There’s a youth movement going on! Chuck Todd has replaced John McCain as the host of “Meet the Press”, cool stoner icon Rand Paul is on his way to Central America, and everyone’s favorite hip young gunslinger is filling in at the internets’ preeminent reader-supported blog.
I was at a meeting the other day where some people got going on “the generation that got trophies for showing up” (hadn’t heard that one in a while), and it got me wondering: has this been going on forever, that each generation sees the next generation as lazy, coddled, entitled brats who don’t know how easy they have it?
Speaking of youth movements, last week was the 45th anniversary of Woodstock.
Talk about whatever.
SiubhanDuinne
What you did there, it has been seen.
kuvasz
“and it got me wondering: has this been going on forever, that each generation sees the next generation as lazy, coddled, entitled brats who don’t know how easy they have it?”
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
Socrates, approximately 425 BCE.
A long, long time.
Jerzy Russian
I don’t know about this, but they all should get off my damn lawn!
SiubhanDuinne
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” –Socrates
ETA: Curse you, kuvasz!
raven
45 years ago I had a week to go!
Iowa Old Lady
Plato on youth: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Cluttered Mind
It’s been going on forever, yes. The big difference and bigger problem here is that today’s youth objectively have pretty much everything shittier than the boomers did, so there’s a hell of a lot of resentment flowing in the other direction too.
ETA: I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that gay rights are the big thing that this generation has better than the last. That may be the only thing I can think of, though.
Burt Hutt
Hilarious confluence. I just had this conversation with my barber 10 minutes ago!
I am far lazier than she as she is 15 years older
And my kids are lazier than me.
Tomorrow the sun will rise.
Iowa Old Lady
@kuvasz: @SiubhanDuinne: Curse you both!
RSA
I bet Socrates had a really nice lawn.
rea
@RSA: I bet Socrates had a really nice lawn.
Executed for corrupting the youth of Athens . . .
Mike J
@Cluttered Mind:
Lower crime rate, longer life expectancy, the existence of the internet and about 10,000 other things that are better now than 1945 (particularly if you’re black (even if there is still a long way to go on that front (as we’ve seen recently.)))
raven
@rea: And it continues here today!
C.J.
@Mike J:
Shackles of debt are just gilded jewelry they refuse to appreciate, I guess.
justawriter
Wikiquote says that quote, while attributed widely to Socrates, is a paraphrase of Aristophanes. Young kids these days are too lazy to distinguish between dead, irrelevant Greeks.
Mike J
The flip side of the stupidity that DougJ highlights is the stupidity that every generation thinks they have it tougher than anybody else in history has ever had it before. Both arguments are moronic.
Suffern ACE
@Mike J: yeah. But we don’t have money for trophies. I don’t know where that idea came from.
Iowa Old Lady
@justawriter: But I think it appears in The Republic, which Plato wrote. He puts it in Socrates’s mouth.
As far as we know, Socrates wrote nothing. He believed writing would lead to people failing to develop their memories and general ruination.
Yeah, he probably did have a nice lawn.
raven
@Mike J: Most people in my generation had nothing to do with the tough part.
Cluttered Mind
@Mike J: Longer life expectancy just means more years to be miserable if there’s no actual hope for enjoying those years. Also, while I am not black and thus can’t claim any firsthand experience, the statistics I’ve seen on school and community segregation from now and then seem to indicate that what progress that had been made in the civil rights era has been mostly rolled back. I’ll grant that there’s a lower crime rate now, but I think I’d rather have a job than a lower crime rate.
ETA: The internet is also great. But again, given a choice between a life of poverty, unemployment, and student debt plus the internet or a stable and secure job without the internet, I’d happily unplug.
Skerry
@Mike J: Rising sea levels, warming sea temperatures, general climate chaos, and we risk polluting drinking water sources forever by fracking so a few can get richer.
We olds are destroying the earth for the youngers.
kindness
OMG look how young Townsend was in that clip. What a fresh faced young-un.
Mike J
@raven:
Very true, but half of them had at least a possibility of being told to die in a rice paddy, and the half that were exempt from that faced a different set of challenges in with the way American society valued (or didn’t) their lives.
Cervantes
I’ll believe that when I see it (if you catch my drift).
Cluttered Mind
It’d be foolish for me to claim that my generation has it worse than anyone ever did in history. The generation that was growing up during the spanish influenza outbreak certainly had things worse, seeing as most of them didn’t survive it. I’ve got no problem sticking to my claim that boomers had things way, way easier than my generation did though.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike J: They don’t have it tougher than anyone else in history, but kids getting out of college now objectively do have it tougher than I did. The job market’s harder to break into; college is far more expensive so they’re shouldering more debt. It’s just worse.
We GenXers were lazy, entitled slackers unwilling to get out of our parents’ basements until the moment the dot-com boom started, and then we were some kind of capitalist superheroes. Go figure.
raven
@Mike J: Not really half, buncha people had a clear path to having little possibility. See Cheney, Richard draft deferments.
Summer
The millenials respond:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IjTUxZORE
piratedan
damn, yet another thread about Obama golfing while the world burns… welp, time for me to continue to adversely influence my teenager….
Mustang Bobby
My grandmother, born in 1903, scandalized her parents by being a flapper and a saleslady in the 1920’s; my mother scandalized her parents by voting for the Democrats. I tried to scandalize my mom by turning out gay but darn it, it didn’t work: she’s all in favor of me being happy.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Thought you’d be at a car show!
Violet
@raven: Hey there. How’s the Mohs site today? My dog bite is better. Redness is down but bruising is up. Still hurts.
pamelabrown53
Speaking of Rand Paul and Central America…
Yesterday, I was reading Steve Benen and he posted about Rand Paul meeting with the Guatemalan president. Rand “…told the Guatemalan president the surge of child immigrants flooding the U.S. border is frankly because of White House policies..”.
How is that not a violation of the Logan Act? Bueller???
NotMax
@kuvasz
“Pull up your toga! Dang-blasted kids.”
M31
Did Rand Paul go on to clarify that it was immoral violent White House policies of the 1980s?
Or did all the problems start with the blah president? Yup, that’s what I thought.
raven
@Violet: I slept until 9am! Took the pressure dressing off an hour ago and it’s a cool 4 inch stitch from my ear to my chin. I did the vinegar and water and then vaseline and put non-stick gauze and tape on it. It’s a little sore but no big deal. The biggest challenge is putting the damn dressing on. I’m reading some info that just keeping it moist with the vaseline is the most important thing. I guess I could find info that would tell me anything I want to believe.
Glad you’re steady, find the owner yet?
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
I sometimes wonder if we X’ers didn’t get our detached/too cool to care stereotype from being the first generation to grow up when divorce became ubiquitous. Lots of us saw our parents have one or more failed marriages, and I think it traumatized more than a few of us.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Too hot for that, but thanks.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Too hot to fish!
Ridnik Chrome
Sort of OT question: Can anyone recommend a good used record store in Portland, Oregon? Visiting friends and family there in a week or so. (Yeah, I still buy most of my music in actual stores. I’m old and behind the times, and I don’t care…)
pamelabrown53
@Mustang Bobby:
You’re in South Florida, right? I live in Northeast Florida and we have heat advisories and Jacksonville (I donn’t live there) also has an ozone advisory.
raven
@Ridnik Chrome: Here’s the yelp listing, looks like a good many choices.
GregB
My Nana always said: Each generation gets weaker.
Then again she would get dental work done without using Novocain and she also hurt her back shoveling snow off the roof in her 80’s.
So she may have had a point.
Cervantes
@pamelabrown53:
1. Was he trying to negotiate on behalf of the US? (I have no idea.)
2. Despite its age, the Act has rarely been tested in court.
3. If it meant anything, Kissinger and Nixon would have spent up to three years in the hoosegow.
pamelabrown53
@Cervantes:
Truthfully, I have no idea if he was negotiating anything and you’re right, it just seems like a law that sits there on the books and is hauled out mainly by republicans to bludgeon democrats.
