Finally, Halperin and Heilemann have a platform to discuss politics. They've been shut out of this industry too long http://t.co/0NCfUwsT5O
— David Dayen (@ddayen) May 5, 2014
.@ddayen With Halperin & Heilemann freed from MSM constraints, we'll know ALL the catty things powerful pols say about each other off record
— billmon (@billmon1) May 5, 2014
@ddayen A new golden age of political journalism dawns. Politico, eat your heart out.
— billmon (@billmon1) May 5, 2014
"Politics is the model for how we will be re-architecting our approach to consumer media" I just shot myself http://t.co/0NCfUwsT5O
— David Dayen (@ddayen) May 5, 2014
For people who want a Politico (aka ‘Tiger Beat on Potomac’, thank you Mr. Pierce) without all those upbeat graphics and cheerful pics. Much like Rick Perry whipping out the hipster eyeglasses, same content, “serious, constructive, smart” repackaging!
***********
Apart from lamenting the failure of Mainstream Media as We Have Known It, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Crusty Dem
No love for DougJ’s tweets?
dmsilev
I am disappointed. Only 4 out of the top 5 NewsMax headlines are about Benghazi. I’d have thought they would have managed a clean sweep.
NotMax
Meh.
srv
Why was it a bad thing for Osama, Saddam or uncle Kim to have nukular weapons?
You know, we might have had a lot less trouble if villagers thought there might be consequences to their actions. What’s the worst that could happen?
tybee
raven – a friend of mine who grew up on jekyll said try this guide:
Brooks Good
9122308957
PsiFighter37
Going to relive some of my teenage/college years when ’24’ comes on in 10 minutes.
Also, I saw Hillary is hosting a fundraiser for Marjorie Margolies (running a campaign in to retake her old seat PA-13 from a couple decades ago and breaking campaign finance laws while she is at it) at the birthplace of PUMA-dom, Lynn Forester de Rothschild’s home.
Goddamn, this is why I am real nervous / queasy when it comes to Hillary running in 2016, and it’s episodes like this that make me wonder if she has learned absolutely NOTHING about why she failed in 2008. Ugh.
WereBear
I am simply stunned by the transparent idiocy of this maneuver. Then I remember the people who vote for him.
geg6
@PsiFighter37:
In her defense, that is her daughter’s mother-in-law that she’s there raising funds for. I give her a pass on it for that reason.
raven
I bought 100 old bricks to finish the garden sidewalk. Half-a-buck apiece and I spent 2 hrs “cleaning” 30 of them. @tybee:
Thanks!!!!
Suffern ACE
Why would anyone think re-architecting using politics as a model would be successful or even desireable? Our poltics is simply awful and following it too closely actually starts making us stupid, devolving from a mild mannered online community into a ravaging pit of rabid jackals (or something like that)? Why would a business information site want that?
Soonergrunt
Everything you need to know about newsmax is in the current headline listing.
Benghazi
Benghazi
Benghazi
Illegal Aliens
Benghazi
Public Meeting Prayer
Testosterone Boosters
Nursing Homes
Republicans 2016
As for me, I’ll be watching the last Orphan Black episode, and tonight’s Warehouse 13 episode.
Citizen_X
Re-architect this, Halperin.
different-church-lady
If there wasn’t such a big market for political pron, there wouldn’t be so much political pron.
jeffreyw
Thread needs moar puppeh!
Suffern ACE
@Citizen_X: I wonder if frequent commentor and current flu sufferer Suzanne has passed her exams in Re-architecture. Is Re-architecture a synonym for “demolition” or “renovation”? Is it an art form, unlike engineering?
raven
@tybee: He has a map of the great white they are following on his FB.
Citizen_X
I can think of few words which would make me less interested.
raven
@jeffreyw: Look at that lil varmit!
Anoniminous
Vacuous blather is the model for how they will be using the same approach to infotainment.
Southern Beale
Today’s 2nd Amendment hero is creepy Uncle Chad of Pike County, PA, who lived in his brother’s basement, until he accidentally shot his son that is. Now he’s in jail. Woops.
rikyrah
Can’t wait for 24!
Cacti
In today’s latest act of anti-fascism, Vladimir Putin has signed a law banning all swearing in film, tv broadcasts, theatre, and news media.
I say, fuck it.
raven
@Cacti: Is “pussy”swearing?
Hungry Joe
Agenda for this evening?
Well, I went home with the waitress
The way I always do …
raven
@Hungry Joe: the shit has hit the fan
Suffern ACE
@Anoniminous: God, I hope they don’t touch the Bloomberg Radio or Bloomberg TV. There really aren’t many sources left for business news that don’t pretend to faint every time the Dow drops 10 points and won’t then spend 20 minutes of every 1/2 hour discussing that 10 point drop and what it might mean. They actually have actual economists on. With hosts that don’t pretend that they are smarter than “experts.” It’s like watching news from a bygone era, where by watching the news, one could become better informed than a sea urchin.
Cacti
Also too, the new GOPer appointed to head up the select committee on something something BENGHAZI! is very androgynous looking.
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
It’s almost like the Fox News commentator doesn’t approve of coordinated talking points.
Suzanne
@Suffern ACE: Hah. “Re-architecture” is just what we call “design by committee”.
SiubhanDuinne
@Citizen_X:
I am sorry I live in a world in which the term “re-architect” is used at all, let alone as a verb.
Schlemizel
Found the perfect bumper sticker for JEB! In the Chattanooga paper no less.
http://assets.amuniversal.com/f6b7ac90b69b01315062005056a9545d?width=750
scav
That is some concentrated blather.
Brands, entirely unrelated to function, activity, content, free-floating logos indicating . . . . immmm, copyright? trademarked coffee cups on Cafepress?
covered earlier, reblueprinted, reCadCammed?
