Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Giving up is unforgivable.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

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

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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

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

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Gamer Dork / Open Thread: It’s All Fun & Games Until Someone Brings An AR-15 to the Pokemon Championships

Open Thread: It’s All Fun & Games Until Someone Brings An AR-15 to the Pokemon Championships

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Not the Onion (this may need to be a category). Per Kotaku:

Two men who drove from Iowa to Boston for the Pokémon World Championships were arrested Friday after threatening violence over social media against attendees of the event, according to the Boston Police Department.

Kevin Norton, 18, and James Stumbo, 27, were arrested on several firearm-related charges. The official Pokémon site lists a Kevin Norton and a James Stumbo, both from the U.S., as invitees in the “masters division” of the world championships for the Pokemon Trading Card Game.

Private security at the Hynes Convention Center, where the Championships were taking place, were also aware of the threats and stopped the two men when they attempted to enter on Thursday. Police detectives seized their car and upon delivery of a search warrant on Friday found within a 12 gauge shotgun, an AR-15 rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They then arrested Norton and Stumbo that afternoon in Saugus, Massachusetts…

Is is too soon to say “I blame Rep. Steve King”?

Reader Interactions

159Comments

  4. 4.

    leeleeFl

    As regards the subject of the post, HOLY CRAP! And the obligatory guns are not the problem, amirite?

  8. 8.

    Gimlet

    Might be interesting to consider how the evolution to a “failed state” is going. From Wiki

    According to the political theories of Max Weber, a state could be said to “succeed” if it maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders.

    When this is broken the very existence of the state becomes dubious, and the state becomes a failed state. The difficulty of determining whether a government maintains “a monopoly on the legitimate use of force”, which includes the problems of the definition of “legitimate”, means it is not clear precisely when a state can be said to have “failed.”

    Typically, the term means that the state has been rendered ineffective and is not able to enforce its laws uniformly or provide basic goods and services to its citizens because of (variously) high crime rates, extreme political corruption, an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics, and cultural situations in which traditional leaders wield more power than the state over a certain area.

  11. 11.

    Cacti

    He took his time about it, but Harry Reid has finally announced his public support for the Iran Deal.

    That makes 27 Senate Dems in favor of the deal.

    Remaining undecideds are:

    Bennet, Blumenthal, Booker, Cantwell, Cardin, Carper, Casey, Coons, Heitkamp, Manchin, Mikulski, Murray, Peters, Stabenow, Warner, and Wyden

  12. 12.

    WereBear

    As a gadget fiend, I have found such joy in my iPad mini. Took it to the lake yesterday where my FIL is staying for a week, curled up in a comfy chair (still not feeling up to more than that) and felt the world shrink to a size I can handle.

    A perfect match of form & function for using Kindle and Oyster, and iBooks and Overdrive, and making wishlists on Goodreads and otherwise turning it into my Magic Book (it is vast! It contains multitudes!)

    While blog commenting on the iPad has its quirks, websites work much better than with the iTouch’s tiny screen and matchbox-sized keyboard, and it can still fit in my purse. For the curious, it also exemplifies the truism that tablets are far more for the consumption of content than its creation.

    I got it by trading in an old computer at PowerMax.com, so it’s not the latest and the greatest, (used iPad mini 2 retina.)

    But, as someone who has come late to the tablet scene, it is to me.

  13. 13.

    mai naem mobile

    Has the Donald the insult candidate dissed Pokemon yet? Or is this still Obama’s fault?

  14. 14.

    Cervantes

    @Gimlet:

    An excellent point — and when it’s discussed earnestly in the media the way Somalia, for example, is discussed, then I just may eat my hat.

    Which reminds me: when we call other countries “failed states,” it’s often useful to ask if they “failed” spontaneously or were undermined, or even destroyed, by foreign intervention.

  15. 15.

    kindness

    Huh? There is such a thing as a Pokeman Trading card game?

    Gotta get out from under my rock more…..

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel

    @WereBear:
    I was gifted a used Android tablet and find it moderately useful. I don’t mind surfing with it, I read books with it (although I still prefer a larger format or better still REAL PAPER) it is so convenient to take along & read from. But I find typing on it a PitA so for stuff like this my chromebook is much nicer & not much bigger.

  18. 18.

