So here in the Northern hemisphere the hinge of the year turns over — no sooner than time — and the days, however cold and dreary, grow infinitesimally longer every one.
All last week and bleeding into this, we had a team of plumbers in the basement installing a new heating system (the choosing of which was a three-year project for the Spousal Unit). For two days last week, there was another team of workers installing a new roof (that only took two years’ research, because the insurance company refused to renew our policy if the replacement wasn’t expedited). So our three little rescue dogs have been in various conditions of stranger-panic and noise-meltdown for the last ten days, and I never got more than three hours’ unbroken sleep at a time. There was also a flat tire (probably from a nail the roofers missed), plus a three-times-rescheduled eye exam and expensive new glasses for me. Not to mention the Spousal Unit’s (rescheduled by the doctor) outpatient surgery yesterday (which, thank Murphy the Trickster God, went off without incident and from which he seems to be recovering well). As a last straw, my flip phone bricked on Sunday, so after a hasty T-Mobile visit (do not visit a shopping mall the Monday before Xmas) I’m learning (not easily) to cope with my first (‘pre-owned’ Galaxy S6) smart phone. Never a good time when one’s first thought is, “Well, at least we’ve got enough slack on the credit cards… ”
Not to mention, all the political and geopolitical stuff. You know.
What I want from 2017 is NO MORE SURPRISES DAMMIT.
***********
Apart from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, what’s on the agenda for the day?
.
raven
Did you go with an HVAC system or do you not need air up there? We have a 17 year old unit and most HVAC peeps I talk to tell me to hang on to it as long as possible because the new ones just are not as good. I’m sure he took that into account as you planned yours.
Darkrose
Blessed Solstice back atcha, and remember:
Axial Tilt is the Reason for the Season!
rikyrah
Morning Everyone???
Schlemazel
It seems to me that things come in bunches. When life has hit a rhythm and things are going ok the stuff happens and not just one thing but a bunch. Sounds like you have had you bunch now and life should settle down a bit
gene108
My usual Seasonal Affective Disorder, which has me hating life, until Summer* has not kicked in this year for the first time in at least 7-8 years.
I count this as a blessing.
*I would say Spring, but an actual Spring seems to be missing the last few years here in the greater Philadelphia area. It just goes from cold to hot.
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
Dance naked around the Solstice Bonefire all you Pagan sumbitches, and hoist an ale to the gods of fertility while yer at it.
Mustang Bobby
The Winter Solstice is my reminder to change the air conditioning filter and move the orchids to a part of the trees where they’ll get the benefits of the returning sun.
The one thing about living this close to the Equator is that we have no twilight. When the sun goes down it’s like someone flipped a switch. I remember once walking across campus from my dorm to the theatre for an evening rehearsal, a ten-minute walk at most. I left the dorm in daylight and arrived at the theatre in total night. I welcome a little more light each day.
Schlemazel
One quibble with the solstice video AL. Those times given are not universal. @Mustang Bobby: and I do not have the same sunrise/sunset times nor the same amount of daylight except at the equinox. This became most clear to me while watching fireworks on the 4th of July in Titusville FL at 9PM while here on the tundra it is barely dark enough at 10PM to set them off.
I will be going to work in the dark & returning in the dark today, like I needed another reason to be depressed. I need to get this black dog off my chest
Mustang Bobby
@Schlemazel: One of the reasons I moved to Florida was Seasonal Affective Disorder that came on when I lived in northern lower Michigan ten miles north of the 45th parallel (that also runs through Minneapolis). It was exacerbated by the bone-rattling cold and fourteen feet of snow. Long summer twilight was wonderful but all too short.
ETA: Sunrise in Miami will be at 7:03 a.m. Length of day will be 10h 32m and tomorrow will be 2 seconds longer.
raven
@Schlemazel: Buck up dawg.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mustang Bobby: Sun comes up at 6:55 here, though we probably won’t see much of it until Christmas. Two storms are passing though today and Friday.
bystander
It’s always time for Rodgers and Hart’s great solstice song. Jack Cassidy’s version is not as good as Malcolm Gets’ was in the Encore production, but still those lyrics. “I measure time by what we do/And so my calendar is you.”