Multi-Platform! Does that mean it will run on both Safari and Crome or that Halperin will be wearing Jimmy Choos and Heilemann Platform Pumps, or edgily, both will be wearing one of each?! And is Digital-led the mood ring successor to the Big-Data news pet rock craze?
Anoniminous
@Suffern ACE:
I get my business news from their web site. Reading the press release:
we’re screwed.
To hell with it. Lots of other web sites on Ye Olde Internete & I’ve got chicken thighs to cook.
PurpleGirl
@Schlemizel: Third Time’s the Charm… for what exactly?
Omnes Omnibus
@PurpleGirl: Well, the first two failed to trigger the apocalypse….
scav
@PurpleGirl: I think Bloody Mary finally appears.
PurpleGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I see.
Schlemizel
He HAS to be better than the first two so ignore them & the damage they did and JEB!!!
@Omnes Omnibus: you win!
Bob In Portland
From the NY Times today:
The anti-Kiev demonstrators had a tent city set up much like the Maidan demonstrators had. But somehow the anti-Kiev demonstrators, apparently outnumbered ten to one by the fascists, started the fight which ended in their tent city being burned, them being chased into the trade union building, where people were burned alive. So the Odessa police force is fired and the job is given to the Nazi street punks.
Does anyone think that this is going to end well?
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: You enjoy people being burned alive?
Shana
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m with you on that.
Schlemizel
http://helpeuromaidan.info/donate
I am sending them a check & plan on increasing the donation sent every time brick head bob drops a big old deuce on a BJ thread. Bobby is going to be supporting freedom for the Ukraine with every turd he drops. Please join me – we can do well by doing good.
Emma
@Bob In Portland: Until the Russians get their “we want Odessa dammit” bug off their system for this century, no, it won’t.
raven
@Schlemizel: The pie filter is working overtime!
some guy
@Bob In Portland:
Burning 31 people alive is all well and good for cacti, but to really get his juices flowing you need to mention his al Qaeda pals in Syria and their fondness for car bombs:
Lurking Canadian
@Suffern ACE: Harry Turtledove once wrote a moderately entertaining short (called something like “Deconstruction Gang”) in which deconstruction was a technique with physical ramifications. Like, a bunch of hard hats would sit around bullshitting about Derida and the death of the author, and when they were done, the road would have ceased to exist.
Not sure if it is relevant to the question of re-architecting, but I guarantee it’s more enjoyable than whatever Halperin is doing.
Schlemizel
@raven:
I can’t get it to work on my chromebook so this is my alternative. I am afraid at how much this might cost me but since bobby is so insistent on doing the ‘right’ thing my hope is he will go away so the decent people of Ukraine won’t get more donations.
Pogonip
@Bob In Portland: Hodor!
raven
@Schlemizel: rats, foiled again!
some guy
al Qaeda had a busy week in Syria, according to the Times:
Pogonip
Here’s a topic, I hope: how many Americans do you know leading a non-American, modest lifestyle? Only a couple of years ago I was the only one I knew, now suddenly there are several. If it’s happening all over, perhaps a tipping point has been reached?
some guy
@Lurking Canadian:
published in Amazing Stories, 1992. a great tale that Derrida himself laughed over.
trollhattan
@Pogonip: Hodor?
Elizabelle
@different-church-lady:
Politiporn.
I don’t think too little Mark Halperin was a problem with our political reporting stream. Sigh.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
No one thinks this is going to end well, but you’re the only one who thinks the US is going to invade.
Let me repeat that: the only person here who thinks the US is going to invade Ukraine is you. And your evidence for that claim consists of two things: JACK and SHIT.
At least Cole had some tough talk about bombing from the president to justify wetting his pants over Syria. You have nothing to back up your claims. Less than nothing. And yet you keep coming here and annoying the rest of us with your hysteria.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Agenda #1: Continue to ignore pundits completely.
Bob In Portland
@Emma: Emma, Nazis burned forty people alive on Friday. The crowd outside the burning building were chanting, “Burn, Colorado, burn” equating the people who were being burned alive with killing Colorado potato beetles. People who were hanging out the windows gasping for air were shot at by people in the crowd. People who jumped out the windows were beaten by the mob. These are the people who the US is backing.
Don’t you find the MSM narrative about the deaths in Odessa to be suspicious?
Don’t you have any sympathy about people being burned alive? And what has Russia got to do with Odessa? Do you know anything at all about the history of Ukraine and fascism?
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip:
Define please.
Elizabelle
That Bloomberg thingie is the worst press release I have ever seen.
Was it written by a robot in India?
It looks like English, but it’s excruciating.
Hill Dweller
The new season of Louie starts tonight.
Pogonip
@trollhattan: Hodor.
Origuy
In software development, “re-architect” means “rewrite this spaghetti-coded monstrosity so that someone can figure out how it works”. Which is what needs to happen to the 14,000 line program that got dumped in my lap a couple of months ago. Ain’t gonna happen, though, so I have to patch the bugs with it as is.
JustRuss
Since I was late to the thread about Cole’s mother’s voicemail, I’d like to take this opportunity to nominate Cole’s mom to be a front pager.
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: Not buying multiples of something when you only need one; not replacing a perfectly good item every year or so when one with more bells and whistles appears; not keeping up with the Joneses.
Ash Can
@Mnemosyne: It’s not hysteria, it’s propaganda. Not very well done, but then old-school Soviets were never known for their artistry. At least we know that he’ll be keeping his language clean from now on.
Pogonip
@JustRuss: Seconded! Juicers unite! We want Mrs. Cole! We want Mrs. Cole!