    Jay S

    Does anyone have a clue about Boston firearms law? The PD claims unlawful possession of weapons and ammunition. Will this stick?

    Was this a true threat or a couple of gun fetishists without a clue? The ammunition amount seems worrisome but not totally off the charts.

  19. 19.

    Schlemazel

    @kindness:
    I think there is a cartoon, I had no idea there was a game – it is hell getting old & left out. Case in point: I can’t raise any ire over the girl in the donut shop because I have no ide who the hell she is or why I should care. But that is as it should be, it wouldn’t be the kids music if I was bopping down the street to it.

  22. 22.

    Cervantes

    @WereBear:

    Not sure that’s a truism.

    Anyway, here’s an unrelated question. Suppose that P1 is the fraction of tablet-users who only “consume content” without creating any, and P2 is the fraction of people in general who do the same. What’s your guess as to the values (absolute or relative) of the two fractions? (Needless to say, I have not the vaguest idea.)

  23. 23.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @kindness: it’s existed for a while-I remember my nephew playing it around 2000. I didn’t realize that kids were still into Pokemon these days. Much less adults.

  24. 24.

    Cacti

    @Full metal Wingnut:

    Ugh Booker you slimebag. What is it with my state.

    I feel ya, I live in blue Washington now, and neither of the Dem Senators here have voiced their support.

    One of the downsides to being the home state of Boeing.

  25. 25.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @Schlemazel: Started out as a video game from Japan. Then cartoon, then trading card game. I didn’t realize there were adults who were actually into it. My nephew got sick of Pokemon around 4th grade.

  26. 26.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @Gimlet: Ask the Google for this:

    A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”
    Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

    Find the link on website globalresearch . ca. Read it, and weep. This is by a former economist from Reagan’s cabinet, who says in the harshest, bluntest terms, the how and why of America as a Failed State.

    He sums up the article thusly:

    Roberts: The American people are lost in la-la land. They have no idea that their civil liberties have been forfeited. They are only gradually learning that their economic future is compromised. They have little idea of the world’s growing hatred of Americans for their destruction of other peoples. In short, Americans are full of themselves. They have no idea of the disasters that their ignorance and inhumanity have brought upon themselves and upon the world.

    Much of the world, looking at a country that appears both stupid and inhumane, wonders at Americans’ fine opinion of themselves. Is America the virtuous “indispensable nation” of neoconservative propaganda, or is America a plague upon the world?

  27. 27.

    Gimlet

    @Cervantes:

    Certainly the issue of legitimate exercise of physical force is questionable. States rights to block Medicaid expansion and lack of progress on infrastructure seem to make one wonder as well.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @kindness:

    Not just a thing, but a common focus of conventions. My teenage niece and nephew went to one last year here on the opposite coast, so this is a pretty freaky story for me. Really, people are getting so worked up about kids’ games that they’re issuing death threats over them?

  30. 30.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @Cacti: Tried to score a job out there back in the day, perhaps in another life.

    But yeah, depressing all around. I’d expect a few holdouts for anything, but 27? Come on guys and gals.

  31. 31.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @Schlemazel: Heh, I’m being a bit of a dick, don’t mean to. I’m into a couple of things that can probably be considered geeky, like Doctor Who. I just honestly thought Pokemon was mostly for children.

  32. 32.

    WereBear

    @Schlemazel: Mr WereBear suggested I get a Chromebook for taking out of the house to write in cafes and such. It’s great for that. Full keyboard and even works offline for email and writing and even book reading if I set up Kindle beforehand. And costs less than laptop insurance.

    Electronic computing is one thing we are rich in.

    And cats. :)

  33. 33.

    bystander

    I’m probably going to regret asking, but just what is the competition for there to be a championship in Pokemon? I get a championship chess tournament. Championship skiing contest. But Pokemon? How accurately you can act like a Japanese cartoon character?

    I’ll bet Weber would have liked to have considered a Pokemon championship in his calculus of a failed state.

  34. 34.