Hart would have hated President Pu$$/grabber.
OzarkHillbilly
Yeah, that EPA just destroys industries with all it’s job killing regulations. I’m sure Mr Pruitt will fix this problem for us.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Sounds like LA in the 60’s and 70’s.
ETA: Even back in the late 80’s, we had one day when I was working on the 46th floor of Satan’s sweatshop we couldn’t see the Central library across the street. However we could see Mt. San Jacinto 90 miles away, serious inversion layer.
Baud
@rikyrah: Morning.
@OzarkHillbilly: Won’t someone think of the oxygen tank makers?
Mustang Bobby
@BillinGlendaleCA: I lived in Idyllwild — in the shadow of the San Jacintos — for about six months back in the early ’80’s and was always amazed — shocked, really — at being able to see the smog layer to the west when I drove down to Hemet. Scary.
Anne Laurie
@raven:
We absolutely need a/c up here, but the house is (natural-gas) hot-water-baseboards heated, so that has to be separately (expensively) planned from the furnace/water heater. So we’ll be using the window units for a few more years yet.
New (Navien) heating system is a panel hanging on the wall, replacing the old monster that took up about 5×10 feet of floor space, so Spousal Unit is pleased to have space for another couple wire shelving units in his ‘man cave’.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: As bad as LA got back then, I’m pretty sure this is worse. The WHO sets the safe level of air pollution at 25 micrograms per cubic meter. The reading in Beijing went over 300.
It definitely affects a much larger area and “the calamity had affected a population equivalent to those of the United States, Canada and Mexico combined with some 460m people having to breathe either hazardous pollution or heavy levels of smog in recent days.”
The videos are horrific.
bemused
We are flying to the opposite end of the country to spend Christmas with two of our boys, daughter-in-law and 3 yr old granddaughter. Grandgirl knows her adored uncle is coming but doesn’t know her grandparents and great-gramma are too. Her parents didn’t tell her because they’d never hear the end of when, when, when. We sent gifts ahead of time and she was sitting in the big box they were in telling her parents to mail her to see Grampa. We can’t wait to see her face.
It will also be a joy to escape trumpapocalyspe news for awhile.
Comrade Scrutinizer
So, Winter has come? Fitting.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yeah! Think of the business opportunities!
Waldo
Question: Are there any Trump admin picks who don’t have ties to Russia?
More seriously, has anyone seen a list or chart online keeping track of the Russian connections? I feel like it would be pretty damning, but i haven’t seen a complete roundup anywhere.
Cermet
Does the solstice really start unless the Druids tie someone to a tree, gut them and wrap their intestines around them? (To think as a kid the “May Pole” celebration was a mock one of these killings … no wonder we turned out so well adjusted – nothing like practice gutting and wrapping the intestinal track (in this case ribbons) around a pole to balance our mental states. May I suggest good old boy Putin as our victim to the any Druids out there? Maybe a certain FBI agent might be a good substitute, if Putin not available?
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: A similar smog situation was going on in Delhi when I first arrived last month, the readings were about as bad though for a shorter duration, thankfully it cleared a bit after my second day there. But I hadn’t seen yellow air like that since the 70s.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s a different kind of air pollution, LA’s was primarily from autos, so it wasn’t mostly particulates. China burns alot of coal, so you get particulates. It’s an apple/oranges comparison.
Baud
How’s the hubby, AL?
Raven Onthill
Hail the unconquered sun!
Me, I’m noticing that Trump supporters seem to think that Trump can repeal cause and effect. I’m also noticing they seem to think that people whose health care has been taken away will love them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mustang Bobby: Yup, folk would live in Pasadena and didn’t see the San Gabriels for the first 6 months until we’d have a Santa Ana.
Mustang Bobby
Denver and Albuquerque get the temperature inversion thing owing to their geography. Driving in from Boulder or Santa Fe you would see the brown cloud and there would be “burn bans” — no wood-burning stoves or fireplaces — during those times. I remember having to get my car inspected for smog emissions and they would change the gasoline mixture during the winter.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cermet:
I grew up Catholic. My friends and I crucified the neighborhood children. Literally.