Ash Can
@JustRuss: I’m not sure if she’d ban us all for using bad words, or teach us a few new ones herself.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemizel: Good idea, thanks. I used to think he’d just come in and shit on every open thread, but now I see that even the ones that aren’t labeled “open” get the same treatment.
Ash Can
@Pogonip: Most of the people I know are like that.
Pogonip
@Ash Can: Yeah, can you fvcking believe that? A fvcking law against swearing? What a crock of horse$hit.
Schlemizel
@Bob In Portland:
You know what I know about Ukrainian history? One of Putin’s predecessors was terrified that the Ukraine wanted freedom from Moscows iron fist so he cause a famine that killed millions and then replaced them with Russian citizens so as to undermine the possibility of an organized rebellion against Russian aggression. Putin is not trying to use those transplants to prevent the exact same self-determination.
SEE:
@Schlemizel:
trollhattan
@Pogonip:
Hodor+Hodor+Hodor=HODOR!
Pogonip
@Ash Can: We done tipped the tipping point. Yippee!
Well, now what do we do?
scav
@Pogonip: Nice thing about swearing. A quick Santorum-izing of Putin would put them into quite a tidy little quandary now . . . .
Pogonip
@trollhattan: Also too, Hodor.
And while I’m on the subject…Hodor.
trollhattan
@Ash Can:
We’d all have to promise to go wash out our typing fingers with soap.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: I have an eight year old car, a ten year old TV, and I get my shoes resoled. A lot of this is because I buy high quality things to begin with. They are worth the expense only if you keep them for a long time.
Pogonip
@trollhattan: Only if we are typing in Russian.
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: You got that right. A long time ago I learned that cheaping out is usually very expensive. Whatever it is, I buy the best quality I can afford, when I can–these days, with some items, quality is rarely available regardless of price.
Anne Laurie
@Pogonip: I think it’s a great idea, but keep in mind, John Cole almost never reads my posts. You’d do better to catch him on twitter, or Facebook.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: I’m not sure that if I ever said that the US was actually going to invade Ukraine or Russia. I said that the Kiev coup government needs to draw the US in, but I meant more military aid, more CIA aid, more US attempts to isolate Russia internationally. I can see more “American advisors” that always seem to turn up in these kinds of situations. There’s a lot more that the US can get away with in Ukraine if they can stir the pot up.
No matter, the US is going to continue to send in aid in order to continue the killing. The CIA is going to continue to support the Nazi street fighters as they have. What will happen is lots of people will be killed because of the coup that we bought and continue to support. There are reports of Blackwater-related mercenaries in the east, but quite honestly there probably aren’t enough of them or of the Right Sector in the east to do more than shoot a few civilians. Gangs of thugs are okay to burn up people in buildings but they generally aren’t great in combat. In case you haven’t noticed the army hasn’t yet actually captured any towns in eastern Ukraine. It’s been about a month now.
The obvious purpose for the US is to draw Russia in. I don’t think the Russians will bite, but that means more civilians dying on our dime. But without some serious American support the current regime in Ukraine isn’t going to survive.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemizel: Just taking this opportunity to note that those who might be interested in but not knowledgeable about Schlemizel’s reference can look up The Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest, Oxford University Press, 1986.
Quoting from the Epilogue:
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: My 2006 Accord just hit 70,000!
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: P.S. I have a 22-year-old TV, which just died, and a 27-year-old TV still going strong. Yours is just a baby; may it give you many more years.
raven
@Pogonip: My truck is 48 years old!
Pogonip
@raven: I’m glad to hear that, I just got an Accord last year.
Bob In Portland
@Pogonip: Don’t look at the picture. It will confuse you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: Actually, that is one thing that I am hoping will die soon. I was given a new Blu-Ray/DVD/Netflix/hulu/etc. capable player for X-mas. It is not compatible with the TV.
raven
@Pogonip: Go for an agressive maintenance schedule, it’ll run forever. 70,000 is actually very low mileage for that old of a ride.
Pogonip
@raven: Is it still running?
SiubhanDuinne
@Pogonip:
:: rhythmically bangs metal utensils on table ::
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. Me thinks there is a difference between the aims of the protesters in maiden square and those in eastern Ukraine and if you are going to start demanding secession, you are going to end up having to fight for that. Just because 20 years ago, the Soviet Union managed to split up rather peacefully, as did Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia did so mostly so ( with noteworthy violent exceptions) doesn’t mean that is the norm. I would be surprised if the violence doesn’t get worse. And yeah, Bob, I don’t think Russia is helping
Pogonip
@Bob In Portland: Hodor.
raven
Animals on trampolines!
Pogonip
@SiubhanDuinne: Bang! Bang! Mrs. Cole! Mrs. Cole!
God, I love being disruptive.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: My 2005 RAV4 has 170,000.
different-church-lady
@JustRuss: Why? So we can complain about the quality of her posts too?
Thoughtful David
@Pogonip:
Wow! I thought I was the only one who used “American” that way, i.e., to mean the sort of consumerist suburban dweller. I have been heard to say about someone who regularly shops that way: “He’s sooo American.”
trollhattan
Chicken Kiev just invaded my motherfvcking dinner table!
Oops, sorry Mrs. Cole [leaves to administer self-punishment, and no, not that kind]
Thoughtful David
@raven:
“Send lawyers, guns, and money…”
raven
@Pogonip: Runs like a bat of of hell! To be fair the drive train is all newer than 10 years. I put a four bolt main 350 in it, new synchro 3 speed tranny and had the rear end rebuilt recently.
