The No Labels organization has always been garbage, IMO. It’s the both-sides fallacy made flesh, a ridiculous outfit that demands we pretend people who want to order Italian or Mexican or Thai for dinner could reconcile with those who prefer to dine on tire rims and anthrax if we’d just roll up our sleeves and work together, gosh darn it.
Joe Lieberman is one of its leading lights, which tells you all you need to know about No Labels. Well, now the organization is demonstrating that in addition to eschewing labels, it has no principles:
[Axios]: Political journalist Mark Halperin, whose career crumbled in 2017 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, has joined No Labels, a D.C.-based bipartisan policy group, Punchbowl News reports… [imagine a goddamned motherfucking paragraph break here since FGDMFFYWP won’t allow me to insert one — ed.]“His treatment of female colleagues before he left ABC News in 2007 was reprehensible. He rightly paid a price for his conduct, professionally and personally,” No Labels senior adviser Margaret White told Punchbowl.
Staff members of No Labels, including CEO Nancy Jacobson and Co-Executive Directors Margaret White and Liz Morrison, have spoken with Halperin and believe a second chance is warranted in this case.
That’s some grotesque white-washing right there, and inaccurate too: Halperin was shoved out of the spotlight when his gropey behavior came to light in 2017, not 2007.
But here’s my question: what does that sexist asshole bring to the table that is unique and not on offer elsewhere? John Heilemann was always the brains of the H&H partnership, which wasn’t all that. IMO, Heilemann has improved due to removal from Halperin’s brain cell-killing proximity anyway.
Why is it that shitty men like Halperin demand and receive second chances when there are smarter, more insightful people throughout that and every other goddamn industry who never even get a first chance? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way; I know why. Open thread.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Halperin is being kind of a dick everywhere he goes.
All kidding aside, he’s part of a klatch that makes every discussion worse.
Old School
Calling someone a harasser would be using a label. Therefore, it isn’t allowed.
MisterForkbeard
I get that everyone deserves a second chance. They do. A single mistake shouldn’t destroy your career forever unless it was egregiously bad.
The problem is that this isn’t Halperin’s second chance. It’s his twentieth, and the guy continues to be a horrible person.
germy
germy
WereBear
Halperin is a bully who threatens people. This is the story of his entire career: intimidating others to give him what he wants so he will go away.
It should have been upended a lot sooner, but then, he’s bullying our sainted betters who are often Republican cowardly worms, so it all worked for so long…
Old School
Good grief. Halperin hosts a weekly show on Newsmax?!
Ridnik Chrome
As a general rule, I think people who are truly sorry for their behavior and have made an honest effort to do better should be given a second chance. But I don’t think Halperin comes anywhere close to being in that category. He proves it every time he opens his mouth.
trollhattan
Maybe that second chance can be something other than a prominent public position. He can manage a recycling facility.
Nobody “deserves” a prominent, well-paid, media platform.
wenchacha
Damn. Just found out I share a birthday with Halperin. My sister’s is today, so I guess she has a worse deal.
If he is on Newsmax, there is no way he can be “No Labels.”
germy
germy
@wenchacha:
“No morals”
WaterGirl
Is Halperin the one who called President Barack Obama a dick?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
Funny how cornerstone founding principles of this country like “No taxation without representation” don’t apply to certain people
Benw
I’d happily forgotten about No Labels. Fuck them, back to the memory hole!
germy
Morning Joe is such an asshole with his GOP talking points.
And then when he’s accused of using GOP talking points…. he responds with more GOP talking points
Kay
I believe the opposite of No Labels. I think a lot of voters are not that interested and not willing to put a ton of work into choosing, so often use a party label as a kind of proxy for a broad set of things they believe in. I think this is entirely rational and fine and leaves them fairly happy with their choice most of the time.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy: Would you?
Kay
@WaterGirl:
He was truly awful to Obama. Hinting at nefarious associations- just sleazy, dirty behavior.
I hope Obama was a dick to him. Richly deserved.
Jeffro
@Kay: Exactly.
“no labels” only benefits those who would otherwise have to bear the weight of the label they either earned or most closely relate to. It’s cover, just as “both sides” is cover for the side that can’t withstand scrutiny.
