Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Not all heroes wear capes.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

After roe, women are no longer free.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Year of the Goat

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Year of the Goat

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Gung hei fat choi — Happy Lunar New Year 4712!

The NYTimes has a very cool photography feature on “Celebrating the Lion Dance“:

… For Jason Lam, lion dancing was an easy transition from martial arts, and from middle school to college. He was a regular practitioner of the quick-footed routine performed under heavy and intricate costumes. Like most lion dancers, he took to the stage during anniversaries, birthdays, store openings and parades for celebrations like the Chinese New Year, Feb. 19 this year.

While studying at the International Center of Photography last year, Mr. Lam decided to step outside the lion costume to view the tradition he said serves as a hinge between his Asian ancestry and American upbringing. Friends in San Francisco, where Mr. Lam is from, put him in touch with the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute in Manhattan. There, he spent nine months documenting a brotherhood of young martial arts enthusiasts and performers expressing their heritage…

“Lion dancing is our way of not only paying tribute to this ancient culture,” Mr. Lam said. “It is also our chance to hold on to the past while living in the present.”

I’m assuming today’s Google Doodle references this Wood (or Green) Sheep Year. From what I’ve read, this is due to be a generally prosperous and peaceful year… especially for us “horned animals” (the Mandarin sign is variously translated as sheep, goat, or ram).

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    Mnemosyne

    So is it a sheep or a goat? Our contact in Singapore said it’s the year of the goat, but BillinGlendale says his wife called it the year of the lamb. So confused.

  3. 3.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    Officially, it is the Year of Animals That Say Baa. Sheep aren’t from Asia, and we Asians tend to think of them as goats with weird hair.

  5. 5.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Amir Khalid: I said goat to the wife, she said it’s lamb. She said she talked to her brother(#2) in Korea and wished him a happy new year(goat, sheep, or lamb).

  7. 7.

    Zinsky

    Cool dancing but the zodiac stuff not so much. I recall Carl Sagan’s comment that the birthing table your mother laid on had more gravitational influence on your life than where the planets were in the sky when you were born.

  16. 16.

    Mustang Bobby

    Lunar New Year is the one holiday they don’t celebrate with artillery in South Florida. Every other one, though, it’s duck and cover.

    Speaking of South Florida, we have a freeze warning for inland Miami-Dade County. Yeah, that happens every so often. Up in northern Michigan, they’re expecting wind chills down to -29.

  24. 24.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: I didn’t know about it, I’ll try it next year. Though this year, I did get hugs from my wife and the kid.

  31. 31.

    Botsplainer

    Thermometer is well below zero and there’s nearly a foot of snow on the ground, thus proving that Algore is fat, has a big house and flies on planes.

    Haha, global warming! Suck it, libtards!

  32. 32.

    Keith G

    @Mustang Bobby: Growing up in the 60s adjacent to the corn fields that surrounded greater Toledo, Ernie Harwell’s voice was ubiquitous. Although I wasn’t especially a Tigers fan (my guys were Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle), for me Harwell’s voice was the voice of baseball and of summer.

  34. 34.

    Botsplainer

    @JPL:

    I wrapped the exterior hose nipples yesterday – hope it helps. Heard the aerator struggling on my septic spray system, and have feelings of dread about mechanical breakdowns, as tonight is supposed to drop to 10-15 below.

    I’m gonna struggle to keep the house above 60 today.

  35. 35.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    It’s 10° this morning here in my corner of NoVA, wind chill –7°. Teens today, low tonight supposed to be around 0°. Freakin’ ridiculous.

    Housecat is doing zoomy racing exercises.

  37. 37.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Keith G: You and I were probably neighbors. I grew up in Perrysburg, and listening to the Tigers on WJR on a summer evening on the back porch with a cold bottle of Stroh’s while the lightning bugs did their dance of love in the dwindling twilight will always be summer to me, too.

  41. 41.

    JPL

    Deflategate is getting interesting. NFL has fired an official who removed a ball in order to sell it. When another official noticed a ball missing, he replaced it with a ball that was approved…then it gets murkier. The official who took the ball noticed what was going on and tried to put the ball back in. hmmm

  42. 42.

    satby

    It’s +3 here, more blizzard conditions because of lake effect snow, and all the schools are closed. Near white out looking out my windows. Wind chill is about -17 they just said on the radio. I’m supposed to drive to Chicago today,where it’s cold but sunny, but the 20+ miles of blizzard before I hit clear weather around Valpo is discouraging me.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Botsplainer:

    It’s all relative. The average low this time of year is 32° here, and we’ve had only a couple of days this month when the high was above that.

  47. 47.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Mustang Bobby: I grew up on the east side of Detroit. I remember my dad working in the yard with the radio in the kitchen window playing the game. The batter stood there “like a house by the side of the road.”

  48. 48.

    henqiguai

    Wan Chi Ming’s Academy – my first Hung Gar school! We were called “the crazy Black guys from DC” because we commuted to The City on weekends for class; among other reasons. They had so much fun with us.