    Schlemazel

    @Cacti:
    I believe the great Western philosopher, Cindi Lauper, expressed it best, money changes everything. Sadly, its true for Dem in far too many cases also.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @WereBear:

    I probably have the exact same model since I got mine a few years ago. I prefer my Kindle Paperwhite for longer reading times because the bright screen of the iPad can bug my eyes, but overall I really like it for basic websurfing/reading. It’s also really good for magazine reading, which is something the Kindle is terrible at. Sometimes you can electronically borrow magazines from your public library using Overdrive if you don’t want to have to subscribe.

  36. 36.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): some people are into it, and some people are *into* it. I know some fairly normal geeks who like to cosplay and go to conventions. But then there are some people for whom it’s basically their entire life. That’s not good-makes them take shit a little too seriously.

  37. 37.

    Cervantes

    @HeartlandLiberal:

    Read it, and weep. This is by a former economist from Reagan’s cabinet, who says in the harshest, bluntest terms, the how and why of America as a Failed State.

    I appreciate this latest testimony of his (as described) but have not read it. (1) Does he appreciate his former patron’s role in the process? And (2) he was, at best, a pseudo-economist.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @Full metal Wingnut: The boy next door walks my dog and sometimes we watch Pokemon. He’s starting fourth grade so it’s nice to know that my long nightmare of watching Pokemon is almost over. I’m the closest thing he has to a grandmother, so I’m being patient.

  41. 41.

    WereBear

    @Cervantes: There are far more consumers than creators.

    Such as the people who do everything on their smartphones. It’s easy to consume on such a device. Possible, but not practical, to create.

    I run a blog and I’m working on a book. Can’t be done without a computer. Unless one has a freakish tolerance for frustration.

  43. 43.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @bystander: I believe it’s a card game. Similar to Magic The Gathering-you have characters who can fight and whatnot. Although I know some people who would tear me a new one for daring to compare MGT to Pokemon.

  45. 45.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @JPL: Yeah, that’s about the age where children’s programming goes from cute to intolerable flashes of color and screaming. Whatever happened to watching Arthur?

  47. 47.

    Cervantes

    @WereBear:

    This may be a truism:

    There are far more consumers than creators.

    And I agree. I guess I was wondering if you thought it was more true of tablet-users than people in general.

    Anyhow, thanks.

  48. 48.

    MomSense

    My youngest loves Pokemon and has the cards and lots of games for his game boy. His brothers will play with him for nostalgia.

    I used to take the kids and their friends to lots of card game tournaments back when the cards first came out. I may still be able to do the Pokemon rap.

    WTF were these gun nutz even mad about?

  49. 49.

    Zinsky

    Paul Craig Roberts is a certifiable survivalist, right-wing loony whose abstract and paranoiac screeds are as popular on Alex Jones’ Prison Planet website/vomitorium as on liberal sites. The man’s car went off the rails right after 9-11, I’m afraid. I’ll bet he is stockpiling food and ammo this afternoon and searching the Bible for hidden codes on how to become rich quick…

  51. 51.

    Comrade Dread

    Just another day in America where any jackhole with delusions of grandeur can buy enough guns and ammo to rival a third world country’s military.

    At least the cops stopped this one. (Since there is no mention of their death, I’m assuming they’re white?)

  52. 52.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemazel: There have been “niche communities” for even the most obscure hobbies since at least the Victorian era. (I read Trustee from the Toolroom even before I discovered sf fandom.) Difference these days is, the intertoobs let even very young people, no matter how small or isolated their meatspace communities, find & bond with each other.

    Because marketing, Pokemon would’ve been a successful kid’s merch-trading game regardless. But “social media” allowed adults to form viable groups big enough to have conventions / scholarships / history…

    And, this being America, the inevitable intersection between ‘niche gamer community’ and ‘angry young white guys with guns’, alas.

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @Full metal Wingnut:

    I just honestly thought Pokemon was mostly for children.

    Bear in mind, though, that the people who were playing it as kids when it first came out have their own kids now. I guess it’s a good enough game that the kids don’t give it up when they grow up.

  54. 54.

    WereBear

    @Cervantes: I guess I was wondering if you thought it was more true of tablet-users than people in general.

    Oh, I get it now. Yes.

    Tablets users know they will be dealing with a lesser keyboard, no trackpad, and limited productivity software. But they get a higher res screen, easy access to watching video, reading, and the like.

    I got it for the reading, myself. But can now see how well it works as a personal Netflix player, for instance.

    Tablets are for fun.

  55. 55.

