In approximate order of seriousity, NYMag says Vice President Biden got asked to a high school prom:
… “Joe Biden makes me laugh,” said Talia Maselli, a high schooler in Connecticut. “He just cracks me up.” She asked Biden to be her date in a note, threatening that her second choice was John Boehner. “And we can’t have that now can we.”…
“I am flattered, but my schedule will not permit me to be in Connecticut on Friday evening,” the vice president wrote back, along with an invite to the White House. “But I hope you will accept this corsage and enjoy your prom as much as I did mine.” A white rose and baby’s breath accessory were included…
Also via NYMag, #OWS protestor Cecily McMillan will only serve three months in jail for smacking the cop who grabbed her boob from behind:
Facing up to seven years in prison — and expecting at least two — activist Cecily McMillan was sentenced this morning to just three months, including the two weeks she’s already served, for hitting a police officer in the face during the Occupy Wall Street protests… She will also be responsible for community service and five years of probation.
McMillan’s became the single most watched case of the Occupy Wall Street arrests as most of the 2,600 people arrested during the protests had their charges dropped or settled without jail time. McMillan fought because she says she only swung her elbow back at the officer’s face involuntarily, after he grabbed her breast…
More detail at the link. Finally, much as I hate to say it, Mitt Romney did a good thing this weekend:
WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Town officials confirmed Monday that the 82-year-old police commissioner who was heard publicly calling President Obama the n-word — sparking nationwide outrage — has tendered his resignation.
Robert Copeland, 82, the vice chairman of Wolfeboro’s three-member police commission, turned in his resignation to the head of the police commission late Sunday night, town officials confirmed.
His resignation comes as several of New Hampshire’s most prominent politicians — including Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R) and Jeanne Shaheen (D) and Gov. Maggie Hassan — had called for Copeland’s ouster…
Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who owns a vacation home in Wolfeboro, has also called for Copeland to resign.
“The vile epithet used and confirmed by the commissioner has no place in our community,” Romney said in a statement to the Boston Herald last week. “He should apologize and resign.”
Much as it grinds my gums, I give Romney full credit here, because in the “Live Free or Die Trying” state, every single elected politician of any party or none could call for Copeland’s resignation with no effect whatsoever, but the money spent at the Romney clan’s multi-million-dollar “summer shack” probably gets a separate line in the town’s annual budget.
(Probably redundant) trigger warning, stay away from the comments in any local coverage of the Copeland story, where the common (as pig tracks) theme is resentment of Masshole summer blow-ins with their dainty-minded liebral devotion to crushing First Amendment FREEDUMBS!!!
***********
Apart from celebrating the small victories, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Baud
I would not trust Biden with my teenage daughter.
mclaren
Meanwhile, Romney belongs to a religious cult that refused to allow blacks to be ordained until 1978.
Gotta love that hypocrisy…
Baud
Credit Suisse pled guilty to tax crimes today.
ulee
It was fun watching Biden destroy Eddie Munster in their debate. It was cruel, like a cat playing with a caught mouse.
mai naem mobile
@Baud: yeah but will anybody serve time or is it just going to be a big fine which they take off their taxes and btw they probably made more money off the taxes they didn’t pay than the fine. Maybe if the CEO and CFO had to share a cell for a few years with some violent criminals there would actually be a deterrent effect.
ChrisH
We have strong evidence to believe the most spoiled entitled portion of our society is old white college administrators.
mclaren
@Baud:
I would not trust Biden with my 238-year-old country.
“We need a D-Day in the War Against Drugs”…”Marijuana is a gateway drug. Legalization is a mistake.” — Joe Biden
“The PATRIOT Act is my bill!” — Joe Biden
Joe Biden the war lover, ardent supporter of the doomed Iraq war:
Joe Biden on the Don Imus show, 8/17/2006:
“We’ve got one last shot here to separate these parties [in the Iraq civil war], and you have to do it politically.”
Joe Biden, Fox News, 11/21/2005: (Should we leave Iraq right now?) “Not immediately, no. I can understand Jack’s frustration. This is a guy who has concluded that so far we’ve handled this effort incompetently, but it seems to me that we have one last shot at getting this right.”
Joe Biden, Charlie Rose show, 21 June 2005:
“I personally think we should not set an exit date. I personally think we should take one last shot at trying to do this the right way. I
think it still can be done, although more difficult.”