    And it’s the year of the goat; other cultures may differ.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    Your morning outrage.

    Giuliani made the claim to a crowd of conservatives — including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — at a private dinner Wednesday night in New York City, wondering whether Obama really “loves America,” Politico reported.

    “I do not believe — and I know this is a horrible thing to say — but I do not believe that the president loves America,” he said at the 21 Club, a former upscale speakeasy in Manhattan, Politico reported. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

  52. 52.

    Tommy

    @Iowa Old Lady: St. Louis guy. Summer. Radio. KMOX. Jack Buck. Cardinals. My mom’s dad would tell you if he was still around he put headphones on my mom’s belly, when I was still a fetus, so I could hear Buck call a game. The love of baseball in my family goes that deep!

  53. 53.

    Botsplainer

    @Baud:

    This is the same sort of white outraged voice that screamed about black intellectuals being communists disloyal to America in the 40s-60s.

    If white Christian conservatives treat you like shit for their own gain or even “just because”, you’re supposed to say “thank you, America is wonderful” because Jesus(spit) will make it all right in the afterlife.

    He’s a disgusting, wretched, small person.

  57. 57.

    Tommy

    @Botsplainer: Growing up there was one rule never broken. Had to be at the dinner table at 5:30. As a family, we’d sit down and have dinner. Talk about our day. World events. You name it. I didn’t agree with my family on many issues that might come up.

    When this happened my father had a phrase I think Giuliani might need to learn. We can agree to disagree.

    Because I don’t view the world the way Giuliani does I don’t love America? Really. The dude could not have made it through dinner in my house in the 70s and 80s.

  58. 58.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    Someone needs to ask Tom Brady how, considering he’s held a football probably hundreds of thousands of times every year for however many years he’s played pro, he didn’t know something fishy was going on. He is clearly lying.

  59. 59.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Tommy: We lived in St. Louis when I was age 6 months to 4; 1953-1957. My first major league game was the Cardinals at Sportsmen’s Park. I remember bobbing around in a swimming pool in a Mae West jacket listening to Harry Carey — yes, he called the Cardinals back then — on KMOX “The Voice of St. Louis.”

  61. 61.

    JPL

    @debbie: ESPN has been wrong all along so take my comment with a grain of salt. It appears that there was only one ball that was deflated a lot and who knows whether he ever touched it.

    The only think for sure is an nfl official was fired and there is mud on the face of the nfl.

  62. 62.

    chopper

    @debbie:

    when you preface your statement with “i know this is a horrible thing to say”, maybe you should have some second thoughts about saying it.

  65. 65.

    Tommy

    @Mustang Bobby: Sportsmen’s Park. That is old school. Before my time on this earth but I am jealous. Also love your shout out to KMOX. I am not that old, younger than you :). I used to listen to radio. Like a few years ago. KMOX was a news station. They have gone the way of Rush Limbaugh. I can’t even tune in.

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    If one more wahoo says “so much for global warming” when commenting on the snow I think I’m going to go nucular.

  68. 68.

    Gene108

    @Baud:

    That is sooooo 2008. Pretty much all of VP-candidate Palin’s speeches was about how Obama was unAmerican, not like the rest of us, did not love America like her and other Mama Grizzly Bears, etc.

    I thought the Right has moved on to calling Obama a dictator and/or monarch, who has no regard for the Constitution and the rule of law. He has ruthlessly expanded Presidential powers, ie does not do what the white men – McConnell and Boehner – tell him to do and thinks the President is a co-equal office to a Congress run by white men.

  69. 69.

    MomSense

    @Gene108:

    Speaking of Palin, when did it become conventional wisdom that she gave a fantastic VP acceptance speech? It was mean but it wasn’t moving, interesting, or intelligent. I heard Matthews tossing around how great it was like it was something everyone accepted.

  70. 70.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    Just how much credibility does Rudy Giuliani still have, anyway? I’m aware he still draws an audience on the right-wing lecture circuit. But has the general public taken him seriously since the end of his time as mayor?

  73. 73.

    JPL

    @MomSense: It was the same thing with the debate. Can I call you Joe? I’m not going to answer that, I’m just gonna talk about Alaska and oil. The truth becomes whatever they want it to be.

  74. 74.

    Tommy

    @MomSense: How about it. I never was a weather watcher. I figured if I wanted to know the temp I could do this strange thing. Go outside!

    But now I have an app for that.

    I will admit to looking at it all the time. It is really cold here. I don’t recall the last time it was in the 20s. It is 4 right now. Where I live that isn’t the way it is supposed to be. But some fool will go out and say because it is really cold in southern Illinois, climate change isn’t real.

    Loons …..

  75. 75.

    Botsplainer

    @debbie:

    Speaking of petty, spiteful and mean, my 98 year old, nothing left in the brain sainted white wingnut granny is in the hospital, my mother devotedly hanging next to the husk.

    Getting positive, as opposed to palliative, care.

    I guess she’s going to burn through another 20-40K in Medicare money uselessly this month in addition to the 6 figures she’s undoubtedly run through just in the past 18 months.

