Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

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

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Friday Morning Open Thread: Predictable

Friday Morning Open Thread: Predictable

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cashless society paranoia rall

(Ted Rall’s blog)

.
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?

Reader Interactions

139Comments

  3. 3.

    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.

  4. 4.

    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!

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?

    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.

  8. 8.

    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.

  10. 10.

    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.)

  12. 12.

    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.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    @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.

    Yep. In the U.S., the suspect would have been a 9 year old girl with an Uzi.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Hmmmm…. I don’t know…. Must have been really important… I GOT IT!!! Pet insurance, how much do you pay per month?

  15. 15.

    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)

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    while discovering who Mike Allen has anointed “The Most Interesting Man in Politics“

    I’m going to guess ‘John McCain’.

  20. 20.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    The agenda today: find a password manager that works with Windows and Android. Right now it’s between Dashlane and LastPass.

  21. 21.

    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.

  23. 23.

    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!

  25. 25.

    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.

  27. 27.

    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.

  32. 32.

    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.

  36. 36.

    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?

  40. 40.

    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.

  43. 43.

    debbie

    I just read yesterday’s list of good happenings. Wow! Overturning that ruling on Obamacare seems pretty major.

  44. 44.

    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.

  46. 46.

    different-church-lady

    Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, actual activists are working for actual progress.

  48. 48.

    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.

  50. 50.

    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.

  51. 51.

    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.

  54. 54.

    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.

  55. 55.

    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.

  57. 57.

    Betty Cracker

    @FlipYrWhig:

    It’s like a mclaren post in vaguely comix form.

    That’s the best description of Ted Rall’s oeuvre I’ve ever seen. Thanks!

  59. 59.

    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’.

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @El Caganer: Quote from the linked article:

    Workshops will include suggestions on how to deal with such offers as beer or pepperoni pizza.

    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.

  61. 61.

    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/

  62. 62.

    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.

  64. 64.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Applejinx:

    I’m real skeptical this ‘your card is invalid’ will come from government. I think it’ll come from big business.

    You mean credit bureaus can jack you up? How long has this been happening? Has anyone told Ted Rall?

  66. 66.

    kc

    @Applejinx:

    I’m real skeptical this ‘your card is invalid’ will come from government. I think it’ll come from big business.

    Enabled and abetted by government.

  67. 67.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Applejinx:

    I’m real skeptical this ‘your card is invalid’ will come from government. I think it’ll come from big business.

    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.

  69. 69.

    different-church-lady

    I don’t know why: DSL modem damage?

    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.

  72. 72.

    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?’.

  73. 73.

    low-tech cyclist

    @dmsilev:

    @Alex S.: Rand Paul?
    [peeks at answer]
    Yep.

    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.

  74. 74.

    Chyron HR

    @kc:

    I believe the Great One’s preferred terminology is “Doing the bidding of their master in Washington”.

  76. 76.

    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.

  78. 78.

    FlipYrWhig

    @kc: Even if that’s what worries you, the no-cash restaurant at LaGuardia seems like an unlikely trigger for your concern.

  79. 79.

    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.)

  82. 82.

    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.

  84. 84.

    different-church-lady

    @FlipYrWhig:

    …there are these things called “jokes” that have setups and punchlines. Rall struggles with those.

    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.

  85. 85.

    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):

    Taking a more global view was George Sibley, who edited Crested Butte’s paper in the 1960s and today lives in Gunnison, a half-hour away.

    “I wouldn’t travel a block, let alone 30 miles, for a free Bud Light. But I’m still bothered by it, not so much for the way it is unfolding in our valley as for what it says about where our world is going. Going to the point: why do corporations have all the money in America, if not the world, while towns, cities, counties, states are starved? Why does a beer corporation have millions to blow on this kind of stupid foolishness, while true communities —wherever—cannot afford to house the people they need to remain a community?”

    – 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.

  86. 86.

    Belafon

    So Rall confuses private currency transactions with government document control and presents them all as a big government conspiracy.

  87. 87.

    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”.

  89. 89.

    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.

  92. 92.

    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.

  95. 95.

    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.

  99. 99.

    Pee Cee

    @Southern Beale:

    Also, the fourth episode of the short-lived Max Headroom TV series back in the 80s:

    Carter attempts to uncover the identity of the unknown buyer attempting to acquire Security Systems, the biggest security company in the world, but soon finds himself on the run from the police when his identity profile is erased from the government databanks

  102. 102.

    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”.)

  103. 103.

    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.

  104. 104.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker: Brother Jed and Sister Cindy

    Infamous!

    Florida is a literal hot-bed of fundies. My little town had three radio stations, each thumping harder than the next.

  105. 105.

    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.

  106. 106.

    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.

  111. 111.

    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.

  112. 112.

    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?

  114. 114.

    trollhattan

    Awful people writing about awful people–yup, that’s The Politico. I’ll be at the antifreeze bar with Pierce.

  115. 115.

    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.

  116. 116.

    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.

  117. 117.

    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.

  118. 118.

    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.

  119. 119.

    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…

  120. 120.

    different-church-lady

    @StringOnAStick:

    …the end result will be kids talking to each other about gawd, and that’s the goal.

    “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!'”

  122. 122.

    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.

  125. 125.

    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,.

  130. 130.

    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.

  133. 133.

    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.

  134. 134.

    Anne Laurie

    @Southern Beale:

    RE: cashless society and that “flip of a switch,” it seems like I saw this in a movie once.

    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… ‘

  136. 136.

    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.

  137. 137.

    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.)

  139. 139.

    Culture of Truth

    someday it’s possible the black president will take all of ted’s freedoms away and you’ll all be sorry

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