.
I {heart} Tom Scocca, because he writes stuff like “Is Glenn Greenwald Still “Red-Hot”? The Politico Investigates“…
Politico Magazine is a magazine edition of The Politico—America’s worst publication—whose mission is “to pull back from the flood to understand what it’s all about.” The flood, in that metaphor, is supposed to be the tremendous churning hourly volume of vacuous meta- and meta-meta-political Narrative and Controversy that sustains The Politico and is sustained by The Politico.
So here, in a piece published online yesterday, The Politico: The Magazine is pulling back and taking a long view on the work of a blogger named Glenn Greenwald, who was famous in 2013 for something or other about codes or wiretapping (CK?). The headline announces the purpose of the piece, by national editor Michael Hirsh, which is to raise the question (i.e., answer the question) “Has Greenwald Inc. Peaked?“…
(“[H]is stock may be dropping fast,” the subhead adds.)
“Stock” is a metaphor too, for what was known in a more intellectual and serious age, before The Politico, as “buzz.” Buzz is a sort of enacted publicity. Under the rules of the buzz process, once a person or entity—Mike Huckabee, The Help, the panoptical security state—has been established as the subject of sustained public attention, the eventual next step is to inform the public that the public is no longer interested. This generates new attention. Ups and downs.
So Glenn Greenwald, having been up—on the strength of Edward Snowden’s decision to trust him with a collection of leaked classified documentation of the NSA’s immense and all but unchecked mass surveillance program—is due to be down. Because the NSA has stopped spying on everyone, hasn’t it?…
If you read Scocca’s whole post, you can avoid giving Politico the click while discovering who Mike Allen has anointed “The Most Interesting Man in Politics“. But you may want to put down your morning beverage(s), first.
***********
Apart from confirming all our prior biases, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
Joseph Nobles
As I recall, Snowden’s passport was revoked while he was in Singapore, not while he was changing planes in Russia.
ETA: Yes, I recalled correctly.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/307253-report-snowdens-us-passport-revoked
Cervantes
Thanks, Anne Laurie. I think.
Gin & Tonic
@Joseph Nobles: His US passport was “annulled” while he was in Hong Kong. Ecuador gave him a laissez-passer which Russia declined to accept when he was in transit.
raven
Oh no, Morning Joe thinks it’s OUTRAGEOUS that the federal government brought these charges!!!!!!!
eta He knows that it’s wrong but it’s overreach!
OzarkHillbilly
Sleep? Is that too much to ask for? I guess the bed is too empty with out my wife there. Lord knows it is not without the best efforts of a 100# black lab to make up for her absence.
mikej
@Joseph Nobles: Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: the McDonnell’s?
Botsplainer
Griftwald must’ve paid Scocca to write that, considering that the world is getting an ugly look at the actions of real state oppressors in Missouri, real bad guys in ISIL and Snowden’s buddy Putin on the march, and the world is reacting by shoving his white dudebro problems with having ones porn stash go into a searchable database aside. Combine that with the fact that he’s a hysterical serial liar with racist tendencies, and he’ll collapse further.
Alex S.
“His stock is falling fast” = K-Street dinner parties have found other topics to discuss
Cervantes
@Botsplainer:
But who paid Politico “national editor” Michael Hirsh?
And under Virginia law (Title 18.2-346), wouldn’t that payment constitute solicitation of a “Crime involving Morals and Decency”?
(Typically, the payment itself is only a misdemeanor.)
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yup.
You asked me something yesterday that I answered hours later but I don’t recall what it was?
OzarkHillbilly
Definitely not in America:
“Residents described scenes of terror and panic as the suspect, dressed in black, waved a machete-like weapon as he wandered screaming and shouting through private gardens.
Police said a man had run through back gardens armed with a weapon, with officers smashing windows to evacuate terrified residents. They risked their lives and distracted the man so he did not harm anyone else.
Armed officers were sent to the scene. The Metropolitan police said the 25-year-old man was cornered in a house, Tasered then arrested. One officer broke his wrist in the struggle.”
Here in America, we just execute them on sight. Trials are such messy and expensive affairs.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yep. In the U.S., the suspect would have been a 9 year old girl with an Uzi.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Hmmmm…. I don’t know…. Must have been really important… I GOT IT!!! Pet insurance, how much do you pay per month?
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: If you’re a governor you’re only accountable to your state’s law. Everyone knows that.
