This Browns/Steelers game is about as fun as a root canal.
Archives for January 2016
Open Thread: Still Trying to Make Fetch Rubio Happen
I can’t pinpoint a moment, but over the past couple months the Conventional Wisdom seems to have congealed around the proposition that Marco Rubio should be the eventual GOP nominee — the fresh-faced, charismatic “establishment” Not-Trump who can, with sufficient effort, unify the party and bring the voters to the polls. (Ted Cruz thought he could be that figure, but it turns out the only way Cruz unifies people is in their vast universal loathing of Ted Cruz.) The perceived problem is finding a winning template, an elevator pitch for primary voters that’ll convince them Young Marco is their best bet. Report from the Washington Post‘s Ben Terris, back in November: “Marco Rubio is just the guy to win the youth vote. Or so the old folks think.”:
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Marco Rubio — he of the unlined cheeks and recently paid-off student loans and strongly felt preference for Tupac over Biggie Smalls— might be just the thing to get young people to come out and vote Republican in 2016.
“I hope that the young people won’t keep being bumfuzzled by Democrats,” said Larry Trickle, a 77-year-old who came to see the senator speak at a Holiday Inn in Council Bluffs this week. “Here’s a guy that can speak their language, and maybe teach them a thing about work ethic.”
Sure, there were only a handful of folks younger than 35 at this ballroom rally packed with a couple of hundred Iowa voters. But to Larry’s wife, Sue, 70, it was a youthful crowd compared with other GOP events she had been to recently.
“You should see them,” she said. “The average age of most is like 70s or 80s. Here, it’s got to be all the way down to the 50s!”…
Rubio, 44, paints himself as the “generational candidate,” one with fresh ideas who can shake up his party and, ultimately, an election. It’s a savvy tactic for turning one of his potential negatives — his inexperience — into a positive. A similar approach worked for Barack Obama in 2008, when he was also a freshman legislator who hated the Senate; he mobilized massive numbers of young people to cast their ballots for him.
But the Florida Republican’s message of youthfulness has not resulted in many youthful supporters so far. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Rubio received 16 percent support from Republicans 65 and older, compared with 12 percent among those ages 50 to 64 and 7 percent among those younger than 50. He might be, as Michael Kinsley famously said about then-Sen. Al Gore, “an old person’s idea of a young person.”…
In mid-December, the Washington Post did a long report on a real-life Miami Vice story from the late 1980s:
…[Orlando] Cicilia, a large, sturdily built Cuban immigrant, had played an intimate role in Rubio’s early life. But as the future senator from Florida was finishing high school and preparing to go to college, his brother-in-law’s illicit career as a cocaine dealer was exposed in a major trial. Cicilia was eventually sentenced to a lengthy prison term in one of the biggest drug cases of Miami’s baroque cocaine-cowboys era.
Rubio, who was 16 at the time of the arrest, does not mention the ordeal as he runs for president, casting his family’s Cuban American immigrant story as the embodiment of the American Dream.
There is no evidence that Rubio or his parents were aware of Cicilia’s drug dealing, and Rubio’s sister was not suspected of any crime. But a deep look at those turbulent years — drawing on previously unreported Drug Enforcement Administration field reports and grand jury testimony, interviews with federal task force agents, and the senator’s writings — reveals that Cicilia was a central figure in the smuggling operation at the same time that he was integrated in the life of the Rubio family.
Open Thread: Still Trying to Make <del>Fetch</del> Rubio HappenPost + Comments (180)
Sunday Morning Happy Tales Open Thread
(via The Cut, NYMag)
Derby’s a cool dude. I’m not sure there’s enough bitter apple in the world to discourage my idiot little dogs from treating prosthetic limbs as chew toys!
Earlier versions of Derby’s prosthetics shown here.
Apart from feeling good to watch a dog smile, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the “holidays” and prepare to buckle down for 2016?
Late Night Open Thread: No Alternative But Patience
@indiancountry Please cover "Change the Name Rally!" Sun. Jan. 3 outside Dallas Cowboys stadium! pic.twitter.com/AYxXg0HTn1
— Miss Oglala Lakota (@MsOglalaLakota) January 2, 2016
Got this from the twitter feed of Mother Jones’ Editor-in-Chief.
You’d think the other rich fvcks in the NFL’s Rich Fvck Owners Club would take Dan Snyder aside and point out the calendar no longer says 1957… but I guess if you can’t show your frog-belly white arse in public, what’s all that money for?
