.
Fireworks have been going off around the globe as people begin to welcome 2021 — but crowds were only allowed at some displayshttps://t.co/oyVm4kzHMR pic.twitter.com/9nDZNvjLjn
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 31, 2020
A note from Mr. Pierce at Esquire (who survived being hit by a car in 2020) — “1968 Is No Longer the Worst Year I’ve Experienced”:
… In 1968, even at its worst, even in the days when, one day after another, leaders were murdered here and democracy was crushed in Prague and Nixon, of all people, was elected President of the United States, there was some sense of forward movement. Hell, LBJ actually got a gun-control bill passed that October, and he was the lamest duck since James Buchanan at that point…
So we enter into the first year of what can fairly be called the nation’s Third Reconstruction, which will be completed this time, God willing, and if we have the stomach for what has to be done. We’ve looked over the edge and into the abyss and felt the ground giving way beneath our feet. That’s a kind of thrill, I guess. I’d rather not feel it again for a while, though.
There’s a lot of work there and so much rubble to clear away, and we are demonstrably not a country that believes in collective action any more. We have to stretch and exert political and social muscles that we have discovered recently have atrophied. That begins on January 1…
I have no reason to be overoptimistic.
But I’m trying…
In South Africa, lit candles replaced parties. In Dubai, images of masked health care workers briefly lit up Burj Khalifa. And in France, officers enforced a national curfew as the world said goodbye to a year like no other. https://t.co/s0SguA2gDB
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 1, 2021
Unexpected Biden fans:
Peruvian shamans predict better times in 2021 pic.twitter.com/YXkB1ToksI
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 31, 2020
On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – Provence, France
raven
Fuck LBJ
Betty Cracker
Reposting comment from downstairs:
Our New Year’s Eve bird stakeout was a success. We saw some night herons out foraging and heard (but did not see) many owls and other assorted birds, including the usual Limpkins. A few weeks back, we saw a male Snail Kite perched along the river, and yesterday evening, we saw a female. There are only about 1,000 Snail Kites in the U.S., so to see two of them is pretty cool!
NotMax
New Year’s Day potpourri.
Flash from the past. Just mentally overwrite the year.
Speaking of the past, anyone in need of a calendar? A little White-Out and a pen (or minor Photoshopping) and you’re good to go.
More locally,
“Psst. Hey, buddy. Yeah, you. Wanna buy a spork?”
raven
@Betty Cracker: When I woke up at 4 I saw a txt from my neighbor/tenant from 11 pm letting me know he was going all out with pyrotechnics. We went to bed and 10 and he wasn’t kidding.
Baud
The Peruvian shaman community is an untapped demographic.
Happy New Year! ??
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Very nice. Hopefully they are a mated pair.
Betty Cracker
@raven: There was surprisingly little of that around here. I believe there were more fireworks on Christmas, which is weird! :)
OzarkHillbilly
The most notable US athletes of 2020: No 1 – LeBron James, a man for all seasons
NotMax
Way too much and way too loud fireworks here. Ash and who knows what else was distinctly heard falling on and bouncing off the metal roof of the cottage; sounded like it was being pelted by hail.
Rain had let up much earlier in the evening and didn’t begin again until about 12:30.
NotMax
@Baud
The meme-a from Lima?
:)
rikyrah
Happy New Year, Everyone??✨????
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
NotMax
Because to help in closing out 2020, why the hell not throw an X-files log on the fire?
FAA notified after large blue UFO seen above Oahu appeared to drop into ocean
Steeplejack
No fireworks here in Threadkill Lane and environs. All the holidays the last few years have been very quiet.
I did get my stimulus check at 4:00 a.m. via direct deposit. So the year is off to a good start. ? Yee-haw.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah, @Baud:
Good morning! ????
Immanentize
Happy New Year, all. Raven and OH have shown me this morning that, in spite of so much crazy change, our foundations are sound.
Blech! And Fuck LBJ! are the incantations I needed this morning. ?
Onward.
bjacques
Lots of fireworks in Amsterdam despite a national ban on anything bigger than sparklers. We drank fine whisky and watched Death To 2020, Special Correspondents and a couple of obscure gems on Netflix: Handsome and Girlfriend’s Day.
Back in Houston I’m told everyone spent their Rona Relief money on fireworks and ammo to ring in the New Year.
germy
Butter Emails
USA Today does not know how to do fact checks. Yesterday, I viewed their assessment of the following claim.
The claim: Clinton and Obama were the only presidents to lower the deficit in the last 50 years
Their Conclusion: Needs Context due to some presidents lowering deficit in the middle of the there terms and no President having a lower national debt when leaving office.
Then today I saw the following
The claim: Five statistics about Obama, Trump and Biden appear to discredit election results
Their Conclusion: Needs Context due to statistics being true, but the conclusion being false
So basically they arrived at the same conclusion for two different memes, one being unambiguously true and one being unambiguously false. To get there there they have to disregard the plain language of the first and go into contortions about deficits going done in the middle of terms and total national debt. For the second they have to ignore the actual purpose of the meme and pretend that the list of facts is the point, not the suggestion of election fraud.
germy
germy
@Butter Emails:
Maybe the people who used to do all that work were laid off in 2009.
NotMax
@germy
Real men down it orally without letting the goop thaw first.
//
germy
germy
Baud
@germy:
raven
@Immanentize: Further!
germy
I love when they eat their own.
germy
Best disclaimer of 2020:
lowtechcyclist
Fuck 2020, fuck LBJ, and especially fuck the dessicated corpse of Richard Nixon even more. LBJ at least escalated because he thought he was fighting the commies. Then when he was on the verge of a peace deal in 1968, Nixon – who ran on a “secret plan to end the war” convinced the South Vietnamese government to bollix the deal, and Vietnam had four more years of war.
And he did that just to help win the 1968 election. That’s right, Vietnam suffered the ravages of four more years of war just so that Nixon could get himself in the White House. Makes the illegal stuff he did to win in 1972 look almost trivial by comparison.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: Do you participate in the annual bird count? My SIL and her husband, who live in Fla, usually do, but I don’t think they are this year.
leeleeFL
@raven: As a current Medicare member, and a Believer in Civil Rights, and a hater of gun violence, I have to cut the man SOME slack, tho not a bunch. He was wrong on SO many levels, but on some things he put the good of the People before politics. For him, that was a huge choice. And he knew he was making it. So, there’s that.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
A new tradition!
Immanentize
@raven: I’m totally scrapping “onward” for “further.” Ken Kesey decade, here we come!
debbie
@raven:
Here, there’s celebratory gunfire every NYE and July 4th. Last night was the worst it’s ever been in the 25 years I’ve been back. It was constant.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
An all-around good egg.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: I clicked on the link and the first reply I saw was
“Jan 6th this Nation will be shaken by what is revealed. The next 4 years will be the 2nd Harvest. Kim Clements prophesied these exact events over 10 yrs ago. Watching this prophecy has been bone chilling. I’m waiting for the female he spoke of to emerge (VP is my guess).”
Holy crap. I am not good enough at imagining crazy shit
Patricia Kayden
leeleeFL
@Butter Emails: This here is why I will not get Florida Today, the Baby of USA Today. Local news or not, I will not pay anything for that dreck.
germy
leeleeFL
@germy: Should they use Hot Sauce, or ipecac? Inquiring minds, and all that!
debbie
@germy:
It must not be called “best”; only “most ridiculous” will do.
leeleeFL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Primo weed, or rancid liquor!?
SFAW
But he’s got a feeling ’21 is going to be a good year
Amir Khalid
@germy:
My own favourite Lin Wood disclaimer is still “We ain’t dermb!“
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: here’s how it works — think up some random stuff, put a date to it, then add ominous titles like:
On the twentieth of the first month, a black and brown leader, once a girl, will rise to the seat beside power. The Third Reconstruction will begin with song and hopeful joy but must also be visited by pestilence and violent resistance. This is the seventh step in fulfilling the vision of Martin, yet this step we will witness although many fighters could not survive to see this day dawn. I am so excited!
See? Easy Peasy.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I can’t imagine an attorney being that batshit crazy; I think he’s butthurt because he’s not getting the attention he thinks he deserves.
lowtechcyclist
@germy:
So let the coronavirus kill ’em, and let God sort ’em out, right?
Yeah, that’s been the ‘pro-life’ GOP in 2020.
Kathleen
@Immanentize: Way late for this because I’m always behind on the threads but I am holding you and your family members in the light.
Baud
@Immanentize:
Hail Martin, full of grace.
Baud
@debbie: He’s getting more attention than he deserves.
Quinerly
@germy: I spent about 45 mins of my life yesterday poking around Linn Wood’s Twitter feed. He’s totally nuts, plus a God complex. He’s relentless in these attacks on CJ Roberts. And, of course, he and the people who follow him are saying that since Roberts isn’t denying his involvement in this pedophile ring (that Trump will soon expose) and in the murder of Scalia (pillow over his face while sleeping) then Wood’s allegations must be true. And the military is going to arrest Kemp… and there is some book about J Edgar Hoover that we all must read.
It’s time for some of these nutcase attys to be sanctioned and disbarred.
germy
@debbie:
Lin is an attorney and Sidney Powell was a federal prosecutor. It’s terrifying to consider.
Anyone who was successfully prosecuted by Powell needs a new trial.
Immanentize
@Kathleen: Thank you. Light is certainly called for! Unpdatum: FiL back home, feeling relieved, but can’t sleep. more Doc work next week — but in a better year.
lowtechcyclist
@Immanentize:
Nitpick: wasn’t it ‘furthur’?
Immanentize
@Baud: No shit. That dude saw
germy
I think he wants to be Trump’s new vice president, after Trump has Pence arrested.
Quinerly
@germy: Linn Wood is also on a multi-day rant about Mark Meadows being a treasonous traitor. Plus, something about Big Pharma.
SFAW
@Quinerly:
As a compromise, would you settle for a holding cell in the Marianas Trench?
Immanentize
@Quinerly:
If that fever dream were true, I would have to begrudgingly give Roberts some respect.
WorkingOnIt
@NotMax:
OT – I was intrigued by description of your eating regimen in an earlier thread – it corresponds to OMAD* aka “Intermittent Fasting” and has had a resurgence the last few years. Had no idea it was a thing in 1964!!!! Was it popular back then ( I wasn’t around…)? I am impressed you’ve stuck with it for so many years. I am on year 3…
*One-Meal-A-Day
Quinerly
@germy: and both were sane and reputable at earlier points in their careers.
