Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

People are complicated. Love is not.

No one could have predicted…

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / I stain my sheets I don’t even know why

I stain my sheets I don’t even know why

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The Coalition Of The Wetting is even more frightened than I expected. Niall Ferguson:

I am, instead, going to tell you that this is exactly how civilisations fall.

[….]

Like the Roman Empire in the early 5th century, Europe has allowed its defences to crumble.

[….]

Poor, poor Paris. Killed by ­complacency.

At this point, I guess we should all know that bed wetting is a core conservative value.

Reader Interactions

176Comments

  1. 1.

    Hunter Gathers

    I need to invest in Depends.
    There’s money to be made with all the grown up pants wetting going on.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    Don’t worry Chris Christie is going to protect us all.. link

    According to twitter
    He wasn’t threatened He saw a guy taking pics of crew & emailing them in Arabic (said his seatmate)
    The plane had to return to the gate..

  11. 11.

    piratedan

    they’re PROUD to tell you that their right to own their own personal arsenal supersedes you’re right to watch a chick flick without being gunned down or even vote without two forms of ID and they’re also PROUD to enjoinder the black booted thugs of big govmint to sequester away anyone else that doesn’t appear to be a gawd feering conservative American.

    They are a puzzle of contradictions to be sure… Makes me wish that someone would arrest Rupert Murdock for crimes against humanity, because that bastard has sowed more fear for profit and been responsible for the brain death of many a person than anyone else I could name.

  15. 15.

    scav

    The fall of civilization?!? Oh, let us sit upon the ground and morn the fate of a few souflèes, at best. In Niall’s World, getting a thumbnail bruised and having it fall off invariably leads to death of the entire body! Perhaps even All the extended kinship!! I mean, this is the resiliance of that supposedly world-colonizing superior Western culture and values?

  16. 16.

    trollhattan

    Poor, poor Paris. Killed by ­complacency.

    Oh, so Paris is actually gone now. I hadn’t realized, this is serious. [Scratches Paris off future vacation site list.]

  18. 18.

    Loneoak

    It’s times like this when I remember all the times that Andrew Sullivan claimed every human virtue as a core conservative value.

  22. 22.

    Hoodie

    Although bed wetting is certainly common among conservatives, this may be more an example of Niall Ferguson’s grifter status than the conservative bedwetter syndrome. He’s been playing this Winston- Churchill-standing-in-the-breech schtick for quite a while. Wealthy Americans seem to be suckers for decline of Europe tripe like this. It’s much easier and more fun and lucrative to do this than writing dry academic papers that gather dust in college libraries.

  23. 23.

    Rock

    I’m intrigued by the apparent hyperbole. Paris is not dead, and I say that not to diminish the deaths of 130 people, but to point out that it is a delusional statement. Or are conservatives predicting that truly catastrophic event is now unstoppable?

    This same style of rhetoric is used by numerous presidential candidates, implying or explicitly stating that Daesh is an existential threat to Western culture. Do they really believe that?

    It’s particularly galling because there are threats that to me some significantly more likely to end Western civilization (climate-change, an epidemic, resource scarcity…).

  26. 26.

    mtiffany

    Poor, poor Paris. Killed by ­complacency.

    Poor, poor Niall Ferguson. Long dead on the inside yet still shambling around.

  27. 27.

    Peale

    So in summary, everything is either Munich in 1938 or Rome in 475 1/2.

    Another way that civilizations fall is that the British win a war and force your country to buy opium in exchange for tea and porcelain. Another way they fall is that the Japanese annex you because you believe in an outdated neo-Confucianism and purposefully cut your kingdom off from technological advances in order to maintain your power. Another way they fall is that Eurpeans bring small pox. Another way that they fall is that the river system changes and everyone has to move someplace else.

  28. 28.

    rikyrah

    @Rock:

    I’m intrigued by the apparent hyperbole. Paris is not dead, and I say that not to diminish the deaths of 130 people, but to point out that it is a delusional statement.

    Timothy McVeigh killed more people in Oklahoma.

  29. 29.

    jl

    Ferguson is such weak sauce. Rome? Seriously, Rome?
    He should shriek about the Mongol destruction of Kiev!
    That will get them shitting their pants nonstop.

  31. 31.