    Suzanne

    @WereBear: I am with you on the consume-on-the-tablet thing (though this site STINKS on the iPad and it was actually better before the redesign). I use the computer to actually create stuff and use the tablet to read the Internet (all of them, Katie) on the couch or in bed or on the toilet—yeah, I went there, and y’all do it too so don’t judge. I use the iPad for taking notes or doing field reports, too, but it is in no way up to the level of power or precision I would need to do architectural drawings.

  56. 56.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @JPL: That’s a lucky boy next door – a dog to walk and a lady to watch TV with. I think that’s probably better than a grandmother!

  57. 57.

    JMV Pyro

    @bystander: It’s a series of video games and a card game. Those have a pretty active competitive scene as far as games go. The show is just a glorified and never ending advertising for the other products.

  58. 58.

    Anne Laurie

    @MomSense:

    WTF were these gun nutz even mad about?

    Well, they were experienced enough to qualify for the “Masters” tournament. Between that and the guns, I’m gonna take a guess it was some variant of MAH AUTHORITAH YOU MUST RESPECKT IT!!!

  59. 59.

    dmsilev

    @WereBear: I spent all of last week without a computer thanks to a very inconveniently-timed hardware failure (had to have been crunch time; couldn’t it have waited 3 weeks until I’m on vacation?), and used a combination of a phone and an iPad to get by. OK for some things (email, mainly, except that long messages are tedious to write), passable for reviewing documents except for complex diagrams that really needed a full-sized laptop screen at a bare minimum, and completely useless for some of the things I had to get done. “Those CAD drawings you sent us a while back are good, but we need some additional details on this bit here. Can you do up a detail view?” “Umm, can you wait a week?”.

  61. 61.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Suzanne: I’m not judging! But then I’m not announcing the status of any batteries either…

  62. 62.

    Roger Moore

    @WereBear:

    Such as the people who do everything on their smartphones. It’s easy to consume on such a device. Possible, but not practical, to create.

    David Hockney would disagree. He does, or at least did, serious artwork on his iPhone; I think he’s switched to an iPad for the bigger screen, but the principle is the same. For many other people, the question of whether they’re creating or only consuming depends on how you treat social media. Plenty of people use their camera phones to take pictures they post on Instagram or wherever. If you count that as creating content, then lots of people create content on their phones.

  64. 64.

    Betty

    Kind of a mystery. On Friday evening, France 24 reported that one of the Americans who overcame the gunman on the train was shot and seriously wounded. Then on Saturday morning, it appeared that just one of the heroes was hurt, and he was cut with a knife. Then late Saturday, France 24 reported that a 4th American had been involved and was shot and seriously wounded, but he demamded and received anonymity. I have heard no further reference to him by any news source. Has anyone else heard about this? Any guess about the apparent desire for secrecy?

  65. 65.

    Dolly Llama

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    Heck, they televise poker.

    This use of “heck” makes me wonder if you’re not using the handle “Tommy” as a sockpuppet to troll us elsewhere. If so, you’re doing the best job in Internet history.

  69. 69.

    Dolly Llama

    @Betty:

    Any guess about the apparent desire for secrecy?

    Because he doesn’t want every waterhead in the world calling him now?

  71. 71.

    Southern Beale

    I mean, here we are in America today where people can openly talk about hunting immigrants at the border like they’re fucking squirrels or something, and you can go to a Florida gun range which has a full-service bar. But we need more freedom.

    We need more freedom.

    Except for women’s uteri. Those can’t be free.

    Riiight.

  74. 74.

    MomSense

    @Anne Laurie:

    …I’m gonna take a guess it was some variant of MAH AUTHORITAH YOU MUST RESPECKT IT!!!

    I guess no place is safe but I had higher hopes for the nerdy venues.

  77. 77.

    Mark

    You know, I could see this happening at a Candyland tournament, but Pokemon? Come on guys, get a grip!

  81. 81.

    Jay S

    @MomSense:

    WTF were these gun nutz even mad about?

    For some definitions of mad I’d say Pokemon and guns.

    Mostly I suspect this was a poor attempt at a joke or attempt to impress/intimidate others. Who knows what they intended to do with the guns, but I doubt it was shooting up the convention.

    These clowns appear to be a few bullets shy of a full magazine, if you get my drift.