And… Then… Trump…
Kathleen
@Baud: I love how every article about victorious Democrats claims supporters don’t “love” Dem Candidate xxx but they LOVE Rethuglican yyy.
debbie
@Quinerly:
I have a working theory that all this batshit craziness was born long ago when crap weed first invaded the market and mutated the executive function of smokers’ brains.
raven
@lowtechcyclist: yes!
Quinerly
@SFAW: ❤️
evodevo
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yur just not Pentacostal/Evangelical enuf!! The group is eaten up with fraudsters who are bilking true believers for bucks, with true believers who actually think their delusional prophecies are true and will act on them, with true believers who are denying reality and cherry-picking scripture, and with those who are leading double lives (“white-washed sepulchers” as the Bible says). Unfortunately for this nation, the fraudster-in-chief surrounded himself with the worst examples of each group and allowed them to guide national policy. And here we are…
Immanentize
@lowtechcyclist: look at the front and the destination and you tell me!
FURTHER
debbie
@germy:
Did Pence really say he was leaving politics? I can’t find it on Twitter.
Kathleen
@lowtechcyclist: So true. And so few know how he sabotaged Johnson and the peace talks. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about Nixon and the 1968 campaign but I didn’t know about that until 30 years later.
evodevo
@Immanentize: Very good!
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What the heck is that suppose to mean? Is 2nd Harvest a good or bad thing?
Baud
@debbie: No.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see I sold a few books in the run-up to Christmas. I strongly suspect BJ is responsible for most of those sales. Thanks to anyone who made the buy.
My small press publisher doesn’t get huge sales but I love them for other reasons. I think I’ve said they’re what in the UK is called a social enterprise, meaning they act in socially conscious ways. Today the owner tweeted that it’s their tenth birthday. To celebrate, this year, for every ten books sold directly from their website, they’ll donate a book to places like women’s shelters. That kind of thing makes up for a whole lot.
Kathleen
@Immanentize: Wishing him the best and glad he’s home.
Quinerly
@Immanentize: ?
Kidding aside.. Since Wood is a “famous” defamation atty, his RWNJ followers all agree it must be true b/c he “knows the law” and thus wouldn’t be saying all of this about Roberts if it wasn’t true. And, of course, there is a picture of Roberts with Maxwell and that proves a J Epstein connection. (the picture looks nothing like Roberts)
Immanentize
@lowtechcyclist:
Now if you want a road trip song accompanying your trip to Further —
Furthur at Red Rock
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: Ya got me. I’m hoping it’s like Second Breakfast.
germy
I don’t believe that.
It’s like calling Jenna Ellis a “respected constitutional lawyer.”
I think Lin and Powell always were what they are now. Just less vocal about it.
debbie
@Baud:
?s.
2021’s first disappointment.
Quinerly
@debbie: hmmmm…. ?
Baud
@debbie:
What does “mouses” mean?
germy
@debbie:
No, Pence didn’t say it. Lin-Wood is saying it because Pence won’t play along with their various schemes. So Lin is basically saying Pence’s future political career is dead.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Haha. We are all hobbits here.
JPL
@Immanentize: So is the 2nd Harvest any good?
Quinerly
@germy:
I particularly like the threads attacking Mark Meadows
“Mark earlier confessed his sins to a small group of Christians. We are a forgiving people as we should be because we are all sinners & need forgiveness. But if Mark thereafter continues the affair with
@KirstenMcKim
, can he be trusted? Ask
@_WilliamsonBen
for the truth. He knows.”
Citizen_X
@leeleeFL: I, too, hate gun violence.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
starts loading shotgun
raven
Since it’s going to be a 12 hour football day I gotta get off my ass for while!
Immanentize
@Baud: Is that because we don’t know half of us half as well as we should like; and like less than half of us half as well as we deserve?
Immanentize
@JPL: Their food is top notch, but the wait to get a table is insufferable.
Immanentize
@raven: I thought the point of a twelve hour football day was to be on your ass for a while.
In your new comfy chair!
debbie
@Baud:
It’s a rat emoji, at least on my Mac.
MomSense
Blech. Fireworks last night from the next neighborhood did not help the insomnia situation.
Chyron HR
@Quinerly:
Mmmmm, big parma.
debbie
@raven:
I don’t follow football, but I really, really hope that Clemson coach gets that smug look wiped off his face.
Baud
@Chyron HR:
A staplen of the 2nd Harvest.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
Just read through the Hoarse thread you posted in the overnight thread. I can’t account for why I find it so cheering, but I do. “Broken beyond repair”! Though I’d argue he was broken beyond repair early in his childhood.
Jo Jo las Orejas
@Baud:
Estoy confundido. Además, los fuegos artificiales alteraron mi sueño. Mamá dijo que era valiente.
Tony Jay
Happy New Year Juicers and Jackals of all creeds and nations! Greetings from the Autonomous Corporate Oblast of Lesser Brexitannia-on-the-Wold, where the new national pastime of competitive junk-punching has entered the knock-out stages and expectations are sky-high that we can achieve kinetic castration of up to 95% of the country’s adult population by March at the very latest.
Why would we do such a thing? D’uh. It’s our sovereign right, innit? Nuff said.
Anyway, now that the Grand Vizier of Victimitude has achieved the impossible dream of snatching the snow-dappled pastures and straw-strewn paddocks of mythical Albion out from under modern civilisation’s cold, dead hand, we no longer have to worry about the wider world’s problems. While blinkered adherents to the so-called ‘science’ of lesser cultures might still be honking the hysteria horn for ‘Lockdowns’ and bleating on about ‘catastrophic levels of demand’ on our National Health Service, every true subject of Her Royal and Imperial Majesty Gloriana the Second knows that, as of Midnight last night, these islands are blessedly free of such mundane concerns. We control our borders now, dontchaknow? It might take some stubborn lip-jutting by our well-seasoned team of hardened negotiators, coming fresh and ruddy-thighed from their triumph over Europe’s effete lace-collared dollyboys at the socially-distanced tables of Brussels’ third most celebrated conference centre, but surely there can be no rational doubt that the men who broke the heirs to Napoleon and Bismarck can win a similarly one-sided victory over whoever Mister Covid nominates to argue his case. Can there?
Nah. We’re good. By next month Prime Minister Flobalob will be able to take time out from having his starfish polished to a gleaming shine by the tongues of the official Opposition in order to commandeer the nation’s TV schedules for a flag-backed monologue, during which he will chummily mumblechurn his way though half a dozen misplaced classical analogies and series of factually-imprecise jabs at all the sad souls who lack the intestinal fortitude to swallow the sheer number of high-quantity rewrites and low-quality retcons plastering the cardboard walls of his pantomime premiership, then he’ll pound the lectern with one chubby white paw and claim that cowardly Herr Covid has indeed submitted to British demands by agreeing to inflict an uncontrolled pandemic spread on the country only insofar as it respects British sovereignty by side-lining inferior foreign variants of the virus in favour of a British-made strain of proper red, white and blue virulence, thus achieving the mass infection levels and astronomical death-rate the Great British Public voted for when they handed absolute, unchecked power to his Brexitarian Revolutionary Front. Then he’ll waddle off with a self-satisfied smirk at the gullibility of fools, leaving the rigorous vetting of his claims in the well-moistened hands of a professional Media caste employed at the whim of executives he either went to school with or promoted based on their loyalty to the Tory Party.
See? It all worked out in the end. Sure, we’re a few contested elections away from sending the new and improved Black and Tan militias north to root out cells of the Pictish Liberation Army from their Highland redoubts, and I’m not exactly looking forward to modelling next decade’s must have fashion of chip-tagged luminous vest and vibrant orange workwear while serving out my centrally-mandated National Service in the windswept turnip fields of Ever Greater Britain, but I guess that’s just the price a true patriot has to pay in order to be properly, perfectly and very, very permanently ‘free’.
Totally worth it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: Thanks for the link. I missed that overnight and you’re right. It is cheering.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
More than one mouse.
Mike E
Birbs 2020
leeleeFL
@debbie: I do not twitter, so glad you posted that thread! I told people in 2015 to stop talking about Trump, and he would go away. That he was a fame junkie. Turns out, I pegged him perfectly.. of course, being a New Yorker, that was a NO BRAINER!!! If only enough had listened, if only….
Fleeting Expletive
If the AstroZenica/OXFORD vaccine is eventually approved in the US, wouldn’t its less-onerous handling requirements sort of make it the sort of default best option for mass distribution? It will be the one that winds up vaccinating most of the world, since it can be hauled in a normal cooler out to rural spaces with out spoilage. I’d like to see some thinking on how to transition to use simpler logistics in mass vaccination efforts without the draconian freezer requirements.
debbie
@Tony Jay:
I was wondering last night where Farage has been. Driven out of town on a rail?
OzarkHillbilly
Keep an eye out for Robin’s Wish.
germy
Hoarse Whisperer has been saying stuff like this for four years, though. Trump is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, according to Hoarse.
I get that he survived a bad marriage, and this has made him an expert on toxic narcissists. And a lot of what he writes about Trump sounds true to me. But Hoarse has had Trump on the edge of disaster for the entire presidency, and I don’t think Trump is that emotionally deep.
After January, Trump will waddle off to his next misadventure. I don’t think he’s suffering as much psychic pain as Hoarse likes to think.
germy
@Fleeting Expletive:
Same as Moderna?
leeleeFL
@Tony Jay: THAT WAS DELIGHTFUL! I had fun reading it. Thank you, thank, thank you!
debbie
@leeleeFL:
Hey, by any chance do you know what percentage of the vote he got in Manhattan? I know he got 9.71% in 2016, but I can’t find anything for 2020. I’m fond of using that statistic to beat his supporters over their heads.
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
If the glorious Brexit adventure somehow goes a bit pear-shaped (there is always that possbility, isn’t there, however distant it might seem in the heady thrill of the moment) do you see a plausible roadmap toward — how shall I put it — takey-backsies?
Delk
Happy New Year! Things Can Only Get Better.
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m hoping I can break that hobbit, shed a few pounds.
leeleeFL
@debbie: I don’t know, cause I am in glorious Banana Republic of FLORIDUH these days. I can try to find out though!