    RaflW

    @trollhattan: What Niall wants to say is that Paris has been ruined already by the Muslim hordes who have been lawfully admitted. The white euro-Paris of his boyhood is gone.

    But that would be obviously racist, so instead he blathers darkly about the fall of civilization.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Rock: Ever hear conservatives going about about “Eurabia”? They’re convinced that Europe is nearly majority-Arab Muslim and on the verge of turning into the Caliphate (because, you know, they breed like rabbits and white people won’t). They’ve been convinced of this for decades. Citing actual statistics to the contrary does not help. Often they throw around factoids and numbers that are just completely made up.

  33. 33.

    dedc79

    Funny Violent Femmes story. Last year I was down in New Orleans for a long weekend and went to this great music store (the name is escaping me at the moment) that was hosting local bands all day long. This one band was playing a bunch of New Orleans music, some songs in french, some bluegrass stuff. At the close of their set, they invite a guest up from the audience, the band starts playing and we all immediately recognize it as a cover of Blister in the Sun. Only this isn’t just any cover – the singer sounds exactly like the original. Well, as it turns out, the reason he sounded so much like the singer from the Violent Femmes is because he was the singer from the Violent Femmes.

  35. 35.

    RaflW

    @Rock: “This same style of rhetoric is used by numerous presidential candidates, implying or explicitly stating that Daesh is an existential threat to Western culture. Do they really believe that?”

    Yes. They believe it so much that they’re precipitating it. Our culture will be unrecognizable soon if the drive to jettison all pretense at human decency proceeds at this week’s pace.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    Have tried several times since last night to link to this video but FYWP just will not let it go through, so gonna try modifying the URL so that it can searched or copied and pasted instead, and reached by eliminating the asterisks

    “We must not give in to the temptation to close ourselves off.”

    – French president Hollande

    France’s proposed acceptance of 30,000 refugees stands.

    h*ttps://www.*youtube.*com/watch?v=2_p04U63ASE

  42. 42.

    trollhattan

    @RaflW:
    Ah, that Paris. Remember back in the day when Japan, Inc was going to own us and everything lock, stock and sushi bar? How’d that end?

  48. 48.

    RSA

    @trollhattan:

    Oh, so Paris is actually gone now. I hadn’t realized, this is serious. [Scratches Paris off future vacation site list.]

    I was deeply sad in 2001, having to cross New York City off the list of living examples of civilization.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    Six attempts in various threads since last night and FYWP will not let any link to this short video on youtube through, no matter how configured.

    So please take a minute to search Google for the following complete title:

    France Still Welcoming Syrian Refugees, Unlike Many U.S. Governors

    The video ought to show at the top or right near the top of the listings.

  53. 53.

    p.a.

    @redshirt:

    The Roman Empire did not fall until the 1450’s

    Yes, and you know to whom? Booga-booga!

    “Why did Constantinople get the works?
    That’s nobodies business but the Turks…”

  54. 54.

    scav

    @RSA: It barely survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (146 dead). Luckily, they died in the name of profit, so the place squeeked through.

  55. 55.

    Heliopause

    Like the Roman Empire in the early 5th century

    Why does everybody always act like this was a bad thing?

  57. 57.

    schrodinger's cat

    From the column:

    It is conventional to say that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe are not violent, and that is doubtless true. But it is also true that the majority of Muslims in Europe hold views that are not easily reconciled with the principles of our modern liberal democracies, including those novel notions we have about equality between the sexes and tolerance not merely of religious diversity but of nearly all sexual proclivities.

    Do the principles of western democracies also include genocide by starvation? Are the 60 million Indians who died due to famine and starvation during the course of the British rule while Ferguson’s ancestors were lining their pockets its crowning glory ?

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    The French themselves are making a point of staying calm, indeed of going out to cafes to show that they refuse to be intimidated.

    But French President Hollande has also stepped up attacks on ISIS military targets, partnering with Russia. And there is this, at home, from a recent BBC story:

    He wants to change the constitution to allow a continued state of emergency – it’s actually described as a “state of siege” in his speech – allowing French people to be stripped of their citizenship and barred from the country if they have a second nationality and are convicted of terrorism, to look again at when police can use deadly force, putting plans to cut defence spending on ice and recruiting 5,000 more officers.

    Perhaps most importantly, the determination to destroy the Islamic State militant group is put above getting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power.

