Steelers v. Bungles. GO STILLERS!
Kind of a big game.
by John Cole| 35 Comments
This post is in: Sports
This post is in: Open Threads
Here’s a fancy table sconce lamp I saw in a North FL restaurant this weekend:
We’re making French dip sandwiches from leftover Christmas prime rib. What are you up to?
by Betty Cracker| 181 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
The Bucs are leading the Saints early in the second quarter. If they’re not careful, they’ll fuck up their shot at the #1 draft pick.
As someone pointed out last time I mentioned the #1 draft pick, there’s no one coming out of the college farm teams this year who is a no-brainer #1 pick.
If it were me, I’d go with Amari Cooper out of Alabama. I’d be as eager to import Jameis Winston to my city as I’d be to volunteer to bury toxic waste. I don’t know much about the Ducks QB who just won the Heisman.
Who would you pick for your shitty team?
by $8 blue check mistermix| 246 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter
David Atkins’ take on Obama’s increasing popularity:
People were willing for a long time to forgive the Bush Administration its multiple failures and corruptions because at least until Katrina they never seemed to lack for certainty and resolution. You may not have liked what Bush stood for–in fact, you might have felt it was downright evil–but you never doubted that he had the courage to act on his beliefs.
Too often the Obama Administration has seemed listless, adrift and reactive. The President’s stands on immigration and Cuba, and even minor things like calling on only women at a press conference, show a President newly energized, engaged and empowered. He seems like a new man who has stopped caring about trying to be the most nuanced adult in the room. This is a common trap for liberals, culturally speaking, and it’s part of why liberals have a hard time becoming and remaining popular with the broader American public.
The new Obama is a more likable Obama. There’s a lesson to be learned there.
I’m skeptical. Presidential approval polls are fickle instruments that measure a whole bunch of things, including how the public feels about the President. The latest polls could be reacting to low gas prices or the economic recovery as much as they’re reacting to Obama’s supposed new toughness.
I always find it odd when progressive pundits long for their own version of an empty suit table pounder like GWB, because it shows a lack of appreciation for Obama’s real toughness. Obama’s signature achievement is the ACA, and it took steely determination and discipline to marshal the jelly-spined Democrats in Congress to get it passed. That’s when Obama was tough, not when he called on only women at a press conference.
This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads
As the Washington Post helpfully points out, it can no longer be considered “too early” for 2016 presidential candidates to announce themselves. Then-freshman Senator Obama launched an exploratory committee in January 2007, and announced his candidacy in February. Hillary Clinton announced her 2008 campaign in January 2007, “intentionally timed ahead of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address”. John McCain started his exploratory committee in November 2006, and held off his announcement till April 2007. Mitt Romney launched his first run in January 2007, formally announced in February, and never really stopped campaigning before reviving his “explorations” in April 2011.
He’s got at least one fervent supporter here, but it looks like Gov. O’Malley will stay on the sidelines with Bernie Sanders until Spring, per the Washington Post:
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s steady march toward a White House bid has turned into a wait-and-see grind, in which he will try to stay relevant in the national political conversation and await an opening to challenge presumed front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
Once he leaves office in January, his associates say, O’Malley may give a handful of policy speeches on national issues. He might make some appearances around the country, and he might look to compile his writings into a book or series of books that reflect his accomplishments as governor and as mayor of Baltimore.
It’s an uncertain and modest to-do list at a time when O’Malley is barely registering in national polls despite years of working to position himself in early nominating states.
Instead of putting pressure on Clinton with a January announcement of his candidacy, those close to him say, O’Malley and his supporters now think their best shot is to sit back and see how Clinton is received. By spring, his advisers say, the appetite for a fresher, more progressive alternative in the Democratic primaries will only have grown….
Yeaaah, that ‘Ralph Nader totally thinks O’Malley should run!’ easter egg is the political version of a flaming paper bag on the doorstep, isn’t it?
… Aides say that O’Malley has not made a final decision about whether he’s running and will not publicly discuss the timing of a potential bid. But short of a major embarrassment, his backers say, it’s hard to see how the exposure that comes with a White House run could hurt his prospects for future opportunities, whether as a vice-presidential nominee, Cabinet member, television commentator — or presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.
At 51, O’Malley is 16 years younger than Clinton and half a generation removed from other talked-about Democrats, including Vice President Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Virginia senator James Webb…
O’Malley cut his teeth in politics as a young aide to Gary Hart during the 1984 presidential election, in which he was dispatched to Iowa. Several of O’Malley’s biggest boosters are friends from that campaign, in which Hart, a senator from Colorado, came out of nowhere to become a serious threat to Walter Mondale, the former vice president, for the Democratic nomination. (Hart started the 1988 cycle as the Democratic front-runner but was derailed by a sex scandal.)…
And that’s one of the major counter-arguments to O’Malley running in 2016; before he got derailed by his own big mouth, Hart banged up Walter Mondale, who then did not win the presidency in 1984. It’s commonly assumed, after the fact, that no Democrat could’ve run against Ronald Reagan that year and won — especially not one who’d served as Jimmy Carter’s VP — but there were professional Democrats who didn’t exactly thank Hart for all his hard work in the primaries, either. Right now it doesn’t look like the Repubs have a second Reagan waiting in the wings, but in 1983 the “washed-up B-movie actor, former governor of the Nutball State” was not exactly perceived as a globe-bestriding colossus. Teddy Kennedy never got another shot at the Oval Office after he failed to derail Carter, and Hart has been more or less politically invisible since 1984. So O’Malley needs to remember a line from that tv series set in his own Baltimore stomping grounds: “You come at the king queen, you best not miss.”