Nicole
No Labels: Working to make white patriarchy sound palatable to the masses since 2010.
VeniceRiley
I am pro labels. Also too, I see color.
Halperin can eat a bag of dude gonads.
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Maybe through a screen door.
SiubhanDuinne
You had me at FGDMFFYWP.
Kay
@Jeffro:
It’s so patronizing too- “you’re just responding to the LABEL”
Yeah. They are. Why can’t they, again?
hueyplong
“No Labels” and Halperin were always disingenuously GOP.
It wasn’t a huge step from those guys to collusion with Putineers.
Ask the guys in the Better Russians Than Democrats t-shirts.
Splitting Image
If they don’t take steps to rehabilitate serial harassers like Halperin now, how will they be able to rehabilitate serial rapist Donald Trump when he’s orange, rested, and ready for another run in 2024? Like everything else, you have to start small and work your way up.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
IIRC (and I could be wrong) he was caught on mic during a break calling another member of a teevee talking heads panel a dick and thus, earning the nickname “Dick Whisperer.”
Which still seems to fit.
I just think of him as a more aggressive Chuck Todd.
Hungry Joe
Yeah, Halperin and ONLY Halperin can do that job.
It’s the same kind of non-thinking that delivers $10 million pay packages to CEOs because gosh, the Board of Directors tried but just couldn’t find anyone competent who would take the job for less.
TheTruffle
Water seeking its own level and all that. This group should be called Irrelevance Inc.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Remember years ago when there was kind of a fad of “brandless” or generic foods? The grocery shelves had rows of these plain white cans or packages that just had “corn,” “coffee,” “egg noodles,” etc. in stark black letters as the only identifier. It was a disconcerting trend. We really rely on brand names and familiar logos as a guarantee of quality or value for money or whatever our shopping priorities are.
The No Labels people want to make our politics like that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Probably because “something something that’s partisan!!1 something something all politicians are corrupt and think for yourself be objective!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
He tries to pretend he’s just asking hard hitting questions and pretends those aren’t just GOP talking point. That clip og Joe Scar was nauseating
Benw
@SiubhanDuinne: lol Repo Man already made fun of that idea in 1984!
Hungry Joe
@Benw: (Eating out of a can labeled “FOOD”) “Mmm mmm mmm, Mom, doesn’t get much better than this.”
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
As a principle, I think that people deserve a second chance, even people who have screwed up multiple times. And I think that this should be widely applied.
My problem with people like Halperin is that the stuff about second chances is often false. People like him, often but not exclusively white men, belong to an elitist band of insiders who are always looking out for each other. They run in the same social circle, know one another, marry or have affairs with other people in their club, went to school together and rose up the media ranks together. They will toss favors to one another when they can.
Their whines about fairness attempt to disguise the degree to which they have rigged the game in their favor.
Another Scott
@Ridnik Chrome: Yup.
I get the need for victims to find a way to move on, and forgiving their oppressor is a way to do that for some.
But it seems to me that too much of the last 40+ years has been folks on the right taking yin/yang concepts and only picking one side.
Power/Responsibility
Confession/Redemption
etc.
It should be the norm that redemption follows sincere confession and actually doing better. These days, the Teabaggers think that the Podigal Son should have stuck to his guns and gone on Parler and OAN and Newsmax and never admitted he was wrong…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: I googled.
MSNBC senior political analyst Mark Halperin was suspended on Thursday by the cable network after he called President Obama “a dick” on a popular morning show and then quickly apologized.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I tend to only see Morning Joseph in those kinds of twitter clips, but that’s a real return to his old 90s form when he was an Angry Young Gingrichite
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I remember that, Halperin was so proud of himself for saying something naughty, like a two year old who had learned that saying poopy would get a reaction out of people.
I’m only surprised Larry Hogan, who clearly thinks he’s the great moderate GOP hope and from what I’ve seen knows how to play the media, didn’t put the kibosh on this before word got out.
Baud
A willingness to associate oneself with No Labels.
BruceFromOhio
Ah … upgrades.
BruceFromOhio
@SubaruDianne:
My ‘mates and I lived on that stuff in college. Shake out the cushions for spare change, and a jar of generic peanut butter and loaf of generic bread would feed us for days.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Of course, often the generic products were made at the same place and contained the same ingredients as the branded items. And this has been revised as supermarkets, for example, put their own name on a product instead of using a bland generic label.