/The Law(according to Joe Scar)
RSR
Ha, John Scalzi turned into a pauper. https://twitter.com/scalzi
dmsilev
I’m going to guess ‘John McCain’.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
FTFY
Alex S.
@dmsilev:
It’s worse.
BillinGlendaleCA
The agenda today: find a password manager that works with Windows and Android. Right now it’s between Dashlane and LastPass.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Heh. From a piece on another incident involving armed police in London:
A female neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “I heard lots of shots – three or four. Like a bonfire. I’ve never heard anything like it before. It was really scary.
It’s a different world they live in.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
They will never know freedom. Sad.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, the suspect in that case was confronted after beheading cats and an old lady, so perhaps a hail of bullets wouldn’t be amiss in his case. But yeah, different world over there alright.
Thanks to our gun culture, I don’t think we could have an unarmed police force in the US. But if our cops could be persuaded to stop shooting unarmed people, I’d call that progress!
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: I bet if you draw a Venn diagram of “gun nuts” and “people shot by cops” in the US there’s not a lot of overlap.
R-Jud
Was hoping to get a highly uncomfortable work-related phone call over with today, but one of the other parties has cancelled, so it’s now postponed until Monday. Ugh.
dmsilev
@Alex S.: Rand Paul?
[peeks at answer]
Yep.
Suffern ACE
I’m in London this morning. I was going to buy you all pens at harrods, but I think I’ll wait and pick up something nice at staples when I get home.
Elizabelle
@Suffern ACE:
I’ll take chocolates, please.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Suffern ACE:
Mitt sends his thanks.
NotMax
The babies cry
And this is why
Deep in the heart of Texas
Baud
@NotMax:
Damn environmentalists.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: That’s the thing Betty, in both cases shooting the suspects would not have been out of line, but both times the police went out of their way to NOT shoot them. Our police seem to reach for their guns first. I hate being the one to say “Back in my day…” but,
Back in my day cops weren’t afraid to go at it with violent people, mano a mano.
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think that was me that asked that question – how much is pet insurance & how well do the cover?
Schlemizel
@RSR:
I looked through a long list of tweets & have no idea what you are referencing.
raven
@Schlemizel: Oh yea, just got back from droppin the boy off. It’s $46 a month with a $200 deduct and pays 80%.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Thanks! Can I assume they are not as big a bunch of assholes as the human insurers? That is they actually pay promptly & not drag things out for months and/or decided there is some excuse to not pay?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Thanx, not too bad, I’ll have to talk to the wife when she returns.
bemused
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Now, now, I’m sure Joe would be just as supportive of Gov. Terry Macauliffe if he was in McConnell’s shoes…..never mind.
raven
@Schlemizel: We’ve been pleased. We didn’t think this tooth extraction would be covered but it is. We have to pay the bill and get reimbursed but it’s been relatively timely.
Compare dog insurance plans
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that far and away too many Americans are packing heat. Nobody, not even a cop, wants to get shot. Add to the shear number of morons carrying large semi-auto guns around the paranoia that even more people are and it becomes understandable why US cops are tending toward ‘shoot first’. This does not explain why most of the targets are non-white or how several of the dead and wounded ended up that way but it does illuminate a substantial amount of the thinking that is getting us to this point.
As a nation we desperately need to find a way to deescalate and disarm. The country is not so dangerous that people need to be armed to the teeth all the time but by being armed to the teeth all the time we are doing a good job of making it more dangerous.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: We are looking at the long haul. We spent thousands on Raven’s cancer treatment.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemizel: White people are armed to the teeth. Black people get shot by cops.
debbie
I just read yesterday’s list of good happenings. Wow! Overturning that ruling on Obamacare seems pretty major.
OzarkHillbilly
“What’s the most important thing your mother has taught you?”
“If you buy food, you should always eat it with someone else.”
(Kampala, Uganda)
Time to go, ya’ll have fun now.
Schlemizel
@Gin & Tonic:
see:
different-church-lady
Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, actual activists are working for actual progress.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic: Ergo success!
Baud
@debbie:
It hopefully puts off Supreme Court review. I have no confidence in the five conservatives on the court, but the longer we can push this out, the better it will be for the system if they decide to take another swipe at Obamacare.
ETA: “the system” meaning Obamacare. As more people get used to it, I hope any legislative fix will be easier to accomplish, especially heading into the 2016 election.