WereBear
@Tony Jay: I always love your across-the-pond roundups. You have a fine way with words :)
I’m still dealing with short sleep, but it’s at least mostly New Kitten at this point.
germy
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-jamie-raskin-announces-death-25-year-old-son-n1252636
leeleeFL
@germy: Having shared this particular tragedy with Mr. Raskin, let me say “demolished” is the perfect word to use.
SFAW
@Baud:
It’s the singular contrapositive* of “meeces.” As in: “I hate meeces to pieces.”
*”Singular contrapositive” is, of course, gobbledegook.
leeleeFL
@SFAW: or a new contraceptive device, FOR MEN!?
Bunter
@debbie: From NBC NYC results, Manhattan gave him 12.3%
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
One of the major Q beliefs is that Trump is going to stage a military takeover and execute all Democrats for our crimes. Yes, ALL of us. The details get even more batshit, with Trump sitting on mountains of evidence he’s waiting to reveal to the public and military tribunals, and the takeover will be of the whole world because somehow the US military is already in place to do that and Democrats rule the world anyway. The theory seems to be becoming more popular as the desperate chumps realize there are no options left for Trump to win except a military coup.
debbie
@leeleeFL:
LOL, I should have persisted. Found it! He got 12.3 percent. Fucking S.I. though.
leeleeFL
@SFAW: or a new contraceptive device, FOR MEN!?
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you for this! Knowing why he chose to leave us has made it easier to hear these many years. I heard the news while driving and had to pull over and park to cry. I was inconsolable. His Family sharing their pain was so courageous.
germy
@leeleeFL:
I’m so sorry.
I have two grown offspring and I worry every day.
Fleeting Expletive
As I understand it both Moderna and Pfiser require constant dry-ice temperatures and the AstroZenica does not. It can be stored for up to 30 days in normal refrigeration without these heroic measures, which makes it infinitely more adaptable to conditions in most of the world, in fact most of the US. More than 100 million doses are supposed to be on order.
It just seems like we’re chasing unicorns here.
leeleeFL
@germy: Thank you, germy! Hug ’em every chance you get. And love a hard as you can. It’s really all we’ve got.
Steeplejack
@debbie:
It was oddly comforting. I was struck by the idea of Trump living full-time at Mar-a-Lago as a sort of Twilight Zone ending where he realizes that he is trapped in a gilded Courtyard Suites franchise.
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
I wish they would share their theory of how a draft dodger could be a true Patriot and defender of the American Way. I still can’t get over that painting of Trump in a Revolutionary War uniform gripping the American flag.
leeleeFL
@Steeplejack: I vote for the hotel in the Shining! McCain would sound fab saying, ” here’s Johnny!”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I though I was up on conspiracy theories but turns out I wasn’t when it came to the Lizard people, Take a gander at this video,…
https://youtu.be/awMdxKB5s1Y
It a nut shell, and invisible empire of shape giant lizard people control the world so they can eat children. That sounds like Qanon to me. So how Qanon came out of nowhere makes sense; some dorks on /4Chan do a their role playing game for the Luz based on the Lizard People conspiracy theory, accidentally tap into something that has been quite popular since the V Series in the 70s so hordes of the stupid take it seriously. Because much like Trump the conspiracy theory has been workshopped by skilled grifters since the ’80s they are endless excuses to cover the obvious holes in it.
germy
@Fleeting Expletive:
An old description of Moderna, when it was still being developed:
leeleeFL
@debbie: a neighbor flies the tRump as Rambo in their front yard. I throw up in my mouth every time I pass it! Fun times!
JPL
@leeleeFL: Hugs to you also, even if just virtual.
leeleeFL
@debbie: a neighbor flies the tRump as Rambo in their front yard. I throw up in my mouth every time I pass it! Fun times!
leeleeFL
@JPL: In these times, virtual is the best hug. Shows you care enough to distance. Thank you!
Ken
@Immanentize: If you can do that in rhymed quatrains, you’ve got a bestseller on your hands.
raven
@Immanentize: The chair hasn’t helped much.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
I’m afraid they can’t explain it because it’s so obvious to them that it doesn’t need explaining, like asking us to explain why starving the poor is evil. Fortunately, I do know. White males = America. If you follow that definition, stomping down on everyone else = Patriotism. Strength = 2nd grade style bullying, with its various flavors of whining, never showing compassion, and treating women like subservient objects whose only value is sex. If you see the world this way, yes, Trump looks like Rambo, who you also haven’t looked closely at because who cares about anything except that he’s a muscular white guy killing America-hating bad guys?
OzarkHillbilly
We have a glazing of ice over everything this AM so I put out extra birdfeed about an hour ago. Just went down to fix my traditional NY breakfast of poteca, ham, and eggs and saw 14 male cardinals out there and maybe as many females.
I’ll take it as a hopeful omen for 2021.
Tony Jay
@debbie:
No oxygen in the room for the Anti-Wog Frog to breathe. Johnson’s Tory Party has swallowed UKIP whole, leaving Farage to forage around in the nether swamps of Conspiratoria looking for another bandwagon to hang his wallet on, but anti-Vax hysteria hasn’t (yet) metastasized into a self-sustaining movement so he’s yesterday’s man.
Give it a couple of years for the slash and grab of Brexit to properly hurt enough people, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him re-emerge as the voice of Continuity UKIP, grifting away on the theory that Brexit would totally have been a rip-roaring success if only it hadn’t been hijacked and sold-out by those Europhiliac Tories and their chums in Brussels.
No one likes to admit they were wrong, and we live in a world where selling victimhood to idiots is a massive growth market.
OzarkHillbilly
@leeleeFL: As a father it has long been my greatest fear.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Thank you for your latest lively and informative commentary. Wishing you much Hope and Glory for the New Year!
Tony Jay
@leeleeFL:
My pain is your gain. 8-)
You’re welcome, seriously. I don’t know what my mental health would be like if I didn’t have this place to vent.
debbie
@leeleeFL:
And those twins following him ceaselessly…
Spanky
@Tony Jay: What’s the opinion over there of Flobalob Senior’s well-publicized wish to become a cheeze-eating surrender monkey? Aka a frog-in-waiting?
Betsy
Umm .. I’m on a tiny phone screen and with low connection at the moment .. or I would search the site .. but how do we join the zoom party and what time is it planned?
O. Felix Culpa
@debbie: Ms. O is from Ohio, so you know who we’ll be rooting for. Go Buckeyes!
Ken
@Amir Khalid: Sure, Parliament is sovereign so can change its collective mind and apply for re-admission to the EU. Not this Parliament, I would think, since that would mean an awful lot of members would have to admit they were abysmally wrong.
debbie
@Betsy:
Send an email to WaterGirl.
leeleeFL
@Tony Jay: moi aussi, “in keepin’ with the situation”. Bet you ‘eard that in Cockney! I always do!
Immanentize
@Ken: I always wanted to write a Book of Martin which. In say 500 years or so, post non-nuclear cataclysm, might just be a top hit of the year!
leeleeFL
@debbie: YESSSSSS!
Luciamia
@debbie: Giuliani bas been amazingly quiet. Those lawsuit threats kept him down?
rikyrah
Happy New Year , Kay?????
I still miss you ??
leeleeFL
@Ken: Soooooo, not introspective, or self-examining souls you’re sayin’? Whocoodanode?
debbie
@O. Felix Culpa:
I don’t have cable, so I’ll be obsessively Googling for the score. ✊
debbie
@Luciamia:
I think that head leakage finally got to Trump and he’s told Rudy to zip it.
Skepticat
2021: “Hey, 2020. Hold my beer … “
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
How is the new hire fitting in with the senior staff?
leeleeFL
Immanentize
@raven: I am sorry. I had to get a new zoom chair. I got a gaming chair because it has more posture helping positions. It’s not perfect, but long zooms are much less painful.
Meanwhile to All —
I hope to see you at 3:30 EST (doors open at 3 particularly for zoom assist?). Email WATERGIRL to get the secret He Man Club passcode and link.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: But would the EU be suffering from Battered Wife Syndrome so badly as to take them back?
Ken
@Immanentize: The key is to be obscure, and let your readers do the hard work of proving that you’re right. Even Agnes Nutter had that problem with her readers.
MagdaInBlack
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Wow. I watched that and then got sucked down that youtube rabbit hole.
germy
@Luciamia:
He’s still talking
Ken
They went into politics, so asked and answered.
OzarkHillbilly
@leeleeFL: For me it became real with the sight of my eldest’s head silhouetted by the headlights of the oncoming cars and the certain knowledge that I would never get there in time.
SFAW
@leeleeFL:
I can think of a contraceptive-like quasi-surgical procedure that should be tested on a few men. Interestingly, they all seem to be Republicans. [I believe the surgical implement of choice is a dull spoon.]
OK, maybe MORE than a few Republicans.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Not for some considerable time, I’m afraid.
OTOH, one mid-Atlantic tsunami could change the whole situation. So there’s that.
NotMax
@WorkingOnIt
Whether or not it was a thing in the generalized sense I cannot say. In my case it just sort of — happened. And became the personal norm as the discovery dawned that I felt and functioned immensely better sans food during daylight.
During the time when was employed at an ad agency in NYC we were all given two hours for lunch. If there wasn’t, as most often the case, work to catch up on I spent a lot of time window shopping and wearing out shoe leather on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
Tony Jay
@WereBear:
I’ve got a fridgeful of beer and an 8th birthday party to look forward to. Those things are unconnected but occupy my (non-venting) time enough to make this New Year bearable.
No kitten, though. And I really like kittens.
Immanentize
@Tony Jay: Did I ever tell you about my favorite ever repartee as seen graffiti written in a London-town tube station?
Someone had heavily marked:
WOGS OUT!! (“out” was underlined)
Below that, in response, someone else had marked:
White Man Can’t Fuck.
So perfect.
I am hoping London will be dirt cheap by September, although I suspect you will have to start charging for museums and, well, everything you can.
SFAW
@germy:
Oh, Rudy (shakes head sadly) … the “massive voter fraud” was what got Kemp elected in the first place. And your god-emperor too.
And, yes, I consider bogus/bullshit voter suppression to be “voter fraud,” it’s just not the method of voter fraud usually mentioned. [OK, maybe it’s “voting fraud.” But I could argue that it’s fraud perpetrated on the voters.]