Joe Biden, Face the Nation, 6/19/2004:
“We need time. There’s one last shot at getting this right in Iraq.”
Joe Biden, Hardball, 24 May 2004:
“We’ve made significant mistakes. Our one last shot to get this right, unite the world, convince the Iraqi people that this is not just a U.S. occupation, is June 30.”
Joe Biden, 11/7/2003:
“I am convinced we have one last shot at bringing the world into Iraq,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “We must do everything in our power to seize it.”
Pogonip
Did anybody see the funny Lost Pet signs on the Daily Telegraph? I liked the one showing a lion: “Likes to play with his food…answers to either Tiddles or Aaaarrgh.”
LT
In retrospect, this story will likely rank as the high water mark of Joe Biden’s 2016 campaign.
Pogonip
@Baud: I wouldn’t trust ANY politician with my teenage daughter. Or with my worldly-wise, 87-year-old father who has survived two wars, for that matter.
ranchandsyrup
A view of our post racial meritocracy. Black heads of household with college degrees earn less than white heads of household with just a HS diploma.
ulee
@mclaren: Biden talks like he’s talking with friends over drinks afterhours. Would you prefer we have Ryan in the post with his full bellys and empty souls garbage?
Amir Khalid
@mclaren:
Cut the man a break. He’s making progress, isn’t he?
Oh, by the way: in case you missed it, America is all the way out of Iraq now.
Fuzzy
I guess “Live Free or Die” does not include saying what you feel. I do not in any way agree with Copeland but his right to say it should not deny him being a police commissioner. He stated his view in a restaurant to a friend and was overheard. He did not deny uttering the N word and yet he was forced to resign. I guess being PC trumps all.
shelley
Awwwwwwwww.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Pogonip:
Face it, you wouldn’t want mclaren near your teenage daughter either. Nor would I. Nor would anyone sane.
Omnes Omnibus
McMillan still has strong issues to raise on appeal, so there is still hope that she will end up without a criminal record.
Bobby Thomson
@Fuzzy: he didn’t just not deny it. He doubled down on it. Your understanding of the constitution is also Palinesque. In conclusion, fuck off and die.
Davis X. Machina
We love New Hampshire here in Maine. The invidious comparisons make themselves, via the Thornton Mellon principle — if you want to look thin, you hang out with fat guys.
(We haven’t done ourselves any favors though with Mini-Meldrim, a.k.a. Landslide LePage.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Fuzzy: An out and out racist probably shouldn’t be running a police department. Wouldn’t you say?
ChrisH
Shorter William G. Bowen speaking to graduating class of Haverford college:
I am greatly disappointed in those who denied Robert J. Birgeneau his right to regurgitate empty platitudes at you and be congratulated for it. You all were told that your opinion matters here at college but it’s time you learnt that you can complain in your student newspaper all you want but you aren’t supposed to negatively impact your betters in any tangible way. I wish you would have allowed Robert to come engage in a serious discussion…the type of discussion where you’re required to sit quietly while he talks, are given no time to offer a rebuttal, and are expected to applaud him when he’s finished speaking.
JPL
We all have free speech but we all need to face the consequences of our speech. I’m glad that
Copeland understood that.
btw.. non-pc is code for being an asshole.
Suffern ACE
Adding to the list of things that I didn’t know existed, turnspits, a breed of dog utensil that your more refined chefs had.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Omnes Omnibus:
The jury and the judge both seem to be implicitly conceding that they pretty much screwed up here, even though there was some rather nasty rhetoric from the judge and prosecution at the sentencing.
JustRuss
@Omnes Omnibus: +1. Use of that word shows contempt and hostility to black people, who are among those he’s sworn to serve and protect. Which means he is not qualified for the job.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity): Letting the prosecution use stills from the video but not allowing the defense to show the video was, IMO, a massive error on the judge’s part.
PsiFighter37
Took a weekend trip to visit my best friend from college who lost his job several months ago. I mentioned the basics of his story – became bummed out, sat around doing nothing, was gaining weight and spending money like he had a bottomless pit of it.