    If a rapprochement with the Russians was on the cards before, this strengthens President Vladimir Putin’s hand and desirability as a partner.

    It is hardly “Keep calm and carry on”.

    And the French right wing, like Republicans here, are going nuts.

    Ferguson and others like him are jerks, but it is going to take more to pull them back from their hysteric ledges.

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trollhattan: One of my old Internet friends just went ahead with her scheduled vacation in Paris, and is currently having a fine time there. Everyone seems happy to see her.

    (edited for infelicitous phrasing)

  61. 61.

    Calouste

    @schrodinger’s cat: I think the party Fergusson is associated with doesn’t have much up with religious diversity or tolerance of nearly all sexual proclivities.

    And to tie this to the previous thread, Fergusson is a professor at Harvard.

  64. 64.

    Tommy

    Like the Roman Empire in the early 5th century, Europe has allowed its defences to crumble.

    Of all said, that quote is kind of hard to read.It might be the one thing accurate.

  66. 66.

    redshirt

    @Heliopause:

    Why does everybody always act like this was a bad thing?

    The legacy of Rome still defines Europe – European states of 2015 are still largely reflective of former Roman provinces.

    Plus, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are direct continuations of Roman systems.

    And finally, it’s my crusade to convince the world that the Roman Empire fell in 1453, not 475. It lasted almost a thousand years after what we’ve been taught was the end.

  67. 67.

    Calouste

    @Brachiator:

    Perhaps most importantly, the determination to destroy the Islamic State militant group is put above getting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power.

    Can’t see anything wrong with getting rid of Daesh been given a higher priority than getting rid of Assad. While Assad is an oppressive, murderous dictator, he doesn’t actually have genocide as one of his goals and keeps his shit within his own borders.

  68. 68.

    p.a.

    @? Martin: My winger relatives have been pissing their pants since the Panama Canal ‘giveaway’. (Longer than that probably, but before that I had minimal contact with them.) Their mental image of the US is of a sort of Belize, while at the same time they’re bloody sociopaths cheering on every REPUBLICAN military intervention. Literally the only things I’ve ever seen on their TV is Fux news, and war movies- the glorification kind, no Full Metal Jackets, Breaker Morants…

  69. 69.

    Tommy

    @Matt McIrvin: That might be about the happiest thing I can hear.I can’t speak for Paris but pretty sure I am not going out on the limb to say it is a safe city.

  73. 73.

    Wilson Heath

    I was already referring to the Hoveround brigade in their tricorner hats as the incontinental army.

  75. 75.

    Villago Delenda Est

    So, has Niall signed up to go to Syria and take on Daesh himself? Or to even man the walls of Vienna, for that matter? No?

    Then STFU you cowardly sack of shit.

  78. 78.

    Hoodie

    @? Martin: No disagreement here, but Ferguson knows better and is just a grifter. He will go with any bullshit that gets him in with the wealthy types that buy this decline of civilization narrative and are suckers for the whole scholarly Brit role playing. Ferguson is pond scum.

  79. 79.

    Peale

    @Brachiator: Yeah. I get the point of the whole “No. Obama. We must destroy them, not contain them” rhetoric. But I really would like to ask the French what they plan to do about it. These weren’t Syrians who attacked France. Primarily, they were European citizens of Moroccan descent. Yes, many of them had been to Syria, or wanted to go. But both France and Belgium weren’t able to stop and pick up a ringleader who was filmed in Syria with corpses. If the US commits to speeding up the action – commits troops to hold the territory in Iraq – and Russia does the same in Syria, a lot of those European soldiers are going to work their way back home. I doubt France or Belgium is going to be any more successful picking them up. Escalating wars tends to create even more refugees. So what’s the plan for dealing with those? Or are we going to avoid those simply because we are going to be so super fast with our new troops that those ISIS dudes aren’t gonna have a chance to slip out of the country and those people whose houses we’re destroying aren’t going to try to live somewhere else?

    If the plan is to just kill them all in Iraq, good luck. I honestly think that after almost 15 years, we may have killed 12 Taliban. Yeah, the papers say that there’s been more. But as of today there are 25,000 Taliban. And 15 years ago, there were 25,000 as well.