CapnMubbers
@Waldo: LGF chart http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/46709_This_Flow_Chart_Shows_the_Disturbing_Connections_Between_Trump_Russia_White_Supremacists_and_Ethnic_Nationalists
Immanentize
@BillinGlendaleCA: so China is like the old London “fog?”
HinTN
@Darkrose: ;^P Loves me some Bad Astronomy
Kay
I still love winter. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I’m older but I don’t think I could live in a year-round warm place. The shorter days are different, but by the time they come I’m always ready for a change.
I lived in both Georgia and North Carolina but I knew I wasn’t staying – nice places!- definitely had good points, but I knew I would end up living somewhere north of there.
My husband is thrilled because kids wear hats again. There was a period where you couldn’t get them to WEAR A HAT. It was fashion-forbidden for like a decade. They were freezing! My older son would head out when it was 5 below with a bare head! Now hats are cool again. You can’t get them to take them off :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize: Yup.
ThresherK (tablet)
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve got this Brazil-like image in my head of those 460m people surrounded by posters and billboards of the Beijing Olympics (when China took temporary steps to make the air quality passable).
Raven
@Anne Laurie: nice
Jeffg166
I use to look forward to the Solstice. Summer was coming back. Now I dread it. Summer is coming back.
Raven
@Kay: if you lived here you know it’s not “year round warm”. I’m sitting outside with my pups and it’s below freezing.
Baud
@Kay: As long as they’re not red truckers hats.
Laura in Kaua'i
@BillinGlendaleCA: I grew up in San Marino in the 50s and 60s and the only two days we saw the mountains some years were on Christmas and Easter, when the cars were off the road, I guess. Or if there was a Santa Ana blowing (and then of course we worried about fires breaking out). Summers were the worst, especially if you went swimming. The combo of smog and chlorine made breathing very difficult.
Baud
@Jeffg166: I like May 2. That’s a good day.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Hat hair was to be avoided at all costs.
Raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: I lived in Whittier in the late 50s and had trouble breathing at times. How bout that huge eucalyptus falling on those folks?
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: Uh, I am really hoping that the word “Literally” has a slightly different meaning for you then me …lol.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s why the kids love the slouchy hats.
Big ole beanies with pompoms are back, too. It’s a lot of fun
Baud
@Cermet: Don’t ask too many questions.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Raven: Pretty sad, killed the mother of the bride. It’s pretty common for those trees to come down after a rain storm and the subsequent wind. I had one fall on my car a few years ago.
Kay
@Raven:
I do know that! Atlanta had a kind of wet cold that goes right to the feet :)
It’s a fun city and it was cheap to live there at the time. I rented for a time in Buckhead and I was a waitress. I was surrounded by Mercedes drivers and I was driving a car that wouldn’t go in reverse. If I got in a place where I couldn’t turn around I had to push it backwards and jump in. The house had a pool! Just crazy, how cheap it was to rent. It was part of a bad divorce or something- someone was fighting over it.
I remember ice storms too. Magnolia leaves coated with ice. I envy you unlimited pine straw, which is the best thing ever, and those giant magnolias. I once planted a white pine just for the straw. I also love live oaks. I covet them.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cermet: We used rope, not spikes, and we always took them down in time for dinner. Each one of us had also spent time on the cross. I think that is what’s called a “martyr complex”.
Kay
@Baud:
Ski hats. They have whole collections. Some of them wear a thin one in one color and a thicker, different color on top of that. It looks good, surprisingly.
Dadadadadadada
I for one am quite looking forward to being surprised in 2017. For example, it would surprise me greatly if Shitler makes it through the year without killing millions of innocent people.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Reminds me of an old truck I once had with notoriously bad starters. Always had to park on a hill in a place where I couldn’t get blocked in. (manual tranny)
Baud
@Kay: Two hats?! I thought kids today were supposed to be suffering.
HeleninEire
Yeah, the only thing I’m not liking about the move is that the sun doesn’t even start its rise until 7:45, and if there’s sun, its not out from behind the clouds until 10. Then its dark again at 4:15ish.