  82. 82.

    redshirt

    @MomSense: We need people to come to Maine. We need jerbs!

    A paper mill in Jay just laid off 300 out of a workforce of 1000.

    Things just keep getting worse in rural Maine.

  84. 84.

    bystander

    Card game never dawned on me. Thanks, all.

    You have to wonder if anyone in Boston would have thought a Pokemon championship would require the same level of police presence as an NWA concert.

  87. 87.

    David Koch

    Senator Harry Reid ‏@SenatorReid 4h4 hours ago

    I strongly support the historic agreement with Iran and will do everything in my power to ensure that it stands.

    709 retweets 694 favorites

    Joe Cirincione @Cirincione

    A major win for the forces of reason.

    Retweets 12 Favorites 12

    Barak Ravid ‏@BarakRavid 3h3 hours ago

    Harry Reid’s announceement about supporting the Iran deal means one thing – Bibi, it’s over. Time to move on

    62 retweets 27 favorites

  88. 88.

    MomSense

    @redshirt:

    We are going to need reinforcements then!

    Yeah the job situation is bad. I don’t see anything promising in the immediate future either.

  91. 91.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I’v never been to the Iowa State Fair, but my husband said we couldn’t see Sherlock tonight because it was all State Fair. He turned it on to show me and there was a picture of food and a woman saying:

    “The chocolate complements the pork very much.”

    Oh. My. God.

  92. 92.

    JPL

    @Betty: This is from the telegram The man has dual citizenship

    The mystery identity of the first heroic passenger to wrestle a weapon from the high-speed train gunman can be disclosed for the first time by The Telegraph, David Barrett writes.
    Mark Moogalian, a 51-year-old professor at the Sorbonne, tackled Ayoub El-Khazzani during Friday’s bloody incident aboard an Amsterdam-Paris international service.
    Mr Moogalian, who lives in Paris but is originally from Midlothian, Virginia, US, is the previously unnamed man who came to the aid of “Damien A”, 28, a French banker who confronted El-Khazzani.
    The academic acted instinctively to protect his partner Isabella Risacher, who was also aboard the Thalys train.

  93. 93.

    Anne Laurie

    @redshirt:

    Things just keep getting worse in rural Maine.

    You Maineiacs should never have let NH take over the premium slot as Massachusetts’ exurban playground & dumpsite….

    (/snark)

    (except, seriously, till 1820… )

  95. 95.

    debbie

    @WereBear:

    i too love my iPad mini. I think a regular iPad would be too big and clumsy to hold. I’ve been laid low a couple times for a month or so, and the mini is the perfect size to hold up in bed for hours, whether it’s reading, emaililng, or wasting lots of time on QatQi.

  96. 96.

    redshirt

    @MomSense:

    Yeah the job situation is bad. I don’t see anything promising in the immediate future either.

    It’s really grim for certain regions. Portland is doing great. York is doing great. But rural counties that once relied on paper mills and attendent industry? F’d. Everything will close eventually, it seems. Entire cities hollowed and killed – visit Rumford Maine for a taste of modern dystopia.

    And I think of those dollars that once went to Rumford Maine that now go to China and I wonder if no rich person or collective of rich persons can see they are destroying the very customers they need to support their empires? Eventually no one can afford your products, Overlords. What then?

  97. 97.

    currants

    @Jay S: Don’t really know (IANAL) but I do know you need a license. For the gun and the ammo and probably other components, if I am not mistaken. It’s all listed very helpfully here under PUBLIC SAFETY. I like that.

  99. 99.

    redshirt

    The super scary thing about this is these were huge, gigantic, titanic NERDS.

    When 98 pound weakling nerds can bring military heat to a card game convention, we’re all in trouble. Bullies, especially.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @debbie:

    They used to threaten to check bags back when people first started doing it in the 80s, but I think it was just too much of a hassle for them, so they don’t bother anymore. They just raised ticket prices to make up for it.

  107. 107.

    pluege

    talk about walls! All the states with reasonable gun laws need to put up walls to keep out the yahoos from states with loose or no gun laws.

  108. 108.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    He accidentally solved a few of them when he botched his vetoes. Bunch of legislators are probably kicking themselves that they didn’t pass more bills.

  109. 109.