Anyways, he’s been back home the past couple of months, and ugh…I did my best not to display my disgust when I was with him, because I wanted to be a friend this time around, but goddamn is he a mess. He’s gained even more weight (I told him he looked a few months pregnant), and the way all his clothes hang on his body (he’s 5’6″, and in peak physical condition, probably weights 135 or so) looks appalling. He’s gained at least 40 pounds on top of that by now. He’s almost certainly worn out his welcome back at home; he forced them to cancel a wedding trip out to CA (that cost them a few thousand to book), and his parents (while he was upstairs in an overeating-induced food coma) were not so subtly asking me what the hell was wrong with him, or them as parents. Then he’s being socially withdrawn as well – limiting virtually any outside access to his Facebook, really only keeping in touch with me (and a few of his other close friends), and shutting everyone else out. He literally does NOTHING with all this fucking free time he has – I mean literally NOTHING, aside from maybe read the newspaper – and eat and drink booze (judging from his physique).
I talked to him about coming out to my bachelor party (which he had assured me he would show up for in the past), and now not only is he likely not going to make it because of money issues (forget the BMW, the Burberry wallet, the Burberry playing cards, the Gucci coat he’s too fat to wear now, or the $700 he blew, in front of me, buying an Xbox One while I was there), but I’m already on the hook for a non-refundable $500 round-trip ticket to LA that will simply go poof if he decides coming to party for a few days (which is probably a bad idea, as it would be indulging his worst aspects right now) for a fraction of the cash he’s blown already is too much.
He has some ideas, career-wise, as to what he wants to do, but what bothers me is that the only thing that he has listened to from his parents is this idea they planted in his head (and I know, because they said it plenty of times when I was there) that New York was a bad place for him to be. No, it’s because he has extremely severe younger brother syndrome (being an older brother, I know very well what this looks like), and his parents probably didn’t put the foot down hard enough when he was younger. Last time when he lost his job 3 years ago, he was still my roommate – so I also think (not to be an egoist) that my influence helped drive him back to getting a job quickly. He is now living with 2 strangers and was effectively living on his own, without friends in the building, for the first time ever – and he self-destructed within 6 months of doing so.
I’m at a bit of a crossroads to what to do. He’s by far my closest friend from college, and he was my freshman dorm roommate in school a decade ago. He’s (at least for now) one of my groomsmen for my wedding. But this kind of behavior was appalling. My fiancee was horrified when I told her all of this last night (she knows him pretty well too). I do want to give him a chance to get it together, but he’s become a bit of a loose cannon (I’m pretty sure he burned a bridge with one of my fiancee’s bridesmaids, who I’m also good friends with, due to shit he said while drunk-texting), and I have zero tolerance for anything with my wedding getting screwed up. And frankly…if this is the person he has become…I don’t know if he is a friend worth keeping, no matter the history. I’m meeting a guy who also is close friends with him tomorrow to get an informed opinion as well. I’m torn between gambling and trying to guide him forcefully towards getting his life back on track (which is not natural for me – I don’t like telling people how to live their lives), or simply letting him find his own way – after all, we are adults in our late 20s, and we should be able to find our own way at this point in life.
What do you guys think? I know that’s an awful lot to digest, but this is what I burned a $400 weekend ticket down to Carolina this weekend to endure, all while battling some kind of weird viral throat infection that undoubtedly wasn’t helped by me having to show a semblance of kicking back by having several drinks with him.
Fuzzy
@Bobby Thomson:Hey TROLL Thanks for the childlike retort. Your idea of a conversation is most unusual but you have the right to say what you feel and Copeland doesn’t.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Fuzzy:
If the police are supposed to be guardians and administrators of some aspects of justice, at least in theory, it might just be a tad problematic to have someone in that position with a derogatory view of a whole group of citizens based on their skin color, no?
Fuzzy
@Omnes Omnibus: Agreed but is he allowed to express his opinion. What if he had used “black man” instead?
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
Your friend is mentally ill, probably with severe depression. He needs help. His parents need to get him to a doctor.
Sorry, but that’s the deal. His life is in danger, and his parents need to get him help.
ETA: If his parents have guns in the house, they need to remove them to a safe location, the sooner the better.
Belafon
Wow, this post brought out all the trolls.
Baud
@Fuzzy:
Copeland has the same rights as anyone else. He’s not in jail. He didn’t even get fired. He resigned, as he should have.
JPL
@PsiFighter37: Send him a note saying that you want him in your wedding but if he feels that he is not able to afford it, you’ll understand.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought it was an astounding display of bias. Frankly, the whole trial struck me as prejudiced to an alarming degree against the defendant.
scuffletuffle
@Pogonip: Would love to see it but couldn’t find it at their website. Do you have a link?
