I’m going to miss Lovey, as she goes to her forever home next Saturday.
Why I Believe I am the Good Doggie You’ve Been Asking AboutPost + Comments (101)
This post is in: Dog Blogging
I’m going to miss Lovey, as she goes to her forever home next Saturday.
Why I Believe I am the Good Doggie You’ve Been Asking AboutPost + Comments (101)
by John Cole| 36 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
Hours after he was indicted on federal corruption charges, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez came out fighting at a press conference tonight, saying he was angry at prosecutors for twisting his close friendship with a Florida eye surgeon into a trumped-up case of wrongdoing.
In an eight-minute address delivered in both English and Spanish at the Newark Hilton, Menendez (D-N.J.) accused the federal Justice Department of buying into lies spread by his political enemies.
“For nearly three years, I’ve lived under a Justice Department cloud, and today I’m outraged that this cloud has not been lifted,” he said. “I’m outraged that prosecutors at the Justice Department were tricked into starting this investigation three years ago with false allegations by those who have a political motive to silence me. But I will not be silenced.”
What political motive is he referring to? Does he think the DoJ gives two hoots in hell about Cuba or Iran?
This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads, Sports, Rare Sincerity
for april fools im going to honor a dude who said "love everybody" while nailed to sticks by refusing to sell lilies to men who kiss wieners
— Big Gay Jeb Lund (@Mobute) April 1, 2015
Apparently there is no off-season for NFL owners being colossal putzes, per David Roth at Vice Sports:
… There are all kinds of reasons to believe that Ray McDonald is a creep and a bad person; there is circumstantial evidence that suggests something even darker than that. The Bears were able to sign McDonald to an affordable one-year deal last week because all those things about him are known by everyone who cares to know them; they were willing to do it because [Chicago Bears chairman] George McCaskey, and the new defensive coordinator and general manager he hired, cared less about those things than they did the possibility Ray McDonald might be able to help the Bears on defense. This is not a very complicated thing to understand, but it is not an easy thing to explain without making it sound like what it is.
This is where it gets difficult for people like McCaskey, who understand that they cannot say what they think—which is that this is a competitive sport, and that after weighing their options they concluded that the benefits of signing an accused woman-beating rapist outweighed the costs—but do not understand how else to say it. At the highest level, the NFL pays people like Frank Luntz, a messaging specialist for Republican campaigns, to write talking points for Roger Goodell, which is why Goodell says that football is “better and safer” six different times in his interview with Peter King… But to the extent that progress has been made after the NFL’s most recent year of staggering profit and staggering disgrace, it’s that they are now obliged to go through this public ritual.
That is it, by the way. Despite having to justify it, NFL executives can and will still do what they were always going to do… George McCaskey knew what he had to do where the Ray McDonald signing was concerned, and sort of attempted to do it. If it didn’t work—and it really, really didn’t work—it is only partially because McCaskey is a ridiculous know-nothing clown.
That said, this is very much the work of that man…
McCaskey did not try to talk to McDonald’s accusers because, “an alleged victim, I think—much like anybody else who has a bias in this situation—there’s a certain amount of discounting in what they have to say.”… Which is not to say that McCaskey felt any special responsibility; to the contrary, he took issue with the thought of it. “To me,” McCaskey said, “there’s an element of reverse sexism there.”…
More at the link. As Mr. Pierce has said in other context, one despairs of the rebranding.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Local Races 2018 and earlier, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment
Dave Weigel, in Bloomberg Politics:
On Thursday, Vermont Senator and potential 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will become the first member of the upper house to stump in Chicago’s mayoral election. Sanders will officially endorse Chuy Garcia, the Cook County commissioner running a progressive campaign against Mayor Rahm Emanuel. One practical reason for the visit: United Airlines was routing him through the Windy City…
Sanders will campaign for Garcia and for Susan Sadlowski Garza, both of them opponents of the neoliberal governance that Emanuel has brought to Chicago. On the left, ending the former White House chief of staff’s reign has become the year’s first great cause. The reasons are many–Emanuel’s fumbling experiments with privatization, the closure of 50 schools, the subsequent school bond program with Goldman Sachs, the friendship with a new Republican governor who is using executive orders to take on unions.
To their great frustration, Emanuel’s opponents are struggling to get the press to cover what they know is true–that the “fiscally responsible” Emanuel has presided over five credit downgrades. In Tuesday night’s mayoral debate, Emanuel portrayed Garcia as a typical liberal spendthrift who promised to undo fiscal pain without ever explaining how he’d pay for it. “You’re walking along all over the place like typical career politicians promising everything like ‘Hanukkah Harry,'” said Emanuel. That narrative has defined the race, not only in Chicago’s media but in the reports that have been filed by national reporters.
“That 15 minutes I spent patiently laying out the facts for the Economist’s reporter why under Rahm Emanuel bond markets have puked over the prospect of investing in Chicago, but Garcia actually has a history of closing fiscal holes, was wasted,” wrote Rick Perlstein, the progressive historian and Chicago resident, over the weekend. “She couldn’t see past her knee-jerk ideological prejudices.”…
“I am not going to Chicago to attack Rahm Emanuel,” said Sanders. “I’ve known him for many years. I believe in my very heart that we need a political revolution in this country, because virtually all political power rests with very wealthy people. And I see in Chuy Garcia a candidate putting together the coalition to fight that.”…
Sanders, in the Senate, has been trying to draw the same contrasts between the parties in budget votes and amendments “I’m the ranking member of the US Senate budget committee, and I’ve just seen a Republican budget that threw 27 million people off health insurance, okay?” he said. “That is what Republicans consider to be responsible. I don’t accept what the right wing accepts to be responsible. I think it’s time for austerity of billionaire class. I’m obsessed with a statistic I saw just the other day: Did you know that over the last two years, the 14 wealthiest Americans have made $157 billion?”…
Apart from the neverending battle, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Open Thread: Bernie Tries to Move the WindowPost + Comments (159)
This post is in: Humorous, Open Threads
Via Boing Boing, this, from Google Japan:
Most scary: the seeming universal nature of hipster affect.
Talk amongst Ur-selves.
by John Cole| 50 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Your daily PSA.
Also, for some reason, the puppies have decided that the BEST time to play is on top of me as I try to fall asleep. I had to grab them both by the collar and hold them in place as I went to sleep last night.
I’m sitting here chuckling about the fact that GEG6 is seeing this beautiful angelic puppy in all the pictures, and HAS NO FRIGGING IDEA that I am unleashing an energy bomb in her household. Heh.
by Elon James White| 128 Comments
This post is in: This Week In Blackness
Oh, Indiana. You know you have problem when even NASCAR doesn’t support your ridiculous policies. In fact, there has been so much backlash to the religious freedom law that Governor Mike Pence is starting to backtrack:
Mr. Pence has said he wants to modify the law, but he has not indicated how he could do so without undermining it. He rejected claims that it would allow private businesses to deny service to gay men and lesbians and said the criticism was based on a “perception problem” that additional legislation could fix. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be helpful to move legislation this week that makes it clear that this law does not give businesses the right to discriminate against anyone,” Mr. Pence, a Republican, said at a news conference in Indianapolis.
Good luck on clearing up that whole “perception problem.”
Team Blackness also discussed troublesome tweets from the new host of the Daily Show, comedian Trevor Noah; rules for the team’s second marriages and we breakdown the delightful drug-fueled song “Trap Queen” by Fetty Wap.
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Sure, Indiana: Your Discrimination Is Just A ‘Perception’ ProblemPost + Comments (128)