We’ve lived through worse years, it seems.
What’s on the agenda for the day?
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!
Innocent people don’t delay justice.
It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.
A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.
We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.
You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.
Bark louder, little dog.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.
Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!
These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.
Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.
It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.
Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
Everybody saw this coming.
“woke” is the new caravan.
Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?
If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.
NotMax
Worse, yes. More enduringly, debilitatingly, pound-head-on-desk dispiriting, that’s a toss-up.
Suffern ACE
You know things have kind of gone down hill for your country when you realize that the Russians are probably twice as optimistic as your fellow countrymen and women.
raven
A few weeks back there was a conversation here that led me to revisit “Bloody Williamson” and an addendum that my grandfather wrote about the his perspective of the people and events described in the book. He was of the generation that was too young for WWI and too old for II. It took me back to the time just after his wife had died and we were driving from his apartment in Leisure World up to Hawthorne. I was one pissed off long-haired, anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-just about everygoddamn thing you can think of character. He asked me about my world view and that was it “the fucking world is going to hell and things have NEVER been worse”. He wasn’t judgmental or condescending, he just sort of chuckled and described just a bit of what it had been like to spend 30 years in the coal mines of southern Illinois through the two wars and the depression. That is all.
Mike E
@NotMax: Heh, I gotta re-up my Obamacare by tomorrow. Good thing I don’t have to call them…my head has already reduced that desk to matchsticks :-(
OzarkHillbilly
When I was a kid and Aunts and Uncles came to town I lived for the stories they would tell of growing up during the Depression in a family of 8 kids. How they would hang out in the alley just so they could smell the aromas of things they could only dream of eating wafting from the bakery. How soup was the mainstay meal because more often than not all Grandma could afford to get from the butcher was a bone. How my old man used to hide his lunch because his sandwiches were made with home made bread unlike the rest of the kids.
And they were lucky, and they knew it. Grandpa was working. Julia was working. Joe was working. Gus was working. Tony was working. Walt was working. OK, so Grandpa and Julia were the only ones with full time jobs, and yeah Tony and Walt had to quit school just so they could help, but Bernie and Dorothy were able to finish school and by Dog my old man (the baby of the family), well, he was going to go to college, no matter what.
That they could even think that way, during those times… Of course, WWII came along and kind of messed up all their plans, but even then they never lost sight of where they were going.
Cervantes
@Mike E:
The desk thing sounds painful.
Feel better. The next two years (at least) will not be much fun but we’ve survived far worse.
Some causes can pay off even in the short term: re-educating a school board? organizing municipal voters? taking back a House seat? When people are ready to start fighting back, they can pick a cause, and pace themselves, and do what they can.
Supine is for doormats.
Mike E
@raven: My college friend and I would have these discussions often, or certainly more than anybody that we knew at the time…his mom was brutalized as a child by the Japanese occupiers in Curacao during WW2; my mom was “hiding” in Italy after escaping Nazi round up in her home country. Neither woman lived to see 9/11, but his mom would tell him how lucky we had it being surrounded by two oceans…tho, he said she was sure we’d get a taste of it someday. My mom never made predictions, but kinda did variations on the old saw, “Those who forget the past…”
Poopyman
Pretty much describes my father’s family, and no doubt millions more. That was when a college education was a sure ticket to a good job.
Other than inheriting some of the 1%’s money, what’s that ticket today?
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes:
What, you mean fighting small battles really matter? Who’da thunk it! Seriously that is where it all begins, one school board seat at a time, one county council seat at a time, etc.
@Poopyman:
My step-daughter married it.
Bystander
I think the reason teabaggers are whining louder than usual is because their b/s was cut out. Big banking and business got what they wanted. POTUS got 24 nominees thru to beef up an administration that’s tried to operate with its hands tied behind its back. But so far as I have heard no personhood rider, no move to strip financing to any school with a policy promoting homos (formerly, non-discrimination policies) or that has failed to adopt an open carry policy to protect the children.
Mike E
@Poopyman: My daughter’s 1st attempt at school had to be put on hold so she can get her head right, but now her state college is demanding repayment of tuition after advising her to withdraw. She’s working and trying to get into the local technical school, but now faces a $4k bill due this Friday. I never had to deal with any of that shit…
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My old man was the baby too. He, his brother and brother-in-law were all on the crew of the Crosby when the war started. As fate would have it only dad stayed onboard for the entire war in the Pacific. The he went to college.