Robert Sneddon
@Fleeting Expletive: The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a conventional altered virus with a protein coat similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus so the body will react to it, make antibodies, memory cells etc. and hence build up resistance to the targetted disease. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are very new tech, mRNA (messenger RNA) strands encapsulted in a manufactured lipid membrane. The mRNA enters the body cells after injection and those cells produce the SARS-COV-2 ‘spike’ proteins the body then reacts to, antibodies and memory cells etc.
The classic Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has a reported efficacy of about 70% i.e. of a hundred people vaccinated seventy will develop robust antibodies to SARS-COV-2 virus and thirty won’t do as well. If you torture the data as the manufacturers are doing and squint you can maybe push that efficacy number up to 90%-plus. The mRNA vaccines more clearly have an efficacy of 90%-plus from the raw test data, no fudging and caveats.
The mRNA vaccines are surprisingly efficacious for their first-ever use case. This bodes well for future mRNA vaccines developed for other diseases. The rushed development is part of the reason for the restrictive logistics chain and I’d expect future mRNA vaccines to be easier and cheaper to manufacture, deploy and use as the technology improves. Don’t be surprised to see the mRNA pioneers getting Nobel Prizes in a few years time.
Geminid
@debbie: You might be able to hear the games on AM or FM radio, if you can catch a sports station. Radio baseball is nice, football not so much, but it allows me to get stuff done rather than be glued to the screen. Today it’s a big clean up of my small home, and cooking a roast stovetop (no oven).
Happy New Year’s, everybody. I hope it will be a happy one for all of us.
Immanentize
@leeleeFL: @OzarkHillbilly:
I was thinking the very same thing, but was frankly too freaked out to type it lest I somehow jinx the Universe. Again.
Immanentize
@Betsy: email WATERGIRL! 3:30 formal festivities. Doors open at 3. No cover today only.
Ken
“Cumbre Vieja and Storegga — Britain’s Best Hope for the Future.”
Immanentize
@Luciamia: Or the continuing after effects of Covid?
Kathleen
@Chyron HR: Something something “Deep Pockets of Big Cheese”.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: Thank you for saying that. We invoked her last night on Zoom. I miss her insights. And her sly humor.
Ken
Or as XKCD put it: “We reject the null hypothesis based on the ‘hot damn, check out this chart’ test.”
Immanentize
@Ken: but that was a good omen, right?
Kathleen
@leeleeFL: I am so sorry.
MagdaInBlack
@WereBear: My lord, she’s cute/gorgeous/a bundle of trouble =-)
Ken
It depends on how the prerequisite change in British politics happens. If it’s by the usual slow mechanisms, then the EU will also have had time to change and may limit themselves to snark.
If the change is more… unusual, the EU would undoubtedly add some conditions, such as “Get control of the cannibal gangs and re-establish a functioning national electrical grid.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: You having gone thru what you’ve gone thru, I don’t blame you.
Josie
@leeleeFL:
So true. My oldest son passed unexpectedly at age 39. I still think of him every day and miss him so much. He was always my best helper and friend.
Kathleen
Those of you who have Twitter accounts might find this interesting. I’ve not tried this of course because God knows I can’t (nor should I attempt to) cook (1 of 2 of my favorite 4 letter “c” words, the second being “camp”).
Snap a pic of up to 3 ingredients you have stocked in your fridge and Tweet it over to
@KrogerChefbot
for recipes that are *Chefbot’s Kiss*
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Right back ‘atcha. Roll on January 20th and the Restoration of Reality.
@Spanky:
Absolutely on brand and not even a little bit surprising. Brexit was always about shielding the financially favoured and their support caste from scrutiny while dumping enough toxic racism into the national fruit-bowl to keep the far-Right well fed and relevant for years to come. It was most definitely not about denying the Very Important People their continental pleasures. So there’s no contradiction in Johnson Pere seeking a Froggy passport while simultaneously inciting Bob and Margaret Pleb to vote for cutting off their noses to spite foreign faces. It was all just words, you see? Clever rhetoric to control the mob. Now off to the Dordogne to pick up a crate or twelve of rich, red Bordeaux without having to jump through any of the hoops the hoi polloi voted for. Larks! Tally Ho. Etc.
I fucking hate these people.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
A longish story about a kind of Nice Thing from last night.
Our neighborhood has a tradition of luminaries on Christmas Eve. A week or two ahead there’s typically a gathering of volunteers to assemble them (about 2000-2500 are needed — luminaries, not volunteers), and then another group of volunteers to put them out around noon on Christmas Eve. And then finally after dark, though people are encouraged to light their own, people will go around the neighborhood lighting those that still need lighting because the homeowners are not home or are elderly.
In past years when we were working musicians (her a pro, me an amateur) we would miss all that, just coming home after midnight to enjoy the effect. One luminary is not that impressive: a white paper bag, a bit of sand, a candle. But line every street with them, both sides, and the effect is spectacular.
None of that volunteer activity could happen this lockdown year. Instead, the organizers sent around a flyer telling people where there would be a repository of supplies, and asking people to please come and assemble their own and then keep them ready to put out and light on Christmas Eve.
But then Christmas Eve was rained out. Such powerful rain and wind that there was not even a remote chance it would allow putting them out or lighting them. That’s OK, it’s happened before. The rain date is New Year’s Eve.
Unfortunately there was rain predicted all day New Year’s Eve as well, and well into the evening. But as the day evolved, the forecast began to clear, just a little. it looked like the rain would quit by 5:30 or so, and would be only a drizzle in the afternoon. I anxiously studied the skies all afternoon. At noon when they should have gone out, it was still too wet.
This year the neighborhood has been a ghost town, like every neighborhood. If you’re a dog walker, you see and nod to other dog walkers, at a careful masked distance. But often even while dog-walking, you have the streets to yourself. Besides watching the sky, I was also watching my neighbors’ sidewalks, looking for some evidence that like me they were going to put the luminaries out. Nothing.
By 3:00 I thought, well I’m going to put them out while there’s still some light for others to see them. Maybe people will notice and get inspired. I put mine out. Looked up and down the block and the neighboring blocks. No luminaries, no humans, barely even a squirrel. A couple blocks away, I could see a few houses that had put theirs out, so that was something.
At 5:00 it was dark enough and dry enough to light them. I went out and immediately saw that several of the neighbors had in fact put theirs out as well and were in the process of lighting them. And filling in and lighting their neighbors’ sidewalks as well. Meaning that there were actual people walking up and down the street, talking to each each other, helping each other out.
I walked up to the supply area and filled a few more bags, enough to cover my next door neighbor’s walk. Saw other people there also filling some up, and exchanged a few words. All at a proper masked distance of course.
At 6:00 I decided to take one final walk to fill in the gaps in my block at least and… the neighborhood was transformed. Enough people had come out to cover the entire neighborhood. Not every inch, but enough. I did one more batch and that was enough to fill in the gaps in our block. And then I stood there and just looked up and down, drinking in the effect.
It felt like hope. It felt like the bombs had stopped falling and we were coming out and starting to put life back together again. It felt like the new year of “build back better” had actually, finally arrived. It felt, just for a moment, normal.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Jesus.
artem1s
@OzarkHillbilly:
LeBron brought Cleveland the miracle national title it had been praying for over 50 years. Yet these misguided critics claim to look this gift horse in the mouth because he had to go to another city to get his first title and left again after winning in Cleveland. It’s nothing but a cover for the white flight racists who demand that black athletes bend the knee to their white ‘owners’. These critics love to tell themselves that it’s OK to hate on him because he’s a traitor for leaving. But they managed to overlook the same behavior for their white hope hero Jim Thome who for some reason merits a statue in the ballpark where he won no national title and in a city that he refused to live and pay taxes in.
Don’t get me wrong. Most of the citizens of Cleveland, Akron and the surrounding area know what a gift he has been both off and on the court. But it’s annoying when once again racist white butt hurt manages to intrude on the image of a decent person of color and their accomplishments.
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
It was recently pointed out by someone that the whole Tory Party manifesto re Brexit is just the 1970s National Front manifesto with the font changed and better PR. And it’s true. It’s not that I don’t recognise my own country any more, I do, it’s just that I don’t like the face I see and I resent being told that I should go along with the fantasy that much of it doesn’t stem directly from the obscene far-Right propaganda that has characterised British Media for decades finally getting a political cause to direct support towards.
I wouldn’t get your heart set on visiting Londongrad any time soon, though. The way this lot are mismanaging the pandemic we’re going to be in Hard Lockdown right up to the next General Election. And though I’m sure you’re right about charges on museums and other cultural fripperies, those contracts will be going to Friends of the Tory Party. Can’t waste that grift on the undeserving.
debbie
@artem1s:
Seconded on LeBron, but don’t forget they still haven’t forgiven whoever it was who moved the Browns to Baltimore in the dark of night.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
“Or maybe we could all just have a bit of a pray and ask God for….”
Sits down and shuts up.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
We never should have let it slip that we considered Comic Sans a joke font.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
There’s a YouTube of a sketch he did (this would be back in the Mork and Mindy days) on the Carol Burnett show, with Williams as a disruptive uninvited guest at the funeral of Burnett’s husband. He is of course full of ad-libbed surprises.
After running once, Carol announces that the director just told them to run the sketch again. “I have no idea what to expect,” she says. “God help me.”
And then you get to see how totally different the second version was.
@leeleeFL:
@OzarkHillbilly: My God. I am so, so sorry.
OzarkHillbilly
@artem1s: I was thinking more along the lines of the “Shut up and dribble.” RWNJs.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
I’m looking forward to seeing your 2024 Presidential campaign literature completely redesigned in French Script MS.
It just looks soooooo Continental.
westyny
I want to know what the Lima shamans predicted last year, in the interests of science.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Despite almost losing both, by some miracle of chance, mine are still here. The fear is very real and never far away, but I have thus far been spared the full horror.
Barbara
@artem1s: The way I look at it, James decided to go back to Cleveland in order to make a gift to the city of a major sports title. Because that’s how good he is. I will watch any game that James plays no matter how lopsided. When you watch how he does things in slow motion it’s even harder to see how he managed to do them in real time, in a split second. I am still tickled that he managed to escape the modern day slavery of college basketball, before the NBA changed its rules to force anyone wanting to play pro ball to play at least one year in college. It’s obscene.