Omnes Omnibus
@Fuzzy: No one stopped him from expressing his opinion.
Mnemosyne
@Fuzzy:
If I said publicly that the head of the Giant Evil Corporation I work for was a “kike” and it got into the news, how long do you think I would keep my job?
Belafon
@Fuzzy: Let’s see. Does anyone here consider black man racist? How about nigger?
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Fuzzy:
You really think “black man” would have expressed the view of the president that he was trying to convey?
Alison
I am hoping we can turn this into a happy story! This pup Sassy has been at the shelter in Santa Rosa CA for THREE years – and that just breaks my heart. If any BJers live near here or know someone who does and who has room in their heart for this baby (and who has no other pets), please please help her find her forever home. http://theshelterpetproject.org/pet?id=25570177
Redshift
@Fuzzy: The First Amendment guarantees freedom from censorship, not freedom from consequences. He absolutely had the right to say what he feels, and he did. He does not have the right to hold a public service post regardless of his attitude toward some of the people he is supposed to serve.
If I expressed attitudes that promoted people to records their freedom to boycott my employer and was unrepentant, I would probably be fired. Why exactly do you believe this outcome equates to not having freedom of speech?
hilts
RIP cinematographer Gordon Willis. His credits included The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Annie Hall, and Manhattan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbchmWS5jIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2akLhosPEg
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity): Yeah, I am hoping the conviction gets reversed on appeal and the prosecutors have enough sense let it go.
PsiFighter37
@Mnemosyne: Nah, there are no guns. He lives in the South but his family doesn’t have any (they live in the Research Triangle area).
@JPL: I feel like that’s a bit of an asshole move to do – implicitly disinvite him because he doesnt’ come to the bachelor party. It’s more the cognitive dissonance of him talking about not having enough money to do stuff during the bachelor party when he bought a BMW straight-up without taking out an auto loan, and he still has plenty of money in savings (granted, not as much as he should), and he’s crying poor.
He’ll be back up in town in a few weeks to move out, but I have to figure out a delicate way to tell him that there was some seriously fucked-up shit going down, and that even if I looked like I was having a good time, I thought it was fucking strange, and not in a good way. It’s a fine line between trying to be a good friend and being an enabler, I feel like, in a situation like this…
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
Good that there are no guns in the house. But I am not joking when I say that your friend is in real trouble, and his parents need to get him to a doctor. Everything you’re saying about him (except for the drinking, because I’m not a drinker) is exactly what I was like when I was off my meds and depressed while unemployed.
His parents need to take him to a doctor. Full stop. There is NOTHING else that will help.
ETA: Buying things impulsively? Common sign of depression in men. So is the drinking, and the weight gain. Your friend is pretty much a textbook case of What A Depressed Man Looks Like.
Baud
First, they came for Anthony Wiener, and I said nothing because I never tweeted dick pics to anyone ….
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@PsiFighter37:
It sounds as if he has severe depression issues at the very least. Stipulating that he ought to keep his commitments and that his behavior isn’t doing anyone any good, I would try and get him to seek help, while not getting dragged down into the bottomless pit of despair with him. Try and remember at all times that he isn’t in control – and is probably angry with himself and terrified and sometimes blankly miserable. Whatever happens, you’ll feel better about yourself in future if you don’t treat some who is suffering like that in a harsh way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Pull the other one; it’s got bells on.
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
Study of compulsive buying in depressed patients
Litlebritdifrnt
Is anyone else enjoying the republican fights in the primary as much as I am? I am stuffing popcorn in my face as fast as it will go. I mean come on, their best bet is posting photos of a Senators wife in a nursing home? Really? BTW anyone who thought that using Chinese Privet as a landscaping plant back in the 80s deserves their place in hell (if I believed in it)
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Like this, you mean?
http://tinyurl.com/kknqala
? Martin
@mclaren: Um, anyone over 50 lived in a country that blocked blacks from participating in many aspects of society. Is Obama a hypocrite for being on the right side of the issues today? Biden? The Clintons? Oh, hey, John Lewis is now a hypocrite.
Is there a prize for owning the broadest brush?
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity): No, but it does indeed have bells on.
PsiFighter37
@Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity): It’s hard to get someone help when they are hundreds of miles away…I can’t go and check up on him frequently.