    Baud

    @MomSense:

    I read about that. Maybe someone can tell him he’s been promoted to governor of a larger state. He might buy it and save Mainers some grief.

  110. 110.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Schlemazel:

    This is my new reader.

    Less likely to be infected with nasties, lasts weeks on a charge. I just now need to take time to convert what few Kindle books I have over to PDF. But no blue backlight to mess up my circadian rhythim, and it comes with a stylus where I can mark up docs.

  113. 113.

    aimai

    Christ, we actually kknow people who were there because their cousin is like number 4 in the world as a pokemon champion. I thought that was so ridiculous I wasn’t paying attention tothem but fuck, I guess it was serious.

  114. 114.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Dolly Llama:

    What the heck put me in moderation?

    This use of “heck” makes me wonder if you’re not using the handle “Mnemosyne” as a sockpuppet to troll us elsewhere. If so, you’re doing the best job in Internet history.

  116. 116.

    SatanicPanic

    @MomSense:

    I guess no place is safe but I had higher hopes for the nerdy venues.

    Gun ownership has all the hallmarks of nerddom- obsessive collecting, insider jargon, dress-up conventions, etc.

  117. 117.

    Feathers

    I don’t have a permit in Mass, but my brother did at one point. It involves an interview with the local police department. I almost got a permit because you need some level of gun permit (pistol?) to legally carry pepper spray, which I did in the 80s. My brother said not to bother though, because I was a girl and as long I didn’t show it off and only pepper sprayed bad guys, the cops were sure to cover for me. This all may have changed in the last 25 years or so. But the sense that you can only have a gun if you are totes cool with the town police remains.

    My Pokemon story – I worked at a store that sold laserdiscs (fuckyeahlasderdiscs!). Our Pioneer rep was really annoyed at how hard his bosses were flogging this Pokemon stuff that they were about to start carrying. How much swag did I want? Called my friends with kids and none were interested. We all still laugh about how kids college funds could have been augmented by all the pre-release Pokemon collectibles we could have had for the not turning it down.

  118. 118.

    Feathers

    One note for people who might not know Boston geography. The Hynes Auditorium, where this all was to have gone down, is right on the same street, a little over a block from where the marathon bombings happened.

  122. 122.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: 110?! Sounds positively temperate. It was 120 here last week.

    To answer your question seriously: YES, absolutely. I love winter weather and have never dealt well with the heat. I also have a state full of uneducated, armed crazy people and we represented by Jeff Flake and John McCain. If I could afford it and I could convince Mr. Suzanne (who could be convinced if it was affordable), I would definitely move. Trouble is that we love our jobs and our house.

  123. 123.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Schlemazel: It also has a slot for a 32 GB microSDHC (why they didn’t add microXDHC support is interesting.) This things had a big price drop when it first came out, and apparently lawyers love it.

  125. 125.

    rikyrah

    MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Trump Fans ‘White Americans Who Feel Left Out of Obama’s America’
    11:27 am, August 22nd, 20152229

    Prior to Donald Trump‘s (not-so-) massive Friday evening rally at an Alabama football stadium, MSNBC’s Joy Reid offered her take on who composes the majority of the billionaire developer’s support base.

    “I think what you have with Trump, and what I see as his base, is not just the far-right, but the right,” she told Hardball host Chris Matthews, “and it’s a lot of Republicans who are disgruntled with the Republican party.”

    According to Reid, there’s a racial element here as well:

    It’s white Republicans. It’s mostly white male Republicans and it’s basically white Americans who feel left out of Obama’s America; who are peeved with the fact that their preferred party can’t seem to beat Obama; and who want to hear a guy be able to stand up and be as politically incorrect as they can’t be. They’d get fired from their jobs if they put on Facebook some of the things Trump said. But here’s a guy who can say what he wants to. Be a man’s man and get out there and be the kind of Ronald Reaganesque kind of America where we what we want, said what we want, pushed the world around, and told them to go to hell if we wanted to.

    mediaite.com/tv/msnbcs-joy-reid-trump-fans-white-americans-who-feel-left-out-of-obamas-america/

  126. 126.