Brand names are all about marketing. They rarely denote quality or value. But we easily buy into the myth that a specific name attached to a product conveys reliability.
ETA: Years ago, when VCRs were still hot, I recall someone swearing up and down that a Magnavox VHS VCR was better than other models. I think that even one of the consumer magazines (not Consumer Reports) got sucked into this. But at the time JVC, Hitachi, Magnavox and a couple of other brands were made at the same damn factory with the same internal parts. The only difference were the face plates and the shape of some buttons. But brand loyalty accounted for a significant sales differential.
germy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Reminds me of presidential debate moderators. Majority of questions are framed around Republican talking points.
Another Scott
As always, watch what they do, not what they say.
Reuters – HomeDepot faces boycott over Georgia voting curbs. Sounds like a good idea. They only care about money, so we should make sure they get less of it.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Benw:
They were kind of quiet under Trump.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: grrr. Too many links in the tweet. Help? Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
@Brachiator:
I remember when there was a salmonella outbreak at some plant that processes peanut butter.
Brands affected were the cheap budget brands and the high-end, highly advertised brands.
All the same peanut butter, apparently.
stacib
@WaterGirl: Yes, and Scarborough goaded him into it, and then they both giggled like school girls.
rikyrah
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) Tweeted:
AG Merrick Garland to ABC News: “Racism is an American problem. It’s plain to me that there has been and remains discrimination against African-Americans. We do not yet have equal justice under law.” https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1384529793568460802?s=20
Another Scott
Today’s Afternoon with Psaki begins shortly. Wonkette linky.
Cheers,
Scott.
Benw
@Baud: very low energy, you might say.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I tend to be light on confession and believe more in the “actually doing better.”
Part of this, I suppose, is because I have absolutely no religion. And sometimes demands for explicit displays of contrition are actually demeaning and irrelevant. It is an empty ritual, as is much of religion.
The worse case occurs when people who have been wrongly convicted or whose sentences are unfairly severe are forced to express contrition as a condition of parole. The authorities demanding contrition don’t consider how screwed up the system might be. The act of contrition falsely implies that the circumstances that brought the confessor down were fair and all in order.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Ha! It’s one of those little things that drive me mad. I’ve abandoned posts over missing and unfixable paragraph breaks more than once. No great loss! But stuff like that makes me want to break things for some reason.
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
I agree that people deserve second chances, but I don’t think that means you just ignore what they did and put them back in a comparably important position to what they had before. It means they lose the trust they had and get a less important position befitting someone untrusted and a chance to earn back the trust they lost. That’s what a second chance ought to be.
I also agree about multiple second chances. This is a real danger of dealing with things off the record. If you keep something off the record, the next person to deal with it doesn’t know if the person is already on their second, or fifth, or twentieth chance. In a lot of cases, I’m sure this is done deliberately to bamboozle the victim; the person who says they want to keep it off the record knows damn well it isn’t a first offense and is just hoping the victims never get together to compare notes.
SiubhanDuinne
@BruceFromOhio:
Oh, sure. The (deliberate) irony of it was that the plain black-and-white label became its own brand.
Nina
Mark Halperin lived near me when I was growing up. I have a very clear memory of standing at the bus stop and listening to him brag to his friends about stealing a carton of eggs from the fridge and hiding it under a hedge so the eggs would be very rotten by the time he would be ready to throw them at cars.
kindness
I will bet that if one could publish the names of people/companies funding No Labels we here would not be shocked. It would be nice to see. Are their donors public?
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
I have always wondered this about the FYWP back room: Is is possible to compose your post elsewhere—in Word, say—and import it as plain text into FYWP? I frequently do that with comments. (I do put the edit box into text mode, because visual appears not to like certain things.)