But yeah, if he does have depression, he definitely needs to get help. I do wonder if it would help if myself and the guy I’m meeting tomorrow go down and convince him to seek it out…I honestly don’t know if his parents think that is the issue – or if they even have the clout to get him to go. I feel like external influences are the best way to get his attention.
I may also chat with a couple of his good hometown friends about it, although they seemed to think he just needed some time and space. To me, 7 months is maybe too long already…
Litlebritdifrnt
My niece got married this weekend, my sister wore the most spectacular hat, my bro in law had a tie and butioner matching the wedding colors. I was not there. Why? Because my job pays so poorly that we can’t afford it and my husband as a North Carolina teacher is now under such a gun than he doesn’t dare put in for leave. It fucking sucks.
jl
I didn’t see any link to the quiz on the Legend of Joe Biden: True Fact or Onion? So…
The Real Joe Biden vs. The Onion’s Joe Biden: A Quiz
http://www.thewire.com/politics/2012/05/real-joe-biden-vs-onions-joe-biden-can-you-tell-difference/51850/
Found this via the TPM story on the Legend of Joe Biden, beloved semi-mythical folkloric character. Hell, Canada has Shatner, and we need one too.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/exploring-the-origins-of-the-joe-biden-legend
Edit: I assume the Big Bide is gonna run, ’cause that’s how he rolls. But I don’t think he has much chance if HRC runs and even if not, still reasonably beatable. So I wonder if he will do it for bully pulpit, ego, yucks and lafs, what?
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: The bells are the least unusual element to my mind. The backup cod is just garden-variety performance anxiety, but wings? Imagine the traffic jams in Heaven if those are standard issue in that configuration.
MattR
@PsiFighter37: Tough situation. The only real advice I can offer is you is that while I think it is OK to tell him that his situation is fucked up and that you are worried about him and you want to help out however you can, you should not tell him he needs to just snap out of it and get his shit together. If he is suffering from depression or some other mental illness, he needs professional help not just better will power.
I would add that it will probably make things worse to guilt trip him over missing the bachelor party and/or wedding. Based on my own experiences, I would guess that he does want to attend but thinks it is too much for him to handle and he is already annoyed at himself that he is letting you down by backing out (but as Morzer said, he is no longer fully in control of himself). As annoyed or angry as you may be, displaying those emotions to him will probably be counterproductive.
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
If Ruckus shows up later on tonight, you might want to see if he has any advice — we were talking about differences between men and women yesterday (among other things) and it turned out that one of his many past jobs was as a mental health counselor, so he might be able to give you some ideas of how to approach it.
aimai
@Fuzzy: What a bizarre thing to say. He wasn’t a private citizen speaking about his personal beliefs. He was police chief–the town is going to be held responsible for his racist beliefs when they translate into racist actions. If he talks about/thinks about the *&^% president of the United States as, basically, a vagrant/thief/lowlife/scum (or whatever he pretends to think “meets my criteria for such” means) how can any citizen who is AA expect fair treatment from him? And how can any white citizen or voter respect his judgement or expect honest treatment from him? He’s dividing the very citizenry according to some racist notion of essential “N-ness” that entitles him to treat them unequally.
Of course people are entitled to believe any shit they want about other people, or the world in general. But such a person shouldn’t expect to hold public office and the public trust for long when they are so unworthy of it.
PsiFighter37
@MattR: Well, it’s more that I don’t want last-minute cancellation on the wedding (which, if he already is going to throw in the towel on the bachelor party, I don’t see as out of the question) – he is part of the wedding party, and if I don’t think he can make it now (he says he’ll still make the wedding, at least for now), I would rather replace him now outright instead of waiting until less than a month before the wedding and having to scramble to get any ancillary stuff adjusted.
It’s an unfortunate coincidence that his breakdown is coming at a time when I really need to know whether or not he’s going to have it together. He did say that he felt like it was good that I visited, and that he was going to start exercising and eating properly going forward. The problem to me is just math…if he’s not going to start thinking hard about what to do until mid-late June (when he moves all his stuff out of NYC), what will he do until then? I know he is exceedingly poor at killing time on his own, and he got way too restless when I was getting ready to grab my gear before we’d head out. I just have no idea what he is realistically going to do during that time with himself.
Bob In Portland
Marriage equality has reached Oregon. Lots of happy people here in Portland.
Also, Gin & Tonic will be concerned about these reporters.