Geminid
@artem1s: Black professional athletes are like a Rorschach test for white racists. Lebron James is resented for making $25 million playing 82 hard basketball games in a year, while George Clooney is admired for making $25 million for one movie. Football players sacrificing their future health for a short career are called “ungrateful” if they just take a knee to protest their brothers being murdered by callous cops. I’ve heard this crap for years. Decades, actually.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Yep. Going with wingdings in the past was a strategic error.
Uncle Cosmo
@NotMax: Right out of John Wyndham‘s 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes. Unfortunately Wyndham never finished the rest of the trilogy – The Kraken Gets Up To Piss and The Kraken Goes Back to Bed… ;^p
Sure Lurkalot
@debbie:
There’s also one I saw with rippling muscles and a face of a 30 year old. It’s weird and creepy that anyone could take that disheveled slob we all see on the golf course and depict him so polar oppositely.
H.E.Wolf
That’s the misdirect for trolls. Very sneaky, Imm! :)
Instead, ask WaterGirl for the passcode and link that works for everyone.
And best wishes to all for 2021!
[As usual, ETA for formatting.]
catclub
You could order a titanium spork from ThinkGeek.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I think it’s easier to handle even than the Moderna. It just needs simple refrigeration.
Mike in NC
Warm and rainy here today. Wife couldn’t stay up until midnight so there’s a lot of Champagne left. I’m on my third mimosa of the morning. Might put on ‘Spinal Tap’ in a few minutes. Happy New Year to all who aren’t seditious Republicans trying to install Putin’s puppet as dictator for life.
Matt McIrvin
@Fleeting Expletive: The Moderna is easier than the Pfizer: it needs freezer temperatures and has a longer shelf life after it’s taken out. But the Oxford/AstraZeneca is more robust than either of them, just needs a refrigerator.
On the other hand, its overall effectiveness in the initial study was lower–but that’s averaging over different dose procedures, and one of the various ones they tried seemed to be 90 percent effective. (Though I don’t think there’s been a followup study to confirm that.)
Subsole
@Immanentize: For bonus points, break it into four-line stanzas. Group by 100s. Change name to something vaguely Roman-mystic sounding, like, I dunno, Mostradamos.
Profit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Were Hoarse Whisperer has it wrong is Trump has a whole ecosystem of human parasites about him who want his money and rescue him when it gets to bad.
Kristine
@Immanentize: Wow. I’d say post some of those on a Q list and run, but you’d probably wind up being heralded as a prophet.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: Q-anan is in shape shifting lizard people conspiracy theory territory. There are likely excuses in place to explain away how Trump leaving office is part of the plan.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NotMax: I suppose they are concerned about landfill, but that seems an unwise move during a pandemic. What else does Oahu propose for disposable eating utensils?
catclub
Palm Beach residents are having none of it. Long term residency at Mar-a-lago is not allowed.
frosty
@Skepticat: Hold my beer? Noooooooooo!!!!!
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I liked Hoarse’s replies to the conspiracy theorists. It’s so easy to fall down those rabbit holes on Twitter, and he just filled them in and tamped down the dirt.
Kristine
@debbie: Thanks for the link. I follow Hoarse, but missed those posts. Yes, oddly cheering, though I despair over what I find oddly cheering these days. Smell of blood in the air, and all that.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: That was such a terrible time for you and your family.
Subsole
@debbie: Small people pursuing small ends often have to dress them up beyond all recognition, if only to avoid being embarassed by a stray mirror. And modern conservatism is in every way dedicated to the smallest, meanest of ends.
Again, they have driven themselves insane because they are too weak to admit error.
jeffreyw
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
BYOS
Subsole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I remember several years ago, back in, oh 2014 I think, there was a meme going around on 4chan that said “Any community that gets its laughs pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe they are in good company.”
Good warning.
Pity it didn’t work.
frosty
@debbie: Same way the fans in Baltimore will never forget who moved the Colts in the dark of night. Nor the moving company. Mayflower lost a lot of business the next year.
Sure, Baltimore got the Browns, but the NFL shut down several other opportunities for an expansion team. And I note that Cleveland immediately got a replacement but Baltimore didn’t. But who holds a grudge after 35 years?
Speaking of grudges, the Ravens now have the potential for three grudge matches each season – Steelers (just because) Colts and Browns. So that’s something positive!
patrick II
Kevin Drum ends the year at his Kevin Drummiest — Top Ten Things You Might Not Know But Probably Should, as shown in charts and numbers.
They include: “The Bible Belt ain’t what it used to be”, “Medical costs are no longer skyrocketing”, and “Police shootings of unarmed suspects are way down”.
trollhattan
@catclub:
Now, in colors!
Fleeting Expletive
Thank you all for clarifications on the vaccines.
Frankensteinbeck
@Sure Lurkalot:
I’ll put it another way: Trump is the champion of White Supremacy. Those paintings are not about Trump. They’re about how MAGA see themselves, or at least how they demand everyone else see them.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’ve heard them, yes. For the ones who go that far, it’s that Trump will let Biden become president for a few days, because that’s the trap that will expose Biden’s criminality in a way provable in court, plus motivate the military to overthrow this illegal usurper and restore the true
kingpresident to thethroneOval Office. It’s hard to say how fast Trump is shedding believers, but I figure a week, maybe two after Biden takes office, only the tiniest nut of crazies will still think Trump is staging a comeback. The rest will be in ‘BOO, ILLEGITIMATE DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT’ except a lot more depressed than that sounds.StringOnAStick
Last night had quite a bit of fireworks, some loud enough to suspect they were the kind that are usually only sold to professionals (one hopes). We’re new here so I have no idea if this is typical or not. We went to bed before midnight and we were awakened by something heavy hitting the roof or siding; the cat flew off the bed in response so it must have been impressive. We’re about to go have a look to see if we find anything. The leftovers from the fireworks? A branch? A particularly large and drunken squirrel?
jeffreyw
Citizen Alan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There is apocalyptic fiction in which, rather than everyone turning it to the zombie, everyone gradually just goes completely insane instead. George Romero’s The Crazies wasn an example. Since 2016, I feel like I’m tract in one of those stories.
Citizen Alan
@debbie: Why? After 3 years of law school and 20 years as a practicing attorney, I’m honestly surprised there aren’t more of us who are batshit crazy. I mean, I’m a liberal Democrat and attorney, and I often feel that I’m one bad day away from ending up standing on a street corner screaming obscenities at passersby.
NotMax
8 p.m. Eastern today on TCM, It’s A Gift. W. C. Fields and company knock it out of the park.
HinTN
@Immanentize: I believe there are two “u” in Furthur.
Frankensteinbeck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’ll add: Absolutely none of the fantasies I’ve seen involve Trump returning in 2024 to be reelected. That’s the path of a loser.
EDIT – @Citizen Alan:
Humans are not rational animals. We are animals capable of reason.
Screaming monkey irrationality is our base state. Rising above that with logic will always require effort.
Citizen Alan
@Kathleen: That’s because LBJ refused to reveal it because” it would tear the country apart.” 90% of our problems are because democrats over the last 50 years have continually and mistakenly put what they thought was a national interest in unity above exposing Republican corruption and mendacity. They have continually failed to realise that having the country regularly under control of a party that was corrupt and mendaciious is worse for the nation then just exposing everything.
Jinchi
Likewise, by their logic, rightwingers could claim that the stock market always goes down during Democratic presidencies because there certain days in every presidency that the stock market drops.
germy
geg6
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is exactly right.
germy
@NotMax:
“Please Mr. Muckle, please!”
Frankensteinbeck
@geg6:
It blends into how they see Trump as manly. The reasoning is something like “I am a whiny-ass titty baby asshole. Therefor, whiny-ass titty baby assholes are actually awesome manly men patriots. Look, the champion of my people is the whiniest and most asshole titty baby in the world. That must make him the most manly. Also, fuck you, if you dare disagree my people will hurt you even more than we already intend to do for fun.”
danielx
Ice storm to begin the new year.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
The Dems forced Nixon to resign, exposed Iran-Contra, and impeached Trump. The amount of lasting voter respect and loyalty they earned for that is zero. 90% of our problems is too many of our voters are looking for the next new thing, and I’m skeptical even Trump has changed that.
leeleeFL
@Kathleen: Thank you.
@Josie: My Son’s age also. Sorry for your loss!
trollhattan
In case the morning coffee didn’t give you the desired BP bump, the Marc Thiessen column inexplicably carried by our local no-more-dead-trees paper, “The 10 Best Things Trump Did in 2020” will do the trick. Bigly. Hint: none of the ten is “lost the election, thus saving the republic.”
Anybody claiming Trumpers and Bushies are separate clans has not done their homework.
debbie
@danielx:
The year 2020 will not easily release its grip.
artem1s
@Tony Jay:
what are the odds that accepting the EU as standard currency will be part of ‘asking very, very nicely’?
leeleeFL
@OzarkHillbilly: Even in imagination, the heart stops!
leeleeFL
@SFAW: All of them, Katie! Please and thank you!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: I would think Qanon would just dump Trump and move on to their next great man,… except there really is nothing to replace Trump – like they think Ted Cruze is the Zodiac Killer most conservative figures are on the enemies list or simple lack the national presence. It’s not impossible the Conspiracy Believers are stuck with Trump in much the same way the GOP is.
Kathleen
@Citizen Alan: That is so true. See also Iranian hostage negotiation by Reagan campaign in 1980.
CaseyL
@raven: Yeah, but…
The further we get from the Vietnam Era, the better LBJ looks.
Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act are pillars we would not otherwise have (albeit the VRA needs to be restored from its gutting by SCOTUS).
Stupid, ruinous, illegal wars that we could not win and sacrificed too many young people to fight? Vietnam wasn’t the last, wasn’t the worst, and wasn’t the longest.
Kathleen
@Baud: Agreed. That dynamic is getting worst.
patrick II
@Tony Jay:
I saw a British politician on BBC last night claim that England would now be able to “return to the world dominant power we once were”.
Aside from him living in the past, unless — you guys aren’t making secret plans to invade India and take all of stuff again are you?
Baud
@CaseyL:
What was worse than Vietnam in terms of dumb wars that killed young Americans? I agree it wasn’t the longest or the last.
Baud
@patrick II:
Sounds like the English equivalent of Trump as Rambo.
