Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

“Squeaker” McCarthy

In my day, never was longer.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

After roe, women are no longer free.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

No one could have predicted…

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / More Candy

More Candy

by | 85 Comments

This post is in: 

I’m working on a couple more substantial bits, but like Betty, life is full today (and for the next…well, forever).  So here’s another bit of candy with which to tide you over ’til supper:

Thought of our blogfather when I listened to the cut this morning — given his love of great rock, I’m not sure how he’d take this version.  But boy, can Rodrigo y Gabriela make some noise!

That is to say: I won’t wish John good luck.  I don’t want luck to have anything to do with it.  Good care, the help he needs from professionals and his circle of family, friends and pets, that’s what I want for him.

I don’t know if I’ve ever discussed this  — but John is (a) someone I’ve never met and with whom I’ve had only the most minimal email contact and (b) an utterly straightforward, no fuck around leader/creator. The limit of his advice/rule-making at least as I’ve experienced it was the dictum that I should size any art I wanted to use to no more than 480 dots wide.  Done and done.   After that, I think I got one note pointing out an error, another to complimented me on my correction…and in some years of graciously allowing me into his blog-home, that’s it.  It’s been a simple charge:  Don’t fuck up.  If you do, clean it up.  Other than that, have at it.

There is an inscription (actually two!) in St. Paul’s in London honoring its architect, Christopher Wren.  It reads (in part, and in translation) “if you seek his monument, look around you.”   I strongly suspect the monuments John most values could be found around his own home…but this is one too, and damn fine it is at that.  I look forward to his return at the time that is right for him, in health, and when he’s fully ready to lay waste to the supply of idiocy I am absolutely sure will still be abundant whenever he’s ready to deal with it.

In other words:  get well as soon as you can, blogfather.

PS, given the absences here that have been piling up, I’m going to try to show up a little more than I’d planned to over the next few months.  I’ll see if I can do my part to keep the argument, or at least the pointing-and-laughing-’cause-we’re-too-big-to-cry going.  See you ’round the campfire.

Oh yeah — open, this is, a thread.

 

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  1. 1.

    BGinCHI

    Nice post, Tom. The combination of cynicism, wit, and sincerity on this blog is hard to find anywhere else.

    This is probably the only place American Exceptionalism is actually in evidence.

    OK, maybe Hot Doug’s on California Ave. But that’s it.

  3. 3.

    gogol's wife

    It would be great to see more of your posts during our orphanhood. Lots of art, please!

  5. 5.

    joel hanes

    Third and last announcement:

    The much-missed liberal blogger Max Sawicky
    has resurrected his legendary blog
    Max Speak, You Listen!

    He has not grown more conservative during his blogging hiatus.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    Well said, Tom. Cole is the exact opposite of a micro-manager as a blog-boss. And as everyone with a lick of sense already knows, he’s a teddy bear beneath that gruff exterior. He was very kind when I lost my mom, which I won’t ever forget. I wish only the best for him. And I look forward to seeing more of you!

  8. 8.

    Morbo

    Something about this post is breaking the site (on Opera 12). Sidebars are borked; links are gone.

  9. 9.

    the Conster

    Thanks Tom. Betty, Richard and AL are doing the heavy lifting, and thank goodness someone is! My First Blog (TM) was Altercation, where Eric Alterman posted once a day, late in the afternoon. I waited all day. One of the reasons I read Sully – Alterman’s nemesis back then – was because of the steady stream of content and his blogroll which led me here after Cole found the light. The quality and content from the front pagers never disappoints. Kudos to JC for climbing in the back seat while letting the FPers drive. It’s so much more interesting and smarter than any other blog.

  10. 10.

    scav

    @Morbo: Yea! We’ve not had an extended site format borking in a while. Some of my text has also gone small.

  11. 11.

    Bart

    Also borked on Firefox. Empty spaces on the left and right instead of navigation and ads etc, small fonts…

  12. 12.