Cacti
@GregB:
My grandma’s parents were tennant farmers in the 1920s and 30s, and she used to spend her summers picking cotton with her brothers and sisters.
She also survived bouts of scarlet fever and typhoid.
I won’t even pretend my childhood wasn’t a breeze in comparison.
Matt McIrvin
@Cacti: Possible; I certainly had some friends who were carrying that baggage around with them. But I think we were mostly just people who got out of college during an economic slump, not as bad as the one the Millennials got, but a significant one. (I went to grad school and waited it out until the boom.)
NotMax
@Cacti
It wasn’t until the advent of no-fault divorce during the 1970s that the divorce rate rose above what it had been in the post-WW2 1940s.
Rates of divorce in America (a href=”http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Historical_Divorce_Rate_Statistics”>Source):
1930 – 16%
1931 – 15%
1932 – 13%
1933 – 16%
1934 – 17%
1935 – 17%
1936 – 18%
1937 – 19%
1938 – 19%
1939 – 19%
1941 – 22%
1942 – 24%
1943 – 26%
1944 – 29%
1945 – 35%
1946 – 43%
1947 – 34%
1948 – 28%
1949 – 27%
1950 – 26%
1951 – 1953 – 25%
1954 – 24%
1953 – 25%
1954 – 24%
1955 – 1956 – 23%
1957 – 22%
1958 – 21%
1959 – 1963 – 22%
1964 – 24%
1965 – 1966 – 25%
1967 – 26%
1970: 33%
1975: 48%
1980: 52%
1985: 50%
NotMax
Augh. Link fix version.
@Cacti
It wasn’t until the advent of no-fault divorce during the 1970s that the divorce rate rose above what it had been in the post-WW2 1940s.
Rates of divorce in America (Source):
1930 – 16%
1931 – 15%
1932 – 13%
1933 – 16%
1934 – 17%
1935 – 17%
1936 – 18%
1937 – 19%
1938 – 19%
1939 – 19%
1941 – 22%
1942 – 24%
1943 – 26%
1944 – 29%
1945 – 35%
1946 – 43%
1947 – 34%
1948 – 28%
1949 – 27%
1950 – 26%
1951 – 1953 – 25%
1954 – 24%
1953 – 25%
1954 – 24%
1955 – 1956 – 23%
1957 – 22%
1958 – 21%
1959 – 1963 – 22%
1964 – 24%
1965 – 1966 – 25%
1967 – 26%
1970: 33%
1975: 48%
1980: 52%
1985: 50%
gogol's wife
I can’t believe I’ve managed to get into a flame war on the New York Times crossword blog.
gian
@GregB:
when I was about 5 or 6 I had fillings done
without any sedation/pain meds. lived in a town where we had well water, so not fluoridated
I’m in my 40s
don’t know if my parents wouldn’t pony up for Novocain or they thought it was dangerous for a 5 or 6 year old…
I also had my wisdom teeth pulled at a dental school to save money (I was paying for it) that was done with local and I can still hear the sounds of them cracking and breaking as they came out, I drove myself home after.
when my 5 year old needed a filling, she didn’t have to just grab the chair and hold on. I guess that makes her weak or something.
oh and for the anti vax folks I remember having the mumps at 3 or 4 years old
scav
@NotMax: oooh, a data link for something I’d just wondered about! thanks. eta, more back to 20s?
@Cacti: Depends. Does sitting around watching vicious or illusionary, lying marriages seem that much better? Marriages also have been breaking up since forever, seems to a solid pulse of divorce for the 1920 census, but that may be reporting. I’ve certainly found a fair number of mutually widowed or suddenly single former pairs earlier (and after, for that matter) plus all the instability of parents just dying.
Llelldorin
@Cacti:
We weren’t the first generation to grow up with parents with failed marriages, though–just the first where they could be escaped more readily. I’m really not sure that growing up with divorced parents is worse than growing up with parents who would have divorced if they’d been born later, like a lot of our parents’ generation did. Daily screaming matches (for the lucky ones) or beatings (for the less fortunate) weren’t a huge improvement over absence.
My memory is that Gen Xers were really slammed twice: Once as a by-blow of Greatest Generation blowhards shitting on the progress Boomer women had made (remember back when we were “latchkey kids” instead of slackers? We were all supposedly running wild because our mothers were working and/or divorced?), then by the boomers in turn as we graduated into the early 90s recession, and they couldn’t figure out why we we were having trouble finding work. Then the dot com boom came, we started doing OK financially, and everyone sort of shrugged and turned to shitting on millennials.
Edited to add: Ninja’d by absolutely everyone :)
divF
@gogol’s wife:
You win the thread.
Cacti
@scav:
Not saying one is better or worse. Just that they create different types of feelings in the kids who are too young to understand the dynamics of marital relationships (wondering why mommy and daddy always fight vs. separation anxiety/feelings of abandonment when one parent is removed from the home).
SatanicPanic
As long as there has been a concept of generation, which imagine hasn’t always been the case.
jurassicpork
American priorities: Murder an unarmed black kid, clear six figures without trying. Try to finance a novel and contribute something positive to the world, get completely ignored.
Anoniminous
@raven:
So you should remember this one
raven
We watched “Blume in Love” with George Segal, Susan Anspach, Kris Kristofferson and Marsha Mason last night. It seemed like a typical atypical 70’s movie about goofy LA relationships where George and Susan get divorces. Near the end Segal rapes Anspach and Kristofferson kicks Segal’s ass. That was it, Anspach is pregnant from the rape and ends up going back with Segal. We were dumbfounded. Woody banging a teenage Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan was one thing but being raped and then just blowing it off. Strange days.
Frankensteinbeck
@Skerry:
The ozone layer is healing, reforestation is widespread, including in the rainforests, DDT is no longer killing… everything, and smog and acid rain have almost disappeared. Oh, and the Yellow Fog of London is no longer killing people, and the moths there have switched back.
hoodie
Hard to compare within generations, much less than between generations, because people face different challenges at different times. My dad’s generation faced economic deprivation in the depression and the prospect of death in WWII, but also enjoyed tremendous post war opportunity (if you were white). My father in law, the next generation, went through Vietnam and overseas assignments during the cold war, but has been living in comfort on the gubmint teat for the last 35 years. Everyone tends to look at these things in the way most flattering to themselves. Case in point, my MIL thinks they put up with such hardship when my FIL was in the Army and thus are more deserving than others, but my dad probably endured more in his 5 year USMC stint from ’39 to ’44 than my FIL ever did in his 20 in the Army.
Djinn
Mississippi Records on Albina and Sumner (in the Mississippi neighborhood) in Portland, OR, is one of the best used record stores in the nation.
chopper
you know, there’s a quote by Socrates that’s really on-point here. I’m trying to remember it.
John S.
@Cacti:
The pendulum always swings back, though. Me and my older half brother (both Gen X) have parents who have been married 3+ times, which I think is a big part of the reason why he has been with his wife for 28 years and I have been with mine for almost 20.
raven
@Anoniminous: Huh, I never heard that. The canoe visuals remind me of “The Night on Rainy River” a chapter in “The Things They Carried” where Tim talks with an old man as he decides whether to go to Canada or the Nam. He concludes that “we were to embarrassed not to kill” and goes.
Bob In Portland
Remember the headline from the NY Times that caused so much discussion here yesterday? Well, it apparently was yet again another lie generated by the Ukrainian military, along with NATO. And, of course, this is how propaganda works, how it works on BJers, how it works on anyone. In a few days you will have forgotten about Russia’s slow-mo invasion, just like you forgot about the column of Russian armor last week, just like you forgot about how weeks ago we were days away from the great victory of Kiev’s forces. But that’s how propaganda works. Even if the story is a lie, it doesn’t matter. You’ve already chosen sides. Even when the initial lie fades from your memories the residue of the propaganda remains, reinforced by a joke about Putin on Jimmy Fallon, or an editorial cartoon featuring a big bad bear. That’s how you can be lied to time and again and it never fazes you. Even when you minds spit out the lies you still have that residue remaining.
And it’s the same liars who steered us into Iraq, Gordon and Rasmussen. So when did they stop lying?