WereBear
@Suffern ACE: Just tell us the pen is from Harrods! Let us dream!
big ole hound
All this stuff made me think of the line “drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life”. Is this from Imus’ ‘church of the ooey gooey death in Del Rio Texas? Long long ago when he was funny.
FlipYrWhig
Why is that fourth panel Rall’s punchline? Because businesses like credit cards more than cash, ergo governments will mess with people they don’t like electronically, such as by switching off your credit card, or by annihilating you with a drone (which beet-faced Obama [?] enjoys to do arbitrarily). How does the one lead to the other? It’s like a mclaren post in vaguely comix form.
Tommy
@WereBear: I am scared, and I buy expensive pens and pencils, to look at what something would cost from Harrods.
MomSense
@Suffern ACE:
Ooh, they have some lovely ginger tea cakes with a light, lemon glaze.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Schlemizel: Another factor, I’m sure, are all the horror stories about people being “hopped-up” on PCP and Meth and Heroin and Crack and Crank and Bath Salts and … that turns them all into superhuman psychopathic monsters. If you think that everyone you meet is potentially inhuman, then it’s easy to escalate.
Declaring the War on Drugs over and dawn of the era of Medical and Psychological Treatment of Addiction would probably help reduce the amount of cop-on-citizen violence dramatically. At least one can hope…
:-(
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chyron HR
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, next you’re going to ask why a “self-guided killer robot” has a pilot asking for orders. Or which part of the Constitution guarantees the inalienable right to $20 martinis.
Botsplainer
@FlipYrWhig:
Bring the circle of left far enough, and you run into a Bircher moving further right.
It was ever thus.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s the best description of Ted Rall’s oeuvre I’ve ever seen. Thanks!
El Caganer
Here’s a little something from up my way in Philly. The story is unremarkable, but the comments are….well, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ is perhaps no longer an accurate descriptor. If it ever was.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140905_National_Muslim_youth_group_to_gather_in_Chester_County.html
Applejinx
I’m real skeptical this ‘your card is invalid’ will come from government. I think it’ll come from big business.
I’m heading over to my local internet provider to talk about ditching my ‘web site’, airwindows.com which has been hosted with them for ages. Thing is, they gave me ten megs of space and aren’t really set up to do that, they’ve just been stable as a rock for decades.
But (a) I moved over to the hosting I’m using for everything else, and (b) suddenly my ISP’s performance has absolutely cratered. I don’t know why: DSL modem damage? But I do know that last week I was handling 720p off youtube, and suddenly youtube is doing—no, FAILING to do—144p. I am literally unable to manage dialup speeds, but only for some sites.
It has me legit wondering if Google is trying to force me onto Google Fiber only without noticing that they’re not OFFERING Google Fiber here. I’m not sure what’s going on, just that big chunks of what I do are impossible all of a sudden. I feel like something attacked me given that SOME things (for instance Minecraft, which I’m doing on a server in Montreal that’s nearly accessible through my ISP’s own interstate fiber network) are absolutely fine. It’s like they’re being shut out of the larger internet.
Google’s taken to helpfully showing what other providers are (not much) better. By that I mean, all speed test stuff shows us in Vermont are hosed wherever we turn, but my ISP is set up to look obscenely bad next to VTel and Comcast on Youtube’s ‘problem?’ webpage.
This is gonna be an interesting conversation with the ISP. I’ve been with ’em for nearly twenty years, no lie. I was on dialup with these guys back when I was on a 68K Performa mac, in a little apartment. I don’t like seeing that continuity disrupted. I mean, TWENTY YEARS of basically no trouble. Literally twenty years of uninterrupted, no hassle, no break-down, no problem. If they’re being attacked in some way, I’m siding with them, not ‘shopping for a cheaper faster deal’.
Betty Cracker
@El Caganer: Quote from the linked article:
Kindly direct them to me! Re: the comments — I don’t think Philly has been the City of Brotherly Love since they scared all the Quakers away.
rikyrah
Bet now they wish they hadn’t phucked with him….but, he was only ‘ the chef’, so they thought they could mess with him.
…………………………………….
Chef who brought down McDonnells dishes on Bob and Maureen
Posted 7:23 am, September 4, 2014, by Scott Wise and Lorenzo Hall,
Updated at 07:00am, September 5, 2014
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A key figure in the corruption trial of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen, sat back and watched the legal and political drama play out on television.
Former Virginia Executive Mansion Chef, Todd Schneider said Thursday, justice was being served on the menu after the conviction of the former first couple.
