that is months and months away). Huge St. Louis Cardinals fan, but I find I actually almost prefer listening to the radio and having the MLB app open on my tablet to the gamecast.

    Now I just wonder what happened on True Dectective last night :).

    BTW: Any tips on how other people have done this are very welcome. I know I could Bittorrent everything, but alas I produce some content for a living and I have moral issues (not so much legal) with “stealing” content. About the only thing I’ve Bittorrented were some darn fine BBC shows that they just won’t show on my BBC America channel.

  4. 4.

    evolved beyond the fist mistermix

    @Tommy: If games are broadcast in your area, find out whether you can get TV reception with a cheap antenna. antennaweb.org is one resource.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Tommy: Welcome to the club. I haven’t had access to cable since… I don’t know when, at least a decade anyway. And I have never paid for it. My room mates wanted it. They paid for it.

    Ballgames and some PBS stuff are all I miss. Even living as far out from STL as I do I can still receive FOX w/ an antenna so if I feel like it, I can watch the Rams or whoever play on Sundays. If I want to catch a Cards game I go to town and buy a couple beers and a burger. Frontline and NOVA are both available online but it is hard for me to watch thru satellite so I don’t anymore, but back when we lived in town and had broadband I was able to watch them w/o a hitch.

    Hit TV shows that I hear are good, I wait for them to come out on DVD and rent from Netflix or wait until they get real cheap and then sample. If I really like them I will then go whole hog and buy all their seasons. Did so with both Breaking Bad and The Big Bang Theory. Friday Night Lights did not make the cut (don’t know what Cole sees in that show).

    Not having TV frees up something far more important than money, something you only have so much of: Time.

  6. 6.

    raven

    @Tommy: I have a tip, so what? People have cable and people don’t have cable. People watch TV and people don’t watch tv.

  8. 8.

    gene108

    Essay from retiring WaPo lifer on what’s wrong with politics today versus yesteryear.

    He gets it right with stuff like this:

    Lies and intellectual inventions are now typical of our public life, which made Washington difficult for me. Of course, a politician lying is hardly a shock, but there is a difference between telling untruths (see Nixon, Richard M.) and making stuff up. I liked Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s dictum: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

    That seems so old-fashioned now, when global-warming deniers hold forth on the floors of the House and the Senate, and numerous Republicans merrily denounce our moderate president as a “Socialistic dictator,” in the recent words of Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.). I haven’t met Weber, but I have met some of the other House Republicans whose intellectual output can be equally baffling. One of my frustrations in recent years has been the journalistic conventions that can make it difficult to speak or write in a straightforward way about people such as Weber who make preposterous statements — and act as though they believe them. What is the appropriate journalistic response to Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) when he announces that evolution and the Big Bang theory are all “lies straight from the pit of hell”?

    And

    Newt Gingrich understood the opportunity those ’80s Democrats had created for Republicans. Gingrich was the most effective and most destructive political figure I encountered in five decades covering Washington.

    I think he grasps for false equivalency with something like:

    Not that Democrats are all clever and insightful; far from it. The intellectual firepower in Congress declined sharply during my years in Washington. Lawmakers who read books, have their own ideas, care about policy issues and believe in government have become rarer than Redskins victories. Where once we had Sen. Philip Hart (D-Mich.) and Rep. Richard Bolling (D-Mo.), for example, now we have Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.). Did you listen to Baucus testify about China, where he is soon to be our ambassador? (“I am no real expert on China.”) Have you heard Jackson Lee hold forth, for example, on Vietnam? (“Today we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South . . . living in peace.”) Not inspiring.

    Because there’s a fundamental difference between systematic denial of facts practiced by Republicans and Baucus not being an expert on every topic under the sun or a brain fart by Jackson-Lee.

    He does get some digs in on Democrats that predate my interest in politics, as I was six when Reagan* ran for President, so I’m not sure how accurate this is, though I’ve heard the general theme before about Democrats not representing their traditional base:

    That same year, Democrats in the House elected a new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Tony Coelho of California. It was a fateful choice. Coelho was remarkably good at the job. His colleagues saw him as a lifeline who would help them raise enough money to retain their House majority despite Reagan’s popularity. And he succeeded. Coelho convinced his fellow Democrats that in this new era, they had to raise money from business interests — just like Republicans. He set up new ways for those interests to make their wishes known to House Democrats. Democrats listened, took the money and retained big majorities. All it cost them was their soul.