Matt McIrvin
“Homer and Aristotle already told us of the virtues of their forefathers and the vices of their own times, and authors in century after century have told us the same thing. If they were all telling the truth, the men of today would be bears.” –Montesquieu, “Pensées Diverses”
raven
@Frankensteinbeck:
You poisoned my sweet water.
You cut down my green trees.
The food you fed my children
Was the cause of their disease.
My world is slowly fallin’ down
And the airs not good to breathe.
And those of us who care enough,
We have to do something…….
Iowa Old Lady
@gogol’s wife: That takes talent.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
One generational remark that always drives me nuts: “It was a more innocent time.” When was that, exactly? When kids were dying in droves from measles and scarlet fever? When we were at war? When was this mythical “more innocent time”?
I eventually figured out that it’s always the speaker’s childhood, no matter when that was, because it’s when THEY were more innocent. That’s why someone can call the 1970s a more innocent time with a straight face.
Anoniminous
@raven:
Although Christie wrote it about the US Civil War it’s applicable for anyone, anywhere, returning home from combat.
scav
@Cacti: but life has always been uncertain — kids have always had to cope with less than theoretically ideal set-ups since probably caves. And what was judged normal set-ups varied wildly. Kids swapped out to raised by other families, fostering, raised by nannies (for the wealthy), farmed out to wet-nurses (see Jane Austen). I’m just not sure I’m seeing this one generation as unusually traumatized, although perhaps with its particular specific flavor, much as it had its particular style of haircuts we universally cringe over. Kids dealt with death first hand, economic uncertainty first hand, war first hand . . .
chopper
@Bob In Portland:
Hodor!
Bill in Section 147
@scav: My first thought when reviewing NotMax’s data was on those unfortunate people who through social stigma, poverty or force could not leave their marriage behind. Divorce does suck for children, and for a lot of the extended family, if there are children as well. There are a lot of Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins who lose a connection to children they care about as well — especially sad as those children need love and stability most at that time. But I think ‘staying together’ for the children is as bad.
Put me in the camp of kids (under 25s) today are awesome, and for the most part, don’t deserve the hand we dealt them. I’ll take Hipsters over Yuppies any day.
Villago Delenda Est
In the case of IT glibertarians, they literally do not know that they owe their livelihoods to the evil state that they hate, that created the entire IT sector starting with big iron for calculating artillery firing tables in WWII, then spurring component miniaturization with the Apollo program, then DARPA working with academics to create the internet itself…all projects of the evil state that oppresses them.
raven
@Anoniminous: A really dumb comment on the Wiki page:
Mustang Bobby
@pamelabrown53: It’s currently 96, feels like 109 and it’s so humid I schvitzed going out to the driveway to pick up the paper. And we have Invest 96L looming in the North Atlantic. Fun in the sun.
Culture of Truth
Yes, they said that about the generation that grew up in the Depression before that lazy bunch had to be drafted into WWII.
Kay
Yes. One of the things I like about my father is he refuses to go along. He’s contrarian anyway, but it cracks me up. “Oh, I was there and there were a lot of stupid people around in the 1940s and 1950s. A LOT. We weren’t working all that hard either, many of us”.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: When I toured the North Carolina BB55 they had an interesting sign in the FDC center. The Navy experimented with changing the analog fire direction to computers. At the end of the study they concluded the analog was so accurate that it would have been a waste of money to switch.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Those idyllic days of Richard Nixon and widespread recreational coke snorting.
cleek
@Bob In Portland:
something to keep in mind
Anoniminous
@raven:
LOL!
Edited after I re-read the comment.
raven
@Anoniminous: No, he was trying to say the majority enlisted as opposed to being drafted. That is true but an enlisted man is one who is below a non-commissioned officer in rank.
Gene108
@Cacti:
I think GenX’ers inherited a good bit of the cynicism of having their early childhoods shaped by adults, who had suddenly become jaded over Watergate , the Vietnam War, the oil shocks and the general feeling that the invincible America that rolled the Nazis and Imperial Japan, held Stalin back from conquering Western Europe had disappeared forever or worse yet may not have really existed.
Add that to downsizing, outsourcing, etc. of jobs that started in earnest in the 1980’s, along with our own generational recessions, the early 1980’s and more importantly, early 1990’s, when the older GenX’ers we’re entering the labor market and you have a generation caught before the wonders of the internet and after the hope of the Baby boomers.
GenX’ers had a society that was supposed to be distrusted, employers who existed to squeeze work out of you and nothing else, along with rapid changes in technology making what we’re useful skills obsolete – learning to type 60 words a minute was no longer a needed skill and draftsmen were being replaced by AutoCad – so the end result was a generation taking its time to figure out where you fit in.
Villago Delenda Est
@cleek: I doubt that Gospodin Romanov here comprehends your comment.
He’s a useful idiot for Russian fascists.
Culture of Truth
When the speaker was a child, by definition.
cat
@Cluttered Mind: White boomers. Why does everyone always forget that???
Ridnik Chrome
@raven: Thanks!
gogol's wife
@divF:
Oh wow, I’ve never won the thread before! That makes me feel better. I’m not very popular over at Will Shortz’s place.
Terrible puzzle this morning. I look forward to the Saturday puzzle all week, but even that has now been FUBARed.
Barry
@Cervantes: ” If it meant anything, Kissinger and Nixon would have spent up to three years in the hoosegow.”
The problem is that the law usually means ‘whatever the elites want’. Nixon and Kissinger, no way. Liberals can get busted.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gene108: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union meant that the existential threat that had kept the 1% in check was gone, and they could go wild with Ferengi greed at the expense of those they had needed to protect them from the World Communist Menace.
piratedan
@Ridnik Chrome: music millennium is an AWESOME place to shop…
http://www.musicmillennium.com/
parking is tough but the selection is incredible for its variety.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth: Ah, here we go…music appropriate for the topic.
PhilbertDesanex
@NotMax: wow, check out 1946! Home from the war! and um…
Yes we have progress on meds and the Internet and all, but as far as getting started in life with a real job and all, the kids today are getting burned.. If you did college back then, you could work your way through given the better wages and lower tuition (taxpayer support of education – remember that?) Now you are in debt for years. If you don’t go to college, your wages are way down from before Reagan. We’ve really gone backwards, thanks to the Boomers voting Reagan-Bush.
But, never mind, if your parents have money.
Betty Cracker
@John S.: Yep! Creeping up on 20 years for me too, and though my younger sister was only legally married last month, she and her wife have been together for 15 years. Our younger brother is a millennial; we’ll see how he does. So far he’s married and divorced and remarried the same woman!
Gene108
One thing I find remarkably different about the kids these days is how musical tastes does not seem to define social cliques. Because accessing music has become so easy, you are not going to ostracize someone from your clique because they listen to tunes your group does not find socially acceptable.
There is no “war” between disco and rock or pop music versus indie/alternate rock versus rap music.
Whatever is on your playlist is what is on your playlist and it does not define a group of who else you can hang out with.
Cluttered Mind
@cat: I haven’t exactly forgotten it, but I kind of figured it went without saying that minorities in this country were screwed in any time period. The only group that objectively have things better today than 40-50 years ago are openly gay white people.
Mike J
@gogol’s wife:
It’s ever happened to me. (Hope you’ve done today’s.)
raven
@Betty Cracker: Hey, you ever eat at Leonardo’s? My friend used to own it!
Anoniminous
@raven:
Know the difference between enlisted and officers.
I am surprised there were more volunteers than drafted in Viet Nam. Everybody I knew and have met during and after who went was drafted. So much for anecdotal evidence.
raven
@Anoniminous: I knew you did, it was for the general public.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@scav:
Do you remember which Austen book references wet nurses? There was an interesting stretch of time in England approximately between 1790 and 1820 where aristocratic women stopped using wet nurses and nursed their children themselves — Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was one of the biggest proponents. It was part of the whole Rousseau “back to nature” thing. I read a book about it years ago but can’t remember the title.
pamelabrown53
@Villago Delenda Est:
What an erudite comment, Villago. Hope you post it sometime on a site like Reason. It might spark a worthwhile dialog.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
Are you being a harridan, a harpy or a virago?