Schneider was the chef in the mansion from 2010 – 2012.
It was Schneider, you may recall, who went to the FBI with the key evidence used to indict the McDonnells on charges they accepted gifts and money from political donor and Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams in exchange for promoting Williams’ company, Star Scientific, and its dietary supplement supplement Anatabloc.
http://wtvr.com/2014/09/04/todd-schneider-bob-mcdonnell-interview/
FlipYrWhig
@Botsplainer: Regardless of right-left, there’s just no attempt to connect anything. He could have his premise be that in a world with no cash it’s easier for the government to mess with you (which I sort of doubt, given that the government is the issuer of currency and that governments have messed with their people long before the invention of the credit card). But how that leads to drones is highly mysterious. If you’re worried about drones being used arbitrarily on dissidents, fine, but that has nothing to do with credit cards. He could make something of his first three panels, or something of his last three panels, but #1 and #4 just have nothing to do with one another.
Schlemizel
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I’m sure that adds fuel to the fire. We know the drug hysteria amps up the desire to be armed always. The whole thing is a vicious cycle.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
You mean credit bureaus can jack you up? How long has this been happening? Has anyone told Ted Rall?
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Naw, a Mclaren comic would have at least 73 panels and a fair number of them would be cut-and-pasted from another person’s comic.
kc
@Applejinx:
Enabled and abetted by government.
low-tech cyclist
@Applejinx:
I don’t think it has to be just one or the other.
But in a country where pols can’t even manage to do away with the penny, I’m not really concerned about the possibility of a cashless society.
Morbo
@FlipYrWhig: Panel #2 seems to imply that Ted Rall has never heard of a telephone.
different-church-lady
DSL is insanely affected by weather conditions. Back when I had DSL, it would fail completely every time there was thunder in the summer. Not a thunderstorm with actual rain, mind you, but just thunder itself. It was completely predictable.
different-church-lady
@Morbo: I wouldn’t be surprised — he’s obviously never seen an editorial cartoon.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: Well played, old bean!
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Well, VISA can blackball you if you’re a pornographer, as can PayPal. I’m just a lot more suspicious of business. Look at Uber.
I think I was on the wrong track regarding youtube, however. The problem suddenly fixed itself. Instantly went back from ‘unable to do 144p’ to ‘streaming 720p without hiccuping’ again, without doing anything. My conversation with the ISP just got easier, changing to ‘so what happened?’.
low-tech cyclist
@dmsilev:
I never knew ‘interesting’ could overlap all that much with ‘more flip-flops than a griddle full of pancakes.’
Politico must use the word somewhat differently than I do.
Chyron HR
@kc:
I believe the Great One’s preferred terminology is “Doing the bidding of their master in Washington”.
WereBear
@rikyrah: Everybody KNOWS you don’t mess with the chef!
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: Tom Tomorrow is similarly wordy and non-narrative, but at least he understands that there are these things called “jokes” that have setups and punchlines. Rall struggles with those. And also the art. Even if your objective is to call into question your medium, you have to demonstrate that you know the canons and tenets of your medium. Andy Kaufman can do anti-comedy because he knows comedy. But if you watch Kaufman and try to reverse-engineer standard comedy premises from what he’s doing, that’s not going to work.
schrodinger's cat
Ugly cartoon is ugly. I am guessing the most interesting politician is Rand Paul. The Beltway Boys are crushing on him right now.
FlipYrWhig
@kc: Even if that’s what worries you, the no-cash restaurant at LaGuardia seems like an unlikely trigger for your concern.
Gin & Tonic
Reports coming in from various sides that the Ukrainian government and the separatists have signed some sort of cease-fire agreement to take effect about a half-hour from now (1700 Kyiv time, 1800 Moscow time.)
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: They have a fondness for rough-around-the-edges Republicans who speak off the cuff and don’t blather on about Jesus. See also McCain, comma John.
chopper
@different-church-lady:
I imagine a mclaren comic would be better described as a ‘tract’.
WaterGirl
@Schlemizel: I wrote a long reply about pet insurance at the end of that thread, before realizing the thread was dead. I use Pet Plan and highly recommend it, and I included details. If I remembered what thread it was, I would supply a link.
Citizen_X
@rikyrah: Heh. Cue Pitt’s “Don’t fuck with us” speech from Fight Club.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t know whether Rall eschews humor deliberately or merely mistakes sneering for the same. Either way, it is conspicuously missing from his presentation.