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
As far as the wedding goes, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Worst case scenario, one of your friends gets to escort a bridesmaid on each arm instead of just one. They’ll probably be fighting to be the one who gets to do that (assuming everyone’s single, of course).
NotMax
No babies were injures when collecting the breath.
But were they American Beauty roses? (Better not have been – gasp – Tea Roses.)
aimai
@PsiFighter37: Everyone else has given you good advice. FWIW I think you should separate out his issues from your issues (your wedding) and realize that you can’t (and don’t need) to collapse them into one thing.
Disinvite him from the batchelor party and save everyone the trouble of waiting with bated breath for him to show or no show or fuck up. He is going to do whatever he is going to do but you already know that he is not going to be able to pull himself together and act like a good friend or even a good guest for the wedding or the wedding parties. And the pressure he may feel to show up/be good is probably not going to do him any good, either. People generally act worse when they feel they are failing other people and sometimes rush to embrace that role to get over their own feelings of shame and despair.
As for the money stuff–forget it. Its none of your business. He is screwing up his life as fast as possible and lying to you or poor mouthing simply is one of the symptoms, its not the real issue.
Don’t worry about the conversation you feel you need to have with him. No one can fix this but him and explaining to him how you feel about the money and time you just burned visiting him, and how you didn’t really have fun, won’t affect things one way or another.
Talk to his parents and help them understand that he needs a serious intervention but that you are not the person to do the intervention at this point in time. You’ve got a wedding and a fiancee and an entire wedding party to manage. They need to get him some serious help and he needs to get into some kind of program/therapy. But you can’t take on that responsibility at this point.
MattR
@PsiFighter37: Yeah. You are stuck in a shitty situation. If you do have a talk with him about his whole situation maybe bring up the idea of him not being a part of the wedding party while making sure he knows that he is obviously still invited and you would love him to be there. It is tricky, but hopefully you can phrase it so he understands you are doing this to relieve the pressure on him to attend (or to lessen the guilt if he doesn’t feel up to it and backs out at the last minute) rather than because you don’t trust him to show up.
NotMax
Even professional baseball stopped using the ‘N’ word as a nickname by the late 1940s.
Roger Moore
@aimai:
This. He needs to have as many people as possible on his side, and getting his parents in on the act would be very helpful. At the same time, you have a big commitment to something other than your friend, so you can’t be the driving force in getting him the help he needs. That means convincing somebody else who cares about him to do the heavy lifting, and his parents are a good place to start looking.
PsiFighter37
@aimai: I don’t really care about the money at this point – if that’s $500 down the drain but he is sorting himself out, that is the better outcome. I use it mainly as an example of behavior that is openly dissonant of the facts at hand, namely that he says he doesn’t have the money, yet he is busy spending it all away.
I am really leaning more towards dropping him from the wedding party, but I just don’t know of how to do it in a way where he doesn’t take it as an insult and simply lock me out of his life. I’m the person outside of his hometown buddies and his family that has the most exposure to him, and I think if he gets locked into a downward spiral in NC, it will be far too late before people realize how deep of a funk he is in and pulls him out.
MattR
@PsiFighter37:
That is probably because the money is just an excuse to not attend. It is a lot easier to lie and say you can’t afford it than to tell the truth and admit that you have other issues.
This is definitely the tricky part. It is also possible that your friend was worried about these same issues when he created the money excuse.
srv
@PsiFighter37: things are important to him, not people. Don’t try to rationalize it. I’m with Mnemosyne on this.
Steeplejack
@Suffern ACE:
Just saw this referenced in a Good Eats episode over the weekend.
Ash Can
@PsiFighter37: If you’re afraid how he’d take being dropped from the wedding party, then don’t drop him. Leave the invitation open to him (and the pressure off of him), and line up a last-minute stand-in from among your more understanding friends if you can’t live with an unequal number in your wedding party. In any event, though, nothing will change unless and until he gets the treatment for depression that he clearly needs.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@efgoldman:
The same Angus who has been muttering about caucusing with the GOP if they take the Senate.
Where’s the beef, Angus?
aimai
@PsiFighter37: Right. I didn’t think it was the money that mattered at all–and as you say it would be cheap at the price if it helped him pull out of his downward spiral. But it won’t. I really believe that nothing you do/don’t do is going to affect things or at any rate I don’t think its going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back or anything.