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Anoniminous:
Technically, I think raven was a volunteer rather than a draftee since they told him it was the Army or jail. A fair number of people with low (?) draft numbers enlisted rather than wait to be drafted so they could go into the Navy or Air Force rather than the Army or Marines and end up on the ground.
Jewish Steel
@NotMax: The normalization of divorce is an unvarnished good. Particularly for women.
Gene108
@Villago Delenda Est:
As a teenager, I personally found the fall of Communidm as relief. No longer having 10,000 Soviet nukes pointed at you was liberating.
As far as the rich going wild, I think the fact that there were actual economic gains, in the 1990’s – not including the tech bubble, which was not a major employer of a good chunk of the economy – and a balanced budget, shows there was a lot more potential for things to be better.
The damage Bush&Co. did to this country will be felt for generations.
Imagine a balanced budget, not squandered in two rounds of tax cuts, the second one being considered so unnecessary it only passed the Republican controlled Senate on Cheney’s tie breaking vote, no wasteful war in Iraq and no cries about “cutting government spending because we are broke” and having the money to reinvest in this country, because of balanced budgets to deal with recessions?
We would be having an entirely different national dialogue about how government can solve domestic problems.
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Roger, one could “volunteer for the draft” and just take 2 years. There was also Project 100,000. I just wrote a long post about it that disappeared but the crux was that the military tool 100,000 a year that didn’t qualify so the college boys could continue their vital education.
Ridnik Chrome
@piratedan: Cool, looks like it’s very close to where I’ll be staying. Thanks for the recommendation!
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Since I went in on my 17th birthday I could not have volunteered for the draft because I wasn’t eligible.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
All three, no doubt. I’m not joining in the happy-face crowd about today’s stupid puzzle.
realbtl
I’m 65 and have told my 28 yo daughter that if she ever hears me say something like “$22k for a new car, I only paid $1995 for my new VW (in 1969)” or similar to immediately tell me I’m hopelessly out of touch (and/or full of shit). My aunt, born 1917, used to say things like this to me and it drove me nuts.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Many times! I liked their rolls. I think it’s still there, or was last year when I walked by it on the way to a football game.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): The Austen stuff on wet-nurses was from her biographies, she and her siblings were sent out to village women. One, George, never returned, he seems to have had some of developmental issues, also possibly deaf? They sometimes visited, certainly kept the payments up and I think was mentioned as an Esq when died. Some biographers ascribe her coolness and detached tone to this farming out. Would the biography of Georgiana be the Amanda Foreman one that was big?
raven
@realbtl:
Mike J
@gogol’s wife: It was trivial once you got the gimmick. Not really a Saturday.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Yea, she and her hubby moved from here where they owned DaVinci’s with her brother. They sold it quite a while ago but I just saw it pop on her FB page and thought of you. The Fla Bama SEC championship game is on the SEC network right now.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Heh. Good one!
You’re not just trolling now, are you?
:-/
About that humanitarian convoy that’s been in the news…
Funny how RT isn’t reporting that, huh. Quite mysterious!!11
It’s such a puzzle!!!11
Cheers,
Scott.
Bob In Portland
@cleek: That’s what I do. I judge who is more or less reliable by their track records. Rasmussen lied about WMDs, remember? Of course you don’t. And Gordon cowrote those inflammatory lies with Judith Miller.
And yet for some reason, Tom Levinson and a lot of the BJers here were preparing for battle over the latest Russian invasion. Yesterday. The fear is gone this morning, except for that little residue. It’s like my uncle’s house. He was a heavy smoker, from his early teens until he died in his eighties. When my aunt cooked something steamy in the kitchen the walls in the living room would sweat nicotine.
You take it in, you breathe it out. A residue remains. That’s how propaganda works on you.
cleek, I constantly reexamine my sources. Do you? Did you miss Rasmussen’s and Gordon’s histories of propagandizing for US intervention the last time around? If you did, the next step is speak up.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Because if your book isn’t the Georgiana bio or The Elegant Madness one, I’d like the title if possible. Physical books just aren’t indexing on wet nurse. I’ve got the one on sister Harriet Spenser too. Time to reassemble the library.
Bob In Portland
@raven: I was considered a volunteer but I was #1 in Nixon’s first draft. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. In fact, the NY Times covered my basic training unit in a front cover article about the “first all-volunteer” army. There were lots of guys wanting to kick their dope habits and somehow thought going to Vietnam was going to help them. Then there were the guys who were given a choice between jail and the army. Being a volunteer back then wasn’t quite the same.
Suzanne
I was born in 1980, so I have heard that I am either a late Xer or an early Millenial, but my mom is definitely a Boomer. And if I hear ONE MORE TIME “Oh, did we forget EVERYTHING we learned in the Sixties?!?!”, as if it was the only period of social and cultural upheaval EVER, I may completely lose my shit.
Seriously.
Mandalay
Don’t tell me it’s just a coincidence that the dog was black…
JGabriel
It’s started!
Reuters: Iceland raises volcano warning level to highest red after small eruption
I doubt it’s going to remain small. Best wishes for safety to any of our Icelandic readers (IF we have any Icelandic readers).
raven
@Suzanne: Your mother is a wise person. Listen to her.
realbtl
@raven:
Yup.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland: I agree, Ray McGovern is credible on these issues.
Jewish Steel
Are ya doin’ a movie?
Yeah.
About this?
Yeah.
What’s it going to be called?
Port-o-San.
Oh, far out.
Suzanne
@raven: The Boomers fucked up a lot for those of us coming after, and I am sick of the attitude that I hear about how the Xers and the Millenials are just lazy pieces of shit. Not to mention that the Eagles suck.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
What is the problem with the puzzle? I do seven puzzles a day on line, but the Times ain’t one, because I have resisted paying for the subscription.
JGabriel
Socrates via kuvasz:
Seriously, who doesn’t love luxury? Luxury is pretty much defined by the things most of us would buy if/when we could afford them.
Amir Khalid
Everton are at home to “title contenders” Arsenal and the Toffees lead the Gunners 2-0.
raven
@Suzanne: hahahaha, xin loi babysan!
Mandalay
@JGabriel:
That’s one definition. Shit you really don’t need in order to be happy is a better one.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: If track records of sources are that important to you, then I guess you can’t rely on Ray McGovern as a source since he said that Obama wasn’t going to bring troops home from Afghanistan starting in 2011:
How’d that work out again?
Sorry, but it looks like we can’t trust Ray McGovern’s judgement and analysis ever again since he was wrong in the past. I guess you’ll have to find another source. Bummer!
Sorry!
Cheers,
Scott.
realbtl
@Suzanne:
Add “Some of” to the start of your post and I can be persuaded to agree.
Though The Eagles do indeed suck.
pamelabrown53
@Suzanne:
I was with you up to the Eagles suck. What’s that about?!
Suzanne
@pamelabrown53: It’s about the Eagles sucking. Like, really bad.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: And yet you seem to miss the most important part of the story: “A Ukrainian military spokesman…”
As I pointed out yesterday, and again today, you look at your sources and judge their track record. The Ukrainian military yesterday, through NATO, reported a slow invasion of Russian tanks into Ukraine. You remember that? You commented on that thread. A week ago the Ukrainian military reported destroying a column of Russian APCs. They also reported that they were imminently about to win the war a week ago. And a month ago.
Now you don’t know if the Russian trucks are loading up at Ukrainian munitions factories even though Russia makes more and better munitions. I guess it’s conceivable that they could be removing radar systems and so forth so they don’t fall into the hands of the Ukrainian army, but then the rebels, who control the territory where this was supposed to have happened, don’t get the radar either. Do you think that that factory is working at full steam without power or electricity, generating the weapons of war.
Scroll back to yesterday’s report that the Russians were slowly invading Ukraine with artillery. That story has disappeared down the memory hole. Like the destroyed column of Russian APCs last week. How many times were the Ukrainian army about to end this? Well, last week they made a glorious thrust into the middle of Lugansk. What happened to that? No follow photos, no pictures to any of this.