    The irony here is that to listen to her in the past, the lazy one who never worked but has been drawing SS and Medicare for nearly 40 years, colored folks on welfare have ruined everything.

    When I told my wingnut mother about white Christian conservative plans to turn Medicare into a Val-Pak coupon for people under 55, she was noncommittal, and said that they really didn’t mean it. Meanwhile, granny gets the best of everything.

  76. 76.

    MomSense

    @Tommy:

    The fools who say this are so smug and condescending when they reveal that they just don’t understand climate change or the difference between weather and climate.

  77. 77.

    Kathleen

    @Tommy: When i was a kid in St. Paul I loved listening to Ray Scott on the radio announcing Twins games. He had an understated delivery that conveyed the drama of the moment. His pauses were the best: “Swing and a miss. (Pause). He struck him out”. One of the best baseball announcers ever in my opinion.

  79. 79.

    Gene108

    @MomSense:

    She gave a lot 50+ year old men boners, therefore she was awesome. The beginning and ending of her appeal.

    She took care of her health, ie ran/jogged, so she was easy on the eyes, hunted and could cut meat off a kill and pissed off liberals.

    What was there not to love and elect her to the second highest office in the country?

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    @MomSense:
    It had a very strong red-meat flavour which the Republican base loved, as was reported at the time. I don’t recall anyone reporting that Palin said anything interesting or intelligent. In fact, in all her years of fame beyond Alaska, I don’t believed anyone has ever had occasion to report that.

  81. 81.

    Kathleen

    @MomSense: NBC/MSNBC has a fetish about its “news” people pimping their wingnut cred (Brian Williams listened to Rush Limbaugh to hear what “real Americans” who had been shut out were saying).

  82. 82.

    MomSense

    @Gene108:

    I guess she proved how superficial most journalists are if they liked her speech.

    @Amir Khalid:

    I can understand why the Republican base loved it but this was Chris Matthews talking about the speech.

  83. 83.

    Tommy

    @MomSense: I like to educate myself. Read more than I care to admit on climate change. I honestly don’t understand anything other than the most basics. But that does not mean the issue isn’t clear. Science settled.

  85. 85.

    debbie

    @Botsplainer:

    they really didn’t mean it

    That’s a tough situation, but you’d think there’d be some kind of self-awareness at the end.

    I was sitting with my dying mom in a nursing home during the Schiavo mess. By then, she was a full-fledged Foxie, but watching the coverage, she admitted that the GOP, Jeb, et al were wrong to intercede.

  86. 86.

    rikyrah

    An anti-education push gets more aggressive
    02/18/15 12:58 PM—UPDATED 02/18/15 02:06 PM
    By Steve Benen

    Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) caused a bit of a stir last week when he referred to “the Twitter” and made a series of odd beeping sounds that were intended to mimic online discussion. It suggested the Republican might not be as tech friendly as he likes to believe.

    But Bush’s comments immediately beforehand were largely overlooked. What he said would “light up the Twitter” was his condemnation of public education systems, which he blasted as “government-run, unionized monopolies.”

    We rarely hear this kind of talk about other parts of the public sector. For example, Republicans don’t usually run around chastising police departments or fire departments as “government-run, unionized monopolies.” Conservatives do, however, direct this ire at public education.

    It was a reminder that as Republican politics becomes more radicalized, GOP opposition to public education is becoming more obvious. In Wisconsin, for example, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) already won a brutal union-busting fight directed at school teachers, and he’s now going after higher education.
    [A]s he woos supporters around the country for a possible presidential bid, Walker (R) is once again picking a fight against a powerful institution at home – public universities.

    Walker’s new budget proposal would slash $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years. That’s a 13 percent reduction in state funding.

    As Rachel noted on the show earlier this week, “To put it in perspective, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison … says that if she just outright eliminates the school of nursing, and the law school, and the business school, and the pharmacy school, and the school of veterinary medicine, if she outright eliminates all of those schools from the Madison campus, that still would not be enough to make up for what Scott Walker wants to make up from that campus.”

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/anti-education-push-gets-more-aggressive

  88. 88.

    Amir Khalid

    @MomSense:

    I can understand why the Republican base loved it but this was Chris Matthews talking about the speech.

    That might not be a difference.

  89. 89.

    Pogonip

    In our family it’s the year of the goat, because my father and son were both born in the Year of Animals That Go Baa and they’re both stubborn!

  92. 92.

    Comrade Mary

    Better year for Rats in health, relationships and work? It’s about fucking time. (Thanks, sheep-goat-ram energy!)

  94. 94.

    JoeShabadoo

    @Mnemosyne: the Chinese word 羊/yang/goat/sheep itself is broad.

    It would be like if you met an Eskimo and said there was snow outside. He would look at you and wonder what exactly you meant by that.

  95. 95.

    henqiguai

    @JoeShabadoo(#94):

    It would be like if you met an Eskimo and said there was snow outside. He would look at you and wonder what exactly you meant by that.

    Yeah, I bet a *lot* of us saw what you did, there… :)

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