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
I always felt like Popeye eating spinach, or someone in a 1960s movie (before product placements became the norm) whenever I ate generic “no brand” foods.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
This was used to great effect in Repo Man, where all the consumer goods in the movie were those kinds of generics; it made the setting just a tiny bit more disconcerting and hostile feeling. And I think the comparison to No Labels is perfect. It’s not just that No Labels is trying to strip away those kinds of identifiers. It’s that there was a kind of performative aspect of those generic products; they made a show out of being generic instead of leaving it in the background. No Labels is trying to do the exact same thing about not being part of a political party as a substitute for having an actual distinctive politcy platform.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
I bought the generic “BEER” as a late teen/early 20s smartass.
It was not good.
germy
@Nina:
In preparation for his future treatment of Democratic politicians.
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
To this day, in a movie or TV show, a character will answer a bartender’s “What’ll ya have?” with “Gimme a beer!” and the bartender pours him one.
rikyrah
Joy-Ann Pro-Democracy & Masks Reid ? (@JoyAnnReid) Tweeted:
I’m watching this Senate hearing on Republicans’ Jim Crow voting laws and am repulsed watching seditionists like @HawleyMO prattle on as if they give a damn about anything other than power for themselves. They have faced zero consequences for helping incite the 1/6 MAGA siege. https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1384550518077501440?s=20
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah:
I feel a great perturbation in the force. It is as if millions of flabby older white wingnuts have cried out in pain over hearing something negative about their exceptional nation.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
Right? I’m not a beer snob, but I have my preferences (Yuengling is nicely predictable, as is the current incarnation of Falls City).
When it comes to gin or bourbon, that’s a whole other story.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
Forgiveness needs to be a decision on the part of the victim. If they decide forgiving will help them to move on, that’s great. If they feel that forgiving will hurt them, that should be their choice, too.
The real danger is when people start pushing victims to forgive rather than letting them come to it on their own. You see this a lot in Evangelical Christianity, where public shows of forgiveness are a huge deal, but it’s clearly part of what’s going on with Halperin and other people who were outed as perpetrators by the Me Too movement. Bullying victims into public acts of forgiveness isn’t just a dishonest attempt to rehabilitate the perpetrators; it’s also a way of victimizing them all over again.
BC in Illinois
@Brachiator:
Peak Generic, for me, came in 1979, when you could buy a six-pack of beer — white cans, single word BEER. The small print said that it was brewed in Pennsylvania. My Pittsburgh taste-tester said it was Iron City.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
I have a theory that can cozies were developed to assuage the social mortification of those who drank the generic beer.
;)
germy
@rikyrah:
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Betty, I was sure there must be a div code in there that was messing things up, but no, there wasn’t.
I checked in text mode, and I don’t see any reason for what it’s doing. I even tried my usual patented “copy the offending text into Word and then copy it back out again into WordPress”, and even that didn’t work.
I did manage to get TWO blank lines in there, but when I removed one of them we were back to no blank lines!
different-church-lady
Are we sure Mark Halprin deserved the first chance?
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl: FYWP doesn’t care, FYWP just takes what it wants.
Parfigliano
Joe Lieberman is still alive? That sucks.
RaflW
Maybe this got eviscerated yesterday, but Nate Cohn has totally taken the Baquet pill, as evidenced by his olympian ‘both sides’ effort that he tweeted out. He makes Joe Lieberman seem like a piker in the effort to fetishize the flaccid, useless center, while claiming that asymmetric polarization will be the ruin of both parties.
It seems like the data nerd has fully absorbed the idea that he, as a nerd, deserves and in fact is to blame for the bullies beating on him. “The fighting in the hall is the fault of them both!”
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Bland – It’s the New White
DCrefugee
I haven’t though of Joe Lieberman in years. That he is still among us is…frustrating.
MisterForkbeard
@Another Scott: Oracle makes friendly noises but is very Republican-friendly. Not as much as some of my always-online friends would have you believe, but Larry and Safra’s sympathies definitely lie in that direction.
I got to watch Larry Ellison make a bunch of anti-Hillary comments in a totally unrelated internal speech a few years back. I think he was talking about the bright future of Oracle and then decided to spend 3 or 4 minutes talking about how bad Hillary was instead. It was very odd.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I remember that era and fad and virtually no American beer made back then was all that good. Drinkably bland (Budweiser, Miller, Strohs and a few others) was really about the best you could hope for. I never had the generic stuff and it was probably worse than drinkably bland (some beers back then were certainly not good).