Now, take the narrative that we got when MH17 was shot down. What is the absolute proof that Kerry was talking about back then? Do you even remember? Of course, you don’t. There wasn’t any.
Now where is the black box information? Where is the US intel satellite photo? Where is the civil radar, the military radar? Where is the contrail? Why the delay? But yours is not to reason why. Yours is to do and die.
Here’s a possibility why Russia Today didn’t report this. It didn’t happen, like the rebels didn’t shoot down MH17 and all the other lies that the US and Kiev have been feeding you.
You will have a problem. How will you still be able to root for Kiev and the US in this when you find out that MH17 really was a false flag operation? A deliberate murder of 300 innocents in order to provoke a war with Russia?
I’ve suggested this book here before but judging from the comments directed back at me, no one here seriously is capable of entertaining the possibility that they might be propagandized to.
Certainly, I see no outrage, not even an acknowledgement, from you or any other BJer like, Hmm, the NY Times reporter and the NATO official who yesterday claimed that Russia was invading Ukraine with artillery were the same people who lied about the WMDs in Iraq. The lightbulb never goes on, because of your confidence in your views. That’s why people join armies and march off to their deaths.
It can’t happen here, because if it did you’d notice. Right?
JaneE
To answer your question yes. It goes back to ancient Greece and Rome at least.
raven
@pamelabrown53: I hate the fucking Eagle’s man.
John N
Talk about coddled, how about the “greatest” generation, you know, like other generations didn’t have to fight any wars.
John S.
@Betty Cracker:
Most of my nieces and nephews, and their friends in their 20s don’t really seem too interested in relationships. Not sure if that trend extends to the rest of the millennial generation, but even if it does, clearly there are outliers like your brother.
trollhattan
@Gene108:
One of the better days of my life occurred when they decommissioned the nearby SAC base. Once they removed the B52s and their nukes, I knew that many, many Soviet missiles and warheads were retargeted so as to not detonate five miles from my home.
It also ended the crashing of B52s in the suburbs, although we now get to eyeball the FedEx planes and wonder how their maintenance program is going.
muddy
@Suzanne: One of my recent favorite sayings is, “Why can’t we have nice things like you had in the Depression, Daddy?” I can work that in all over these days.
John N
Besides, hasn’t the whole point of human existence been an effort to find new ways to avoid doing work? I mean, of course every generation gets lazier, that’s the goal of humanity. When we get to the day where everyone is happy just laying around, eating and having sex, we will have reached the pinnacle of our species.
raven
@John N: wtf?
Amir Khalid
@Suzanne:
The Eagles don’t suck as bad as Creed sucks; the former are far better musicians. I think they lack a willingness to take creative risks, and are mostly just so-so as songwriters.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Ray McGovern and a lot of former CIA analysts who’re associated with Robert Parry essentially offer modified limited hangouts. You didn’t know that? I was looking at the quality of that milieu, whose work started appearing in the 90s. Remember that?
Meanwhile, how’s that slo-mo invasion going? Or has it disappeared down your own private memory hole?
You know, someone should organize a crowd-funding thingie to get New York Times reporters camera phones.
Oh, and are we still in Afghanistan?
Ridnik Chrome
@Suzanne: “They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast…”
John N
@raven: Old people think I’m lazy? I think they’re full of themselves.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Things known can be forgotten across generations. It’s true that American Presidents have misbehaved since the founding of the Republic and some have been fiercely and famously excoriated in public — but periods of outward calm, success, and prosperity can help us to remain in deep denial about our history. Technically, the era of Vietnam and Kennedy and King and Watergate was no more “eventful” than any other — but if one has no first-hand experience of that time and what came before, it may be difficult to imagine how disillusioned some people were when the evening news forced them to face uncomfortable, and even outrageous, facts every day.
Put another way: “innocent” and “more innocent” are not synonymous. And when someone says things like “It was a more innocent time,” it’s useful to ask: “For whom?” and “In what way?”
Baud
@John N:
I thought this blog was the pinnacle of our species.
raven
@John N: And that is somehow what your statement meant?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@John N: Tim Russert used to do a weekend show on CNBC, and whenever he had a new book out, Tom Brokaw would “guest host” the show and interview…. Tim Russert! They were so smarmily proud of these two-man circle-jerks of self-satisfaction. One time Brokaw was interviewing Russert and his father, who was never called Big Russ till his son needed a cutesy hook for sales, and Pumpkinhead, all goggle-eyed and almost panting, “Guys like my dad, went to Europe, won the war, then came home and built this country!” Brokaw, with a painful-to-watch smug condescension that he probably thought conveyed respect, turned to the old man: “Mr Russert, sir?” The old man seemed a bit nonplussed by the whole affair; he shrugged and said something like, “Yeah, I got drafted, then I came home and got a job.”
John N
@raven: Yep, sorry you didn’t get it.
raven
@John N: sure didn’t, I’m sorry too
Cervantes
@gogol’s wife: Have we not discussed that before?
John N
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s a funny story, and definitely indicative of the mindset that I’m talking about.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Haha. Well told. I could picture the whole exchange in my head.
John N
@raven: It’s ok, we can still be friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6_JZec_MIU
This is a problem I have sometimes, too. I don’t always just “say” what I “mean.”
Bob In Portland
The world however didn’t wait…
Suzanne
@Amir Khalid: Creed certainly sucks, most egregiously. However, I don’t think they’ve released anything in years, get very little airplay, and won’t be on the classic rock station in twenty years. Whereas I have to change the classic rock station at least three times a week when I hear the opening strains of “Hotel California” or “Desperado”.
raven
@Suzanne: I can’t tell you why. . .
Ridnik Chrome
@Amir Khalid: Jim Farber actually nailed what was wrong with the Eagles back in the Eighties. They’re arrogant, entitled sexist jerks, and you can hear it loud and clear in their music…
John N
@Suzanne: College radio is the way to go. I used to listen to “Traditions in Swing,” then “Positively Dylan,” featuring people making requests for obscure versions of Bob Dylan songs, and “the German Hit Parade,” which featured like polka and stuff on my local college station. Much more interesting stuff.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
But who defines a commentator’s “track record” as “one thing [he] said”?
pamelabrown53
@Suzanne:
Sounds like a tautology. That…and I’m older, plus I was influenced by mellow.
raven
@Ridnik Chrome: And their agent is one of the biggest assholes in the world. Read “Star-Making Machinery: Inside the Business of Rock and Roll” for an up close look at the Commander and the Eagles.
Soonergrunt
@Doug J, top:
Yes.
raven
@Soonergrunt: Those were some funny vids you posted.
Mike J
@Ridnik Chrome: This Jim Farber?
http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2011/06/29/the-daily-news-jim-farber-judges-all-contemporary-music-by-its-masculinity
Kind of brings us back to the original point of the thread.
I do wish I could find a copy of Lester Bangs ‘How The Eagles Cleaned Up the Wild West” online.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: Why the International Commission on the Veracity and Track Records of Web Sources, of course.
That McGovern linky and excerpt was just an example. Feel free to find more!
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
And Arsenal have drawn level on the stroke of 90 minutes. Feh.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
Traditionally, the puzzles get harder as the week goes on. Monday is the easiest. (I’m leaving Sunday out — it’s sometimes hard, sometimes easy, and it always has a theme or a gimmick.) Thursday traditionally has some kind of trick, theme, or gimmick. But Friday and Saturday are the most difficult. Saturday never has a theme, it’s just a brain-busting classic crossword puzzle. I look forward to it all week. But this morning, it had a really stupid theme, a gimmick that you had to guess in order to solve any of the clues. But once you guessed it (or looked it up on their blog), the clues and answers were totally banal and easy to solve. And the gimmick had no larger meaning than its own self.
gogol's wife
@Mike J:
Exactly. But if you go to the blog, everyone’s having orgasms over it.
Cacti
@John N:
The Boomers got a national Vietnam memorial 22 years before their parents got one for WWII.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
They are sheep.