    Bobby Thomson

    NO STAIRWAY.

    Yeah, text is small but that can be increased with the mouse. Maybe this is John fixing the damn autoplay ads.

    ETA: and just like that, the damn autoplay is back.

  13. 13.

    gogol's wife

    @Bobby Thomson:

    I assumed it was a side effect of that.

    I watched the movie Stairway to Heaven last night (real title A Matter of Life and Death). It’s a masterpiece. David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, and Marius Goring are incredible!

  14. 14.

    cbear

    Great post, Tom.
    Cole’s a good man with a good heart and he’s created quite the “home” here for all of us. I’m glad we have you and all the other FP’ers to keep the home fires burning.

  15. 15.

    bemused

    On Monday, Booman theorized that when the Republican party finally collapsed as a national party, the ending would be sudden and without warning. It’s entertaining imagining this happening just like Booman’s theory and what this country would look like immediately after and beyond.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    We learned last week that John loves us and wants us to be happy. Now it seems that Tom loves us, too.

    Thanks, Tom! Lucky us!

  18. 18.

    Emma

    Same here. No sidebars at all. And I don’t care what they say, that was some mighty fine guitar!

  20. 20.

    the Conster

    @bemused:

    Beyond Thunderdome? The last scene from Planet of the Apes? The nutjobs aren’t going away without trying to bring everything they can down around us.

  22. 22.

    Scott S.

    @bemused: The GOP collapse won’t be sudden, won’t be without warning, and will definitely be messy. The party is largely dedicated to nihilism and the fantasy that they can never fail — they’ll go nuts, and they’ll try to take everyone out with them.

  23. 23.

    bemused

    @the Conster:

    They’ve already been working feverishly on that since the usurper has been living in the WH. If an overwhelming percentage of fed up Americans caused a sudden, decisive GOP collapse, they may not be able to rebound very quickly. They haven’t learn a thing from the Romney rout or stopped pissing off women, LGBTs or almost everyone else not white stale males.

    Heck, I’m having fun fantasizing the reactions of the Village, Morning Joe, Fox, the entire rightwing world and how soon most start pretending they have always been moderate.

  24. 24.

    Eric U.

    @Scott S.: I always figured that the collapse will take out the Democratic Party first, but I am a bit of a pessimist. But the moronic “centrist” types have a lot of money and aren’t going away, so my idea is that they will strip off idiot dems like Manchin and give the republicans a second life

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @BGinCHI:

    The combination of cynicism, wit, and sincerity and cute girls on this blog is hard to find anywhere else.

    Fixed.

  28. 28.

    Bobby B.

    Good backing music for the Quintana bowling segment of “The Big Lebowski”. Better than the Gipsy Kings anyway.

  31. 31.

    shelley

    I watched the movie Stairway to Heaven last night (real title A Matter of Life and Death). It’s a masterpiece.

    One of my favorites too. Love the scene early on, after Niven’s jumped from the plane and wakes up on the beach and assumes it’s Heaven. A dog runs up to him and he pets it, saying, “Oh, I’d always hoped there be dogs.’

    I hope as well.
    *******************

    But it is too sad that in Heaven ‘They’re starved for Technicolor up there.’

  32. 32.

    Schlemizel

    I hope JC is offline now. A few weeks ago the local NPR interviewed a (details are sketchy but I bet someone knows what I am talking about) a Yale psych prof who had written a book about recovering from addiction. He was not a fan of 12 step and stated that most rehab places relied too heavily on it. One of his biggest criticisms of 12 step was that if you failed it was because of a moral weakness in YOU. He said most people fail the first time, often repeatedly fail, and that this belief that failure made you a bad person was a roadblock to recovery. It was a call in show anf man did the FOBs call to rip him over this charge!