Of course the summer is the exact opposite. The sun is shining bright by 5:30am and it stays in the sky until 9pm. And the whole time, the temps rarely reach 75 degrees. Absolute heaven.
Today the sun is shining and it’s a crisp 47 degrees. The perfect day for a long walk along the quays of the River Liffey.
rikyrah
@Waldo:
I saw a tweet of all the Russian connections. Pretty damning.
Botsplainer
No more surprises would mean that Me and probably most of the inhabitants of North America survive until February 1.
rikyrah
I enjoy living in a four season place. I would be lying if I didn’t say that winter gets harder and harder to deal with every year.
satby
@rikyrah: Morning!
I also like living in a place with four seasons, and I don’t mind cold or snow as long as I can avoid having to drive on ice, which hasn’t been possible the last two years but may be after a few more years. I take the short winter days as the required penalty for enjoying the long summer days, and winter solstice is my favorite day because I know the march is on to more daylight.
JPL
Anne, I’m glad that your husband is on the mend.
Twitter informed me that O’Reilly’s is defending the electoral college.
Steve Bannon must be so proud!
debbie
@JPL:
“White establishment”??? I say we go back to the day everyone hated the Irish, Mr. O’Reilly.
Patricia Kayden
@Cermet:
Which Trump kid do you have in mind?
@Waldo: Here is a link to Trump, Russia and White Supremacists which is not exactly what you’re asking for.
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: The “white establishment” only includes straight, White Republicans. President and Secretary Clinton need not apply.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: @debbie: On the bright side of Trump’s ascendancy is the tossing away of the dog whistle. Used to be it was OK to be racist as long as you didn’t sound like one. They aren’t hiding anymore.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I bought it off of this 17 year old southerner. He was so nice. He would let me bring it back and he would fix it sometimes. I have no idea why he was running a used car lot in his grandmother’s front yard. They all drank “Jack and Coke”. They’d run it together like one word- JacknCoke. This might explain why the car wouldn’t go in reverse despite numerous repairs.
Central Planning
Happy BS “darkest solstice in 500 years” day!
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, the rope part is good to hear and I hope you guy’s had a foot stand so suffocation was averted …sounds like you all had an interesting childhood of religious fun …guess that wouldn’t go over well at most Sunday schools … . Well, our May pole was colourful but not in a bloody manner.
Jeffro
@Waldo:
I’d say Betsy DeVos, but then again, she’s gonna be rushin’ to privatize America’s public schools…get it? Rushin’?!?
(crickets)
Guess I better not quit my day job…
raven
@Kay: Here are the magnolia decorations on our mantle!
raven
@efgoldman:
We returned to that five room flat
Now it was empty and this the last time
There were blinking pictures
Of how we’d sit and chat
Some of them are scattered
Others shattered in my mind
It was always three flights up
Cathedral bells kept time
In the winter, a-chatterin’ cold
While the building shook like ragweed in the wind
Stories from the heat pipes
We were told
But now they only leave me
With a half-enchanted grin
Spanky (ex-P-man)
Dang! Missed Solstice! That happened back at 5:44 EST, and as it happens I was spending a quiet moment with a cat on my lap after Mrs. P had left for work and before I got rolling out the door. A good activity for the moment of solstice.
And of course everyone knows we (in the Northern Hemisphere) have been gaining afternoon sun since December 5 while losing morning sun until January 5(ish). That’s due to the obliquity of the ecliptic making the sun run slow this time of year.
raven
@Kay: I had a friend in Champaign that lived in the ATL in the 70’s and he said it was wild!
Spanky (ex P-man)
A/L, I mis-typed this new nym and am in moderation. Please to rescue?
JPL
@raven: That is beautiful! As soon as it warms up, I am going to clip some branches and copy that.
satby
@debbie: hey now!
Morzer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpQJUps5mPk
A wide-ranging, challenging discussion by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rebecca Traister, Chris Hayes, and Sherrilyn Ifill of why Trump won and the state of American society.