Good editorial cartooning works on many levels — artwork, writing, message, humor, etc. Really good editorial cartooning can make you laugh even when you don’t agree with the message. Rall elevates the message above all else, makes the the artwork a deliberate anti-aesthetic, and scraps all the other elements. Thus he manages the opposite of really good editorial cartooning: he makes you think the cartoon sucks even when you do agree with the message.
Good observation about Kaufman.
Elizabelle
Would you let Anheuser Busch paint your little mountain ski town Bud Light Blue?
And film a weekend-long commercial there? Having flown in 1,000 partiers (who auditioned for their official wristbands)?
For $500,000 to the town coffers?
Welcome to Crested Butte, Colorado. It’s reported 90% of the town is fine with this, but the deal was cooked up in (sort of) secret and that didn’t go over well. I’m also wondering if they used many locals for the advance labor. (Note the pictures; looks like trucked and flown in events staff.)
AND Crested Butte is a town more into craft brews. Not so easy to find Bud Light on tap.
Plus a former newspaper editor asked the million dollar question here (which eluded the NYTimes):
– See more at: http://mountaintownnews.net/2014/09/05/crested-buttes-spat-beer-brands/#sthash.eCoQXR6M.dpuf
Mind you, Anheuser Busch is flying those 1,000 selected partiers in, some via chartered 757, the first to land at nearby Gunnison airport. That took some suds.
Belafon
So Rall confuses private currency transactions with government document control and presents them all as a big government conspiracy.
Southern Beale
Is this just a Southern thing or are “open-air preachers” doing the hellfire-and-damnation thing a feature on other college campuses? I’d never heard of such a thing, but then, I attended one of those fancy-pants liberal arts schools with a capital “L”.
raven
@WaterGirl: I gave him a link for a review site.
RSR
@Schlemizel: it’s the pauper frame in the Rall cartoon at the top. The link was just for reference to Scalzi, not that he commented directly on the cartoon yet.
ThresherK
Hey, any further news on a BJers meetup in eastern MA next Saturday (Sept 13th)?
Corey X It
All of us in the reality based community check our buzz portfolio with metaphorical regularity.
Southern Beale
RE: cashless society and that “flip of a switch,” it seems like I saw this in a movie once.
The thing is, there will always be black markets and underground operations. So we can all be made outlaws if we’ve offended CitiBank with an errant blog post or two. Easy peasy.
Gin & Tonic
@ThresherK: efgoldman posted about it last night, said AL would be providing details.
ThresherK
I know it’s a couple weeks past, but if anyone wants to hear Tom Tomorrow interviewed as part of a local NPR show (i.e. much better than the Mothership), there’s audio here.
Kylroy
@Southern Beale: I remember very similar yutzes at the University of Minnesota in 1998. I think this is just an ongoing thing with people who think pissing off passersby is a sign of righteousness.
ThresherK
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks. I may be there and I may bring cupcakes.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: Has anyone ever seen mclaren and Ted Rall in the same room? Just sayin’.
Gin & Tonic
@ThresherK: I can’t make it, unfortunately.
Pee Cee
@Southern Beale:
Also, the fourth episode of the short-lived Max Headroom TV series back in the 80s:
kc
@Chyron HR:
Who is “the Great One?”
WereBear
I thought it was Jackie Gleason.
ThresherK
@Pee Cee: From my memory, isn’t that the one where Jeffrey Tambor says “Credit fraud? That’s worse than murder!”
Boy, that scene “Networked”* pretty quickly.
(Went from “far-out crazy” to “merely prescient”.)
Betty Cracker
@Southern Beale: I can report that open air fundamentalist preachers infested the campus of the University of Florida back in the late 80s. I remember one duo quite clearly even after all these years: Brother Jed and Sister Cindy. They specialized in insult preaching, wherein they slut-shamed passersby.
WereBear
Infamous!
Florida is a literal hot-bed of fundies. My little town had three radio stations, each thumping harder than the next.
schrodinger's cat
@Southern Beale: I have never seen it, and I have been on four campuses but none in the South, unless you count Maryland as the South. The closest was a pro-life Geology professor who would stand outside the Student Union holding a huge poster of an aborted fetus at lunch time.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
There was a kerfuffle in the knitting world a few years ago because someone at one of the credit card companies decided that a yarn club must be some kind of new internet scam, because why would anyone buy knitting yarn on the internet? So they canceled everyone’s pre-orders from one of the big companies (I think it was Blue Moon) and blocked the company from taking any new orders.