    I really would like someone to convince me that the expensive “massive shock and awe” approach is better. Its just more expensive. Do we have examples of terrorist groups that have been destroyed by massive intervention? Weakened for a time maybe, but in the past 14 years, has there been one group that no longer exists because we decided to focus on it for awhile? If not, then why bother?

  80. 80.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @p.a.:

    the glorification kind, no Full Metal Jackets, Breaker Morants…

    Ah, missing out on the authentic war movies for the fantasy ones. Gotcha.

    They probably won’t enjoy Saving Private Ryan or Enemy at the Gates, either.

    Markup that is not put into place with the buttons still not working, btw.

  81. 81.

    Goblue72

    These are the same xenophobic bedwetters screeching about “Mexicans” and how “Mexico” is secretly trying to re-Mexicanize the Southeast into Mexifornia.

    That would be the same Mexican immigrants who are leaving the U.S. at a faster rate than they are entering.

    Per Pew Research Center, there has been a net loss of 140,000 Mexican nationals from the US. between 2009 – 2014.

  82. 82.

    jl

    @Goblue72:

    ” Per Pew Research Center, there has been a net loss of 140,000 Mexican nationals from the US. between 2009 – 2014. :

    Geez, what a party pooper you are.

  83. 83.

    ? Martin

    @Tommy:

    I can’t speak for Paris but pretty sure I am not going out on the limb to say it is a safe city.

    Well, Paris so far this year (both attacks included) has slightly more homicides than gun-totin’, self-protectin’ Dallas, a city half the size of Paris.

  87. 87.

    EthylEster

    OT but I just noticed that the blogroll link to RealClimate.org is pointed at someplace I’ve never been. Is this a well-known problem (bad link) or has the domain name really expired…as it says at the top of the page the current link takes you to?

    Or am I losing my mind?

  88. 88.

    Gin & Tonic

    @efgoldman: You know, I pride myself on being a wide-ranging and adventurous eater, but the thought of something being processed in lye before going into my mouth is a barrier I can’t get over.

  89. 89.

    Mike in NC

    Seems like the American media is in full blown “ISIS is coming to kill you!” panic mode. Those of us traveling long distances to visit relatives next week are almost guaranteed a miserable time getting there.

  90. 90.

    scav

    @efgoldman: Well, if they’re to be our new Overlords, I’m signing up under the Linie confessional, and I’m hoping for a little salmon on the flatbrøt.

  91. 91.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Well, I think that this only proves that being scared to death of everything is what makes one a tough guy. Only gutless cowards fail to quake in fear of Syrian orphans and branches scraping against the house at night.

    In all seriousness, though, I can’t help almost feeling a little sorry for these people. How do they make it through the day with such overwhelming fear of everything?

  92. 92.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mike in NC: It’s vital to give as much help as possible to the panderers of the Klown Kar in order to keep the horse race narrative intact for the general election a year less two weeks from now.

  95. 95.

    goblue72

    @? Martin:

    Pew study: http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/

    Meanwhile, of those Mexican nationals emigrating TO the United States, those migrants are increasingly more highly educated and skilled – http://news.rice.edu/2015/11/19/baker-institute-paper-number-of-high-skilled-mexican-entrepreneurs-migrating-to-us-has-increased/

    This is also the case for the Syrian refugees – a significant percentage of Syrian refugees have university-level degrees, and Syrian refugee population migrating into Europe is MORE likely to be an educated professional or from a more affluent background than other migrants into Europe.

    Quite glad my state’s (California) governor came out in favor of accepting the refugees. California gets it. You don’t want the best and brightest from the rest of the world? Fine. We’ll take ’em.

  96. 96.

    Archon

    Has anyone ever asked what the endgame is to conservative ideas and preferred policies, like as a human species endgame? At this point I would guess that most conservatives haven’t even considered looking ahead that far, or more darkly that the conservative project currently at it’s core is nihilistic. If human progress is the goal it’s literally impossible to look at conservative policies (at home or abroad) as idealistic or even positive, much less utopian.

  97. 97.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Archon: They want to undo all human progress since about 1400 or so.

    They want to return to feudalism.

    In this sense, they are firm allies of Daesh.

  104. 104.

    goblue72

    @p.a.: The trend has actually accelerated from what I understand since the recovery started. That is, the net loss rate has increased not decreased, as the economy has improved.