The official blurb:
Random House presents a “Big Ideas Night” panel with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Chris Hayes, Rebecca Traister, Sherrilyn Ifill, and moderator Chris Jackson. They discuss the fallout of the 2016 Presidential election, and what a Trump presidency could mean for America.
Jeffro
Glad to see more and more writers, like Jamelle Bouie today, noting that what’s needed is to restore some of the norms we all used to abide by in our politics. It’s a great way to highlight the GOP’s decades-long spiral into Tea Party madness without giving them any wiggle room or excuses. The Hacker/Pierson book I”m reading, American Amnesia, touches on this theme as well.
Kay
@raven:
They’re lovely. I used to put the magnolia blooms in bowls but they only last about 15 minutes :)
We used to go to the Fox Theater. One of us had a boyfriend who had a brother who was a concert promoter so he’d get us in free. TONS of drama. Someone was always crying and storming out. I had a (female) friend who was named “Merle” after Haggard. She had NO sense of humor about this!
Jeffro
Btw, very cool stuff here (first noted over at TPM by Josh Marshall): great way to make sure we have Dems running for every possible seat in the country. 50-state-strategy? Psshht. How about a 40,000-seat strategy?!?
Chris
Open thread, right? A very random question to the floor. Is anyone else here unable to drink coffee on account of irritable bowel syndrome or something like it, and if so, have you ever found an adequate substitute in the “staying awake at work” department?
(I assume that if your body doesn’t like coffee, Red Bull isn’t even worth bringing up. Anything else?)
Chris
@efgoldman:
That shit’ll kill you.
Botsplainer
For anybody who has seen the vid of the racist old troll berating the Hispanic women at a JC Penney’s in Louisville (with no pushback from other customers), keep in mind that her attitude is pure Kentucky, but not Louisville.
That mall is in the farther reaches of the South End, bordering deplorable country.
raven
@Kay: I have a buddy who knows Dylan and some of his long time players. About 20 years ago I ran into him on the street and he said “I gotta have a ride to the Fox to see Bob, you want to take me”? I thought he was full of shit but I did it. We went to the back door and, sure enough, he was on the backstage list. It was weird, you couldn’t really hear but it was an experience. Jagger was making a movie in Atlanta at the time so he was back stage too. I remember Dylan going off stage and Mick trailing after him “Bob, Bob. . .”
OzarkHillbilly
@efgoldman:
I was just about to mention mini-splits. They are very efficient and very popular in Europe and Japan where space is a consideration. The cost overall isn’t that much worse. I’m going to be putting a couple units in my house soon (I hope).
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s bad enough that it effects me here in Japan across the goddamn sea. We have alerts now for PM2.5 when the wind blows the smog from China our way. I mean, Beijing is pretty damned far away.
raven
@JPL: Should only be a couple of hours.
germy
headline:
Andrea Bocelli Joins a Long List of Singers Who Will Not Be Performing at Donald Trump’s Inauguration
Morzer
@efgoldman:
Didn’t the Youtube link come through? The recording was posted to Youtube on December 19th.
Baud
@germy: Yes! Small victories.
JPL
@raven: Thanks. I’ll clip them late Saturday afternoon before the crowd arrives for dinner.
Elizabelle
Good morning, all. Happy Winter Solstice.
Normalizing Fascists. Blogpost by a Case Western professor, with interesting comments following.
Baud
@Elizabelle: To be fair, Hitler’s opponents didn’t have private email servers.
magurakurin
@debbie:
Why stop there? Why not go all the way back to hating Germans?
Elizabelle
@Baud: I know. Emails, emails, emails.
Despondent. That is the mood. (John and others discussed it in the overnight thread.)
Baud
@Elizabelle: I was a sociopath before the election so part of me is happy to see my outlook validated.
Morzer
@Baud:
*cough* Alan Turing was just wily *cough*
Morzer
@Baud:
So, would a sociopathic sociologist be a sociopathologist?
germy
@Baud:
At this point I believe the only entertainment will be Rush Limbaugh playing The Presidential March through his ass cheeks.