So, yeah, I’m much more concerned about getting screwed over by a private company, because it happens all the time.
different-church-lady
@Bobby Thomson:
I don’t go in rooms like that. Just sayin’…
Southern Beale
@Kylroy:
Evangelism by trolling. Can’t imagine they think it’s working.
Southern Beale
@Pee Cee:
I never watched that show. I think maybe I was thinking of that old Sandra Bullock movie, “The Net” (I think that’s what it was called, too lazy to look it up…)
Origuy
@Southern Beale: There’s often one in front of the San Jose main library, which also houses the San Jose State library. I’ve never stopped to listen to them.
Cacti
I always enjoy Ted Rall’s savvy political analysis, and his totally not-racist caricatures that give the black POTUS the biggest nose of anyone in any panel.
Liberty60
Given how servile the telecoms are with NSA demands for phone tapping, to the point where NSA has connections directly into the telecom switching stations, trying to parse out “what private credit card corporations can do” from “what government can do” is pointless.
For those who ask, I take Rall’s 4th panel to pose the question that if we are willing to tolerate the assassination of suspected citizens without court oversight or due process, what won’t we tolerate?
Mnemosyne
@Liberty60:
Yes, I’m sure it was the NSA that was behind Blue Moon’s yarn club being cut off. Just can’t trust those sock knitters!
trollhattan
Awful people writing about awful people–yup, that’s The Politico. I’ll be at the antifreeze bar with Pierce.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: Some time in early 2008 I met someone who mentioned she was with “Knitters for Obama.” When you’re half-paying attention to what someone is saying, that can give you whiplash.
catclub
I just went to FP, which I think used to be Foreign Policy, and it seemed that it has become a)optimized for iPhone and b) kind of like a Fox news version of itself.
Since it required login to go further, I stopped at that point, but wondered if anyone else has noticed,
or if my impression was mistaken.
StringOnAStick
@Betty Cracker: Brother Jed and Sister Cindy! I remember them at CO state U in the mid 1980’s, sadly with their small child in tow (what a sucktastic life that kid has probably led). At first the crowd did some fine jeering, and then it just got annoying. However, reading a story about them in the student newspaper revealed the subplot. The guy was taking advantage of his former frat bros by going around the country and using that connection to get a free place to stay (as required by the frat charter), but his whole goal was to be quite outrageous simply because it got students talking to each other about religion, and that’s where he felt he was effective. After that, I quit joining in the jeer-sessions and just avoided the asshole.
These hellfire preachers hit college campuses because they know their act will get attention, and in their martyrdom the end result will be kids talking to each other about gawd, and that’s the goal. They are a sideshow act with ulterior motives.
D58826
Senator Inhofe wants Congress to pass a bipartisan resolution to give Obama authority to use all necessary force against ISIS. I might suggest a name for this resolution – Tonkin Gulf the Squeal.
Have we learned nothing since 1964 or have we just forgotten everything that happened before Jan. 20, 2009. Yes there will be a military thread to defeating ISIS but most of the effort has to come from within the political and religious culture of the various sects in Islam. Even if Obama was a mysterious Kenyan Muslim he can’t solve 1500 years of religious warfare within the Muslim community. He also can’t solve the legacy of 500 years of colonial interference in the region, which is why western boots on the ground is a non -starter.
Of course the beauty of the resolution is Congress gets to pass the buck and dodge all responsibility while at the same time being free to criticize whatever it is that Obama is doing. All of the Gooper presidential contenders will have a secret plan that will work miracles but they can’t reveal the details until after they are elected. We saw that movie before also.
Applejinx
@Mnemosyne: Yeah.
I’m relieved my total internet collapse turned out to be my ISP derping (my foolishness can be somewhat excused by the fact that they have not had a problem up til now, for nearly TWENTY years) but not especially soothed.
Amazing story about the sock club, and yeah I totally buy that a bank wouldn’t have done that to a group of men. So many heads to smack upside, so little time…
different-church-lady
@StringOnAStick:
“The other day I was talking to a classmate of mine and she said, ‘Until those street preachers came along I had no idea God was such a dick!'”
Betty Cracker
@StringOnAStick: OMG, they have a website! I always preferred the campus Krishnas. They at least gave out free food. It was awful. But it was free.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Have to agree with you Betty. This was a great description of Rall.