ETA: Schrodinger’s Cat would kick their ass.
Frankensteinbeck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
My best guess is that a serious contingent will just stop voting. Trump is meaningless to them except for the white supremacy he offered. He won’t be able to offer it anymore. Nobody else can offer it half as well, because they’re not as whiny and stupid and proudly mean. No other conservative politician would do a mocking arthrogryposis impression, and that is exactly the kind of unfiltered assholery the Trump voter wants.
I worry a lot this is wishful thinking, but it’s what makes sense to me.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: That is so cool!
Jinchi
Starting the new year on a hopeful note, I see. With a vision of a country where the neo-Nazi’s stop voting. I like the way you think.
Robert Sneddon
@artem1s: It doesn’t work that way. Entry into the Euro requires meeting standards of GDP, limited debt and a number of other hoops to jump through. Basket-case economies like Greece faked the numbers because they wanted the free money the Euro provides but the UK can simply not apply to join the Euro if and when it decides to rejoin the EU itself. If we spend a decade or so sliding down the economic greasy pole before that happens it’s possible we might need to join the Euro to recover economically but I don’t actually think that’s likely. An independent Scotland might well choose to apply to join the Euro-zone though on day one. This would solve a number of technical problems involved in establishing a currency separate from the rump-UK’s control.
It’s likely there would be pressure to allow Schengen-zone free movement if the UK or rump-UK applied to rejoin the EU but that’s about as far as things would go, I think.
cmorenc
@germy:
That would make me feel much better still if it didn’t also mean Trump has 19 more days maliciously, vengefully destroy stuff on his way out.
dexwood
Dear Balloon Juice,
I wish you all a brighter, better New Year.
With gratitude, dexwood
DivF
@Citizen Alan:
@raven:
@Baud:
Vietnam was the last war that used draftees. Young men being sent unwilling to die in a pointless war generated a large national anti-war movement.
leeleeFL
@cmorenc: My unshakeable belief that he will burn everything and salt the earth keeps me awake a lot if nights. Saying Joe Biden will be President in 19 days is an incantation, not a statement! I would take melatonin to get some decent sleep, but I really can’t take a chance on oversleeping since I still work full-time. ????
evodevo
@SFAW: A calf-bander would be my implement of choice…got one down in the barn if anyone is interested…
Frankensteinbeck
@leeleeFL:
Look at what he has done so far. There hasn’t been a lot of salting the Earth. His minions push through a few of their pet projects that Biden can probably reverse. Mostly Trump whines, golfs, and indulges in whatever’s left of his job that requires people to suck up to him. So, pardons, which while disgusting are not America-destroying. He’s too lazy and depressed to go on a spree of destruction, and like all narcissists, his instinct for vengeance is to attack his friends (the Republican Party) first.
EDIT – Sadly, what Biden cannot reverse is fucking Barr executing as many prisoners as he can. What vile shit-stains these people are. But again, not ‘burn everything’.
sab
@frosty: Cleveland didn’t “immediately” get a new foootball team to replace the Brown Ravens. It took years.
leeleeFL
@DivF: For which I like to say a hearty “You’re welcome!” whenever some putz challenges my opposition to that cluster-fuck.
I don’t like the BS that has gone on with the current use of the Volunteer Military, nor the obvious problem with the militia mentality it has allowed.
I think there should be 2 years of national service by ALL citizens, not necessarily military. It would focus the understanding of the Children of the prosperous, and give the Children of the Rest a shot, w/o putting their actual lives in jeopardy. Also too, We the People, should have a say in who WE decide needs their asses kicked. Focus is the new vision!
Geminid
@germy: Jefferson Davis probably did more to destroy the Confederacy than any man besides Ulysses Grant and Abraham Lincoln
A political contemporary described Davis: “Cold as a reptile. Ambitious as Lucifer.” But he was a crappy wartime leader, and from the Beschloss quote, a whiner. But the idea that the South was unfairly beaten was prevalent after the war. Grant referred to this with typical irony in his Autobiography.
leeleeFL
@Frankensteinbeck: From your mouth to FSM’s noodles appendages!?
artem1s
@debbie:
kind of depends on how you look at it. The minority owner, Al Lerner was the one who provided the jet where the deal was signed for the move. But somehow he never had to bear the brunt of the blame and was, indeed, rewarded for brokering the deal by being allowed to purchase the franchise at a pretty steep discount. Modell took the bait, but Lerner was the one who baited the hook. He also was responsible for hiring the most grossly incompetent managers and coaches who all got paid astronomical salaries to keep tanking the team year after year after year. Randy, I think, did a decent job and finally decided to sell once he admitted to himself that he and his family were never honestly interested in maintaining any presence in the Cleveland area. I just wish the NFL had allowed the sale go to a better owner. As much as I disliked Modell’s choice to move the franchise, I have to give him credit for hiring Ozzie Newsome and his treatment of AA players was much better on average than the rest of the league. Yes, Modell did betray the city and the fans still hate him for it. But you can hardly equate moving a whole franchise out of the city to a local athlete choosing to play for another city’s franchise. And Modell didn’t bring back the team and then win a Super bowl. LeBron more than made up for leaving the first time by coming back and winning CLE a national title. And he didn’t take the championship or franchise away from the city. So it’s hard to believe the criticisms of him aren’t based on something other than leaving the city.
Frankensteinbeck
@leeleeFL:
I’ve been batting damn near a thousand for four years, but there’s nineteen days left for me to be horribly wrong and I’m crossing my fingers hoping I’ll be right about the rest.
SFAW
@evodevo:
Doubtless because they “have no problem in that department”? [Or so they claim, especially the Gelding-in-Chief.] Frankly, I was thinking more like a mouse-bander. [But thanks! I learned a new term today!]
SFAW
@Geminid:
How so? I’m being serious — I’ve spent approximately zero time learning about him and his “leadership” of the Traitors.
Tony Jay
@patrick II:
Oh sure, of course we are. The plans have been in place for years but we had to get out from under the Franco-Prussian high-heeled jackboot before we could let the dreadnaughts of Empire loose their moorings.
Oh, India? Sorry, I thought you meant Indiana.
Baud
The mystery of Jean-Luc Picard’s English accent solved!
Baud
@Tony Jay:
You know, if you want Indiana, I think we can work something out.
Benw
@Baud: if you’re negotiating, Wales for Indiana, straight up
germy
leeleeFL
@Baud: Yeah, Indiana IS negotiable, as is all of Texas, except Austin, most of the rest of the Old Confederacy. The Northern areas of concern can be folded into Canada. Border areas where the border crossed the people, and not the other way around can revert to Mexico.
OR, we could just return the whole shebang to the Native Tribes and beg for the chance to rent the space!
Intriguing, no?
WaterGirl
@Betsy: The zoom officially goes from 3:30 – 5:30 Eastern time.
Doors open 30 minutes ahead of time for visiting and resolution of any tech issues, changing your name to your BJ nym, etc.
You send email to me to request the zoom link – but I do not have an email from you, so I got you started by send you an email that you can reply to.
artem1s
@sab:
If you’ve been watching the “team” over the last 2.5 decades, you might argue that CLE still doesn’t have a replacement for the Browns.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: So, an old Internet acquaintance of mine (in all the senses of that word) just referred in a forum we both frequent to “Britain being a sovereign nation again”. I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
I was bitterly disappointed back in the day to realize that he was a Little Englander. He’s really old, his wife just died, and we are supposed to avoid discussion of politics and religion on this particular forum (a rule this particular chap ignores when it suits him), or I would have been all, “Sovereign of WHAT, precisely, Dr. G?”
Oh, well. If he lives, he may well learn. Or not. “Wogs Out” as a presiding sentiment seems to be just as important to your WASP-y racists as it is to ours. Maybe dog food and toilet water are just going to be seen as the PATRIOTIC choice of fare.
I feel for ya, TJ. Dr. G, not so much.
Tony Jay
@artem1s:
As the estimable Mr Sneddon points out, adopting the Euro isn’t a condition of joining the E.U. but I think that any political movement that wins a general election promising the latter is going to be campaigning in an environment where the former is an economic, financial and/or cultural must.
For the petty nationalist fever to be broken the disastrous results of surrendering to it will have to be plain as the nose on Manilow’s face. IMHO that will mean – wanting – to join the Euro even if it’s not strictly ‘necessary’.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Citizen Alan:
The goofiest among our ranks tend to be in tortworld – there’s a messianic complex that tends to attach, and they’re prone toward Glibertarian economics to start with. Bottom feeder criminal defense guys can head this route as well.
Not a lot of RWNJs among the family law, commercial dispute, transaction facilitator or heavy criminal practice bars, in my experience.
The Pale Scot
@Betty Cracker:
Right Like WTF? Many of the Korean and Vietnam vets who lived around here have passed their mortal coil. The newbies have put TV’s out on the patios so they can watch Fox when they’re not sitting on the dock yucking it up at 11pm. And blowing off fireworks on Xmas Eve ’cause baby Jeebus loved explosions. It’s a canal lined with concrete houses, the sound travels, can’t open the windows to let a breeze at night because of the fuckers
Another Scott
HNY, everyone.
Gradually, and then suddenly…
Good, good.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
Reason #1043 as to why his end should have been in the looping knots of a rope.
Mike in NC
@germy: We don’t yet know who will be the next Secretary of State, but he or she will be a vast improvement over Fatso Pompeo, who has illusions of grandeur. Likewise the new Attorney General.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: That’s so lovely. Thank you for sharing your story with us.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
There’s a Secretary of State nominee.
SFAW
@artem1s:
We Jets fans feel your pain, although admittedly you guys have had it a lot worse.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@CaseyL:
As I watch the Ken Burns Vietnam War series and listen to LBJs recorded calls with McNamara, Russell, etc., I’m struck by how ordinary and mediocre they all were. LBJ was stupid enough to let himself be led by the nose by morons, and rather than listen to the inner voice that was telling him to bail out of the conflict, he listened to and facilitated the lies that McNamara, Westmoreland and the rest were feeding him in order to “look tough”.
So stupid and immoral.
Jinchi
Pompeo is twisting the knife, I see.
Seriously, I thought this was a resistance tweet at first. I wonder if Trump will read it the same way. “We’re so much safer today than four years ago”?