Jeffro
@Botsplainer: saw it on Twitter…what a horrendous person. Would have been nice if someone had bothered to get the JCP manager (then again, it’s only a 1-minute video; the manager may have been on the way)
germy
@Elizabelle: And then I see this WaPo headline:
NotMax
Got yer sunrise right here.
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
I once spent two of the most annoying weeks of my life in Louisville. I am prepared to believe the worst of that city and its denizens.
Elizabelle
@germy: Freewheeling, huh? How carefree.
germy
@Chris:
Those caffeine supplements give me the jitters. Sometimes just standing up and doing some brisk movements (without alarming your co-workers) will provide a rush of alertness. A quick walk, some arm flapping, etc.
Morzer
@germy:
“Are nuclear wars a growth opportunity for the corporations who survive them?”
germy
@Elizabelle:
I know, right? I love the words they use. So safe and harmless. I thought Bob Dylan was freewheelin’, not herr drumpf.
Elizabelle
@Morzer: Yeah, really. Much like those who survived the Black Death benefitted from less folks being around in the aftermath.
germy
@Morzer:
“Diet and fashion tips for your post-safety net lifestyle”
NotMax
@efgoldman
When it comes up in conversation, like to describe getting old as “a carnival of revelations.”
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
I’ve gone from despondent to furious. A long time friend made a comment about the DNC being mean to Bernie and I congratulated for falling for the Russian con game. The Sanders supporters were the initial targets for the Russian information warfare. She looked really shocked. I then told her that anyone who harbors one bit of admiration for Sanders is an idiot and I’ve given up playing nice. I’m sooo done coddling people. They honestly didn’t care enough about the people who would be harmed to warrant any concern from me now.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
Oddly enough, they did. Agricultural laborers found that their services were in great demand because their segment of the population had died off at horrendous rates and the big estates simply couldn’t get the peasants they needed, and so they could negotiate for better wages (or simply up and go elsewhere) in ways that simply weren’t possible before. These tendencies worried the aristocrats enough that you find new laws being passed in e.g. England to restrict freedom of movement and cap wages at a pretty low maximum legal rate.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: Furious would be a step up. So there’s that to look forward to.
And yes.
But how about changing the S-word to Wilbur in your comment, or we will have that asshole NR smelling up the place.
I agree with you totally. The manic progressives shivved us. Fuck them.
Morzer
@NotMax:
I think we shall soon experience the joy of living through a carnivorous revelation.
Spanky (ex P-man)
@Elizabelle: You know the rules about headlines. For every headline that ends in a question mark the answer to the question is “no”, even (especially?) if the author’s conclusion is “yes”.
Elizabelle
@Spanky (ex P-man): Gonna put that to the test. LOL. Might amass a collection. Of the ridiculous.
Chris
@efgoldman:
Don’t the caffeine tablets have the same effect as drinking coffee would?
Getting a co-worker to slap one upside the head is, of course, always an option, thank you for reminding me. And several of them wouldn’t mind a bit.
germy
@magurakurin: I am so naive that it didn’t occur to me until much later in life that many of the old books I’d read and enjoyed in my youth were written by men who would have hated me on sight.
I am one of Ben Franklin’s tawny swarthy undesirables.
JPL
@MomSense: I’ll be good, I promise!
Actually, I thought Bernie’s lack of transparency about his finances, would have shown his supporters, that he was a phony. I think it was here that someone here who mentioned that Trump didn’t release his tax returns, because he didn’t want his followers to know, how little money he actually had. Bernie didn’t release his, because he didn’t want his followers to know, how wealthy he was.
germy
@JPL: Susan Sarandon can enjoy her tax break while fighting the good fight on twitter.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
Conservative Group Wants Trump To ‘Ferret Out’ Pro-LGBT State Department Workers
A new twist on old McCarthyism.
12/16/2016 04:57 pm ET | Updated 2 days ago
A leading social conservative organization is calling on the Trump administration to “ferret out” employees at the State Department who worked to promote LGBT rights and replace them with conservatives.
The Family Research Council, in a little-noticed statement on Thursday, accused the Obama administration of having deployed the State Department to advance an LGBT agenda, and argued it was incumbent on the next secretary of state ― likely ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson ― to stop it.