Pogonip
@raven: Every goat should have its own trampoline!
raven
@Pogonip: And buffalo!
raven
dupe
Pogonip
@different-church-lady: Certainly. We wouldn’t want her to feel left out.
cckids
@Schlemizel:
I’ve got one from way back when Duh-bya was elected, tho I can’t lay hands on it right now:
“Bush & Sons, Inc.: Formerly known as the United States of America”.
Still works.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: Bob, let’s say you eventually bring the three dozen or so knuckleheads who haunt this joint around to your point of view.
Then what?
ultraviolet thunder
I’m back from Canada and in CT for the week. A whole week in the same place! Just picked up a jetlagged colleague who flew in from Stuttgart, and went to dinner. I hope he’s straightened out in the am because we have serious work to do and he can’t be walking sideways into walls with his eyes pointing in different directions like he is now. The jetlag, it is a bitch.
Emma
@Bob In Portland: Lord God you are ignorant. Russia has been after Odessa for four centuries. Have you ever heard of the Treaty of Jassy? The whole freaking city was founded by Catherine the Great! In the 19th century Odessa was the fourth largest RUSSIAN city!
Russia has no good warm water ports. Odessa has two. Russia considers it theirs. Tsars and communists and now the pseudo-tsar Vlad of the KGB have wanted it.
ultraviolet thunder
I could argue that the MSM hasn’t failed, it has succeeded at its only goal: to make money.
We only feel that it has failed us because we misunderstand its mission to be to educate and inform the public.
Suffern ACE
@different-church-lady: we can all exchange stories about blowback, blaming the CIA for all the trouble in the world, praising foreign authoritarians for protecting our freedoms.
Elizabelle
@Pogonip:
You got me to look.
Pogonip
@raven: Jump around! Jump around!
Anoniminous
@Omnes Omnibus:
Anyone who doesn’t do this is a fool.
Gin & Tonic
@Emma: Since Odessa is in the news, and in the comments, here is a brighter view. A flashmob in the central fish market on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago performing the Ode to Joy (the anthem of the EU.)
Schlemizel
@Suffern ACE:
Russia is helping . . . itself to half of Ukraine.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: I ain’t doing it unless I get all that stuff Slim Pickens lists in Dr. Strangelove.
different-church-lady
@Suffern ACE: Can’t I just hit myself on the head with a hammer and save a lot of trouble?
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Buncha fascists. They are playing German music for gawd’s sake!
scav
@Gin & Tonic: Seems to have been a fair bit of moving people around to disrupt that kind of thing. I ran across the Lemko while digging into the Rusyns, which, while more in
Poland? (the Ukraine’s involved), made me wary of leaping into any mess of reputed “homelands” blahblah in that corner of the world. The hairball of Ruysn / Russian / Ukrainians / Unameitans is mindbending.
MomSense
Crazy, busy day. It’s only Monday. I think I need better vitamins.
Schlemizel
@Emma:
Poor Blob in Portland. We hit him with uncomfortable history lessons while others ask him the question I asked a couple days ago that he could not answer – “what do you suggest we do?” an it appears he has run away.
I’d like to think my donations to
http://helpeuromaidan.info/donate (@Schlemizel:)
for his continual stinking the place up had a hand in his sudden silence. But whatever it is its nice he has gone & taken the foam at the mouth crazy with him. I wonder if he is one of Daddy Vladdy’s paid puke pumps?
different-church-lady
OK, let me try to rescue this thread…
Because it was just Derby Day, the mint julep is in the air. I have heard much more bashing of this delightful potion this year than I have in the past. I was thinking, “Well, you’ve simply never had a good one,” when it occurred to me: you, DLC, have never had a mint julep that you have not mixed yourself! Therefore, I can only guess at what the others are complaining about. If anyone out there has had a bad one, I’d be curious to know what you found objectionable.
Traditionally I have the first julep of the season on Derby Day, but this year I had to defer to tonight for two reasons: I was working on Saturday and there was no viable mint in my garden due to the absurdly long winter. So I am enjoying my first julep as I type.
Perhaps in a later comment I will wax rhapsodic on how the potion is properly prepared.
DLC, +.5
Emma
@Gin & Tonic: Thank you. That was lovely.
Omnes Omnibus
@Emma: The “Born This Way” flashmob in Phoenix was pretty cool too.
ETA: Not lovely, but cool.
Schlemizel
@different-church-lady:
If the bourbon is good, sugar and mint destroy the quality of the spirit. If you have cheap rot gut I suppose it does no damage but life is too short to drink rot gut.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
The first and still best julep I had was crafted by a college buddy’s parents and served in an honest-to-gawd sterling cup, with frost on the side et al.
Good gawd was it amazing. I’d have that over any mojito I’ve ever tried.
Suffern ACE
The heck with the question of who gets Odessa. Just as pressing is as who gets to claim the origin of chicken tikka masala and what it means to the national identity of the United Kingdom. If Scotland does declare independence, does that mean the English can not longer claim it as part of their cultural heritage?
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: My guess is that most taste like mint and sugar with no trace of the taste of the booze. The good ones I have had are mixed so that the favors complement one another.
Suffern ACE
Expert advice on mint julep making from Imbibe Magazine, where they take cocktails a bit more seriously than most places. I don’t have an answer. I’ve taken to drinking my bourbon with the King’s Ginger when I want to mix it with something. I’m not much for muddling.
different-church-lady
@Suffern ACE: Good article. I was surprised by the topping with simple syrup. For me, one of the keys is a straw — I do not top with sweet; instead I push the straw well down to where the sugar is, so that one is drinking from the bottom up instead of the top down. Mine start sweeter, and then turn more towards the bourbon later.
DLC, +1
Elizabelle
@Suffern ACE:
That was a fun article on the julep. Makes me want one.
My kind of Virginians.
Although maybe the servants were enslaved …gives one pause.