Raven
@Mike E: I got caught in some shit like that when I came home. It wasn’t tuition but the fucking year contract for the private dorm I lived in because three years in the Army didn’t matter, I couldn’t live off campus. I flunked out and they wouldn’t give me my money back. That’s how I lost the badass stereo I brought home from the Nam. My old man paid the bill and I hit the road.
Raven
@Mike E: Whoo, tough stuff that.
WereBear
So true. Any student of history can pick a worse time for themselves!
For me, it’s knowing I’m not looking up from my work to see the Mongols are arriving.
Baud
@Cervantes:
Thank you. Have a this.
Poopyman
@WereBear:
Good point! Keep your head down.
(That may not be the point you were trying to make.)
Baud
I’d be curious to see a racial breakdown of the optimism poll.
mai naem
My dad was from a large family(10 kids) and he was the eldest. They started out dirt dirt poor and slowly pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Anyhow, my second youngest uncle was sent abroad to university. He finished his accounting degree but failed his CPA exam. My dad who had been paying for this schooling apparently slapped him after he failed the exam – hard enough that he has he still has dental problems on that side of his face. My mom was talking about this recently – apparently my uncle used to write home and begging for money, bitching about how he didn’t have the “right” clothes and “right” everything to go to college. This is my one uncle who even though he has a very good income , has always lived beyond his means trying to keep up with the Jones’.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: At some point after it started my old man was heading for the recruiters when Grandpa stopped him. He said something along the lines of “They already have Joe, and Gus and Walt. If they want you too, they are going to have to draft you. Right now you are going to stay in school.” So he did, and by the end of ’42 he was drafted into the Army Air Corps. Sorry Gramps. At least his 2 years of college got him a 2nd Lieutenants bars.
mai naem
Cool ad. When we lived in England, we liked shopping at Sainsbury’s. Stores always looked clean. Sainsbury’s was pricier than Tescos but not ridiculously priced and you felt like you get your value for money.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike E: My wife’s mother was born in prison during a bombing raid in the Spanish Civil War. Her father never came home from the fighting and Monse never forgot what it was like to be well and truly hungry, to have absolutely nothing to eat.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
My mom told the story of walking with her dad to get an ice-cream cone at least eleventy billion times. It was the one memory of her Depression-era childhood that stayed with her until she died.
satby
What a beautiful as Anne Laurie! Thanks for FP ing it.
Mike E
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t understand people who can’t even recognize a contemporary example of this, even when they walk/drive past it on a regular basis.
After watching The Roosevelts I’m pretty sure FDR’s era was the high water mark when it comes to societal empathy, where great suffering was needed to even move the needle enough for anybody to care for their fellow citizens.
Betty Cracker
Well, I survived the drunken cookie baking marathon, but now my brother is making himself scarce, leaving my sister and me in charge of his two little kiddies until we can track his ass down!
Sis and I aren’t accustomed to curtain climbers; sis never had kids, and my only child is practically grown at 16 and was always preternaturally self-entertaining and mature. A six year old boy? Alien creature to the likes of us! Halp?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Take him outside to play in the dirt with bugs and slugs and all kinds of “UGGHS!”
debbie
Nice to hear the soundtrack from “True Grit” again.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike E: There has been a whole slew of cities and towns in Florida (and elsewhere?) banning/severely restricting the feeding of the homeless, because, you know, Jesus was all about property values.
Josie
@Betty Cracker: Is there a dog he can chase around with?
Mustang Bobby
@Cervantes: That plan worked down here in Miami, but not the way I wanted it. A Tea Party Republican leveraged his visibility on the school board to win a seat in Congress this year, defeating a Democrat. And his replacement on the board will be appointed by Gov. Scott.
I think I’m gonna need a bigger desk.
Mike E
@OzarkHillbilly: Here too…a local ministry in Raleigh defied the ordinance and the news coverage of their run ins with police resulted in our city council “modifying” the rule. The mayor even came out for a food line event!
ThresherK
Mom was born the day before FDR’s first election. Dad was also a Depression baby.
Each grew up in ordinary American cities, middle class, and didn’t have the “gated experience” of not knowing how others lived. They weren’t The Little Rascals, but they knew some kids like that. And also winos who bought Aqua Velva because of the alcohol in it.
Open topic: On my last update of AdAware I somehow didn’t stop Lavasoft from cramming its Web Companion onto my PC. That let MS put junk on my Office 2010 Starter I didn’t want (Click to Run, anyone? Autoupdate Word and Excel?) , and also move my default web browser and search engine. Ugh.