Suzanne
@John N: We don’t have a college station. We have an indie station that I can only get in my car sometimes. I might get satellite radio in the next car. (I really only listen to the radio while driving.)
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: That’s a fine response but the point you were trying to make (?) is (now) obscure (to me). On the other hand, if all you’re doing at the moment is toying with someone else, so be it.
raven
@Mike J: Looks like you’d have to pay.
Suzanne
@pamelabrown53: Okay. I think their suckitude is self-evident, but really I am just always annoyed by how their musicianship never translated to good SONGS. Shit, that new Taylor Swift song blows the Eagles’ entire catalog away.
raven
@Cacti: We didn’t GET shit, we raised the money and built it ourselves.
“Based in Washington, D.C., VVMF (the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund) is the nonprofit organization authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1980 to build a national memorial dedicated to all who served with the U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War. Incorporated on April 27, 1979 by a group of veterans led by Jan C. Scruggs, the organization sought a tangible symbol of recognition from the American people for those who served in the war. The result was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (commonly referred to as The Wall), which has become one of the most visited memorials in Washington, D.C. with an estimated 4.5 million annual visitors. – See more at: http://www.vvmf.org/aboutus#sthash.a7Np2OaG.dpuf“
Ruckus
@Cacti:
Did/do most marriages end on a high note? I’d bet a lot of them had screaming/fighting going on even if the children were not directly involved. Was in my case. I went downstairs once during one such at about 13-14 and told my parents to shut the fuck up and just get a divorce. They asked my why and I told them so I could get some peace and quiet. They did about 15 yrs later, long after I’d moved out.
The no fault divorce was better. Cheaper, easier and less messy. To me finding someone that you can live with for decades is difficult even if you want it to work. I applaud those who do it, standing O for those who do it well. The rest of us? At least make it easier for us to not suffer. Wait, that sentiment can be applied to so many things, divorce, health care, poverty, jobs are the big things I can think of off the top of my pointy little head.
DWD
Freddie is almost as self-referential in his blogging as Sullivan, so the transition has been seamless. He’s really the perfect backup for the Dish.
Cervantes
@Mike J:
Here.
Cervantes
@Cacti:
Really? Tell me more.
muddy
@Cacti: The whole country is a monument to WWII.
Cacti
@raven:
July 1, 1980 – Congress authorizes 3 acres for the site. Management of the memorial given to the National Park Service and its National Mall and Memorial Parks Group.
Baud
In my day, front pagers would put up new posts at regular intervals.
Lazy kids….
dmsilev
@gogol’s wife: Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who thought the puzzle was silly as a Saturday. Could have been a decent Thursday, but not a Saturday.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: There’s a difference between predictions and reporting on events that already took place.
But like I said, we’re still in Afghanistan. And for that matter, we are apparently back in Iraq. Went for the WMDs, stayed for the oil.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
I remember when this blog had a football specialist. I really miss Randinho. Sigh.
Cacti
@muddy:
They also got it 13 years before the Silents got one for Korea.
pamelabrown53
@Suzanne:
Did you apprehend my comment before replying? There is no right or wrong here.
I’m older than you, plus we have our unique backgrounds and seminal events. Which means the footprints on our souls/psyche differ.
When I hear “Hotel California”, it reminds me of who I was at the time and who I was struggling to become.
BTW, the Eagles were secondary to me: Bob Dylan was the first artist that I listened to incessantly, followed by Joni Mitchell.
Thanks for reading.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
World’s going to pot, Amir.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: Ok, serious reply.
BiP has a log in his eye about sources he trusts while posters he disagrees with here (like every human) have splinters in theirs.
His lecturing us about his sources being above reproach while anything that disagrees with his thesis is obvious falsehood is not persuasive. (Yes, BiP, I’m exaggerating your position slightly. But only slightly.)
Everyone who makes public statements on current events over any length of time gets things wrong. Even Ray McGovern. That doesn’t mean that Anders Fogh Rasmussen is wrong here.
Of course the track record of a source is important. So is relevance. And so is not getting caught up in conspiracy theories.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
DougJ
@Baud:
I’m on a once-a-week schedule now.
raven
@Cacti: I know you are not stupid so you must just want to be a pain in the ass.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc. (VVMF) raised nearly $9,000,000 entirely through private contributions from corporations, foundations, unions, veterans and civic organizations and more than 275,000 individual Americans. No Federal funds were needed..
Cacti
@raven:
And the land it was built on?
Purchased with private funds also?
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: Bangs was brilliant. I took a collection of his essays with me on a recent vacation. Two of my favorites are his one, I believe, on Van Morrison’s “Cypress Avenue”. And the one on the Troggs.
Suzanne
@raven: Love how it was the Greatest Generation who crapped all over Maya Lin for daring to be Asian, female, and brilliant.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: Actually, it was a review of all of “Astral Weeks”. Here.
raven
@Cacti: I got nothing else to say to you. You don’t give a goddamn about any of this so just jam it.
raven
@Suzanne: There were a good number of Nam Vets who did too. Jim Webb was one of the biggest critics.
John N
All joking from me aside, the generational construct really isn’t a useful one, in my opinion. With people being born every day, every year, it just seems divisive but with no actual informative value. What does it mean to be a part of a generation? Every generation struggles, and has disagreements. So why group people together that way? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Cacti
@raven:
I would also add that the WWII memorial was financed entirely through a private donation campaign. Doesn’t change its nature as a public memorial, nor the fact that Congress designated a location for it a good 15 years after the same had been done for a Vietnam memorial.
Cervantes
@John N: I’m with you on that.
CALfan
@kuvasz: There are 3000 year old clay tablets from Mesopotamia recording opinions abt a younger generation who didn’t pay attention in school, disrespected their parents, were lazy etc. Socrates was a Johnny-come-lately.
Gin & Tonic
You kids have fun here, but don’t break anything. I’m off to do this.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: A log in my eye.
So why do you link on news stories the originate with the Ukrainian military? A log in your eye? How did they earn your trust, Scotty? Please explain. You might go back to the Gospels to reread your reference. Jesus wasn’t talking about just Bob in Portland. He was talking to his audience. The meaning apparently escaped you.
Cheers.
John N
@Suzanne: That’s too bad. Satellite radio is pretty good, if you can afford it, I do recommend it. Probably the best thing to do though, if your car has an auxiliary jack and you have a smartphone, is to queue up full albums on YouTube and listen to those.
raven
@John N: It’s bullshit just like this “Hello Chicago” shit bands do.
It’s as dumb as national designations.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland: He was certainly an iconoclast.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Also, because conspiracies never happen!
Tell us, Scotty, do you trust Fogh Rasmussen as an accurate purveyor of truth? How about this guy Gordon? Just minor splinters in your eye?
John N
@raven: Yeah, I think national designations are dumb too. Its like “oohh, look at me, I was born in a place!” Like, yeah, we all were. So what? Why do people think that makes them special?
Ridnik Chrome
@Mike J: Farber’s original argument was probably dumbed down considerably by his editors (it is the Daily News, after all), but I kind of get what he’s trying to say. It is possible to be sexually assertive without being sexist, but it seems like kids today have lost that art. They either go too far in one direction and write stuff that sounds like pornography, or they go too far in the other and present themselves as neutered…
Ruckus
@John N:
Nothing else does?
raven
The WWII memorial received more than $197 million in cash and pledges. This total includes $16 million provided by the federal government.
So the Federal gave the WWII memorial TWICE as much money as the VVMF raised on it’s own and it was GIVEN to us.
John N
@C.J.: Oh, I have tons of debt. I just don’t pay it!
John N
@Ruckus: Hah, nice.
Botsplainer
People who self-identify as bloggers suck.
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/08/meet-the-man-who-ended-the-10-hour-starbucks-pay-it-forward-i-had-to-put-an-end-to-it–106360.html
Bob In Portland
Cheers, Scotty. I note that you link to a book about “Illuminatus”. Since I’ve never ever discussed or have ever given any opinion on the Illuminatis why would you even link to a book I’d never even heard of? Seriously, why?