There were a couple of regional exceptions to that rule – Anchor Steam, Ballantine and Genessee Cream Ale spring to mind – but for the most part it was wannabe watered down pilsners. Most large cities (Natty Bo in Baltimore, Hudy in Cincinnati, Hamms in Minneapolis, etc.) had their own brand to compete with Miller and Budweiser but they were all minor variations on the same theme.
laura
No labels – no accountability no remembering no redemptive acts no apologies no standards no power sharing no diversity no skirts no blame no enlightenment no improvement no gays no rights no reckoning no insights no character no rules no casting out to the wilderness no limits on white male underachieving sycophants. Fuck all the bullshit of no labels. Not having it. And a special fuck you to joe leiberman may his memory not bless a damn thing someday.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@BC in Illinois:
Oh, god. That one is in the same tier as Blatz for a miserable experience. Syrupy, barely tolerable when ice cold, and leaves you gassy. Farts smell like a burning tire, and your gut hurts for days.
MisterForkbeard
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Anytime I see a reference to Yeungling, I have to post this. I’m sorry:
http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-man-law
montanareddog
Could be it’s just a 2-step rebranding exercise:
L85NJGT
@BC in Illinois:
The soon to be landfill they sell at IKEA is plain label branded.
Rob
Completely off topic: There’s been a Hermit Thrush in our back yard all day, hopping around and occasionally singing. It is migrating north right now, to its boreal forest summer home. Our yard has shade from a couple of medium-height trees, but is otherwise no features I would consider enticing to a forest-interior bird.
No Labels is indeed trash.
different-church-lady
@SiubhanDuinne: Thre was a little known evolution in that. At the height of the generics craze a friend and I were walking down the cereal aisle when a box of corn flakes caught our eye. Apparently someone in corporate America had decided that just text was too bland, so the packages now sported photos. As in an undersized, black and white, and utterly unappealing shot of a bowl of corn flakes. That was it: just the words “Corn Flakes” and something that looked like it had been cut out of a newspaper in 1952 on an otherwise blank white box.
It looked so absurd that we bought one, and I still have it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m guessing you guys have already covered this, but I must say: BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA
I’ll keep the rest of my distinctly un-christian thoughts to myself.
Bobby Thomson
At least Halperin isn’t ruining anything of value.
citizen dave
a small rant: Watched a minute of Psaki, who said “J&J” three times in 20 seconds. David A or others in the health fields can set me straight, but until recently I had never heard Johnson & Johnson, even in the leadup to their vaccine, called “J&J”. It was the pause, which seemed to cause an avalanche in the media that day of “J&J” this and “J&J” that. My theory was the media had a new toy.
Why can’t we all just say “Johnson and Johnson”?
laura
The insistence on Repeated second chances for gross shit bags like Halperin is nothing more than No Chances for non white male shit bags. No seats at the table for the rest of us despite our overacheivments because this toxic entitlement fast tracks mediocrity with a better luck next time for sure keep trying as the door is slammed in your face yet again…..
Gin & Tonic
@germy:
Would you rather have, at that point, 20 minutes of the character inquiring about the varieties of hops and comparing IBU ratings? I mean, if you want verisimilitude…
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: We wish. Malevolent seems to be the new white. (Which, when you get right down to it, is just Throwback White)
Kelly
I worked several summers at a vegetable cannery. Cans fresh of the line were called “brights” and they were warehoused unlabeled. Contents were marked by codes stamped into the lids by the machines that put the lids on. They weren’t labeled until just before they were to be shipped out. The label room had a wall of brand labels. All the contents of the cans were the same.
Elizabelle
How long do you think Halperin will remain with No
ScruplesLabels?I am guessing he will be sashaying off once news of this gets out more widely.
Mike in NC
Halperin should use his great journalistic skills to write a multi-volume exploration of the many successes and achievements of the Trump administration.
The Pale Scot
@germy:
At the Halperin thread below.
“She was just about to drop some CDC knowledge. Damn.”
White woman representing like Benita Butrell
Like WTF?
Elizabelle
@citizen dave: Two less syllables?
Pfizer has two.
Moderna has three.
Johnson and Johnson has five.
Astra Zeneca has five, also.