After Trump lost the election, I can’t say I disagree with that. 4 years ago we were about to hand the nuclear codes to a white nationalist, Russian asset who was openly soliciting bribes from foreign billionaires.
Bishop Bag
@Immanentize: Saw Furthur at the Greek Theatre on October 5, 2013. Really good show, of course Bill Walton was there. I think it was the last tour for the group before Phil decided it was time for him to cut back on the touring lifestyle
I need to check with the Overlords here…have I officially killed the thread?
Gvg
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I bought one. I am behind on my reading but it’s on my nightstand. Also bought a grant autobiography because of BJ posters recommendations.
currently trying to decide on this years garden seed orders. The catalogs have started.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: That is so awesome!
Baud
@Jinchi:
Yeah, that “just me” was weird.
WhatsMyNym
@Immanentize: Which chair did you buy? I need I better one.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
I’m wondering about Pence’s mental state. It’s often hard to tell if anything is going on in his head at all, but I know from how the evangelicals talked at the beginning of Trump’s administration that Pence expected God to kill Trump so Pence could rule as divinely appointed priest-king of the American theocracy. By now, it’s clear that won’t happen.
Ken
@Tony Jay: Your dreadnoughts will have trouble getting to Indiana’s 40 miles of coastline, even if Canada is in on the plot.
OzarkHillbilly
@leeleeFL: After he was safe again I went limp, still in the last lane of traffic. Some passing black guy pulled me the rest of the way in. I had nothing left.
Uncle Cosmo
IMO you’ve confused two moves here. Art Modell, the Browns’ owner, did not move the team “in the dark of night” – in fact he gave the city notice long before the move.
Maybe you’re thinking of Bob Irsay, who took his Baltimore Colts team to Indianapolis under cover of darkness in early 1984. There’s a bitter riddle still current among us old Baltimore Colts fans:
The Browns story is a sad one that I won’t go into right now. Their loyal fans didn’t deserve to lose their team (which they got back as a “new” franchise in 3 years, with their colors, logos and history intact) but neither did the loyal Baltimore Colts fans (who were repeatedly denied an expansion team over the 12 years before the Browns came here & became the Ravens).
laura
Love that Wiley cartoon strip up top. He was a dear friend way back in the 80’s when he was the editorial cartoonist for the Santa Rosa Pressdemocrat. He married on NYE to one hell of a good woman and boy howdy, was that a night of losing many a brain cell. When he draws a bar scene as above it is based upon the long gone Santa Rosa Bar & Grill which was right accross the street from the paper’s main office and the place to be of a Thursday or Friday night. Them’s was the days, I tells ya, thems was the days.
I’m glad that this last year has been taking out to the trash can, but after a night of wierd head pain I’ve woken with a lovely, bubbly cold sore. Oy.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Dreadnoughts! “We want Eight, and we won’t wait!”
Dan B
@Tony Jay: And now for the inevitable, “How do you really feel?”
Are you following Flobalob’s dad to Frannncccce?
Patricia Kayden
Charged. No pass!
citizen dave (aka mad citizen)
@Frankensteinbeck: There are still 19 days left for this to happen.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
It’s ominous what’s going to happen as the EU customers for SME’s decide to find more convenient suppliers. Barely anyone seems to have noticed that to ship to the EU they have to find an importer to accept liability and be the middleman between supplier and customer. And the carnets required for each musical instrument if a band wants to play there. Oy! It will be harder than when the Beatles played Hamburg in ’60, things have changed.
Que image of Charlton Heston on the beach on his knees in front of the remains of the Statue of Liberty
CaseyL
@Baud: I didn’t mention killing young Americans exclusively.
The specific conflict I had in mind was Bush II’s Iraqi Adventure, which directly killed off about 100,000 Iraqis during the initial conflict (IIRC), then indirectly killed at least 500,000 more during the ethnic cleansing stage. Plus, so many people fled Iraq for Syria – promptly destabilizing that country, and very likely causing the civil war there.
Mind you, if one takes into account the death, carnage and destabilization as well as the direct conflict itself, Vietnam still ranks right up there. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 4 million in Cambodia murdered by their own government, etc. But the worst of that was a result of Nixon’s escalation, not LBJ.
The Pale Scot
@The Pale Scot:
Thumbs up
Dahlia
@Tony Jay: A delightful summary to read! Thank you.
leeleeFL
@OzarkHillbilly: I can only imagine that sense of helplessness. Glad the Universe kept him with you. The Gods smile sometimes.
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid:
(Source)
scav
@Dan B: Ah, the little englanders are no doubt thrilled to return to the glory days when all their de Flobalob overlords had domains both in Normandy and on the island. What hey and a forelock tug for The Lyin-Hearted!
leeleeFL
@Patricia Kayden: Guess I am a splitter! Fuck unity, that MoFo needs to serve time.
debbie
@Uncle Cosmo:
According to the fans, he sure did.
debbie
@leeleeFL:
If Trump gets a pass, then the entire American judicial system should pack up and move to France. ?
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
I don’t see it in our lifetime. The Continent is so over dealing with the UK. The UK would have to accept the Euro without the “eventually” other new members have been allowed. No opt outs, that in itself means at least 20 years, by then the current horde of pensioned, home owning olds who are nostalgic for a war they weren’t in and an empire they didn’t serve to exit, stage
leftright.Skepticat
He’s my absolute favorite cartoonist (though I think a better description might be “illustrator of truth”), and I so envy you the friendship. I believe the diner scenes are based on Ogunquit, Maine, and his Mainuh accent is good; I think I know some of his characters.
Uncle Cosmo
@sab:
Three years, to be exact: the former Browns opened the 1996 season as the Baltimore Ravens and the new Browns (complete with the old Browns’ colors, logo and history) started play in 1999. TBH, with all the crap involved in creating a new franchise out of thin air, it’s a minor miracle it happened that quickly.
FTR, the main reason Baltimore was not awarded an NFL expansion franchise in the 12 years after the Colts moved was that Washington R**skins owner Jack Kent Cooke insisted our fair city should become part of his fanbase & his good buddy Commissioner Paul Tagliabue (ptui!) enabled his desire. Not only were we subjected to endless telecasts of R**skins games as the “home team,” Tags actively intervened to prevent the franchise that became the Carolina Panthers from coming here: After the Baltimore bid was judged best, Tags canceled the award & sent the Carolina bidders (former Colt Jerry Richardson prominent among them) back home to fix their bid. When the revised competition awarded the franchise to Carolina, Tags told Baltimore they should take the money they raised and “build a museum with it” – clearly signaling that so long as he was Commissioner we would never get an expansion franchise. Which is why we jumped at the Browns when Modell came calling.
(BTW since 1996 the Washington Football Team [aka DC Untied] has made the playoffs 5 times, never even reaching the NFC Championship Game. Meanwhile the Baltimore Ravens have reached the postseason in 12 seasons, the AFC Championship Game 4 times, and the Superb Owl twice, both of which they won [XXXV and XLII]. :^p)
JPL
@leeleeFL: That would help unify the country. Until his cult members find out that he was nothing more than a common two bit crook, they won’t accept Biden as president. His cult members are willing to rid us of democratic norms, and that will only change if he is behind bars.
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: Since when do we get to vote directly on law enforcement?
But okay, sure. Next, let’s do the one where we decide if police officers who have murdered black people get to go free or not.
TomatoQueen
Up to nearly three thanks to cannons going off followed by a little display of anxiety on Merlin’s part, and he was imho entitled to yodel a bit and of course do clingies. Now having second brekky and a marathon of Pride and Prejudice (with public television gimmes, the 5 local channels with their hands out all at once earn an especially cranky “are there no workhouses?” from me). “It’s a Gift” duly noted. Changeover to footy. Also weather changing over to grey and cold.
For the first time since the second hip surgery, I have put on a pair of pants. Happy New Year to everyone and better times ahead.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
Which consist of two non-nuclear carriers equipped with 24 F-35C’s and nine helicopters, which is close to what a carrier task force needs just for AIRCAP and anti-submarine duty. They are just very obvious targets that need to be refueled frequently
Another Scott
@Tony Jay: The BBC News report I briefly saw a couple of days ago showed a clip of Nigel declaring victory ((roughly) “they laughed at me for 25 years – who’s laughing now?”) while holding a big glass of wine and a cigar, just before they went to a commercial.
No doubt, both were imported.
:-/
I continue to be disappointed by Starmer. Maybe he has some grand plan to build-up and build-back Labour, but he just looks like a weak whinger to me. (Maybe that’s the RWNJ media slant – dunno.)
Thanks for your reports! HNY to you and yours, with sincere hopes that you find a way to survive Brexit with as little damage as possible.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
I believe it is now. But new members just have to agree to move to eventually. I don’t think the UK would get that fudge
leeleeFL
@JPL: You may be right. If Nixon had been prosecuted, we would live in a different reality! The Republicans who told him to resign would have had to back up his punishment instead of starting the second Lost Cause lie.
Yutsano
@Tony Jay: I am completely not shocked that our dear Boris forgot a minor detail in his mad rush to “get a deal and get out” before the clock ran out. Fortunately Gibraltar made it a point to get their own status done. It’s been suggested that if Gibraltar could do this, what would stop Northern Ireland and Scotland from doing the same thing?
Uncle Cosmo
So fucking what? Beats the living shit out of seeing your team drive off in the middle of the night after their drunk SOB of an owner said he had no intention of moving them.
In fact it was Cleveland’s Powers That Were who provoke their move. By the 1990s the whole city was pissed they hadn’t won a Super Bowl yet & blamed owner Art Modell, whose entire fortune was sunk in the team. The PTW did everything they could to squeeze Modell financially & force him to sell them team to someone with deeper pockets. It was their own “movers & shakers” who betrayed the Cleveland football fans by failing to realize he had Plan B in his pocket: a lucrative deal for whichever franchise relocated to Baltimore.
Dahlia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: What a lovely story.
Geminid
@SFAW: How did Jefferson Davis drag Dixie down? A long answer; those uninterested in Civil War questions should scroll on.
Davis continued the South’s cotton Embargo when he took office. This was supposed to bring England in on the South’s side, but all it did was encourage cotton farming in Egypt and India. The Confederacy would have done better to ship every last bale it could before the U.S. Navy grew enough to blockade the South, and use the gold to fight the war. While the English upper class empathized with the planter dominated South, they knew there were several million Irish nearby who were ready to secede anytime, and the U.S. would help them do it if it came to war between Britain and the U.S. But Davis made European intervention a strategic goal.