Just don’t like Rall. He’s not funny, draws like a 4 yr old and his political commentary comes off like that of a 7 yr old. All and all not an endearing combination.
WaterGirl
@StringOnAStick: we had a preacher on the quad when I was in college in the 70s. I think his name was Jed, too.
raven
@WaterGirl: Yep, he was an asshole and we didn’t let him go unchallenged.
StringOnAStick
@Elizabelle: That whole ‘Budweiser in Crested Butte’ thing is interesting; I live in CO and I just heard about it a few days ago. I found the quote from the town’s police chief interesting about how anyone who isn’t a local “will not be allowed to enter the town” during the event; that doesn’t sit well with me or a lot of other locals either. I have 2 sets of friends who live there, and I plan to ask them what they think.
Crested Butte’s biggest “problem” as a resort area is it is quite a drive from Denver, and the closest airport isn’t exactly a big one nor is it easy to get discounted flights so getting there is neither easy or cheap. They had the foresight to preserve the town’s old mining town character by not allowing any construction within the Town of Crested Butte that doesn’t look like it was built way back when (you have to get a “certificate of appropriateness” to build anything, house or business). Of course, up at the ski area, anything goes and most of it is typical kinda ugly ski town construction a la 1980’s; local hipsters/rich hippies live in Town; absentee owners and those requiring McMansions live up at the ski area. Town still feels like a real community, though one that depends heavily on tourism; the ski area town feels dead even when it is busy since the concept of walkable resorts wasn’t around when it was built.
The booming ski economy seen at places like Vail has never come back to CB after the late ’80’s, thus the need for the town fathers to offer themselves to whoever has money, like Bud and this weird promotion that is about as antithetical to life in CB as anything I could think of. Being in a mild recession has become the local default state,.
WaterGirl
@raven: we mocked him!
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
So his job was done. He got at least one person to see the light.
raven
@WaterGirl: I’m sure you were gentle compared to the House of Chin crowd!
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig: Well, the food, if that’s the word I want, is execrable.
StringOnAStick
@WaterGirl: I guarantee you your preacher named Jed was the same guy. The campus newspaper story I mentioned noted that Bro Jed and Subservient Cindy spent most of their time traveling from campus to campus, all over the country.
I have agree about Ted Rall too, his badly drawn dudebro hectoring quit working for me once I de-firebagged/grew the hell up. I’ve decided to quit subscribing to a monthly comics magazine because of him, and also because of the growing number of essays about aging/aging parents/life sucks that seem repetitive and formulaic, plus not funny.
Jebediah, RBG
@different-church-lady:
Here in Southern California, I had DSL that would get slow or die in a gentle rain.
WaterGirl
@StringOnAStick: I don’t remember Cindy. Raven, do you remember Cindy being with Jed in CU?
Elizabelle
@StringOnAStick:
Muy interesting. I’d like to see more of those mountain towns. Not painted Bud Light blue.
PS: I like the word “sucktastic” applied to the bible thumpers’ spawn. Poor kid.
Anne Laurie
@Southern Beale:
Enemy of the State, back in Clinton’s day, with excellent performances by Will Smith & Gene Hackman. Lawyer tees off the wrong legislator, his bank accounts are electronically emptied and he’s spy-eyed for elimination.
I had good progressive sf-reading friends who thought the premise was ‘too extreme’ and ‘impossible with any survelliance technology that’s liable to be possible within fifty years… ‘
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
The Handmaid’s Tale did it first, but nobody noticed because it only happened to the women.
/small amount of snark
moops
Just watched Enemy of the State last week. Rall’s cartoon is pretty much like that, except with an actual plot and done skillfully.
I put Tom Tomorrow higher in rank because of his artistic skills, not because he has any better “jokes”.
ThisModernWorld has the same punchline in every comic: Strawman leads to slippery slope.
different-church-lady
@moops: Tom is inconsistent, but at least he always puts the effort out. Sometimes he’s funny as hell, and sometimes it’s just a big thud. But at least he understands the value of humor. I don’t think Rall is familiar with the phenomenon in any way, whether it it be in his work or his personal life. (Based on the little I’ve heard from him outside of his work.)
Culture of Truth
oh no! does Ted Rall still think Obama speaks the wrong language?
Culture of Truth
someday it’s possible the black president will take all of ted’s freedoms away and you’ll all be sorry