    JPL

    Sixty minutes just did a story about the relationship between Obama and Coburn. As a Senator he was part of the problem, but he was right on the bridge to nowhere. I wish that Lesley Stahl, had asked him about those who couldn’t afford cancer treatment before ACA, which he opposed.
    Did anyone else watch?

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Jay S:

    I think you missed the part where it was private security hired by the venue that stopped them based on the internet postings. The Boston PD impounded the car based on the security guards’ report, pending a search warrant, and then searched the car once the warrant came through.

    It makes sense once you realize they were initially stopped and held by private security, not Boston PD.

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @rikyrah:

    Makes sense. There are quite a few white people (including relatives of mine) who realize that they’re being screwed by the Republicans but are too racist to throw their lot in with the Democrats. I honestly don’t know what the answer is, because they seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of joining forces with black and brown people to get what they need, and it would be insane to alienate non-white voters in the hope of maybe getting a few Trump fans to switch over.

  129. 129.

    rikyrah

    GOP struggles to replace ObamaCare without losing voters
    By Sarah Ferris – 08/23/15 02:30 PM EDT

    Just before Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal revealed his plan to replace ObamaCare last year, he sat down with 15 of Washington’s top conservative healthcare wonks to discuss it. They didn’t approve.

    “Near the end, they said, ‘You make a good point, but what you’ve put forward, we just don’t think it’s politically viable,’” Jindal’s long-time adviser Curt Anderson recalled in an interview this week.

    To his surprise, he said the group agreed the next GOP nominee couldn’t entirely roll back ObamaCare for fear of losing votes from millions already with coverage. In other words, even ObamaCare’s toughest critics say that parts of the law are here to stay.

    The 2016 election will mark the first time Republicans will be running against Obamacare since its biggest pieces have gone into effect, including billions of dollars of subsidies that have helped millions to gain coverage.

    Already, GOP strategists are getting heartburn about how to fight against ObamaCare without turning away those who are benefitting.

    thehill.com/policy/healthcare/251704-gop-struggles-to-replace-obamacare-without-losing-voters

  130. 130.

    Schlemazel

    @JPL: Yeah, I saw it.
    That would have been uncivil! Heaven forefend! It might also have been inhuman to ask him what he did to try and make things better instead of just destroying, delaying and disrupting everything.

  132. 132.

    JPL

    @Schlemazel: They did ask him that and he seemed proud of that achievement.
    Google tells me that was an earlier interview and he now sold his farm and now lives in Tulsa.

  133. 133.

    Schlemazel

    @JPL:
    I facebook friend mentioned that they better not charge the American for his hospitalization after he was injured in the AK47 attack.

    I reminded him that France has real, honest to gawd universal healthcare and nobody would get a bill. He shut up

  134. 134.

    Schlemazel

    @JPL:
    But not making things better just stopping everything. Throwing sand in the gears does not make the train run better and is not going to make the train run better

  135. 135.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Baud: Yes it is. When it first came out last year it was cool $1200. But with a purpose-built OS the odds of getting infections are close to zero-it has a built-in web-browser, and the screen is YOOOOGE. No one else builds anything like this in this size (It’s true A4 / 8.5 x 11) and runs for weeks being e-ink based. Having to need access to tech docs and not wanting to take up more screen space than I’m already chewing up for emails, consoles, debuggers and the like without having to have another massive desktop display (and the ability to take notes on top of it) just makes is a no-brainer to me-especially since I tend to lose/throw notes away. And since it’s all PDF-based, my PDF-editor can handle anything this thing spews out with no issue.

    I can now truly be paperless.

  139. 139.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @aimai:

    their cousin is like number 4 in the world as a pokemon champion. I thought that was so ridiculous I wasn’t paying attention tothem but fuck, I guess it was serious.

    Their cousin being #4 in the world is ridiculous? Or the guns thing? Or both? Probably both.

  140. 140.

    MomSense

    @efgoldman: @Baud:

    I like Maine winters. The world is bright white and quiet and peaceful.

    I like Maine winters, too. That’s not what we had last winter. I think we had a Siberian winter.

    I would be interested in a Mass meetup!

  141. 141.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @efgoldman: 110 degrees? Sounds enticing! Fuck that, I grew up in Florida, I’ll take a nice cold New York winter over a nasty humid south Florida summer any day.

  142. 142.