“I certainly don’t see Tillerson cut from the same cloth as [Hillary] Clinton or [John] Kerry, but he doesn’t have to be for these anti-life, liberal social policies to continue,” said a statement that appears to be written by the group’s president, Tony Perkins. “He must have the courage to stop the promotion of this anti-family, anti-life agenda, which is very much a question mark given that he capitulated to activists pushing to liberalize the Boy Scouts’ policy on homosexuality when he was at the helm of the organization.
“The incoming administration needs to make clear that these liberal policies will be reversed and the ‘activists’ within the State Department promoting them will be ferreted out and will be replaced by conservatives who will ensure the State Department focuses on true international human rights like religious liberty which is under unprecedented assault,” the statement concludes.
Elizabelle
@JPL: That strikes me as true.
So: the only nominee who disclosed: was done in by emails, emails, emails.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: I got yer moon rise right here.
Morzer
@rikyrah:
I’ll believe it when I see Tony Perkins fighting to defend Muslims whose mosques have been attacked and whose civil liberties have been threatened by right-wing white Christian terrorists.
Elizabelle
The Family Research Council can go to the devil.
Honestly. I would love to see The Great Orange One’s face when he has to give them a meeting. He probably thinks they’re as whacko as we do. But they’re a channel to more of his supporters.
The evangelical set. WIth Trump as their defender of morals.
You can’t make this shit up.
Weaselone
@Morzer:
“Nuclear Winter: Solution to the Climate Crisis?”
Chris
@Elizabelle:
To be somewhat fair to them, fascism was still a relatively new phenomenon at the time, even if it was composed of a ton of things (authoritarianism, antisemitism, imperialism) that were anything but. Also, note that dictatorship was much more widespread and accepted in those days.
The article is, of course, pretty much spot on. A lot of this is stuff I’d thought of years ago when reading up on fascism, looking around me and wondering how many conservatives would hop on board the bandwagon if it ever came around and how they’d justify it. And it was, unfortunately, all very easy to imagine.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
Where do you think they came from? Trust me, Satan is not taking them back.
Spanky (ex P-man)
@Weaselone: Actually, that may be the one headline that violates the rule I mentioned in #124.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Truth.
A Ghost To Most
I’ll just leave this here:
“What It Means”
Patterson Hood
He was running down the street
When they shot him in his tracks
About the only thing agreed upon
Is he ain’t coming back
There won’t be any trial
So the air it won’t be cleared
There’s just two sides calling names
Out of anger out of fear
If you say it wasn’t racial
When they shot him in his tracks
Well I guess that means that you ain’t black
It means that you ain’t black
I mean Barack Obama won
And you can choose where to eat
But you don’t see too many white kids
Lying bleeding on the street
In some town in Missouri
But it could be anywhere
It could be right here on Ruth Street
In fact it’s happened here
And it happened where you’re sitting
Wherever that might be
And it happened last weekend
And it will happen again next week
And when they turned him over
They were surprised there was no gun
I mean he must have done something
Or else why would he have run
And they’ll spin it for the anchors
On the television screen
So we can shrug and let it happen
Without asking what it means
What it means?
What it means?
Then I guess there was protesting
And some looting in some stores
And someone was reminded that
They ain’t called colored folks no more
I mean we try to be politically
Correct when we call names
But what’s the point of post-racial
When old prejudice remains?
And that guy who killed that kid
Down in Florida standing ground
Is free to beat up on his girlfriend
And wave his brand new gun around
While some kid is dead and buried
And laying in the ground
With a pocket full of skittles
What it means?
What it means?
Astrophysics at our fingertips
And we’re standing at the summit
And some man with a joystick
Lands a rocket on a comet
We’re living in an age
Where limitations are forgotten
The outer edges move and dazzle us
But the core is something rotten
And we’re standing on the precipice
Of prejudice and fear
We trust science just as long
As it tells us what we want to hear
We want our truths all fair and balanced
As long as our notions lie within it
There’s no sunlight in our ass’
And our heads are stuck up in it
And our heroes may be rapists
Who watch us while we dream
But don’t look to me for answers
Cuz I don’t know what it means
What it means?