    JC has to know when he gets back that it is OK if he fails, he needs to keep trying & to seek out alternatives if 12 step does not do the trick for him. That is not a message he needed to hear going in but maybe, if the time is right, when he gets out. I come from an ancient family of addicts and I am grateful every day that the demon has no hold on me. I like a drink, as a kid before I was married I enjoyed many other things too but I never felt I HAD to have any of them and they have never interfered with my life in any way. I have no idea what it takes to overcome but those I have seen try & stumble suffer worse in some ways than those who never tried. Those who stumbled but got back up are heros to me in my family. godspeed JC

  33. 33.

    burnspbesq

    Speaking of Republican wisdom, did you hear Sen. Rafael “Ted” Cruz allege that the FAA instruction to avoid Ben-Gurion Airport is part of a U.S. economic boycott of Israel?

  35. 35.

    Schlemizel

    @Scott S.:
    Since I have been saying for 15 years that today is exactly like Antebellum America I need to read up more on the death of the Whigs. I think the GOP could go that way with the T-baggers and the Paultards being the 21st Century Republican party, Its sort of a shame that the Dems sold their soul for corporate cash in the 90s. The old world Dems would have been a natural home for the populist bits of those two off-shoots. They could really have sped the demonize of the goopers.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    You and me, Tom, luck is for the lottery. I wish for Cole to find the strength with in, to do what he needs to do. He has it, he just has to find it.

  42. 42.

    srv

    Were’s Bob? I just have to laugh about this

    When Vice President Joe Biden’s son, R. Hunter Biden, joined the board of a private Ukrainian oil and natural gas company this spring, he explained his new job as a legal one, disconnected from any effort to influence the Obama Administration. In a press release, the younger Biden boasted of his abilities on issues like improving corporate transparency.
    …
    David Leiter, a former Senate chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, signed on to work as a lobbyist for Burisma on May 20, 2014, about a week after Biden announced he was joining the company, according to lobbying disclosures filed this month.

    Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.
    …
    Burisma Holdings is owned by a Cypriot holding firm, Brociti Investments Limited, which is controlled Nikolai Zlochevskyi, a former Ukranian government minister, according to Cypriot records. …

    Dudebros will be dudebros in Brociti, Brah.

  47. 47.

    burnspbesq

    @David Koch:

    By all accounts, Messi is a nerd.

    He probably doesn’t even know who his teammate Pique’s girlfriend is.

    (hopefully that will summon TBogg).

  49. 49.

    Roger Moore

    @Schlemizel:

    I think the GOP could go that way with the T-baggers and the Paultards being the 21st Century Republican party, Its sort of a shame that the Dems sold their soul for corporate cash in the 90s. The old world Dems would have been a natural home for the populist bits of those two off-shoots.

    Sorry, but it was the Civil Rights Act that drove away those parts of the Democratic Party, not the party selling its soul for corporate cash. The Republican party would be a very strange place for anyone worried about the Democrats being too corporate to wind up, but the post-Southern Strategy Republicans are a logical place for anyone upset about the CRA.

  51. 51.

    mdblanche

    Um, what’s going on right now in the West Bank/East Jerusalem? And who put Israel/Palestine in a handbasket and where are they taking it?

  52. 52.

    David Koch

    History’s Greatest Monster saves life of mother of 6

    Dear Mr. President,

    I am the breadwinner for a family with four step-children. I own a small business where I support many clients with accounting services. I raised two daughters as a single parent. I am a typical American. I do not want a free ride…I just wanted to join the club and be able to care for myself so I can be here for my family.

    I decided to open my own business in 2004. With this I bought health insurance from the very limited choices available. I made arrangements for them to automatically draft the premiums knowing how vital it was to keep coverage. After a year or so they quit taking the premiums, and when I inquired they said I had to re-apply for coverage. I re-applied and was denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

    As soon as the pool opened I applied for coverage. So on January 1st I was covered with real insurance. I could fill my prescriptions with a co-payment, I could see a doctor for $20.00 a visit. Another bonus to having real healthcare, I could be referred to a cardiologist, for a $30.00 co-pay.And I could have tests done to determine what was wrong, with 20% co-pay. I could finally fix that pain.