Zinsky
There is some interesting discussion of the Christmas Truce of 1914 on The Agonist blog, under the Jukebox thread. Link here:
http://agonist.org/jukebox-because-its-getting-to-be-that-time/#comments
Betty Cracker
@Josie: Yes — my sister’s half-grown lab mix has been a godsend. But nothing entertains the little bastard for more than five minutes. Gah. I’m thanking FSM for the 10,000 time I had a girl!
Althea
On the Agenda of Evil this morning, Dick Cheney defines/justifies torture on MTP.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: Send them outside to play. If it’s raining, get out the Twister game.
Elmo
It’s my day to be melancholy. I’m traveling for work, spending the day in hotels and planes. It’s the second anniversary of Sandy Hook and of my Dad’s death.
And it’s my birthday.
I have reservations for one at one of the best steakhouses in Phoenix tonight.
Okay, done whining now.
Pogonip
@Josie: No, the dog has a doctor’s excuse. No gym because she sprained her tail.
Pogonip
@Elmo: Happy birthday regardless.
Elizabelle
@Elmo:
Happy Birthday Elmo. You can tip a glass to your dad at the steakhouse tonight.
And make a birthday resolution to come out for a DC area meetup sometime in 2015.
Elizabelle
@Pogonip:
“No gym” for the dog. I love that.
Xenos
@Betty Cracker: Cartoon Channel. Maybe there is a Pokémon marathon or something on that you can use to hypnotize the 6 year old.
Buddy H
• Why does every photo I see of Ted look … off? I’m not sure how to describe it; his facial expressions seem vaguely demented. He obviously has tremendous self-esteem, bolstered by his father’s belief that he was sent by god to personally save the republic, and he models his appearance on classic heroes like Joseph McCarthy and Thomas Dewey, but there’s just something off about his whole persona, and his voice is like air escaping a balloon.
• Are there cats in heaven? I hope so. I love Mittens, our pretty polydactyl girl (extra toes). And my wife is not really crazy about dogs; she’s somewhat like Elaine from Seinfeld. They bark at her, and she tenses up. When she learned what the Pope said, she expressed a desire to be warm in the other place. I told her our cats might be there to keep her company.
• A woman was shot to death in Schenectady. They caught the guy; a disgruntled ex-friend. In the online version of our newspaper, the article is followed by reader comments, mostly people who knew and loved her saying R.I.P. One asshole (white guy) comments “will there be demonstrations in the streets about it? I think not!” First of all, rather rude to politicize this sad news item, and second, if a petty criminal robs or shoots someone, you don’t demonstrate in the streets. But if an agent of the government, a cop, shoots or chokes someone, you hold demonstrations. But he’s a white guy who feels compelled to leave his comments after every story involving a black person’s tragedy.
Elizabelle
You’ll have to translate from “Britcook” speak, but Nigel Slater in The Guardian with two festive and hearty vegetarian entrees: a rich mushroom ragu — like Beef Bourgignon — over butternut squash, and an eggplant casserole.
Aubergines and 250 grams throughout, plus King Oyster and brown chestnut mushrooms (have you seen those?), but you could follow the spirit of the recipes.
Look yummy for a cold night. Not totally vegan because there’s butter in the squash dish, but adaptable …
satby
@Elmo: Happy Birthday Elmo. Steak dinner sounds excellent, and tell them it’s your birthday so they sing to you. You deserve that.
greennotGreen
@Buddy H: WTF is it with white people? I’m white, and, although I didn’t participate in it or was even alive during most of it, white people have done some pretty crappy things. Native America genocide, anyone? Claiming people as property and raping as common use of that property? Not caring about Ebola until it came to our shores? And if memory serves, Hitler was white.
I don’t think we white people should be making any noise about being rained on. Other people have been rained on, and many times it’s because we’ve been pissing on them.
Linda Featheringill
Happy Birthday, Elmo.
And many more.
You probably won’t be alone for some of them.
Pogonip
@Buddy H: It couldn’t be heaven without a cat purring happily!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: When my sons were tots, if memory serves me, I once said why can’t you watch tv like other children. haha
Pogonip
@Elizabelle: She’s on restricted wagging for the next couple of weeks.
WereBear
My sympathies. It’s never fun to get hijacked.
I’ve been wrestling with the purchase of Things for Mac — the $50 price tag is a shock to me, used to $1.99 apps for my iPod Touch. But it’s the best at what it does and with “free” software we still pay… in annoyance.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: I really don’t like his recipes. They all seem so complicated that it is hard to tell what a dish is supposed to be. I like my recipes to be short, half a dozen or so ingredients. With his, I am constantly fighting to not lose my place. Maybe it is just my ADD coming thru.