    But I disagree with the last sentence here, because letting the President set the policy agenda is what Congress is supposed to in our system of government. What is the alternative to not letting a newly elected President set the policy agenda? I think the end result is the outright opposition to Clinton’s health care reform and our current mess. Despite the mess of the tax cuts that get reversed the next year letting the President set the agenda is how our government has functioned, when it functioned.

    Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory surprised the Democrats in Congress and left them confused about what they believed. Once they had genuine leaders — Humphrey was one, Robert F. Kennedy another — who could forcefully articulate a liberal platform with broad appeal, but those leaders had no successors. When Reagan announced, in his first inaugural address, that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” Democrats seemed helpless to reply. Instead they caved. In 1981, Democrats provided the votes in both the House and the Senate that enacted Reagan’s tax and spending cuts, as well as his defense buildup.

    Anyway, I think it is worth reading the whole thing.

    Post-script:

    He does miss one obvious point, in that the recent vote to raise the debt ceiling also had the a number of no votes as the vote in October from Republicans.

    I realized just how depressing last October, when Congress voted on legislation that would raise the debt ceiling — allowing the Treasury to pay the debts Congress had already incurred — and keep the government open. This was exciting, but perversely so. On Oct. 16, 162 members of Congress, 144 in the House and 18 in the Senate, voted “no,” votes meant explicitly to drive their government into bankruptcy, when there was a real chance that their view might prevail.

    * My 1st grade teacher let us vote for President. She put the three names of the candidates on the board. One person voted for Anderson. The rest of us voted for Carter. None of us had ever even heard of Reagan.

  10. 10.

    Tommy

    @evolved beyond the fist mistermix: They are. Got my eyes on a digital antenna. I will miss PBS and I can get that and also the Cardinals games. But alas they went to Fox Sports. Used to be most of the games were on a local channel. Don’t hold me to these numbers, but about only 30 are on the local station now.

    A very interesting thing I found is how hard it is to get news without cable. Sure I have the local news (which is terrible). I also get the 30 minutes nightly news from ABC, NBC, and CBS. But only Rachels show is on iTunes (which if I had to have one MSNBC show I’ll happily take her show). Of course they have segments of each shows throughout the MSNBC site, but not complete show I can subscribe to. Just seems strange and kind of short sighted to me.

  12. 12.

    raven

    @Tommy: Yea and if you hadn’t posted your deep thoughts on the ramifications of not having cable I would have never known either.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Only until about 8;30 9am. After that I have to be productive. ;-)

    ps, I actually thought about that when I wrote it and to be honest I’d much rather be parrying words with you than watching another Columbo rerun. At least then I don’t fall asleep mid-sen……..

  14. 14.

    raven

    I want someone to disconnect their internet and tell us all about how great it is. . . oh wait.

  15. 15.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m just foolin around. A friend of ours gave us a flat screen she wasn’t using yesterday. I went to get it and mentioned that I have 6 TV’s. She said “you are crazy”. Yea, and?

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @raven: Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I didn’t seem to judge anybody that has or doesn’t have this or that. Just a statement and some questions. Funny things I find people here are usually already tried or done things I am thinking of doing, and you know maybe they might have some insightful. You know, just saying.

  20. 20.

    NonyNony

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Who are the white guys? Are they also Bert Coopers? They don’t look like boxers to me.

    Apparently Bert Cooper is also the name of a character on Mad Men. So it’s driving google’s image search algorithm a bit nuts.

    It is interesting – I wonder how many examples of “two famous unrelated people/characters in the public eye at the same time” there might be. It might be because of the pop culture skew of the Internet – the most famous Bert Cooper in real life is the boxer, but on the Internet there are probably more sites discussing Mad Men – the Mad Men wiki is the second hit on Google, and I suspect that’s only because their algorithm ends up prioritizing Wikipedia in general as a site and so lands it a higher spot in the rankings.

  22. 22.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I never played one computer game ever in my life. Think of all the time I saved? I was able to waste hours on the basketball court, running, and swimming. Look where that got me!

  23. 23.

    Tommy

    @raven: No worries. That is what I figured and I was as well. Just not that sharp yet, need more coffee (only on my first cup).

    What really got me mad was, and I wouldn’t call myself “cheap” but I don’t like to waste money, is this. About once a quarter I’d call Charter and ask if I was getting the best deal possible. I did this for years. They always told me I was. Then the last time, about two months ago the lady was like, wow, you are not getting our best deal and saved me like $60/month (so my savings is really like $248 — although that included a second VOIP line). I was like WTF lady. You mean for like 24+ months I had been paying $60 more then I should have.