I missed the wedding of a friend of mine (I wasn’t in the wedding party) because I was trying to finish my dissertation– and I had a wedding myself so I know what its like to try to pin people down in advance. Its hard to believe when you are organzing these things that they don’t matter that much at all even to people you are quite close to–their real life problems loom much larger than your guest list or your issues. Especially when the wedding involves a trip.
I guess what I’m saying is that you really need to do what you need to do for your own wedding happiness. Because I am pretty sure that your friend is going to do whatever he needs to do to fuck it up and the end result is going to be more anger and heartache and guilt for everyone.
Just call him up and say it in a businesslike way. “Hey, buddy, you seem like you are not in a great space right now what with the drinking and the spending and the not working. Don’t worry about being in the wedding party or the batchelor party. If you can make it to the wedding we will be thrilled to see you. We will be doing the final headcount by two weeks before the wedding so just let us know then if you can make it.” Then just get off the phone and don’t let the wedding get in the way of being his friend and supporting him as he moves through this crisis.
I am a person who sometimes worries too much about what I am going to say and how I’m going to say it but the truth is that mostly people who are in trouble like you are describing aren’t listening that closely to what you are saying or how you are saying it. They have their own demons that they are responding to, their own voices in their heads, their own angers and their own shame and distractions. Don’t explain yourself or accuse him or let the conversation wander too far and you’ll be fine.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: How can a politician with Collins’ voice get elected?
She is worse than Ariana Huffington.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@efgoldman:
I have a feeling that we are going to just save the Senate. I think if Manchin were going to sell out, he’d probably want to do it at a more opportune moment. He’s not going to gain anything by deserting the Dems to have 2 years among a GOP majority who can’t and won’t do anything for him in WV and with a president who can veto any and all legislation – all this with the knowledge that the Senate is coming back to the Dems in 2016.
PsiFighter37
@aimai: It’s just harder for me to do that because, as I noted, this is my best friend from college, and I feel like this is an abandonment of sorts. But your points are well-made and well-taken.
LAC
@Fuzzy: what if he stopped being a damn racist instead?
AxelFoley
@Fuzzy:
You dumbfuck. If that asshole is a racist, as we’ve seen, how can he be fair to those not in positions of power or authority? If he was some asshole off the street, it’d be one thing. But this old racist fucker, as the sheriff, has the power to back up his racism.
Bobby Thomson
@Fuzzy: Outsourced.
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
It doesn’t have to be an abandonment. I think aimai’s right that you need to separate out the wedding and the friendship so they don’t conflict. Leave the invitation open but have a backup (or no backup, and go for the two-bridesmaids-one-groomsman thing) and assure him that you won’t be angry if he doesn’t come to the bachelor party or wedding.
If you can figure out a way to do it, tell him that you’re worried about his health (physical and mental), but that should be separate from any wedding talk. You should probably also talk to his parents if you can — emphasize that he is not the same person he was in New York and that you’re worried about the changes in him.
He won’t get help until he’s ready, but it’s worth leaving a door open for him to walk through when that time comes.
rikyrah
92-year-old Bellmead woman struggles to get voter ID
By STEPHANIE BUTTS [email protected]
Bellmead resident Ruby Barber was born in Guys, Tenn., to sharecroppers who never signed a birth certificate, and now the 92-year-old is struggling to prove her citizenship so she can vote in the upcoming gubernatorial election.
“I’m sure (my birth) was never reported because I was born in a farmhouse with a coal oil lamp,” Barber said. “Didn’t have a doctor, just a neighbor woman come in and deliver me.”
Barber visited the Texas Department of Public Safety office last week to request an election identification certificate, but was refused one because she doesn’t have a birth certificate.
The state’s voter identification law, enacted in June 2013, requires all voters to show one of six forms of valid photo ID in order for their ballot to be counted.
The U.S. Department of Justice has joined other parties in a federal lawsuit asking the court to overturn the voter ID law, saying the law would affect minority voters disproportionately.
Voters who don’t have a valid ID, such as a driver’s license or Texas concealed handgun license, may apply for an election identification certificate — or EIC — to vote.
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/elections/year-old-bellmead-woman-struggles-to-get-voter-id/article_58dba72b-e781-52ca-9787-f0a8234b9430.html?photo=3
Pogonip
@scuffletuffle: No, but I found it on Daily Kos which referred back to the Telegraph.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
They have this same story on the front page of VoteRiders.org.