What it means?
Wolverines!
MomSense
@JPL:
That would be me who said that about their taxes. Bastards.
Weaselone
@Spanky (ex P-man):
Good point.
jenn
@A Ghost To Most: Hadn’t read this. Thanks.
matryoshka
@rikyrah: So I guess America will soon be officially supporting the “kill the gays” people in Uganda? And what’s good for Uganda is good for. . .
A Ghost To Most
@jenn: and this:
“Once They Banned Imagine”
Mike Cooley
We had our heart strings dangling ripe for the yanking
And lot of reasons grabby was good
Poor huddled masses singing boots up their asses
Giving grabby what he needed to pull
All the way back to where ghosts from the past were still
Fighting their wars from the grave
Complete with record burning and threatening and spurning
The crime of getting blood on the page
Since the big one ended we’d been mostly pretending
We’d have had the same gumption and grit
As the greatest among us when harm came upon us
We wouldn’t hesitate to defend
But with or against something’s been out to get us
And it looked like something finally did
No nobler cause in our lifetime for setting our sails to the wind
But once they banned Imagine it became the same old war its always been
Once they banned Imagine it became the war it was when we were kids
Are you now or have you ever been in cahoots with the notion that people can change
When history happens again if you do or you did you’ll be blamed
From baseless inquiry
To no knocking entry
Becoming the law of the land
To half cocked excuses for bullet abuse regarding anything browner than tan
Cause once they banned Imagine it became the same old war its always been
Once they banned Imagine it became the war it was when we were kids
Wolverines!
randy khan
“The hinge of the year” – what a lovely phrase.
The Winter Solstice is one of my favorite days of the year – I yearn for the promise of the return of the light.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
“This isn’t Wall Street! This is Hell! We have a little thing called integrity!”
Jeffro
@A Ghost To Most: “Ramon Casiano” = great history of the guy who made the modern NRA so vile (Ramon was his first victim) and “Surrender Under Protest” = a sharp take on how the Confederacy lives on after all these generations
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@randy khan: I want to second the beauty of the phrase
and thank you for noting it.
HeidiMom
@magurakurin: I’m a descendant of those “ignorant Stupid Sort” so feared by Ben. According to our family history, our surname was originally “Kraehenbuehl,” meaning “crow hill.” As with so much of Pennsylvania “Dutch,” or German, culture, it’s been Anglicized. Like all bigots, Ben feared what he didn’t understand, or even have first-hand knowledge of. (Where did he meet those swarthy Swedes, anyway?) About the only danger our culture poses to the Commonwealth nowadays is the possibility that if you order chicken pot pie in a family restaurant or diner in central Pennsylvania, you’ll get something you’re not expecting. Ask before ordering!
A Ghost To Most
and for Harlon Carter, who made the NRA what is is today:
Ramon Casiano”
Mike Cooley
It all started with the border
And that’s still where it is today
Someone killed Ramon Casiano
And the killer got away
Down by the Sister Cities river
Two boys with way more pride than sense
One would fall and one would prosper
Never forced to make amends
He became a border agent
And supplemented what he made
With creative deportation
And missing ammo by the case
Since Bullet ran the operation
There’s hardly been a minute since
There ain’t a massing at the border
From Chinese troops to terrorists
He had the makings of a leader
Of a certain kind of men
Who need to feel the world’s against him
Out to get ’em if it can
Men whose trigger pull their fingers
Of men who’d rather fight than win
United in a revolution
Like in mind and like in skin
It all started with the border
And that’s still where it is today
Down by the Sister Cities river
But for sure no one can say
The killing’s been the bullet’s business
Since back in 1931
Someone killed Ramon Casiano
And Ramon still ain’t dead enough
E
Aarghh. The northern hemisphere is not, as the video states, “furthest from the sun” on this date. The earth is actually pretty close to the sun this time of year, it’s just that our northern end is tipped away from it.
Gary K
@E: Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. I left a similar comment at the YouTube posting.