    Quick math that is almost $1,500. That is kind of “real money.”

    That got me pissed at them and started me down this road, which I should have taken a long time ago.

  24. 24.

    Tommy

    @Jane2: Wonderful. Never heard of that service before. Bookmarked and I’ll review later today. A suggestion like this is why I posted what I did. I’m a nerd/geek but I don’t know everything about all the stuff that is out there.

  26. 26.

    raven

    @Tommy: I think if it makes you happy you should do it. You can always go back. The addition of the Big Ten Network to our cable means a tremendous amount to me. With the sports tier and internet I’m at $144 per and it’s great for me.

  27. 27.

    Tommy

    @Jane2: OK that is freaking amazing. One place I got a little pissed was I had some Syfy shows (like Helix) on my “Favorite” list in Hulu. I went to watch one this weekend and they directed me to the Syfy site and asked me to confirm my cable provider info (like HBO did with Go on my tablet). I was like “dude that sucks.”

    That service you suggested, I have no idea how they can do what they say they do, but for $4.99/month I’ll sure them a try!

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A last link before I go: Mount Everest litter targeted by Nepalese authorities

    Finally…

    I used to do some expeditionary caving and in all my years I never saw anything like that. Maybe it’s because most cavers treat caves with the reverence of a crucifix. Or maybe it’s because after years and years of “It’s always been this way.” most climbers didn’t give it a thought. Or maybe it is just because most cavers are too poor and all cavers are too damn cheap to just leave equipment behind.

    I just never understood the condition of Everest.

  29. 29.

    raven

    BTW, James Lifton was on MJ and he shared a book that Matthew McConaughey sent him. It’s called The Greatest Salesman in the World by OG Mandino. Now I know there a a number of high level literary types here and this book will probably get hammered but I was interested to he Lifton say that it changed Matthew’s life.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    Yet those Bert Cooper Googlers are not searching out Don Draper. Strange. Very strange.

  31. 31.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: My old man used to bitch that everywhere the Army went in the Pacific they just threw shit away left and right while the Marines couldn’t get anything.

  32. 32.

    Tommy

    @raven: Well part of it, to be honest, is I don’t have the best willpower. I work out of my house. I tend to binge work (why I can be here for long periods of time during “work” hours). Work 15+ hour days for a few days, pump out a project, make a lot of money, then have days before another project comes in.

    I find myself now sitting in front of a TV too much. I could be doing other things. Heck the house I bought about 10 years ago (when I first got cable) the previous owner was a woodworker in his spare time. I have all these amazing work benches. Now I can barely hang a picture, but alas I should be able to learn to make something shouldn’t I :)?

    Part of it is the expense, but to a larger extent it is not giving myself something so easy to waste time with.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Ha! Same here, only it freed me up to spend hours, days, weeks, even months out in the woods, deserts, mountains etc (even a little time on oceans). Just think of all the damsels in distress I could have rescued!

  34. 34.

    p.a.

    @Tommy: went without teev for about a year (2012). Did read a lot more, but other than that didn’t really improve my life that much because I’m lazy as sin. Now watch broadcast TV. I live in a medium size city, so signal isn’t an issue. What I really miss from cable is the food pr0n; Giada, Top Chef, and Bruins and Celtics. ESPN pro football sucks, the Sunday schedule is enough for me. The best college is over the air. Miss fishing shows. I have DSL so streaming is a no-go. May go FiOS internet, but have no plans to get the TV service.

  35. 35.

    Tommy

    @OzarkHillbilly: I hope you see this OzarkHillbilly. Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air kind of explains this. The party he went up Everest with, well several didn’t make it back. At the time he wrote this in 1997 was really the start of where if you were rich, well somebody would almost carry (no really) you up Everest so you could say you did it.

    From reading that book and many articles on Everest, it is clear that most that climb it have NO respect for the effort nor the beauty of the place. I’ve seen pics of some of the base camps and the places literally looks like a waste dump. It is sad beyond words.

  36. 36.

    Tommy

    @p.a.: I will MISS all the food porn. Only good news is I’ve found YouTube is an amazing resource for this. It wasn’t until a few years ago, but I never really thought to search for how to cook and/or do this or that there. I’d argue what they have there is BETTER then the food shows. Top chefs. Heck folks like you and me post a staggering number of cooking related videos.