    Rather, there is in part a cultural shift – the single biggest factor for return to Mexico cited by emigrants is family reunification. And the percentage of Mexican immigrants with friends or family in the U.S. has fallen.

    And by some measures, the number of immigrants from Mexico has now been surpassed by the number from China and the number from India.

    The more things stay the same, the more they change.

  105. 105.

    trollhattan

    @Lordwhorfin:
    We are left hoping wingnut keeps accelerating until it breaks free of earth’s gravity altogether. And they can’t have the moon, either.

  106. 106.

    Enhanced Voting Techinques

    Like the Roman Empire in the early 5th century, Europe has allowed its defences to crumble.

    Yes because socialism is just so much like castrophic crop failures combined with a massive trade deficite, never ending series of panepidemics and invasions.

    ISIS = Attila the Hun, how could we be so blind?

  109. 109.

    Felonius Monk

    @Gin & Tonic:

    the thought of something being processed in lye before going into my mouth is a barrier I can’t get over.

    Then I presume you never ate real bagels or real pretzels. Both are boiled in lye before baking.

    ETA: Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to boil all these PantzWetters in lye.

  110. 110.

    Elie

    @Peale:

    These soldiers have to be paid (Daesh) and the money mostly comes from territory they hold, This has shrunk recently, though obviously other financing from oil and rich patron Qtari and Saudi leadership. The best way, in my opinion which obviously is not professional, is that we make it expensive both in terms of costs of our blowing up their leaders and the necessary financial and IT forensics to disrupt their financial, communication and recruitment networks. They are including new nation state enemies in Russia and China (though they haven’t carried out anything around China’s interests yet – just threatened. They are spread pretty thin right now is my guess, though they seem to have plenty of foot soldiers. Leaders who know how to organize and implement these hits are rarer and each time they get killed, replacements must be trained and replaced. Their increased visibility with increasing international hits brings more of their surface area under investigation and possible attack. This will and is a long battle of attrition with some military aspects, but mostly policing and technical disruption. We should prepare ourselves for disappointments and set backs but a 500k army sitting in Syria or dotted through the ME would not change shit.

  112. 112.

    p.a.

    @goblue72: Leave it to conservatives to fight the last war. Hope the Mexican repatriation is due to improving conditions there, although as I type that, Mexico relies on oil prices, doesn’t it?

  113. 113.

    Patrick

    When a white guy killed 20 school children between 5 and 10 years old in Connecticut right-wingers did not want to do a damned thing to make sure it didn’t happen again. But when some European citizens commit a terrorist attack in France, right-wingers apparently are as scared of Syrian refugees as a five year old is of ghosts.

    Racism or insanity? Or both?

  115. 115.

    Elie

    @goblue72:

    Yeah, I heard on the radio that the net direction of Mexicans is out of the US….

    Should have an interesting impact on construction, farming and other industries up here in the NW.

  116. 116.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Archon: The ones who take the long view tend to be very big on hierarchy, authority and obedience. The whole human species, from races and nations down to the nuclear family, carefully sorted into higher and lower groups and higher and lower people, with the higher nobly administering and the lower happily obedient. And everyone ceding authority to the correct God at the very top.

    You get the purest form with the religious guys and the Mencius Moldbug-type neo-reactionaries. They’re convinced it’s the only way to avoid a parade of horribles of modern society.

    The more libertarian types claim to be against this vision, but scratch them and you’ll usually find an advocate of a similar hierarchy who just wants the sorting to be done by who has the most money, or the biggest bitcoin-mining machine or whatever. They may leave out God and the state.

  117. 117.

    Schlemazel

    @efgoldman:
    I have had Lutefisk twice in my life. The first time it was an inoffensive nothing that when dipped in butter was just OK. The second time it was like eating lye-based wallpaper paste. Apparently knowing how to cook it is key.

    I worked with a guy who still had family in Norway. He went to visit & asked them about lutefisk. Their response was “We haven’t eaten that shit since we got refrigeration!”

  120. 120.

    Germy

    @Archon: Their endgame is to free the genius captains of industry from pesky taxes and regulations. Once this is accomplished, the golden age will commence, with wealth trickling down to good, hardworking citizens.

  121. 121.

    pseudonymous in nc

    I’m old enough to remember when Niall Ferguson was a historian. Long, long time ago.