They also have a “Contribute” link. Hint hint for everyone. ;-)
PsiFighter37
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, they basically asked me that point-blank. I didn’t really have enough time to see him in action in NC yet (I had just gotten there), but the behavior itself isn’t new from NY – he dicked around and did nothing and gained wait when he was here after he got fired, too. It just seems to have accelerated more now that he’s in the relative isolation of the NC suburbs.
Irrespective of the wedding stuff, I’m going to talk to my formerly close friend who is still good friends with him as well tomorrow, and I’ll see what his thoughts are on making sure that he doesn’t spiral any further. He talks about getting his head together, but now that I think about it, it was originally supposed to be beginning of this year. That clearly didn’t happen…and if this really is a serious problem, I doubt he’s going to be able to flip a switch and go from zero to 60 as quickly as he thinks.
Pogonip
@rikyrah: This is fucking ridiculous. Anyone over 80 should be exempted from all these paperwork requirements.
MattR
@Pogonip: Agreed. The good news is that if all else fails, she can register to vote by mail without any photo ID.
Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)
@Pogonip:
But, but.. what about the ancient Mexican hordes crossing the desert just for the chance to vote for Louie Gohmert’s shining dome on a shill?
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
“…so there is still hope…”
I think that one is what they trotted out shortly before Dietrich Bonhoeffer got hung in a concentration camp.
In a country with a constitution and a bill of fucking rights, we need a little bit more than “there is still hope.”
The notion that a woman who convulsed and had to be taken to the hospital because a police officer assaulted her, should be put on trial and convicted for assaulting the officer, is so insane that there exist no words in the English language to fully describe its lunacy.
What next?
Will prisoners beaten to death by prison guards be put on trial retroactively and their families assessed a fine for “assaulting the guards”?
Will torture victims at Guanatamo be tried and convicted for inflicting psychic pain and suffering on their torturers?
What kind of fucking Bizarro World are we living in???!?!?!???!?
mclaren
@? Martin:
Um, using that cheap excuse in a failed and futile attempt to cover up the massive racism of Mormonism makes you look not only stupid, but like a total racist asshole.
Mormons taught the doctrine that blacks were “the sons of Ham,” cursed by God. That’s racist. Your efforts to try to deny or evade or obfuscate that flagrant racist just make you look like a Klansman.
Oh, and as for your garbled reasoning and scrambled logic — I’m living in a country where for most of its history, beating and torturing and killing black people was legal. So by your warped reasoning, anyone who criticizes beating and torturing and killing blacks is “painting with too broad a brush” and can’t be taken seriously.
I also live in a country where it was legal to rape your wife for most of its history. So by your twisted thinking, anyone who criticizes a guy for raping his wife is also “painting and too broad a brush” and has to be ridiculed and marginalized.
There’s the ordinary level of stupid that your average Balloon-Juice commenter spews out on this forum, but you, sir, have reached the rarefied level of advanced stupidity.
Mnemosyne
@PsiFighter37:
Right, but you’re not comparing his depressed behavior in New York to his depressed behavior in NC. You should be comparing it to his pre-layoff behavior.
Depression doesn’t get better just because you pick up and move somewhere else. So I would probably say something like, I was worried when he was like this in New York, and a change of scenery doesn’t seem to have helped at all.
hamletta
Oh, goody. mclaren is here.
Anyway, Bianca DelRio won RuPaul’s Drag Race tonight. I am very happy for her and all her sisters. Ben DeLaCreme (who wuz robbed!) won Miss Congeniality.
She’s going to be at a bar in the District soon, and I’d really like to go. The top four will be there too, but it’s during Pride Week, so I don’t think I could cope with the crowds.
ruemara
@PsiFighter37: outside of the money, the clothes and booze… you’re friends with my ex? Because that’s him, right now.
@Fuzzy: He didn’t say black man, he used a nasty biased epithet and he’s supposed to be an impartial upholder of the law. Is that simple enough for your skull density?
Matt McIrvin
Josh Marshall just undertook a research project, in the sense of “query the lazyweb”, to figure out where the comic “Legend of Biden” came from. It took about thirty seconds; he hadn’t known the crazy badass Biden character was basically wholly created by The Onion around the time of the 2009 inauguration.
LAC
@hamletta: oh yeah, that is going to be out of control fun.