    Mike in NC

    @efgoldman: All of the Republican governors elected in the past several years ran on a platform of “jobs, jobs, jobs”, which when you looked at the fine print actually meant “guns, abortion, Jesus”. But it works for them like a charm in almost every case.

  143. 143.

    Schlemazel

    @Full metal Wingnut:
    The entire ticket price goes to the distributor so popcorn sales have no impact on ticket price. The only place the theater makes any money is concessions.

  144. 144.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @Baud: This is the second time I’m mentioning Chomsky in one thread-I swear I’m not a college anarchist! I remember once he said he had an offer to go to UC Berkeley but found it too hot in California. Said he liked Massachusetts winters because they made him get work done.

  145. 145.

    Full metal Wingnut

    @Schlemazel: I know, I was joking. I rarely go to theaters anymore anyway. Saw MI5 and it seemed like half the theater was on their phones. I wish there were an Alamo Drafthouse or another theater with draconian anti-phone and anti-talking enforcement. They’d get my money

  146. 146.

    Schlemazel

    @Full metal Wingnut:
    Having lived in Florida and Minnesota I completely agree. Any place where the weather is always nice reduces ambition. Everyone there knows it too. If you move from the Midwest to FLorida everyone wants to hire you because they know you will work.

    @Full metal Wingnut:
    Sorry, I didn’t catch that. We almost never go to the movies but there is a great cinema grill by us, clean, uncrowded, cheap and beer+pizza both above average.

  147. 147.

    Suzanne

    @Full metal Wingnut: We get 118 and dry as a bone, to the point that I get spontaneous nosebleeds. Then this time of year, the heat gets temporarily abated by dust storms. Then it’s only 105 and you better not be on the freeway or HOLY SHIT.

  148. 148.

    Anne Laurie

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    “The chocolate complements the pork very much.”

    Well… remember, chocolate (mole) sauce was traditionally paired with chicken. So the Other White Meat wouldn’t necessarily be a dire reinvention, assuming (ha) the fairground chefs used a decent cacao base & not Hershey’s syrup…

  150. 150.

    Anne Laurie

    @Feathers:

    One note for people who might not know Boston geography. The Hynes Auditorium, where this all was to have gone down, is right on the same street, a little over a block from where the marathon bombings happened.

    Yeah, it’s also across the street from a fire station & one of the busiest small-boutique-restaurants blocks, and connected by hamster trails to a couple of the Very Tony Shopping Malls (Prudential Center, onwards to Copley Place). Maybe not quite as busy on an August weekend as an April state holiday, but if those doofi hadn’t been flagged on social media… I don’t think they’d have had time to do much damage, but after the professional response, their families might’ve had to collect their bodies with a sponge & a basin.

  151. 151.

    Anne Laurie

    @MomSense:

    I would be interested in a Mass meetup!

    Or we could all compromise, meet in Portsmouth or Manchester.

    Just not the week after Columbus Day, I’ve got an out-of-town friend visiting & I’ll be busy then!

  156. 156.

    FlyingToaster

    @Jay S: Massachusetts sees unlicensed (and hence, unqualified) gun posession as a public health threat. Given that we have zip codes with upwards of 25K persons/sq.mi, it really is one. Given that the convention center can hold like 50K+, it’s really a public health threat.

    So, if you want to bring your guns in from Vermont Iowa, you’ll need to qualify for a hunting license and a gun permit. Which means you’ll have to join a hunting club, convince the police chief in the municipality of said club that you’re not going to go around shooting up the neighborhood, and wait to be approved.

    Hynes security is going to want a current permit-to-carry, they’re gonna call the club and the police chief if you have a valid permit, and they’re going to call the BPD if you don’t.

    If you’re crossing state lines with weapons, you need to make sure you’ve read up on the rules in any other state you’re traveling through or to.

    Edited to change BCEC to Hynes.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    @rikyrah: All they need to do is draw up a bill that is word-for-word identical with the ACA and call it Shmobamacare, or something. Then repeal Obamacare and pass that the same day. Hey presto, repeal and replace! And nobody gets hurt!

  158. 158.

    Another Holocene Human

    Wannabe tough guys from gunz-infested states always assume that New England cops sleep on the job like the Maytag man. God I wish I had photos of the looks on their faces when they realize this is not a drill, they really are getting arrested….

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