  124. 124.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Do the principles of western democracies also include genocide by starvation?

    Apparently so. In addition to the famines in India you mention, there’s the Irish Potato Famine- Ireland was still a net food exporter even as more than a million Irish starved to death- and the American destruction of buffalo herds to starve the Plains Indians into submission. I’m sure there are more that don’t come to mind immediately.

  126. 126.

    Schlemazel

    @Felonius Monk:
    Most people have never eaten a real bagel, only those abominations sold at places like Einstein’s.

    Corn meal is treated with lye also, Native Americans and South Americans figured this out centuries ago but pellagra was rampant in the southern US until European decedents figured it out.

  127. 127.

    Elie

    @Patrick:

    Honestly, there is NO answer that is rational or logical. It is downright painful to hear the horror of this situation over and over, knowing there is no real way to wake these people up…. the fear that we might not be able to contain their fear and anxiety and that bad things can happen… They are changing living in this country into a nightmare of hate and bottomless pit of sadness and fear. We are in the midst of an epidemic as virulent as ebola… All we can do is wring our hands and stand ready to take a real stand if necessary –

  130. 130.

    Roger Moore

    @Archon:

    Has anyone ever asked what the endgame is to conservative ideas and preferred policies, like as a human species endgame?

    I think their expected endgame is The Rapture. Long term planning is unimportant if the world is going to end any time.

  131. 131.

    Roger Moore

    @goblue72:

    And by some measures, the number of immigrants from Mexico has now been surpassed by the number from China and the number from India.

    IIRC, it’s that the number of new immigrants from Mexico is now outpaced by those from China and from India. Mexico still leads in the total number in the country already.

  132. 132.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Elie:

    They are including new nation state enemies in Russia and China (though they haven’t carried out anything around China’s interests yet – just threatened.

    I think they recently executed a Chinese hostage, so China may have an increased interest.

  133. 133.

    p.a.

    @Gin & Tonic: You can get yummy unlyed olives (vinegar/wine/lemon juice processed) at any Middle Eastern market IF YOU DARE ;-) Lye processed corn makes more nutrients available. Pozole at any Mexican restaurant or taco wagon IF YOU DARE, usually on weekends. And corn tortillas have it over flour for me.

  134. 134.

    Roger Moore

    @Felonius Monk:

    Then I presume you never ate real bagels or real pretzels. Both are boiled in lye before baking.

    Bagels are not boiled in lye; they’re boiled in water. Depending on the style, the water may have a little bit of salt, sugar, or honey added, but not lye.

  136. 136.

    Karmus

    My dear friend is in tears because her sister in Texas is dying, like her best friend a few years before, and she’s fallen between the cracks of the health-care system. She very probably would not have done so had that state not rejected Medicaid expansion. My friend and I live in Florida, and I at least have been between the cracks for many years–at least I am physically stable, although I do have health needs that are not being met. How many tens or hundreds of thousands of people, of American citizens, are suffering or will suffer because of the political games being played with people’s lives? But these bedwetters are fine with that. They just want to be scared by the boogeyman. Kentucky is a perfect example of voters taking it up the poop chute and smiling and saying, “more please, as long as those people suffer too.” I suppose they can nod at each other and say, “at least we’re not in Paris.” Such oblivious idiocy boggles my mind.

  137. 137.

    p.a.

    @Roger Moore:

    Do the principles of western democracies also include genocide by starvation?

    New England settlers left their hogs unpenned so they could root out and destroy Native Americans’ crops, which were unfenced (or insecurely fenced against pigs).

  138. 138.

    Sad_Dem

    @Peale: “So in summary, everything is either Munich in 1938 or Rome in 475 1/2.”

    Just like people with past lives were soldiers in Charlemagne’s army–never Pepin the Hunchback’s.

  139. 139.

    Brachiator

    @Peale:

    Do we have examples of terrorist groups that have been destroyed by massive intervention?

    Depends on how you want to define terrorists. For now, the Tamils in Sri Lanka have been ruthlessly suppressed and that country’s civil war ended.

    But you could go back to the harrying of the North, when William I laid waste to English opposition to his rule in 1069. Effective? Very. Don’t want to look at the Danish and English opposition to William as terrorists? A matter of perspective.