J&J is snappy. I am not aware of anything else out there, widely known, with those initials, either.
SiubhanDuinne
@citizen dave:
Who has the damned time?
L85NJGT
There were three Johnson brothers. Somebody got left off the nameplate.
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Could be cat scratch fever. ?
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Dumb pressfolk would report she was talking about Lyndon and Andrew.
;)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wow. The virus has a sense of humor.
Mr DAW was just telling me one of his bridge clubs is opening for a hybrid game–one person will be at each table with their computer and everyone else will be playing from home. The people in the club have to be masked and — ta da! — have to be vaccinated.
TheTruffle
@WaterGirl: Wow. That is a bad choice of words, given Halperin’s, um, conduct.
Steeplejack
@L85NJGT:
The most important one, too!
different-church-lady
@L85NJGT: “You left out a Hungadunga! You left out the most important one, too!
citizen dave
Stupid me, I’ve been confusing (somehow) the companies “SC Johnson” and “Johnson & Johnson”. Figured all Johnsons look the same. https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2019/08/27/fisk-johnson-stop-confusing-sc-johnson-with.html
Still want to tour the Frank Lloyd Wright SC Johnson Research Center building: https://www.scjohnson.com/Home/Interacting-with-SC-Johnson/Tours-and-Architecture/Our-Architecture/Frank-Lloyd-Wright-designed-Research-Tower
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
I don’t know if it’s the only, but certainly one of the very few abbreviations that takes longer to say than the thing it stands for is WWW (nine syllables) for World Wide Web (three syllables).
Soprano2
@MisterForkbeard: Fun, obscure fact – Ellison lives in Hawaii right now. My stepson talked to him on the phone once about pies! Ellison said he had ordered pies, and my stepson told him “We don’t take pie orders here, we just make pies, what kind do you want?” or something similar. I don’t think he even knew who Ellison was – when you live on Maui I guess it’s not that uncommon to run into famous people.
It’s snowing here, crud! Guess I’ll have to cover some of my flowers tonight once it stops. It always does this crap at least once in April or early May – it’s like winter has to get its claws in us one more time.
SiubhanDuinne
@citizen dave:
“In the dark, all cats are grey.”
MazeDancer
Not letting anything harsh my Celebrating Walter Mondale mellow. Bittersweet, because he died. But remembering those times when men were liberal, learned, self-made gentlemen fighting for women.
Thank heavens we have such a man in the White House today.
Here are two great stories from Twitter.
One, a tear-inducing pic shared by Teddy Mondale: https://twitter.com/alisonr61423986/status/1384546439502630912?s=21
The other a terrific tale by Joe Trippi, with quite the surprise ending: https://twitter.com/joetrippi/status/1384533738441355264?s=21
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Pleasurable to bid “no trump?”
:)
germy
Covid denier dies from virus after hosting illegal gatherings
Hans Kristian Gaarder died in the town of Gran, roughly 40 miles north of Oslo, on April 6, with subsequent tests showing he had coronavirus. The conspiracy theorist, 60, had hosted two illegal gatherings at his barn just days earlier, on March 26 and 27, NRK reported.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/04/15/norway-covid-denier-dies-from-virus-after-hosting-illegal-gatherings-14415842/
germy
L85NJGT
Pinning for liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats is Sorkinism at its worst.
Realignment happened, dumbasses.
WhatsMyNym
@citizen dave: The stock name for Johnson & Johnson is JNJ.
And if you want to be accurate the vaccine is from Johnson & Johnson/Janssen.
Jeffro
@BC in Illinois: @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I’ll see all of these opinions and raise y’all a Schaefer Light ;)
$5/case (or $4/case when past its sell-by date)
SiubhanDuinne
@different-church-lady:
Hahaha! I love that kind of absurdist stuff.
Benw
@NotMax: Have you ever played Rage?
My family still chortles when someone says “Trump is orange”
Bex
@Gin & Tonic: The only answer to “what’ll you have?” is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Not that you’d actually want it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: One would think so
citizen dave
@WhatsMyNym: Thanks for that–maybe they are all saying “JNJ”.
I’m going with “Jay Ampersand Jay” :)
Steeplejack
@MazeDancer:
Your first link goes to the Joe Trippi story too. Fixed link: Teddy Mondale picture.