Anyway, the eggplant recipe sounded interesting and I thought I might try and simplify it
WereBear
@Althea: In my naive youth, I’d read about the sadistic tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and think I’d not see their like in my lifetime.
But I was wrong. The only thing restraining Cheney is being born in Wyoming. Our system may not work as well as we’d like… but it seems it is good for something.
WereBear
Absolutely. Because it wouldn’t be Heaven, otherwise!
GregB
Cheney is in the perfect spot to get teed-up for some real hard hitting gotcha questions.
“Are you proud to say you helped use the same tactics that got Imperial Japanese war criminals charged during WWII? “Etc.
We know that won’t happen.
He’ll be subjected Enhanced Interview Techniques wherein Chuck Todd will fondle his balls with velvet gloves.
Who needs to watch that atrocity?
OzarkHillbilly
@GregB: Now if Colbert and Cheney were on the show at the same time, that would be worth watching.
Violet
@Althea: Is anyone going to watch Meet the Republicans with Darth Cheney so we don’t have to?
JPL
@Violet: Why ruin a perfectly lovely day! Maybe Raven will since he has the stamina to put up with Morning Joe.
danielx
@Poopyman:
Judging from what I’ve read so far in James Risen’s book At Any Price, an almost surefire method is to convince the government you have some sort of tool or technique that is needed for the permanent war, then watch the money roll in. Having the tool or technique actually work is desirable but not necessary. (See Montgomery, Dennis.)
Project for the day, other than moving the truckload of firewood in the driveway, is ripping some vinyl LPs so that I can put them on CDs. Since my sister requested that I perform this for Soul of a City Boy by Jesse Colin Young and it’s a lengthy and labor intensive operation, I figured I might as well get some other recordings done as well. Would that it was as quick and easy as popping a CD into the computer and firing up iTunes, or for that matter recording a vinyl LP to cassette. In the latter case you had to play the whole LP including the parts you didn’t like, but at least the tracks were recorded individually. Ripping vinyl songs to individual MP3s is a pain in the ass, also known as a labor of love.
First good laugh of the morning – listening to the spousal unit arguing with Zoey the Menace about going in or coming out. Sorry, hon, that’s another minute of your life that you’ll never get back spent in arguing with cats about making up their minds.
Mike E
@Violet: Culchah o’Troof will document said atrocities.
Amir Khalid
I had a less-than-pleasant encounter at a food court today. A young white dude was standing off to one side of the cash register, apparently still not sure what to order. So, having already made my own choice, I move in ahead of him and make my own order.
At this point the YWD begins berating the guy at the register for being racist: taking an order from me, “your fellow Malay”, ahead of him. YWD throws in some, ahem, free compliments about Malaysia and, while taking out his money to pay, the ringgit. (His accent, I am sorry to report, is American.)
I tell YWD that it’s his own fault he didn’t step up to order if he’d made his choice.
YWD replies with some strange remark about me staring at the menu screen like I didn’t know how to read. (He himself was already standing before the menu screen when I got there.) Then he resumes berating the remarkably patient cash register guy.
I considered telling YWD how childish he was being; but I didn’t think he would admit it even to himself, so I didn’t bother.
Iowa Old Lady
@Violet: If anyone does watch, please post the names of the sponsors so we can contact them.
The real tell will be whether the non-cheney people on the show use “torture” or “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
The least the MSM could do is abide by their own idea of “balance,” and have someone speak in support of the torture report when they also allow a war criminal to defend himself.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid:
Somehow or other, I already knew that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WereBear:
Hitler, Stalin and Mao were competent blood crazed dictators, unlike Cheny. Which makes Cheney truly vile in my opinion – even he knows the crap he pulled like torture and the Iraq War were pointless.
Amir Khalid
@Elmo:
My 35th and 53rd birthdays were marked by infamous plane crashes, so I understand some of what you feel.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: I suppose it is too much to hope for that they might use the original German “Verschärfte Vernehmung” when referring to EITs
MomSense
My son recommended the series Black Mirror on Netflix and I have to say it is certainly thought provoking.
It’s a sci-fi that deals with human nature, privacy, and technology. I just watched the second episode and damn there was a great soliloquy but I won’t say much more lest I spoil it for you.
ThresherK
@WereBear: I don’t know that I’d call it “hijacked”. There must be some more appropriate word for this, compared to, say, Conduit Toolbar*.