    Could a Republican president be as ruthless, and drop any pretense of “regime change” in order to “guarantee” that the American people would not be bothered by the possibility of a terrorist attack? Would people rise up to prevent it?

  141. 141.

    Sad_Dem

    @delk: “And just like that, my civilization destroying gay marriage has been rendered useless.” Don’t feel so bad. You helped.

  143. 143.

    p.a.

    @Brachiator: being on an island helps contain any insurgency.

    Sherman’s march thru the South was effective. The gvt of the US just didn’t have the will to keep it up for a generation, which was necessary.

  144. 144.

    goblue72

    @Roger Moore: From the study in my link:

    Using this measure for 2013, about 147,000 Chinese immigrants came to the U.S., compared with 129,000 Indian immigrants and 125,000 Mexican immigrants.

  145. 145.

    Mary G

    Here’s some more depressing news: Wapo’s newest poll shows majority of Americans agree with the bedwetting Republicans:

    — By 54-43, Americans oppose taking in refugees from the conflicts in Syria and other Mideast countries even after screening them for security.

    — By 52-47, Americans are not confident that the U.S. can identify and keep out possible terrorists who may be among these refugees. (One bright spot: 78 percent of Americans don’t think religion should be considered in determining whether to accept refugees.)

    — By 81-18, Americans think it is likely that there will be a terrorist attack in the U.S. in the near future that will cause large numbers of lives to be lost.

    — By 55-45, Americans are not confident in the ability of the U.S. government to prevent further terror attacks against Americans here.

    — By 72-25, Americans say that it is more important for the government to investigate terror threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy, rather than refraining from intruding on personal privacy.

    I’ve decided to go to bed early, eating chocolate and listening to audiobooks by Georgette Heyer, and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

  146. 146.

    Calouste

    @Elie: It very similar to the tactics Lawrence of Arabia used to get the Ottomans out of the Arabian peninsula. Blowing up trains and railroads didn’t really have much impact, because the Ottomans could replace them, but targeting locomotives crippled them, because they couldn’t really fix them themselves and getting spare parts from Germany was problematic during WWI.

    The same applies to Daesh. Suicide bombers are, by their very nature, expandable. The recruiters, trainers, organizers, and bomb experts however are not expendable, there aren’t many of them and training them takes time and requires certain skills. And these guys are mostly operating from the territory Daesh controls in Syria.

  147. 147.

    benw

    The RWNJs have gone from “Oh God! The government is coming for MEEEEEE!” to “Oh yeah? The government is coming for YOOOOOOOOOU!” so fast my head is still spinning.

  149. 149.

    bemused

    @Archon:

    No long term thinking similar to corporations looking only as far as the end of current quarter profits, their stock market status, and their shareholders.

  150. 150.

    Calouste

    @Sad_Dem:

    Just like people with past lives were soldiers generals in Charlemagne’s army–never Pepin the Hunchback’s.

    Accurified.

  153. 153.

    bemused

    @Schlemazel:

    Ha, I live in Scandinavian heavy MN and would never touch lutefisk even though my parents would get it for holiday “treat”. When I saw that the clerks at the grocery store meat counter had to wear plastic gloves to handle the lye soaked shit, I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to eat it.

  154. 154.

    ? Martin

    Ok, so Houston and Paris are pretty much exactly the same size in terms of population. Last year Paris had 73 homicides, Houston had 242. 16 people were killed in the Hebdo attacks earlier this year, and 130 in the most recent attack. Assuming the same rate this year as last, but adding in the 146 from the two attacks, Paris (219) would still be safer than Houston (242), in spite of the nearly 1 million conceal-carry license holders in GOP-loving Texas.

    Now, I’m sure all of those Houston victims were deserving, or some shit, but we really need to get a bit of perspective in this country.

  156. 156.

    JMG

    @Mary G: This was a country frightened of destitute children from Central America last year. Ignorance, and America’s general knowledge of the world outside itself is damn near nil, breeds fear.

  158. 158.

    Brachiator

    @Calouste:

    Can’t see anything wrong with getting rid of Daesh been given a higher priority than getting rid of Assad. While Assad is an oppressive, murderous dictator, he doesn’t actually have genocide as one of his goals and keeps his shit within his own borders.

    Keeping his shit within his own borders, I guess, leaves out the millions who have fled, fearing murder and oppression.