Cacti
@Emma:
BIP and some guy are incapable of processing information that hasn’t been filtered through Kremlin state media.
How else does one explain their insistence on calling a country “anti-fascist” that:
-Is based around a strongman leader
-Is hyper-nationalist and militaristic
-Censors free speech and free press
-Codifies discrimination against disfavored minorities into law
-Believes it has a right to acquire territory by displacing or annexing parts of smaller nations
It takes a special sort of “progressive” to swallow all of that whole.
different-church-lady
@Elizabelle: The preface to “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails” makes a big point of the fact that cocktails were once considered MORNING drinks. (Capitalization from the book).
An excellent toy for anyone who likes their mixed drinks. And what’s fun is how so many of the “extinct” ingredients are so much more available today than when he wrote it just a few years ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: LaRouchie and Trot.
RSA
Is there anyone who talks like that and isn’t a tool?
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: IIRC Churchill always started his day reading papers in bed with a scotch and soda.
PurpleGirl
@different-church-lady: You mean all the stuff that a guy could use to have a pretty good weekend in Vegas… $500, X amount in gold, 9 packs of chewing gum, prophalactics, 3 pairs of silk stockings, etc.
ETA: I love that movie.
Bob In Portland
@Schlemizel: Did you send money to the Chechens too?
You don’t like me mentioning Ukraine. Too bad. Even a “Yeah, that sucks we’re paying fascists to kill people” now and then would satisfy me. But no, most of you think you’re living in the 1950s. Christopher Simpson’s THE ART OF COERCION is apparently available online now. Of course, me suggesting it will probably generate another round of donations to the Right Sector, but I am continually amazed how easily you get fooled by propaganda. Okay, five years later, after the US has fucked up another country and made it safe for American corporate plunder the peanut gallery here gives up a little “Tsk tsk.”
I’ve linked to Robert Parry. No one here seems to read it. Why not? How can you live with yourself knowing that you’re tacit support is allowing fascism to thrive in Ukraine?
Maybe that’s the wrong tact. Apparently, shame won’t work. Doesn’t intellectual curiosity make you want to check out a different point of view?
Elizabelle
@different-church-lady:
I wonder if one of the problem with our politics is that too many people are on the wagon.
Or scolds.
PS: MORNING drinks. Imagine rush hour if you had to dodge drunks (or those imbibing) after the sun came up … guess that concept went missing before autos were in wide circulation.
Suffern ACE
@RSA: I work for accountants and business consultants and even they would find that sentence a bit jargon rich.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland:
Because I’m too busy slamming my hand in this kitchen drawer.
Suffern ACE
@Elizabelle: I worked for a guy who came to work with breath that smelled like gin and scope. It did not work out very well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland:
Backatcha. I read your links. I read what others post as well. Your stuff seems to be frequently sourced in Moscow – maybe laundered through a few intermediaries. You also throw out blanket accusations of fascism at anyone who doesn’t accept your take on things. Sorry, Bob, you just aren’t persuasive.
And it is “tack,” not “tact.”
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Apparently a lot of people were traumatized by bad mint juleps in the 1980s. We served mojitos at our wedding and a lot of the older guests (50+) were hesitant to try one because the ingredient list made them think it would taste like a mint julep.
(They overcame their hesitation and a good time was had by all.)
Suffern ACE
@Bob In Portland: UKRAINE IS NOT PART OF RUSSIA SO QUIT COMPARING IT TO CHECHNYA YOU SANCTIMONIOUS FOOL.
different-church-lady
@Elizabelle:
And thank heavens!
However, I do advocate the idea that cocktails are designed to whet the appetite, and thus most appropriately timed before a meal.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: Russia HAD Odessa when it was the Soviet Union.
And again, how was burning forty people in a building connected to Russia? Are you saying that they were Russians in the building? Because the MSM calls them pro-Russian does not mean that that’s what they are. They are certainly anti-coup. Odessa is yet another area that voted for Yanukovich. Notice where there are rebellions: people’s whose vote was taken away from them by a coup in Kiev.
In 2008 there was a survey, one of the American firms, conducted in various countries about what language they preferred to use. One of the countries where they surveyed was Ukraine, where Russian got 83%. Considering that there are a few Poles left from the Bandera slaughters in WWII up in the northwest and some other ethnic enclaves, that pretty much leaves fifteen percent who preferred to use Ukrainian. So why would the coup government try to eliminate Russian as one of the official languages?
I know, it was vetoed. Now they’re just burning people alive.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I did read it. Parry is full of shit, because he thinks American history is more important to Russia and Ukraine than Russian and Ukranian history.
Sorry to break it to you, but the US is not nearly as powerful and important as you like to think. The Russians and Ukrainians have a history between them that goes back to the czars (if not before), and no CIA interference is going to be more than a drop in that ocean of their mutual history.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: My intellectual curiosity is not raised by someone who cites that “Someone else in the past was right!” as a reason that he is right in the present. But that may just be me. I’m just not near enough to any drawers to be slamming my hand with them instead. Maybe I’m move furniture tomorrow (could that be rearchitecturaling?)
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus: Have you read Robert Parry? What do you think his game is?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Did you think Robert Parry was full of shit during Iran-contra? Or were you born yet?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: I said I read you links, didn’t I? I think that Parry is conspiracy theory prone and are you.
@Bob In Portland: Sometimes people try too hard to capture their moment of real glory.
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
Really BIP?
You’re finally acknowledging that you think the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop still apply to the Russian Federation in 2014?
Progress!
Now explain why you think anyone should take this position seriously.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: Poking around these Gore-given interwebs, I have an inkling much of the problem might be adulteration of the ingredients list. “Sprite” keeps popping up. One thing a proper julep should not do is fizz, no matter what flavor said bubbles consist of,, and thus the comparison to the mojito is spurious at best. (And let me tell you, my mojito making skills are legendary amongst my compatriots.)