Saturday Night Open Thread: Waiting GamePost + Comments (90)
This post is in: Post-racial America, Shitty Cops, Assholes, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, Just Shut the Fuck Up, Sociopaths
Last night, a bunch of cops and former cops paid to have the following Yodafied statement of disapproval flown over NYC in an apparent attempt to show their displeasure for the current mayor. All they have really accomplished to date is making themselves look foolish and evil, and now we know they can’t write a simple sentence.
Today, Patrick Lynch’s goon squad decided to up the ante, and after asking that all protests stop until the burial of the two dead officers so that the families could mourn, they pulled this little stunt:
Thousands of police officers from across the nation packed a church and spilled onto streets Saturday to honor Officer Rafael Ramos as a devoted family man, aspiring chaplain and hero, though an air of unrest surrounding his ambush shooting was not completely pushed aside.
While mourners inside the church applauded politely as Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke, hundreds of officers outside turned their backs on him in a show of disrespect for what they see as his support for anti-police protesters.
The rush of officers far and wide to New York for Ramos’ funeral reminded some of the bond after the Sept. 11 attacks and Superstorm Sandy. Vice President Joe Biden promised that the “incredibly diverse city can and will show the nation how to bridge any divide.”
Still, tensions were evident when officers turned away from giant screens showing de Blasio, who has been harshly criticized by New York Police Department union officials as a contributor to a climate of mistrust that preceded the killings of Ramos and his partner, Wenjian Liu.
Let’s remember what horrible things de Blasio said to create this “climate of mistrust”:
This is profoundly personal to me. I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he said that Dante reminded him of what he looked like as a teenager. And he said I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens. And I said to him, I did.
Because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.
And that painful sense of contradiction that our young people see first, that our police are here to protect us, and we honor that, and at the same time, there’s a history we have to overcome, because for so many of our young people, there’s a fear. And for so many of our families, there’s a fear.
Oh, the horror. He had to point out to his son that which is so widely known that it is backed up by repeated studies and so familiar to black and minority families across the country that this is referred to as “the talk“:
“If you are stopped by a cop, do what he says, even if he’s harassing you, even if you didn’t do anything wrong. Let him arrest you, memorize his badge number, and call me as soon as you get to the precinct. Keep your hands where he can see them. Do not reach for your wallet. Do not grab your phone. Do not raise your voice. Do not talk back. Do you understand me?”
In other words, “the talk” is exactly what you would think cops would want kids to be told- don’t be threatening, do what they say, don’t raise your voice, and for the love of everything holy, don’t reach for anything, even if they ask you, because this might happen:
Yeah. Mayor de Blasio really threw the police under the bus. Assholes.
And let’s remember what is so particularly ugly about this- this is motivated as much by the desire to not reform and to maintain the current institutional racism as it is the current contract talks and union elections.
Fuck Patrick Lynch and his goons.
This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Online outrage gives us a socially acceptable outlet for sadism. The lynch mob instinct is strong. http://t.co/REIkxpp7Br
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) December 23, 2014
I wore an onion on my belt, as was the fashion at that time. A little nostalgia from Emmett Rensin, at Vox:
Because I was 16 and because I was angry, too readily bored and too easily lonely, and because I wanted very badly to be accepted by anyone at all, I once spent the better part of an October weekend doing nitrous oxide in a San Diego hotel suite with a dozen or so hackers and internet trolls.
My presence wasn’t some freak happening. It was the result of some two years I’d spent running in trolling circles: an affiliate of Bantown, a sometimes-member of 4chan, and an early contributor to Encyclopedia Dramatica, the Wiki site where we documented our exploits (that is: where we documented every time we made somebody cry or scream for our own amusement). I wasn’t a hacker. I didn’t have the technical know-how for much of that. But I compensated for this deficiency with an over-abundance of juvenile sociopathic impulse. I was one of them, or at least I had the company t-shirt (bright yellow; red, MS-Paint style star with a missing pixel; ‘LOL DONGS’ printed across the front)…
Trolling isn’t quite so David vs. Goliath anymore. If it was adolescent then, more mean-spirited fun than outright malice, it is now a frighteningly adult enterprise where the joke is lost somewhere amid the sexual harassment and death threats. What began as the occasional doxxing of a Tumblr user or the occasional angry 4chan /b/ post leading to the uncoordinated harassment of a social justice blogger has grown into a series of ever more serious and well-organized public attacks…
For all of my desire to complicate the trolling narrative, to insist that at one time our motives were permissible if not strictly noble, to suggest that it was fun and harmless and surprisingly diverse, trolling as an impulse has always been largely the domain of white men — and especially of those acutely aware of a world where the theoretical foundation of their inherited power is crumbling. They — we — are all anxious. The difference is in how we cope. This fear does not deserve pity, nor does it take priority over the far deeper worries of the genuinely maligned, but there is something explicable in this alienation. It’s worth having a little bit of empathy if you want to understand where these people came from. Ten years ago, the worry was easily enough ignored: displaced into pranks and jokes and insistence on being above it all, somehow outside both systems, crumbling and ascendant. Trolling was escapism; a denial of one’s place as part of a threatening world by way of imagining a troll as its incidental trickster, here to expose all vanities in equal measure. Today’s so-called trolling is the opposite: it is an explicit part of these power dynamics; a reactionary force desperate to stop the world from changing in this way.
It’s why trolling isn’t really trolling anymore. The motive isn’t sublimated. The rage is bare. Trolls don’t expose the vanities of the world these days; the world exposes the vanity of trolls. I don’t know if it will ever go back to how it was…
Open Thread: “Confessions of A Former Troll”Post + Comments (88)