But at some point I don’t wish to see Lavasoft slide down into the hole where Micrsoft lives, with the bandwidth-eating, disk-churning, continual “UpdateBackgroundAllTheTimeHappyFun” settings becoming more hidden and difficult to disable.
We are getting broadband at our new place–joining the 20-oughts in what will be CY 2015–and the only way I’m letting my wife use it is with a special laptop I rescued and setup with Linux. Otherwise it’d be a support nightmare for me.
*I’ve earned a few drinks and dinner invtiations destroying that POS from friends’ computers.
Violet
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Cheney was also not officially in charge, like the aforementioned dictators. He’s more of a Rasputin figure.
ruemara
@Mustang Bobby: That’s why it will work if Dems do it. It’s been working for conservatives for decades. Of course, it seems follow through is a little tough for Dems.
I’m editing a certain rendered animation and testing it against voiceover. It just needs the model of the kidlet and the girlfriend from my ex so I can get them into the shot. So, far, close to 12 seconds of footage, which jibes with my estimate of at least a 22 second short. It’s beautifully foggy here in NorCal and I have to wait for stores to open because I need to go scrounge some change conversion or I won’t have any clean clothes. FedEx has been here 7 days out of the past 8. It seems that her visits are returning to the old length of time, where the record was 14 days of her staying over. If I wasn’t mentally and emotionally exhausted from every other thing, I’d be mad enough to kick the roomie out, but I’m over a barrel. I need a roommate and in a college town, I’m not attractive enough to get another in a short space of time. On the plus side, the new recipe for candied bacon is not too shabby.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Elmo: Happy Birthday, Elmo.
Elmo
Thanks everyone for the kind bday wishes. Funny how even a virtual space like this makes it less lonely.
MomSense
@Elmo:
Happy birthday!
Kathleen
@Elmo: Happy Birthday, Elmo.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: I, too have only 1 child, a daughter who sounds a lot like yours. She did, however, have 2 boys, and my observation is that anything related to computer games or sports will keep boys occupied. Does he have a favorite TV show or DVD?
ruemara
@Elmo: Hey, Happy Birthday! Have a steak and enjoy being out and about today.
Tree With Water
Wartime Americans in 2014 must eat shit or admit their complicity in waging unprovoked war.
We must eat shit as we rationalize their support of torture.
We must eat shit as the party of rule or ruin lies to face about virtually everything.
I, for one, won’t eat that shit. People who do are vicious birdbrains. In particular, people who defend American torture are no better than child molesters, no less sick. Not those who commit the torture, mind you. I specifically refer to those who defend it, by word or deed. Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as domestic enemies, because I know better.
Cervantes
@Mustang Bobby:
Well, in that case, may I interest you in any of these fine desks I have available? Roll-top, stand-up, sit-down — custom-made, too, if you like. Genuine wood, highly rectangular, guaranteed to make a fine sound upon impact.
I can get them for you wholesale.
Cervantes
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Far from pointless.
mellowjohn
@debbie:
don’t remember it from True Grit, but it was also used in a recent Guinness ad. it’s an old baptist hymn called “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
http://youtu.be/rx0MRawkrj4
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
There is no help. You’re doomed.
Also, from what limited evidence I have, it appears your brother is quite clever. Feel free to follow him out of a maze any time.
WereBear
@mellowjohn: I used to sing it in church. Pretty easy tune.
Betty Cracker
Finally tracked little bro down and repatriated his rug rats. Jaysus, that was bracing. Thanks for the child wrangling advice. We opted for putting the kids in a carb coma with pancakes. Now I’m back home, once again pinned to the sofa by two dogs who missed me.
PurpleGirl
@Elmo: Enjoy the steak dinner. Happy B-day.
One thing that I remember from my time as a paralegal was some of the traveling I did and that I was able to do dinner in the better hotel restaurant.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Mike E: Mike, did I miss something in all my reading of history? When did the Japanese occupy Curacao, which is in the Caribbean? Was it possibly another island? In the Pacific?
Mike E
@phoebes-in-santa fe: Burma! I panicked ;-)
It was the Dutch East Indies…dunno where Curacao came from.
1weirdTrick
Dan Carlin’s History podcast (so popular that he’s turning it into a iTunes pay thing) — is doing an incredible job of describing WW I. And the first four episodes are free. In episode 3, at 1:18:00 or so, is his description of the 1914 Christmas truce.
http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-blueprint-for-armageddon-iii/