In the world of propaganda, this is known as “bad-jacketing.” If you want to slime Obama you find a minister that said something controversial, or something taken out of context that sounds controversial, and emphasize the connections. Or you try to figure out a connection with someone who once was in the Weather Underground. “Bad-jacketing.” Or if you want to pin “conspiracy theorist” on someone you repeat his name and link to something ridiculous which has no connection to me. Unfortunately, Scotty, once it’s pointed out that it’s just another clump of shit you’re throwing, people begin wondering why you’re trying so hard to smear me. Why are you trying so hard to smear me, Scotty?
So let’s roll back the tape. Yesterday’s slo-mo invasion of Ukraine by the Russian artillery. True or false? Today’s Russians loading up its humanitarian aid convoy with military things to take back to Russia. True or false? How about last week’s destroyed Russian armored column? True or false? How about the Russians sneaking a BUK battery across the border so that the rebels could shoot down an airliner, then sneaking it back? True or false? The mighty thrust of the Ukrainian army into Lugansk last weekend that was going to end the war. Did it happen? And, of course, the shoot down of MH17. The rebels or the Russians or a Ukrainian false flag?
All set out for you. How about you tell about the proof behind all of these stories that convinces you to trust the New York Times? Please share with us, Scotty.
(As with other BJers here, he won’t.)
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: He was great. I remember his columns in The Village Voice long ago. You ever hear his albums?
Maybe the best song about Son of Sam, although I liked his earlier version better.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland:
Not so! Conspiracies happen all the time – in fact multiple conspiracies are working simultaneously all the time.
For instance, as discussed in the book I linked, it’s not well known but John Dillinger was actually the assassin of John F. Kennedy. True fact!
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: I guess you haven’t had your coffee yet.
Because I thought you and readers here might be interested in it?!? Maybe???!!
Check it out – it’s very Illuminating! Of course, it could be that that is just want the CIA wants you to think, so be careful!!11 ;-)
Enjoy your coffee. I hope it helps you wake up.
Cheers
Scott.
Jim C
I would like it noted – in everyone’s permanent record – that any notion that “medals for just showing up” did not start with this generation.
I received a “Particiaption” ribbon (aka medal for showing up) as a 6th Grader in 1980. I am solidly placed in GenX. I don’t know how long they’d been giving those out, I didn’t care, I didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment, I used my Gallant-worthy manners and said, “Thank you.”
Me? I blame the Hippies. I’d punch one, but I’d probably swing and miss. And they’d give me a ribbon for trying. (You figure out if I’m joking or not!)
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: So you link to a ridiculous book about Illuminati in a post where you are disparaging me not to “bad jacket” me, but on the off hand that the readers here would be interested in it? No, that’s a lie, ol’ Scotty. You just lied in order to continue to mock me even after I pointed out that your sources on the Ukraine conflict were liars. And, of course, you aren’t going to comment on that now, would you?
Even invoking JFK and conspiracy shows how out of touch your reality is with the world, because if you recognize that a coup happened in 1963 then you recognize the nature of our politics, why the Republican Party has morphed into Mussolini’s fascist politics. Why the Democrats are now Republican-lite. Why your choices aren’t choices. Why, as Jim Garrison said in 1967, Congress was becoming merely a “debating society.”
Scotty, not to be too harsh, but you are an ignorant fuck, and you are because you want to be. Cheers.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Always glad to help, BiP.
Keep up the Fight!!!11
But have some more coffee, too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
Found it! It was In The Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860. Her main thesis is that it was a time of transition from a mother being defined as a woman who physically bore a child to a mother being a woman who raises a child. There are also some very poignant stories about post-partum depression and how difficult it was for families to cope with even among the aristocracy.
The Austens were gentry, not aristocracy, so it would have been Jane’s generation (or even that of her nieces) that would have done their own breastfeeding since it takes a while for aristocratic fads to work their way down to the gentry and middle classes. ;-)
Woodrowfan
@Skerry: We olds are destroying the earth for the youngers.
well if they won’t stay off of our lawn them dagnabit, there won’t BE a lawn…
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yes, a serious reply — thanks.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Unlike these, which were cheap and hollow — and beneath you, or so I had thought.
Not to worry, I discover my mistakes numerous times a day.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne: Jane Austen and her siblings practically lived with a wet nurse for the first two years of their lives (each). Their mother, it is said, visited them every day.
One other incidental note: women have known for millennia about the contraceptive effects of nursing.
Cervantes
@Jim C: Hippies punched back in their own way.
Joel
Peter Tosh. Nice.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: Interesting. I’ll take that under advisement.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
The number of children that Englishwomen had is addressed in the book as well. From memory (I haven’t read it in a while), French aristocrats were constantly sniping about British aristocrats, who were having 8 or 10 children while the Frenchwomen were having 3 thanks to contraception (mostly barrier methods, including an early version of the diaphragm). There was definitely a cultural difference in contraceptive use (including breastfeeding) and number of children.
And breastfeeding can have contraceptive effects, but it’s not nearly as effective as actual contraception. I have several friends who can testify to that.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Thank you. As for the Austens, they were also running a school for boys in the house at the time if I remember correctly, so it (outsourcing very young childcare, essentially) may also have had some pragmatic basis. Mom is busy being den mother / housekeeper for the paying youngsters.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne: Thanks.
Sure, I did not mean to suggest it was a fail-safe! — only that it has been a factor in women’s behavior at different times and in different places.
But wait — are you saying you have friends who relied on lactation as a contraceptive? In this century as in the last, that seems … unwise.
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
Only a couple. Crunchy granola types who were worried about the bad effects of hormones in breast milk and didn’t like barrier methods. Plus most doctors will tell you that it takes a few months for the body to get back to normal and start ovulating again, so they thought they had a little time before they would have to worry about it. Turned out, not so much.
Jim C
@Cervantes: Oh, how they did …
chopper
@Cervantes:
Depends on the woman. For some breastfeeding does fuck all. For some it makes a pretty big difference.
different-church-lady
Look, here’s the deal: every generations has been spewing a BUNCH OF GODDAMEND NONSENSE since time immemorial.
DLC +1 really strong mojito…
Will in Colorado
@Bob In Portland: Thank you for this. I saw the headline on numerous websites and assumed it was bullshit. My bs detector has really improved over the past 14 years, not perfect, but almost. I’ve noticed for this conflict that the US media only has sources in Ukraine, NATO, or the State Dept., and they’re all singing from the hymnal.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: That’s really good. Now do the Zapruder film.
Bob In Portland
@different-church-lady: I’m going to keep it simple for you. Look it up. A month and a half before the JFK assassination there was a man in front of the Soviet embassy and the Cuban consulate pretending to be Lee Harvey Oswald. How do we know he’s a fake? The CIA had surveillance cameras taking pictures of both places. They also recorded telephone conversations of this (or yet another) fake Oswald. Unfortunately, the recordings have been destroyed by the CIA. However, the pictures still remain. If you google image “fake Oswald Mexico City” you’ll get a lot of pictures of this guy.
Here is a real simple use of logic: Who would have known six weeks before the assassination that Oswald was going to shoot the President (or be blamed for shooting JFK)? Who would’ve known that there were surveillance cameras there?
J. Edgar Hoover and Johnson knew about this extra Oswald and had a conversation about it around 10 a.m. the day after the assassination:
The tape’s at the LBJ library but I bet you can find the recording on the internet somewhere.
So who was trying to frame Oswald six weeks before the assassination? Who wanted to connect Oswald to the Soviet Union and Cuba? You answer those questions. We’ll count the cartridges on the Grassy Knoll at our leisure.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: John Fnord Dillinger, of course.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
MvR
@Ridnik Chrome: I don’t know anymore but if Django’s is still around it will likely still be good if it is. It used to be at around 11th and Stark. Spent a good bit of my $3.50/hour summer job salary there in the late 70s, when 2-3 bucks would get you a good used LP. I can’t recall the place on the park blocks that was next to Hamburger Mary’s, but got my first Hank Williams record out of the dollar bin there. Bird’s Suite on SE Hawthorne is no more, I think, but there ought to be something on that thoroughfare. If you move out in concentric circles from about 10th and West Burnside you are liable to hit whatever is left of the used record stores downtown withing about 3 to 4 circumlocutions.