    I am not a fan of Gordon Ramsay, but my gosh he has like 7-10 five minutes videos (from years and years ago) on how to cook some basic staples (the perfect egg, steak, you name it) that are maybe the best videos I’ve ever seen on cooking. And heck he doesn’t yell at anybody :).

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: I had a Marine uncle who said the exact same thing. Of course, he said the same about the Navy too. My old man who flew B-29s and my frogman uncle both said Marines were all thieves. Hmmmm…. Yep, they were all there.

  38. 38.

    Jane2

    @Tommy: They are legal, efficient, and reliable, and regularly add new channels to their offerings.

    As for cooking shows, you’ll soon be addicted to “The Great British Bake-Off, and Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry will become your new cooking gods.

  39. 39.

    Tommy

    @raven: That interview Matthew McConaughey did with 60 Minutes was amazing. I never liked the guy. Then I saw Dallas Buyers Club and True Dectivitive and was like this dude is a powerhouse actor. In the 60 Minute interview they asked how he went from teenage heart throb to serious actor, and he said he sat down with his wife and they decided it was time for a change. Said he went almost two years without getting a role, but he wanted to “rebrand” himself.

    I’d say he did that.

    When they asked him about losing all the weight for Dallas Buyers Club he said he got to a place where everybody felt it would work. He kept losing weight until people were asking him if he was sick. If it was OK. He said that was when he knew he was at the right weight.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Tommy: Yeah, I read that. Great book. But I like everything Krakauer writes. If you like to read about climbing her’s another: Enduring Patagonia by Gregory Crouch. What he writes about fear, and conquering it, is so dead on, I thought he was reading my soul. Also he comes at climbing from the POV of “just a guy”. Talks about working for 6-9 months saving every penny he can just so he can go back to Patagonia.

    Quite a read. So good that after a buddy loaned it to me, I went out and bought it because I know I am going to read it again and again and again….

    and now I have to go.

  45. 45.

    Tommy

    @schrodinger’s cat: Thanks. Bookmarked. Years ago when the local stations went digital NPR had a story about these digital antenna. They went to kind of a “hipster” area of St. Louis where I guess a lot of folks were too “cool” to buy cable, but they loved them some PBS. They all raved about the quality of the digital antenna.

  46. 46.

    bjacques

    Robert Morse from “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” (stage production)! Also remember him as a villain on All My Children, when I used to watch it at lunch in college.

    Gotta get hold of The Loved One. I had a clip of it on tape once.

  47. 47.

    Gin & Tonic

    Since this is an open thread, I’ll note that the ruble and the Russian stock market are plummeting. The market fell by 10% immediately after opening, and the central bank has had to raise interest rates and sell dollars to support the ruble. Sounds like people are voting on Putin’s war plans.

  48. 48.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Tommy: You are welcome. Thanks for the suggestions about Dreamweaver and Photoshop. I have the CS6, haven’t looked at the other programs. BTW do you have a favorite YouTube channel for DreamWeaver tutorials?

  49. 49.

    Origuy

    I have cable, but my housemates watch it a lot more than I do. They’re disabled and home all day. I do watch a lot of videos online, mostly documentaries and British panel shows like QI. I was using tunlr.net and an app called DnsJumper to get access to the UK network sites, which block out the US. Tunlr.net went away a few days ago and I started using a plugin from hola.org. It’s actually a lot easier, if less flexible. I can watch BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. I think I can watch CBC and Australian TV, too.

    Almost all of PBS shows are on their website.

  50. 50.

    Gin & Tonic

    And here’s an interesting public opinion survey taken in both Russia and Ukraine, prior to Russia’s invasion, about support for the protesters vis-a-vis the Yanukovych regime. If you can’t read Russian, Google Translate does a decent job. But the interesting thing is that support for the Yanukovych regime increases by age band, from 14% support in the 18-29 cohort to 38% support among the 70+, and decreases by education level, with 29-31% support among people with less than high school to 17% for “higher” education (meaning university or “polytechnic”.) Support for the opposition, naturally, is highest among the young and among the better-educated.

    http://www.levada.ru/03-03-2014/otnoshenie-zhitelei-ukrainy-i-rossii-k-sobytiyam-v-ukraine

    What does that pattern remind anyone of in the US?

  51. 51.

    Tommy

    @schrodinger’s cat: You are more than welcome.

    I just search, very specific searches (like the tool I want to use). Then click the column to rank order by total views. I guess I crowd source :). Funny, the most viewed are well usually the best ones.