Here’s video from a 2014 protest at the same stadium:
Late Night Open Thread: No Alternative But PatiencePost + Comments (25)
Balloon Juice Survival Bunker Standoff Watch: Day 1 (Updated at 12:45 AM)
I know Anne Laurie is working up a new post from checking the dashboard, but since we’ve got two aging posts and breaking news, this’ll do for both an open thread and a discussion of ongoing events until she finishes and hits publish.
Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan, another unnamed Bundy brother, Ryan Payne, and a number of other militia folks have now occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters buildings. The Bundys have stated that they are prepared to stay there for years and that they are prepared to use violence if any attempt is made to remove them. So we now have breaking and entering into a Federal facility, criminal trespass, and terroristic threats. (h/t Paul W and Kelly in comments).
Here’s the link to Oregon Live’s update. They’ve just updated at 9:15 PM local time with the following statement from the local sheriff:
“Statement from Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward: ‘After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation.'”
Here’s the link to what the Feds had to say about what the Hammonds were actually accused, tried, and convicted of.
Here’s John Ritzheimer’s Youtube video (h/t LGF commenter Backwoods Sleuth):
Balloon Juice Survival Bunker Standoff Watch: Day 1 (Updated at 12:45 AM)Post + Comments (317)
Football Open Thread
Sorry- I thought the actual Cracker would take care of this or I would have put it up earlier. I’ve been doing things around the house and went and got a haircut and checked in on my car. Somehow, a brake job and alignment turned into replacing a cam humaduh humaduh because it was rusted and they broke the whosiwhatsit and need to replace the arm something something and it won’t be ready until Tuesday. I wish I lived somewhere where I didn’t need one of these god damned car things but then I would have to deal with people because public transportation doesn’t make much sense when there is no public.
Oh, Sunless Sea is a delightful little video game.
A Well Regulated Militia: Burns, Oregon Edition – Updated at 7:45 PM and 10:10 PM
While we’ve all been hashing out Texas’s new open carry law, the good folks of Burns, Oregon have been living the dream. Oregon is an open carry state and the Burnsites (Burnsers?) are experiencing an influx of out of state militia folks. They are there to defend the Constitution and two local cattle ranchers who are set to turn themselves in on Monday after the 9th Circuit resentenced them to longer prison terms for setting fires on the Federal land where their grazing leases were. The out of state/area militia folks are being led by Ammon Bundy; Montanan Ryan Payne – the Army veteran who claims to have been Bundy’s militia advisor and in charge of setting up the snipers at the Bundy standoff; and Arizonan John Ritzheimer – the Marine veteran who has kept his honor clean by acting like a loon around Muslim Americans.
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The Hammonds, who are set to turn themselves in on Monday, as well as most others in Burns do not seem to want the outsiders around. A rally and march earlier today seems to have gone off without incident, so hopefully Burns can make it through the weekend without a problem and the Hammonds can peacefully turn themselves in on Monday. The rally was organized by right wing radio host Pete Santilli, who was on site today in Burns. We’ll update if anything of note happens…
In other militia news: Stuart Rhodes, the Oathkeepers founder, was disbarred in Montana (h/t: Eric the Fruit Bat). This was, apparently, for some sort of malfeasance in Federal court. The lawyers in our commentariat can explain if this means he’s done as a lawyer everywhere, as it arose from a Federal complaint, or just in Montana.
——— UPDATE ———
There’s been some question in the comments of what, exactly, the Hammonds were charged and convicted of and both why and how they were resentenced. Since we’re a full service blog here (though we won’t pick you up at the airport – this is what relatives are for), here are the links to the legal/juridicial issues. The first link takes you to the right up for the original trial and sentencing. The elder Hammond was convicted for setting the 2001 Hardie-Hammond fire. The younger Hammond was sentenced for both the 2001 fire and for a 2006 fire: the Kumbo Butte fire. They were acquitted on charges that they set two other fires in 2006.
http://burnstimesherald.info/2012/06/27/hammonds-convicted-in-federal-court/
This second link provides the explanation on their being resentenced. The appeal was made because the sentences were considered by the prosecution to be far too lenient. The prosecution also drew a conceptual connection to eco-terrorism, which is where the terrorism related allegations/concept seems to have come from.
http://www.capitalpress.com/Oregon/20151007/judge-sends-oregon-ranchers-back-to-prison
———UPDATE 2————
Thanks to Paul W and Kelly in the comments, we now know that Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan, another unnamed Bundy brother, Ryan Payne, and a number of other militia folks have now occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters buildings. No word on Ritzheimer’s whereabouts. The Bundy’s have stated that they are prepared to stay there for years and that they are prepared to use violence if any attempt is made to remove them. So we now have breaking and entering into a Federal facility, criminal trespass, and terroristic threats.