Of course my recollections are from the era when the vibe in the movie Drugstore Cowboy still held sway in PDX. Even the criminals were gentle and somewhat lovable. So ignore my advice for the good advice you likely got before I posted this. Just wanted to post in a DougJ thread for old times sake, which is probably also why posting about used record stores in Portland is attractive to me!
MvR
@Bob In Portland: Just read his biography. It was somewhat depressing as is the biographies of all my heroes (Guthrie, Chandler, Hammett, well not Keith Richards, Joe Sturmmer). Actually, Hammett comes off pretty well standing up to HUAC.
MvR
@Bob In Portland: Yes, my favorite of his writings, I think. Has a kindness in it that makes it.
Bob In Portland
@MvR: I read the DeRogatis bio. Yeah, had a tough life. Brilliant guy.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: That’s why you’re an intellectual coward, Scotty.
Cheers.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Hey BiP. Had your coffee yet?
There’s this new thing called ad-hominem. Check it out!
Cheers,
Scott.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Someone who makes jokes about the murder of a President as a way of avoiding discussion about its circumstances is an intellectual coward. What I posted for another church lady is on the record. You can look at what I wrote, you can confirm it in multiple places across the internet and in books. A picture of the faux Oswald was in the early printings of the Warren Report. Or you can make inane jokes about a thirties gangster somehow doing it.
We have people here laughing about the stupid Republicans and the WMDs in Iraq, but the same BJers seem to buy the same reporters and the very same same sources to provide their daily the narrative about Ukraine. It’s a joke to you that the CIA was trying to link the unknown nobody Lee Harvey Oswald to the Russians and Cubans outside of the US six weeks before the assassination. You can’t allow yourself to pursue that line of thought to the ultimate conclusion. That makes you an intellectual coward. If you are a citizen of the US (I’m presuming you are) or an occupant of this planet and you are afraid to look at the destruction of our government, then you are a coward.
25 years ago I was writing about a private group that included an ex-FBI agent as well as an SFPD/CIA asset with connections to overseas torturing that was dumpster diving in my union’s garbage, which you might also want to laugh about. The local ACLU also wrote about it. They didn’t find it a joke.
That was a gray area of history where there were still Congressional restraints on our intelligence agencies left over from the mid-seventies Congressional hearings. So the job was privatized. When we went to court the judge said we couldn’t see what information was gathered on us because it was “private property,” as if the ADL (they were fronting it) needed to gather intelligence on Branch 214 of the letter carriers’ union. But, hell, that was just a local union. That’s hardly spying at all, is it? Of course, they were spying on hundreds of organizations, politicians, bookstores, student groups. But to worry about the government spying on you? Back then it was being paranoid.
Now we have the NSA vacuuming up everything on everyone. But no need to worry. If you haven’t done anything wrong there’s nothing to worry about, right? And if you never understand what the US’s national interests are in Central Asia then you don’t have to worry about them. If someone fifty years ago murdered our President, so what? How could something like that affect us today?
That’s why I identify you as an intellectual coward. Because you are. I hope I haven’t offended you so much as to cause you any self-reflection or self-doubt. Cheers, Scotty. Keep on truckin’!
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: I’m at a loss here — I don’t know whether to take your reply as an indication that you have a sense of humor, or as an indication that you actually are an idiot.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Sorry for the delay – I’ve been out pulling weeds.
Let’s see…
I guess you haven’t had that coffee yet; oh well.
For you, and anyone else who feels the need to read dead threads, I’ll close with these thoughts:
1) I already told you earlier I don’t get much out of arguing with conspiracy theorists. As a kid I read Erich von Daniken, and Robert Sam Anson’s “They’ve Killed the President…”, and Velikovsky, and Gary Allen’s “None Dare Call it Conspiracy”. I got my exposure to arguing with “true believers” in the Spartacus Youth League in college. I’m well aware of the arguments, and the techniques of arguing, of those who are convinced of the righteousness of their positions.
You’re following your forebearers with great distinction! Onward Vanguard!!
2) You said in response to my posting the Reuters story about the “humanitarian convoy” that the “most important” thing about the story was that the source was a Ukrainian military person. Based on that, and that alone, you could discount it. That fits with your previous comments on the importance of the “track record” of a reporter or source.
Sorry, but if the source is most important, that reduces you to looking for reports that support your “side”. That’s not the way to be well informed.
The way I try to read the story is to: a) see if it is internally consistent. b) see if it provides information that is falsifiable. c) see if it explains or is consistent with other known facts. d) see if the reporter is credible. e) see if subsequent stories agree or disagree with it.
Not simply making snap judgements based on the source.
3) Based on 1 and 2 above, you’re not going to badger me into addressing things you bring up in your “arguments”. We have no common frame of reference, we don’t evaluate sources under common “rules”, and you apparently don’t understand how I use hyperlinks or when I’m using humor. It’s no more productive than playing Scrabble with someone who is using a different dictionary than you.
That’s Ok. I’ve got no monopoly on the truth, and you’re free to react to my posts however you wish. I’m not going to convince you, and you’re not going to convince me, on these topics.
At the risk of disappointing a certain 16th century Spanish author again, let me close by saying that I may throw some humor your way again in the future if I feel like it. Be prepared!! But don’t expect that insults and 3rd-grade taunts are going to convince me to engage in a serious discussion with you on whether the CIA killed the Kennedys, when after all it was you and me. And John Fnord Dillinger.
Have fun!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
More useful than raw insult, if you ask me.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Just FYI, there is a form of ad hominem argumentation that can make sense. Locke identified and named it; others have written about it.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: You get nothing out of discussing conspiracy theories? What is that supposed to mean? You don’t care about criminal conspiracies? Or you’re intellectually incapable of believing that elements of the US government would ever conspire? You know, Scotty, you are a piece of work. I didn’t attend Spartacist meetings. Apparently, you did. So you try to smear me (red-bait me, actually) by something you used to do.
And of course we have no common frame of reference because you can only make jokes about the murder of the President and any examination of facts is too threatening for your mind to deal with. Yes, an intellectual coward. I know when you’re using humor at my expense you’re attacking ideas, but you’re unwilling to attack my ideas by arguing facts. So, really, you are an intellectual coward. Toodles, Scotty.
Bob In Portland
@different-church-lady: So you’ve looked at the pictures of the fake Oswald in Mexico City and you laughed? I’m an idiot because I’m concerned about democracy in our country?
What a laugh. If the US really did have a coup by the CIA we’d be fighting unjust wars around the world for the benefit of our corporations. We’d have the intelligence services conducting surveillance of our citizenry. So, yes, church lady, it must have been a joke.
What’s the difference between “It can’t happen here” and “It happened but it wasn’t such a big deal.” Fifty years.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Some alleged conspiracies are investigated and found to be utter nonsense; others may be worth pursuing; yet others are proven. You’re right that these distinctions are easily understood yet often blurred or even obliterated.
What happened to Hillary Clinton in the ’90s when she used the term “conspiracy” (as in “vast right-wing conspiracy”) is an instructive example.
And before that, people who pushed for an investigation of “Iran-Contra,” too, were derided for conjuring up wild-eyed “conspiracy theories” — that turned out to be not only true but under-stated.
And do I even need to mention how Nixon would have had us dismiss “Watergate” as a “conspiracy theory”?
It’s a rhetorical trick, obviously. Examples abound.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes:
Indeed they do, indeed they do. In lots of BiP’s threads, even.
I believe Bob’s mentioned this one, even. If he had read the book like some of already have, then he would not even have to read #5 to know that it is on the list.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: You may well be right, although I have not seen him dismiss anything you have said simply by calling it a “conspiracy theory.”
Anyhow, my purpose was just to note that, strictly speaking, “conspiracy theories” are not per se illegitimate.