    I immediately put this privilege to work, getting my check-up, my blood work, getting better working meds and a Primary Care Physician. But that was not all I got. Now I had a doctor I could see on a regular basis, who was learning my story. She heard me when I said my mother had a heart attack at 46 years old. She heard me when I told her I had a back ache that had plagued me for many years.

    Four and a half months after getting coverage, I was admitted to the hospital. I had a triple bypass surgery. The surgeon said I was a prime candidate for a major heart attack, and because of anomalies in my heart’s structure, I may not have survived it. I am 110% better, back to work, and out of pain.

    Healthcare reform gave me that chance.

    Thank you-
    Karen M

    If we had only listen to our progressive betters those kids could be orphans, today.

  54. 54.

    Schlemizel

    @Roger Moore:
    Sure, the racist bits, but not everyone of the baggers or the tards is a bigot. Many are anti-oligarchs who have been suckerd in by the goopers. Many have no real strong convictions on race one way or the other but only care about themselves. Having them as reliable votes every other November would go a long way to crushing the worse elements of both parties that are paving the way to hell with bad intentions

  57. 57.

    Schlemizel

    @Baud:
    I am a sick, sad man though. When I saw that pic & the comment about ‘hat trick’ this is all I could think of:
    Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; ’cause chicks dig dudes with money.
    Peter Gibbons: Well, not all chicks.
    Lawrence: Well, the type of chicks that’d double up on a dude like me do.

  59. 59.

    Johannes

    Since this is an open thread, may I share that I have a novel out? It’s called Phineas at Bay, and it’s a sequel to Anthony Trollope’s Parliamentary novels. From the site:

    “Phineas at Bay is at once an entertaining romp and a serious inquiry into how Victorian problems are also our own. It is a pleasure to read.”—Nicholas Birns, author of Understanding Anthony Powell.

    Set in 1890s England, Phineas at Bay picks up where Anthony Trollope’s Palliser series left off: now two decades after the unconventional marriage of Phineas Finn, an Irish Catholic, to the Viennese Jewish widow Marie “Madame Max” Goesler.

    Phineas has become an almost entirely independent member of Parliament, nominally belonging to the Liberal Party. But his independence has come at a cost. Having made no political gains, his own party no longer takes him seriously. But an awakening of his political and social conscience leads him to revitalize his political activism and become involved in the newly forming Labour Party….

    Not to trumpet my own wares, but…it’s kind of amazing to me that this thing is real, now.

  61. 61.

    Schlemizel

    @Johannes:
    I stand in awe of people who can successfully write books. I have a million ideas but no talent in that area. I feel like Scalari in “Amadeus’ I curse god for giving me the ability to see it but not to be able to do it. I hope you hit the Times best seller list.

  62. 62.

    Trollhattan

    As head-scratching political events go, Wonkette found a doozy. It makes me wonder who’s scammin whom here? “Nyuck-nyuck, I’m sure not signing up for Obamacare after seeing your skits, nosiree mister!”

    Also, too, return of the Doctor Uncle Sam puppet.

  63. 63.

    catperson

    Hi, Tom. Nice to see you back!

    Taking advantage of the open thread to get a couple of relatively inconsequential things off my chest:

    1) Most of the frontpagers don’t know jackshit need some education about the proper use of strikethrough humor. It’s only funny if the strikethrough part reads like the uninhibited first draft.

    2) Linking to the source material in the first line of the quoteblock is irritating and deceptive, given that quotes can include hyperlinks that are native to the text.
    e.g.

    Video up above (even Fox New’s Brit Hume can’t understand the gibberish coming out of Perry’s piehole) courtesy Heather Digby Parton, who finishes her report:

    Oh, and by the way, as we watch the Republicans get more and more worked up about this alleged horde of diseased child invaders, here’s a little something to keep in mind:

    First link is by the post author, second link is native to the quoted material. Why not put the link to the source in the “courtesy Heather Digby Parton” part? It’s more accurate. And I’m not picking on the author of that particular post, it seems to have become the FP norm over the past year or so.