NotMax
@Jeffro
Peek under the bottom of the barrel and you’ll find Rheingold.
Elizabelle
@MazeDancer: What a story about what the boxing gloves signified.
VP Mondale was a marvelous man. Deserved better, but sounds as though he was grateful for everything that he did get to accomplish.
Americans made a choice in 1984 that many are finally seeing the results of, today.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
Yup, Schaefer is in the Blatz tier of shit beer.
James E Powell
@RaflW:
My summary of the meaning of that article is: “We, the NYT, have read and heard your criticisms. After careful consideration, we have decided you can all go fuck yourselves. We have no intention of changing anything.”
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
BTW, threw my 2¢ on coffee makers in the by then moribund morning thread.
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yes, I agree that their beer is well made and tasty — but the owner of the company is a virulent RWNJ anti-union fascist.. so I won’t touch their Nazi swill under normal circumstances. Now, if I was stranded in Death Valley and found a stack of cases of Yuengling, that would be different. But normally, no F’in’ way!
WhatsMyNym
@citizen dave:
Or that big damn company.
ETA: they resumed shipping vaccines to the EU.
SiubhanDuinne
@MazeDancer:
Thank you so much for sharing that beautiful story by Trippi. It’s so nice that most of my tears these days are tears of gratitude at the goodness of people instead of tears of rage and desperation at evil-hearted mofos.
NotMax
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
From the vault: Mabel! Black Label!
;)
Jeffro
@Bex: gotta have a PBR with some BBQ once in a while
Also, back in the Before Times, PBR 16oz cans were just $5 at the Black Cat in DC. ;)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Jeffro: I remember Schaefer!
@NotMax: Not so much Rheingold but then I grew up in Michigan where Strohs was king and Goebel was distinctly second tier.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@J R in WV:
I think that’s pretty common in the brewing world – makes some sense, as that would be the type with the access to the sort of funds necessary for large breweries.
Distilleries run on a smaller scale and have a different class of owners.
Jeffro
@NotMax: Noooooooooo! I’m too scared to look under the barrel!!
On a lark, I did get me and my college buddies some retro Schaefer ballcaps recently. Hopefully I will be able to catch up with them soon and we can all look dumb(er than usual) together.
Jeffro
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: so bad we had to drink it super cold – like 32.5 degrees cold – and quickly. Well, the first six, anyway… ;)
different-church-lady
@WhatsMyNym: Now you can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay….
NotMax
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Back in the 70s, in its distribution area, Leinenkugel was several cuts above the rest.
(Regional beer-related sidebar: Olympia has moved on to … vodka.)
Kay
This snow is a disaster for my sweet peas. Why do I put myself thru this every year?
Mother’s Day is the frost free date. Since I’m 8 years old I’m trying and failing to speed this up.
I can’t grow sweet peas because I have about 4 days of spring and then it’s 90 degrees. That is the reality.
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Most of the major distillers have been bought out by big conglomerates like Diaego, Pernod Ricard, and Beam Suntory. Of course, the big label beers have mostly consolidated into big multinational conglomerates like Molson Coors and AB InBev.
NotMax
@NotMax
70s also the time of the “Taste? Pfeh. Let’s just double the percentage of alcohol.” Maximus Super. In yer face, ‘lite’ beers.
;)
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne: In Cincy in the 70’s these were called “generic”, packages were white and lettering black at Kroger. Good times.
NotMax
@Jeffro
PBR Bock would show up around Easter every year for a limited time and promptly disappear from the shelves (well, the distributor’s floor as this was PA back when and beer wasn’t yet sold in supermarkets) faster than one could say “Where’s the church key?”
:)
germy
I remember a magazine print ad for Ballantine Ale featuring Ernest Hemingway
https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/ballantines-literary-ads-ernest-hemingway/
Bob Benchley first introduced me to Ballantine Ale. It has been a good companion ever since.
You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. But I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish.
We keep it iced in the bait box with chunks of ice packed around it. And you ought to taste it on a hot day when you have worked a big marlin fast because there were sharks after him.