Bob In Portland
@Suffern ACE: I didn’t compare Ukraine to Chechnya. I compared sending money to Chechens like sending money to fascists in Ukraine. Both were financed by the US. Granted, a lot of it was on the down low because people blowing up subways was kind of hard to justify. But if you think that you can turn your head away from Nazis burning up buildings full of people you have a lot of head-turning in your future.
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus: Was Robert Parry a conspiracy theorist during Iran-contra?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland:
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I was in high school when Iran-Contra broke and got most of my coverage of it from “Bloom County.” I’m not really sure why you think This guy was right 30 years ago about something different! is supposed to be a convincing argument when it’s actually a classic logical fallacy.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
Since Woodward was right about Watergate, he was also right about Iraq having WMD.
BIP logic 101.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: I’m not sure. How old was Ribbentrop in 1922? No, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union long before Stalin cut a deal with the Nazis. And parts of it were within imperial Russia before then.
But why would you bring that up? Why do you think that there are large sections of Ukraine that speak Russian for the fuck of it?
There are lots of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers and just people who don’t like fascists. But you have no problem with them. That makes you despicable. And apparently piss poor at history.
Mike E
Sweet Jeebus did Louie suck tonight…x 2. I felt like a ‘punked’ victim watching them as long as I did, which wasn’t 60% they were so excruciating. Fuck.
Between that and trollmageddon here, good times.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: Dude, is every person who supports the current Ukrainian government or is a Ukrainian nationalist a fascist in your mind?
Edited slightly.
Elizabelle
@Suffern ACE:
Gin and Scope. My new moniker when I go a-trolling. Maybe Peggy Noonan’s already grabbed it, though.
PS: Liked “The King’s Ginger” website. Yet another potable allegedly concocted to be medicinal.
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
No BIP, Russia has long history of ethnic cleansing policies toward Ukraine, the more recent ones belonging to Stalin (still quite the popular figure among the “anti-fascists” you so adore).
But you’re pretty much alone in thinking that past ethnic cleansing grants Russia territorial rights to Ukraine in the 21st century.
Small wonder that Poland, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic States went leaping into the arms of NATO when given the opportunity.
They’re getting a real-time demonstration of their fate had they chosen otherwise.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes.
SATSQ
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
I suspect that some kind of artificial mint extract was probably involved, too, since it was the 1980s.
Jay C
@Bob In Portland:
Unless, of course, you are just going to dismiss it as “fascist propaganda”, you might want to look at this map. Admittedly, its data is a decade old, but barring major and widespread migrations of populations in Ukraine since 2001 (dubious), it’s quite likely that this chart (rather than whatever poorly-sourced anecdotal scare-story BS you get your tale from) reflects the actual distribution of linguistic usage in Ukraine. It does, after all, correspond pretty closely to virtually every other ethno/linguistic breakdown of Ukraine I’ve ever seen in any media; but then, that’s just the US and World news media: what do they know?
catclub
@Suffern ACE: You do know that Megan McArdle is on Bloomberg, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Oddly, since we were talking about my alma mater in the thread below, I am reminded of an interesting thing that I learned in my Russian History and Soviet Foreign Policy courses: Soviet foreign policy had many of the same goals as traditional Imperial Russian foreign policy. And, golly, it seems to be post-Soviet foreign policy.
Edited.
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
Fun fact from that article: the first Indian restaurant in England was founded in 1810. Dang.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: When you say someone is full of shit, that’s a pretty broad statement. Then you come up with horseshit about him thinking that he talks too much about American history. Try again.
You seem obsessed with nattering about Russia this, Putin that. If you read the NY Times you’d know that most of their anti-Russian propaganda they end up correcting a few days later. I’m talking about what America is doing. But if you’re not interested, then skip over my comments.
PIGL
@Suffern ACE: well i guess, to be fair, there a more than a few Chechens who would consider that Chechnya is not part of Russia either. It’s a Q of which lines on a map were drawn directly by Lord Jesus H Christ Almighty Hisself, and so are safeguarded under the UN charter, and which are subject to revision. Also, of which any of us are going to do anything about.
Suffern ACE
@catclub: Yeah. But so is Tom Keane. This latest gambit seems to be to replace Tom Keene with Matt Halperin type eventually. Egad. Tom Keene actually, you know, reads the books of the people he is interviewing and is well versed with the debates and ideas about them. He can actually hold a conversation with very bright people. I may not agree with him, but gosh, it’s nice to be able to listen to that kind of discussion instead of CNBC’s “Armageddon is nigh” rambling.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
It seems like Putin’s vision for Russia in the 21st century is to combine the worst features of the Soviet and Tsarist periods.
My sympathies to its people who had hoped for something better.
CaseyL
Tonight I am relaxing, after what was for me a very busy weekend.
Sunday a friend and I went to a National Geographic Live presentation by Kevin Hand, who talked about finding life on other planets. The best candidates are Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, and Triton. Some of these moons have liquid water – not methane, but water! Europa, in fact, is a world ocean. No landmasses, just one big ocean under something like 10 miles of ice.
I talked to him afterwards (very briefly; there were a lot of people in line to do so). I asked why he said the life we’re likely to find will be non-sentient: were there constraints in terms of nutrition, body structure, or something that might limit development to the kinds of critters we find in the deep ocean? He said evolution is full of bottlenecks.