    Feel free to flame. I’d rather say something than continue to be silently irritated.

  66. 66.

    gogol's wife

    @Johannes:

    Sounds great! I’m a Trollope fan, but hardly ever get time to read him, since it’s such a commitment. It took me three years to get through The Way We Live Now, grabbing a few minutes before falling asleep. But it was worth it! I love Phineas Finn, the Irish member.

  67. 67.

    Origuy

    Those neo-Nazis in Kyiv are sneaky. They’ve named an interim prime minister who is Jewish.

    Volodymyr Groysman, a deputy prime minister who is Jewish, was appointed acting prime minister of Ukraine following the resignation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

    Groysman was tapped at a special Cabinet meeting on Thursday, according to the RIA Novosti news site. He joined the government in February as deputy prime minister for regional policy and is a former mayor of the city of Vinnytsia.

  68. 68.

    schrodinger's cat

    Thought of our blogfather when I listened to the cut this morning — given his love of great rock, I’m not sure how he’d take this version. But boy, can Rodrigo y Gabriela make some noise!

    Small correction, our blogfather is Tunch, Cole is merely the son of the blogfather. Anom.

  69. 69.

    Johannes

    @Schlemizel: I hope so too! For what it’s worth, I was in exactly your place re writing for decades. Agony. I started several projects and dried up, cursing my meager imagination; that’s why I wrote academic stuff–it was a way of doing the next-best to what I wanted to do, and actually I liked it. Then, last year, when I picked up the aborted first 3 chapters, and retyped them, I knew what came next.

  70. 70.

    Johannes

    @gogol’s wife: The “what happened next?” question haunted me with Phineas, because of the small part he plays in the last two books. And he seemed to have lost some of his edge in Dukes Children. So I hope I did him, Marie and Trollope justice.

  72. 72.

    Tommy

    I saw Rodrigo y Gabriela play after hours at a tech conference in San Fran years ago. They brought the house down. Jimi Hendrix would be proud of what that women does with a guitar, and lets be clear, I own their albums, it is the women in the duo that can really play. I try not to be over-the-top about this or that. But I swear if you click the below link and watch the three minute video you will be stunned beyond words what she does with a guitar.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-qgum7hFXk

  74. 74.

    burnspbesq

    @Origuy:

    I’m sure BiP will be along any time now to tell us that Groysman isn’t really Jewish. I dunno, maybe the guy who did his bris wasn’t a real mohel. Bob continues to amaze with the shit he comes up with.

  80. 80.

    David Koch

    @schrodinger’s cat: There’s really a fringe that believes Obama engineered a Nazi coup in Ukraine.

    Marcy Wheeler, who is the new site’s “senior policy analyst,” speculated that the Ukraine revolution was likely a “coup” engineered by “deep” forces on behalf of “Pax Americana”:

    “Deep Forces” sounds like a classic porn title.

  83. 83.

    RSR

    Ha, and a Christopher Wren reference?!? Word. I make monuments…cemetery memorials…tombstones. I work with my mother. We took over her father’s business. Who took over his father’s. And *his* father–my great-grandfather–was the first caretaker of the cemetery next to which our company was located.

    All three men, their spouses (Great-grandmother Anna kept a greenhouse growing flowers for the cemetery), and many, many other relatives are all buried in the cemetery, which is filled with thousand of memorials and monuments we have produced. Thankfully. mom is still here and working.

    But I think of that phrase often: LECTOR SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE

  85. 85.

    Bart

    I’m pretty sure the layout issues introduced by this post are caused by one simple item in the HTML: at the end of the line with the YouTube video there’s this: /iframe /div. This should be /iframe /p. Can someone please fix this?

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