    I don’t recall off the top of my head what comes with CS6, but Lightroom is amazing. Does many of the things Photoshop does, but also serves as an advance photo album. Set it up and anytime you add photos (to a folder you choose) or plug your camera (or the card) in it syncs everything up. A shocking beautiful interface.

    Also InDesign is nice if you have to design, well anything paper based or to send as a PDF (like a flyer, brochure, you name it).

    Here is a secret. Head to ThemeForest. Scroll to the bottom and on the left you’ll see icons for all their “sister” sites. Tons of Dreamweaver templates. Photoshop files. Heck stuff for InDesign to design, well anything. Most are only a few bucks. Usually well under $20. Anything you can imagine you want to do, you can find it here.

    Now I’ve given away one of my best secrets …. this site makes me look better/smart to my clients then I really am. Also saves me a ton of time. No reason to reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to.

  52. 52.

    Mnemosyne

    @Southern Beale:

    Honestly, I still don’t get the disconnect on people who go out to a restaurant on a Sunday and then scold the employees for working on the Sabbath. If it’s so goddamned important to not work on the Sabbath, shouldn’t you drag your lazy ass home after church and do your own damn cooking rather than making other people sin on your behalf?

  53. 53.

    Tommy

    @schrodinger’s cat: Oh I am in a giving mood today.

    If you want email me at tommy.young at gmail dot com and I’ll just put a few InDesign files (brochures) up on my server so you can download them. The program is amazing, but opening it with nothing to work on, to start from scratch, well that is a steep hill to climb. This was how I learned the program and since it has basically the same interface as Photoshop, it will happen faster then you might think.

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    If they did their own cooking, they’d be working on the sabbath. This way they get to feel like they have done their duty and get to shame/guilt others into being as idiotic as they are.

  55. 55.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Southern Beale:

    Such stories amaze and sadden Roberts, who said he doesn’t think Christians realize just how condescending they can come across sometimes.

    Well, no kidding there. Also, too, these people are obviously not actually Christians, they’re Mammon worshipers.

  56. 56.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne:

    Check out the first comment on the story. Guy who worked in a gas station on Sunday got that from “Christians” and he snapped them back, but good.

  58. 58.

    Suffern ACE

    @Ruckus: @Mnemosyne: The reason they invented slow cookers with timers is to prepare Sabbath meals. I’m fairly certain of that. I you are worried about work on the Sabbath, you can always prepare the meal Saturday night before bedtime.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    Orthodox Jews aren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath, either, but I don’t think I’ve heard of them berating their shabbos goys for doing the work for them.

    And the people who leave fake money on the table that’s really a religious tract deserve to be jabbed in the ass with pitchforks for all eternity. Sure, we just made you work your ass off for our group for two hours, but you shouldn’t be paid for it. Cheap assholes.

  60. 60.

    jheartney

    @Jane2: Don’t you still have to have the relevant subscriptions? For example, to get HBO GO you’ll need HBO, which means you need a cable subscription. To get HULU+ or Netflix you need those subscriptions. Given that my existing hardware (Roku/Playstation) will already receive those channels once I have the subscription, what is Unblock-Us offering? The chance to spoof an out-of-the-US IP? Why would I want that?

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    @jheartney:

    The chance to spoof an out-of-the-US IP? Why would I want that?

    A lot of fans of BBC shows like to have it so they can see “Sherlock” and other shows before they’re released in the US. It used to be a problem with “Dr. Who,” but now they air them simultaneously in the US and UK, so people no longer have to wait 6 months to see what everyone else got to see.

  62. 62.

    Jay S

    @schrodinger’s cat: I don’t have a Leaf or the Winegard Flatwave, but I’m not sure you can claim they receive all digital channels. It depends on your location and the frequency bands of your stations. Most antennas advertised for HDTV are tuned for UHF, and don’t perform well for the high VHF channels. In Seattle the PBS station at least is high VHF. I can receive it on an old style mixed mode (VHF and UHF) rabbit ears antenna. Other indoor antennas seem to do poorly from the limited reporting I’ve seen.

    Both the Leaf and the Flatwave are best in UHF according to their websites. The Flatwave is reported to be a better receiver for VHF than the Leaf. People should probably check on the stations in their area and there distances from the stations to get some idea of what they can expect. Their are amplified versions of each that might be more appropriate if you are far enough away (too close and they can be worse than non-amplified). Note that the station number you see won’t tell you if it is UHF or VHF anymore. You have to check, and there are many sites that will show the stations and the frequency band they use within range of your location.

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