Here’s the thing, though: life on Earth has been periodically all-but-wiped-out by a series of massive extinctions (we’re entering a sixth Great Extinction period). Each time, a different order of critter has had to evolve to take over the empty niches. But that means humans are the latest in a long, long line of sentient “advanced” life-forms. What if one of the moons that are good candidates for life didn’t have the same boom-and-bust cycles Earth has had? What if a few dominant lines of critter had all those hundreds of millions of years to evolve without interruption?
I also didn’t get a chance to ask him about plate techtonics on those other worlds.
Damn, it would’ve been nice to have a long conversation with the guy.
Bob In Portland
@Jay C Well, Gallup has been wrong before.
Gin & Tonic
@PIGL: Russia just seems much more prone to revising those lines than any of its neighbors do. And it only ever seems to be in one direction. In all his rantings, I have yet to see BIP address the Budapest memorandum of 1994 or explain why it’s OK that Russia is breaching it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: FWIW, I don’t deny that some of the people involved in the overthrow of the pro-Russian government were fascists. I do, however, doubt that the entirety of the movement or the current government is fascist. OTOH a lot of governments are further right than I would prefer.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: No, but fascists got four ministries in the coup government. The interior minister waging the war against the east and sending fascists into Odessa is a fascist.
Actual hardcore fascists make up a small percentage of Ukrainians. But you must know how fascism works, right? At one level there are the street thugs, and higher up it’s a merger of business and state. The bully boys do the dirty work.
Like burning up people in buildings.
Mnemosyne
@CaseyL:
If you missed this week’s episode of “Cosmos,” you should catch it, because it’s exactly what Tyson talks about. Shortest version: there was a period of about 5 million years (IIRC) after the Permian extinction where any aliens who visited the Earth would have concluded that it would be impossible for the Earth to sustain life.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: Woodward wasn’t right about Watergate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: Awesome.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I said he’s full of shit about Russia and Ukraine. And, yes, I mean that broadly.
Dude, you’re the one claiming that current events in Russia and Ukraine are due to Nazis emigrating to the US. That is you claiming that American history is more important than Russian or Ukranian history. That is you claiming that the history of Russia and Ukraine is less important than US history.
srv
@Omnes Omnibus: If the Russians are fascist and the Ukrainians are fascists, what’s wrong with a little fighting amongst fascists?
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
And that’s why needling you is an endless source of amusement, BIP.
Always ready to apply the fascist label to opponents of Moscow, but never ready to explain why the Russian Federation bears so many obvious characteristics of historic fascist regimes.
It’s almost as amusing as the “anti-fascists” who carry banners of fascist collaborator Joseph Stalin as an icon of their “anti-fascist” resolve.
Bob In Portland
@Emma: So you think that the people who were burned up in that trade union building were fighting for a Russian warm water port?
Is the water off Crimea too chilly?
It’s all Russia’s fault. Just like it was all Saddam’s fault. Whatever.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: The current Ukrainian government is somewhere pretty close to 90% of what it was before February 22. The 450-member parliament elected in 2012 has not changed, although some members changed party affiliation or resigned — there are about 400 currently working. Most cabinet-level departments have not changed, and at the sub-cabinet and career civil-service levels there have been almost no changes.
srv
@Mnemosyne: Or maybe, just maybe, aliens used meteors to engineer a result.
It’s about time for another weeding.
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: Aside from the deaths of innocent people, nothing. BiP is all in on Moscow’s version of things. My experience with eastern Europe is that antisemitism and hard right politics are pretty easy to find. Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine; there is a shitload of it just under the surface.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: I’m always ready to apply the label of fascism on fascists.
It’s amazing that you deny the coup government’s links to the Ukraine’s fascist past. So either you are intentionally ignorant or you’re lying. Your choice. You own those deaths in Odessa.
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: Rogozin?
ETA: Seriously, Bob, if you can’t call him a fascist, you have no street cred.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Did you know that I own those deaths in Odessa?
BIP gets so worked up when you don’t buy what he’s peddling.
Reminds me of a Jehovah’s Witness.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Or, since “higher up it’s a merger of business and state,” how exactly was Yukos absorbed by Rosneft?
max
@Omnes Omnibus: FWIW, I don’t deny that some of the people involved in the overthrow of the pro-Russian government were fascists. I do, however, doubt that the entirety of the movement or the current government is fascist. OTOH a lot of governments are further right than I would prefer.
Svoboda is nationalist socialist (social-nationalist is their term of art), minus most of the Jew-baiting. Fatherland (currently holding most of the portfolios) is the Western Ukrainian crooks (as opposed to the Regionaire Eastern Ukrainian crooks). Pravy Sektor mostly seems to be upset with the whole Ukrainian government escapade thing and would like to bang some heads on the streets which makes them appear vaguely fascist. Mostly I can’t much blame them for being pissed off.
If there’s a problem there, it’s Svoboda. Well, that and the parliament and government is staffed up with crooks, just like always.
@Omnes Omnibus: My experience with eastern Europe is that antisemitism and hard right politics are pretty easy to find. Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukrainian; there is a shitload of it just under the surface.
Yup. A clash of right-wing nationalisms.
max
[‘For some reason, some of those folks in Kieve expect that the EU will straighten it all out, but based on the EU’s track record in the rest of Europe, I believe the appropriate phrase is ‘fat fucking chance’.’]
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
So there’s this movie from the 1980s called Head Office. It doesn’t hold together very well as a film, but it has a bunch of great vignettes. One of them is when the dictator of a South American country stands up at a fundraising event and makes the following speech: “Authoritarianism: si! Totalitarianism: no!”
Someone here is stuck in the 80s in more ways than one.
Emma
@Bob In Portland: You are the most jingoist American it has been my misfortune to meet. You think that every event in the world happens because something-something-about America. Clue in on this. America wasn’t even a glimmer in Tom Jefferson’s eye when the Russians swept out to push others away from the Rodina and to create their ring of client states. The government of Russia — whatever it calls itself — has constantly played on the paranoid fears and nationalist jingoism of Russian ethnic populations in those states to annex them whenever it can. It’s about them, not about us.