Davis used his Secretaries of War as administrative functionaries, and kept questions of military policy and personnel in his own hands, to ill effect. One problem was his patronage of officers like his nephew Joe Davis and family friend Alfred Iverson, who both ineptly sent their brigades to slaughter and capture the first day of Gettysburg. Confederate losses that day outweighed any advantages gained. Davis favored lousy generals like Bragg and Pope, and kept his best generals- Joe Johnston and Beauregard- on the shelf because of personal friction. Davis’ relief of Johnston in July 1864 cost the South it’s best chance to hold Atlanta. Davis greatly overrated his own military judgement. Maybe worst of all, Davis kept his buddy Colonel Northop in charge of the Confederate commissary apparatus most of the war. Northrop simply was not up to the job, and the agriculturally rich South never fed its troops adequately. The situation improved as soon as Northrop got canned, but that was January 1864.
Davis’ status as Lost Cause hero exemplifies that doctrine’s unwillingness to face facts.
catclub
@StringOnAStick: Midnight at my neighborhood there was a continuous
barrage from one location for 8 minutes ( if it started only at midnight). I would have guessed 20 minutes. It was a LONG time.
SFAW
@Geminid:
Thanks for the concise explanation!
Tony Jay
@Another Scott:
A long line of “Yes, I fully agree with that assessment” from me. The Brexit Delusion has already cost this country soooooo much, but the real butcher’s bill will be years in the paying. It’s been finalised (to an extent) less than 24 hours and aready its chief cheerleaders are reduced to fantastical lies about what was agreed, what it means and what happens next. As long as there’s an audience for their lies and a national media willing to promote them it’s not going to start improving…. so we’re fucked in that direction too.
Starmer is a joke. A cardboard cut-out who stood as a unifier but has spent his entire leadership signing off on stupidly divisive and cowardly policies that are breaking the Labour Party apart. Whipping the Party’s MPs to support Johnson’s deal will go down as one of the stupidest political moves any Opposition has ever made, only made worse by lying about the vital need to do so to avoid No Deal. The only reason I haven’t torn up my membership card is so I can be around to vote against whichever New Labour careerist stands to replace him following his defeat at the polls in 2024.
But that’s a long way off and it’s reliant on the Labour Party (and the UK for that matter) still having free elections then.
Roll on January 20th, eh?
Geminid
@SFAW: You are welcome. It actually took some condensing. British General H.F.C. Fuller wrote an excellent book about the civil war. He takes Ullysses Grant as a focus, and titled the book The Generalship of Ullysses Grant, but I think it’s treatment of broader questions of strategy makes it the one book I’d read if I could only read one.
The Pale Scot
Return of the Trance
New from ADF
Asian Dub Foundation ft. Stewart Lee – Comin’ Over Here
Reissue of KFL ’91 video FT Tammy Wynette
Justified & Ancient (Official Video)
Everyone should have had enough mimosas by now
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
It’s like the hardcore GOP cult and their cast-iron certainties about “urban thugs” and “latte sipping metrosexuals”. It’s all code for things they all “know” but feel uncomfortable expressing outside of their info-bubble.
The UK was always ‘sovereign’, we can’t regain what we never lost. But if you take ‘sovereignty’ to mean being able to kick anyone who you don’t consider properly British out of your White Free State it makes a lot more sense.
And these are the people the Labour Party is moving right to try and win over. Shameful.
leeleeFL
@Tony Jay: As many of my fellow Democrats have been saying, we don’t want to court them….send them to court yes, but that’s a horse of a different shade there.
As a simple-spoken friend of mine used to say, “These are not your stellar people!”
Edit- Just found out a good Friend of the Family, who has my GrandDaughter over sometimes( read: this past week), just tested positive. Worry, worry, worry….probably have to stay away from my Girls for a bit. Damnit….we were going to cook and eat together tonight.
Sister Golden Bear
@Patricia Kayden: We need to turn over the vaccine distribution to whoever puts up the Shen Yun posters.
The Pale Scot
@Robert Sneddon:
It’s questionable whether the UK could meet the EU’s current definition of a democracy. No formal constitution, laws are not originated in a parliament of congress. Unless the UK somehow reverses 180 degrees, gets a charm transplant, and convinces the EU to go along with Bobby Ewing “the last season was just a dream” insert shrug icon here. The EU isn’t going to let itself get sucked into UK politics. Building on the framework of the FTA will be relegated to a group of professionals and walled off from EU policy discussions.
Tony Jay
@Yutsano:
I say in all seriousness, nothing but political arrests and troops on the streets.
The only thing that actually keeps national polities together and everyone playing by the same rules is the implicit understanding that these are the civil guardrails, the boundaries of the playing field, as it were, and you stay within them because otherwise it’s might-makes-right chaos. The Tories have been chipping away at this understanding with increasing lack of restraint for the last few years, accelerating under Johnson as he senses no real opposition coming from an increasingly co-opted or side-lined Establishment.
Once the peoples of Scotland and Northern Ireland get an up close and personal look at what the reality of Brexit means for them I can defiantly see their respective leaderships moving forward with plans to push the boundaries themselves. There’s a far-Right nationalist movement running England at present and no realistic hope of shifting them for a decade. At some point Edinburgh and Belfast (for different reasons) will probably make the calculation that they’ve got nothing to lose by just declaring themselves authorised to make trade and customs accommodations with the E.U. and daring London to stop them.
Celtic Coalition, here we come. Did I ever mention that the only things about me that aren’t (Lowland) Scots-(Catholic) Irish are accent and location?
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Indiana, not Indianans.
You better believe that’s in the Terms of Surrender.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
These are Great British dreadnoughts. They’re mostly inflatable and fit in a white van.
leeleeFL
@Tony Jay: It will be ironic if Northern Ireland decides to scrape the Empire off after lo these many centuries and the export if the Scotch-Irish to the New World to solidify the Royalist ideals here. But, Celts being what we are, it is probably inevitable they will do exactly that. Loyalists need their fine wines and cheeses too, don’t Cha know!?
trollhattan
@Uncle Cosmo:
For the first and only time this season, the [Las Vegas] Raiders will not be broadcast locally and a game between two playoff contenders will be shown instead. Had been wondering when the first blows of “no longer in the home region” would strike area Raider minions, did not think it would take until week 17. As we learned during the LA excursion, a Raiders addiction requires a long weaning period.
Pity.
Tony Jay
@leeleeFL:
What really, really sticks in my craw over the sudden New Labour pivot to doing whatever it takes to win back anti-Immigrant, anti-progressive voters in the northern seats they lost in 2019 is that these New Labour wankers are the exact same people who spent years haranguing, undermining and basically destroying the previous leadership for the unforgivable sin of trying to keep these same voters in the Labour camp by downplaying support for a 2nd EU Referendum. What was deceitful and treasonous when it might have stopped Brexit suddenly becomes sensible, pragmatic and moderate policy when Brexit is a done deal. There’s no other way to look at this volte face than as proof that Labour’s Right deliberately sabotaged the Party’s electoral chances and the fight to stop Brexit in a blinkered crusade to keep Corbyn out of Number 10 at any price.
Now they want to drag the Party into the sewers of White Votes Matter populist nationalism while blaming the electoral defeat on the people they stabbed in the back? Get to fuck.
Anyway, enough of that. We haven’t been out and about in any non-safe way since March and I can’t see that changing until Summer at the earliest. It’s just not safe.
What a world. No wonder people are super stressed.
Zelma
@Tony Jay:
I love your posts, Tony. I taught English/British history for decades and I try to follow current politics but find it hard to find good information here in the colonies. I read the Guardian, but they seemed anti-Corbyn with no recognizable alternative to his policies. My subscription to the Economist lapsed but I could never figure out where they stand regarding the current Tory Party. I am open to suggestions as to where I should look for better information.
Frankly, I understand British politics in the 1760s better than the current iteration. And politics were a mess in the 1760s.
leeleeFL
@Tony Jay: Thanks for all that info. I feel your disgust. I want to shake pundits that jabber about reaching out for the prejudiced purses that make it impossible for us to have nice things!
Fingers crossed for things being better later this annum!
Being stressed out is unavoidable these days….unless you don’t care about your life…or worse yet, other people’s lives.
leeleeFL
@leeleeFL: Putzes, not purses! Though that works, sadly!
Tony Jay
@Zelma:
I’ll be honest with you, Zelma. I’ve been asked before where to get good information about British politics and I came up totally dry. Most of British News Media is a swollen venom sac suspended in a used septic tank and considerably less useful. The Independent and the Guardian are both owned by monied interests who seemingly just want a product they can sell to the non-batshit insane segment of society without challenging them with any dangerous ideas, like voting for people who are actually interested in fixing the damage done to society by decades of right-wing fuckery. I’m sure there must be people on social media who have important things to say, but I’m not there with them.
I just get by with reading between the lines and always ascribing bad-faith to the people our media presents as sensible, moderate and reasonable. Hasn’t let me down yet.
Tony Jay
@leeleeFL:
Wise words.
Ruckus
@germy:
I’d actually say that trump might really be where Horse says he is. One of the problems is that he’s finally had success, so to speak, when he won the election. I’d say don’t think of him the way you might about other people who have won this office. His entire thought process always, always goes through the same filter, the narcissism filter. And his narcissism filter is turned up to 11 and the knob is lost and the shaft welded in position. Most of his losses through out his life he could filter through his bullshit, how much money he “had,” how much fame he “had,” but this time none of that works. He’s lost supporters who not long ago thought his shit didn’t stink, and the whole world outside his very racist supporters know how much of a loser he is, and there is nothing he can do about it. Especially with his very limited repertoire of normal human processes. And this fuels his narcissism, so he will try harder and as he always does, fail harder.
ColoradoGuy
Hi. Tony! I can see why the Scots might want to exit an unstable alliance ruled by failed aristocrats, Murdoch media, and Russian stooges, but what of the border and the currency? What is a non-border now, would become barbed wire with people trying to escape the Tory hell to the South, the matter of a Scottish Euro and an ever-declining Pound, and new trade barriers between the two. But I can certainly see why the Scots would want to be shut of the corrupt English aristocracy once and for all.