    And a September 28 Atlantic article made the following claim, looking at Russian support of Assad:

    Assad’s plan, it seems, is to deliberately aid the rise of ISIS—what I call the devil’s gambit. The logic is simple and ruthless: radicalize the opposition so that the Syrian dictator looks like a lesser evil to domestic and foreign audiences. Here, Assad benefits from the inherently polarizing nature of civil war, as a cycle of atrocities and revenge pushes all sides to the extreme.

    He has further spurred radicalization by focusing the regime’s fire on moderate enemies, while reportedly releasing jihadists from jail and purchasing oil from ISIS. In recent months, the Syrian military allegedly used air strikes to help ISIS advance toward the city of Aleppo. Khaled Khoja, a Syrian opposition leader, claimed that Assad’s fighter jets were acting as “an air force for ISIS.”

    What a mess.

  159. 159.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:

    Correct, but why would one discriminate between eating lye vs lime treated food?

    Lime is both less basic (pKb of about 2.4 vs. 0.2) and much less soluble than lye. The solubility is probably more important. A saturated lime solution is only about 2-3 mM, which keeps its pH within reasonable bounds and means food prepared with lime can be eaten without further treatment. Lye is much more soluble- it’s actually deliquescent- so lye solutions can be extremely caustic, and some foods prepared with lye actually need to be neutralized or rinsed clean before they’re safely edible. That’s an important difference.

  160. 160.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I haven’t read this book myself but it talks about the Late Victorian Holocausts caused by the Invisible Hand.

    I would be careful with anything Mike Davis wrote. He cares a great deal more about exiting rhetoric and political point scoring than rigorous adherence to the truth. You need to be very careful about both his factual evidence and his interpretation.

  163. 163.

    a different chris

    @schrodinger’s cat: No! They are polar opposites! The Wahabists are blinkered pig-ignorant sociopaths who believe their religion is true and all other religions are false, therefore anything they do is justified. While at the other end of the spectrum, the Christianists are blinkered pig-ignorant sociopaths who believe their religion is true and all other religions are false, therefore anything they do is justified. So it’s blatantly obvious which side is Good Guys and which side is Bad Guys, and if you can’t spot the difference you need your head examined!

  164. 164.

    Roger Moore

    @a different chris:

    So it’s blatantly obvious which side is Good Guys and which side is Bad Guys, and if you can’t spot the difference you need your head examined!

    Yep, it is obvious. The one who spells God’s name the right way is pure good, and the one that spells it the wrong way is 100% evil. Either that or they’re both awful and need to be locked in with each other and away from the rest of us.

  166. 166.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Jesus people, Paris was not killed by complacency. Paris was killed by Philoctetes – aided and abetted by Oenone’s refusal to heal him.

  170. 170.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @efgoldman: Once upon a time there was a brilliant description on the Net of an American’s experience with lutefisk. One thing I remember was the author’s description of how to prepare for ingesting the stuff.

    One begins by assembling the necessary equipment: A blindfold, a bottle of ketchup, a pack of saltine crackers, a dishtowel, a bottle of akvavit & a shot glass. The process:

    (1) Fill the shot glass with akvavit & put a dollop of ketchup on a saltine.
    (2) Toss down the alcohol.
    (3) Put on blindfold.
    (4) Eat the saltine.
    (5) Bite on the dishtowel.
    (6) If you can still distinguish the taste of the dishtowel from the taste of the saltine, return to step (1).
    (7) If you cannot distinguish them apart by taste, you are drunk enough to eat lutefisk.

  172. 172.

    Procopius

    @Hoodie: I would say academics at Oxford and Harvard have misled themselves. Fergusson is not a historian. He is a novelist. Like most undergraduates he memorized enough facts to pass his exams and then promptly forgot them. He discovered there is more money to be made telling made-up stories than from telling stories derived from research and study.

  174. 174.

    Another Holocene Human

    @redshirt:

    If anything, America has inherited the legacy of the Roman Empire. So we’re it.

    Wake me up when State of Florida decides to build roads 1/10 as durable as the Romans’.

    You know who else did interesting stuff with rainwater collection? The Indians.

  175. 175.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Lots of corn is processed with lye, like taco shells, grits, hominey, etc.

    ETA: Not that I’m advocating the preparation and consumption of lutefisk!!

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