Try some alternative reading: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-herlihy-russia-ukraine-odessa-20140501,0,1564808.story#axzz30u8paUKq
And you know who needs to worry? The Jews. Because no matter which rightwinger is in power, Russian or Ukrainian, they are always the easy targets.
GregB
How dare you call Stalin a fascist? He’s a totalitarian!
Needless to say the fascists and sectarian militias are on a global rampage these days.
From Golden Dawn in Greece, to Le Pen in France to the authoritarian and border line elected dictator Erdogan in Turkey to the salafists in Syria fighting the dictator in Syria and Libya and Egypt(plus the return of dictatorships in Egypt and Iraq)to the Procol Harum, or is it Boko Harum in Nigeria to the narco terrorists in Mexico to the pro-Ukrainian goons to the pro-Russian goons to the violent settlers in Israel and their Arab counterparts Hamas to the Bundy militia in Nevada. Not to mention Al Qaeda in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya and North Africa and our dear friends Al Shabab.
The nuts with the guns are on the move. Grim fucking times.
CaseyL
@Mnemosyne: I did catch it – I’ve been watching Cosmos, mostly on Demand, because there are a few fewer commercials.
The pre-Cambrian era is fascinating to me, because that when the first (?) of the Great Extinctions happened, when cyano bacteria oxygenated the atmosphere and killed off all the methane-breathers. Was that anomalous? Is a methane atmosphere the “default,” and oxygenation happens later, if at all?
My point is that I don’t know (and I don’t know if anyone knows) that the Great Extinctions were inevitable. If we posit that they’re not, then a lunar or planetary ecosystem that didn’t suffer them would have had uninterrupted eons for life to continue evolving and advancing.
Imagine if the Permian critters never died off. Or the mammal-like reptiles that preceded the dinosaurs. Or, sure, the dinos. What would they have been like if they’d had another couple hundred millions of years to develop?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
No, Robert Parry is full of shit because he thinks the CIA is controlling what happens in Ukraine. Really, Parry thinks the Ukranians were fine with Yanukovych’s lavish lifestyle on the public dime and it took interference from the CIA to get them upset about it?
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB: Those people are always there. Always have been. Always will be. The trick is not to let them get control or at least not for too long.
We have them here. The Russians have them. The Ukrainians have them.
Matthew 7:1-5 (KJV)
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
There’s a reason Soviet Jews emigrated in droves as soon as Gorbachev allowed it, and it ain’t because the Russians were historically pro-Jewish.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Oddly, they were not particularly beneficial to the peace process in the ME.
GregB
@Omnes Omnibus:
A curious post.
The point of my post was that everyone has them, hence the litany of areas where fascism seems to be erupting.
Talking about it and creating awareness is important.
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB: My point was that bitching about incipient fascism in, for example, Moldova is a bit silly if it is happening in your own backyard.
srv
@CaseyL: Dinosauroids
GregB
@Omnes Omnibus:
Did you read my list? It did include an example in the US? So I was bitching about my own backyard.
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB: Then we aren’t arguing, are we?
ETA: I did not have the intent to argue with with you, nor was I trying to contradict you. I was just trying to build on or riff off your point. Okay?
GregB
@Omnes Omnibus:
Splitter!
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB: Imperialist running dog!
AxelFoley
@Cacti:
Hah, the hero of the Right and Left not hiding his attempts to bring back the old Soviet Union.
Beth in VA
It is horrible about the burning of 40 people in that Ukrainian unrest. No one here is for that. More were killed in Syria. Also even more horrible. I’m just glad we’re not bombing–although some think that helps. I don’t think just war theory or mindful foreign policy supports that.
tybee
@raven:
mine will be 8 in august and has almost 38k on it. and it’s my daily driver.
Larv
@CaseyL:
I’m not sure why you would think that. There’s no evidence that I’m aware of that sentience has evolved more than once. As far as “advanced”, most evolutionary biologists shun that terminology, as it’s very hard to define in a non-circular manner.
The problem is that evolution is not a constant process leading inevitably towards greater complexity and sentience. The greatest evolutionary change doesn’t occur in times of environmental stasis, but rather in times of change and upheaval. That is to say, given hundreds of millions of years of moderate stasis, a species might not evolve very much at all, and would not necessarily evolve in the direction of increased complexity or sentience. After all, the primary benefit of sentience is that it allows the organism to deal with very complex and changing environments. A lifeform evolving in a protected and unchanging ocean might not derive any fitness advantage from it.
Bostondreams
@Bob In Portland:
Except if they are Russian, apparently. Because Putin is doing a pretty good il Duce impression lately, and we don’t see you call him out at all…
jake the anti-soshal soshalist
Is the best hope for this new enterprise to be 16 Magazine to Politico’s Tiger Beat?
Another Holocene Human
@PsiFighter37:
I swear to dog she’s the can’t win for losing candidate, win one election and fuck the party. Has absolutely everyone forgotten all the suck from the Clinton admin? It wasn’t good just because Bush was worse, okay? Obama has kicked so much ass and not even Dems can see it. Yes I’m an Obot because I’m not fucking delusional. And what about the revelations that Hillz is much more of a hawk (we knew that) than Obama? Former GOPer, not that anyone runs around and calls her a “human oil slick” (seriously?).
Mark me down for ABH at the primaries. I’m ready.
Another Holocene Human
@geg6: Florida Dems gave Alex Sink a pass on bigfooting the special election after Bill Young died and she drained the coffers of Labor and lost the election!