You are tired all the way through. The fish is landed untouched by sharks and you have a bottle of Ballantine cold in your hand and drink it cool, light, and full-bodied, so it tastes good long after you have swallowed it. That’s the test of an ale with me: whether it tastes as good afterwards as when it’s going down. Ballantine does.
NotMax
@germy
The Bert and Harry Piel’s ads (and associated promos) were so-o-o much better than was the product. TV ads were voiced by Bob & Ray.
;)
James E Powell
I just read an essay at VOX in which the writer, Allissa V Richardson, asks, “What’s the purpose of sharing violent police videos anymore, other than to traumatize Black communities?” She makes good points, but I’m not sure that I agree. My anecdotal experience over the last year is that those videos changed minds and sparked activism among white people who I knew never really thought about such things before.
I can see why communities of color would say enough! But I think the majority of white people still need a steady pounding on the brain to change a lifetime of propaganda that presents police violence as our only defense against the scary black people.
What do you guys think?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
For every bought up distillery, three smaller ones pop up making artisanal products. My choices in Louisville are fantastic these days.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The triumph of hope over experience!
My husband starts plants from seeds in the winter and usually plants things too early and has to start over, but this year his gambles have all paid off!
We’ve been enjoying rattlesnake beans and another type of green beans for a couple of weeks now, and the tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc., are all coming along nicely.
There’s one type of small peppers that are already edible — shishimo or something like that? They’re wonderful all by themselves, sauteed in olive oil with a little salt and pepper. About 1 in 50 is seriously hot, so there’s the element of surprise…
Old School
@James E Powell: I think they still need to be shared just to keep people from thinking, “Well, I’m glad that’s not happening anymore.”
geg6
@BC in Illinois:
The only local beer that was worse than Iron City was Rolling Rock. I couldn’t believe when it became some sort of status-y yuppie beer for a few years. It was swill and still is. Regular Iron City is also awful. IC Light, however, is not bad for a light beer. It at least tastes like beer. And I’m no beer snob at all.
Steeplejack (phone)
@germy:
“Let’s have a beer! Who wants to fight?”
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I can’t imagine. The sweet pea thing started when I got a garden book from the library and the cover photo was a big jar of sweet peas. My oldest was a baby so more than 30 years ago.
I’m plowing them under when I get home. That or saw off plastic milk cartons and make little huts…
I love that the colors are clear. Cool season flowers have clear colors, and a real blue but I don’t live in England, now do I?
NotMax
@geg6
Triumph of the swill.
;)
When it came to “meh” there was also Old Dutch.
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
I understand the author’s anguish about the replay of violent images, but ultimately disagree with her recommendations, especially this one:
The Broadcast Decency Act and the thought behind it was stupid.
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You are much nicer than I am. I hope he suffers. And if he dies, he dies. I won’t mourn him.
germy
@Steeplejack (phone):
I wonder if Papa Hemingway wrote that ad copy, or if some clever copywriter composed it in his style. I suspect the latter.
Steeplejack (phone)
@James E Powell:
Keep ’em coming. Nobody is forced to look at them, but Whitey needs to be constantly reminded that the problem continues.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Old School:
True.
Steeplejack (phone)
@germy:
It’s almost (self-)parody. Would love to see the Faulkner copy.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Um, maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to invoke the name of Comstock as an exemplar.
Another Scott
@James E Powell: +1
Gandhi, King, and all the rest understood that the way to get change is to show the masses and the elites what life is really like in ways that they can’t look away.
Cheers,
Scott.
jeffreyw
@citizen dave:
I heard they make good floor wax.
NotMax
@jeffreyw
“Floor wax? I thought it was for waxing your johnson.”
//
MazeDancer
@Steeplejack: Thanks!
Another Scott
ICYMI, …
That’s pretty good, indeed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MSNBC: Chauvin verdict reached, will be announced later this afternoon
NYT:
The jury has reached a verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in the death of George Floyd, and its decision will be read between 3:30 and 4 p.m. local time.
Benw
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: that’s too fast for a hung jury…
PST
@James E Powell:
Some of the least woke people I’ve ever known have begun to take notice of lethal police violence against unarmed black men now that they can see it happening. In some ways, many white men with poor educations and unpleasant jobs are primed to believe that police play god when they think they can get away with it. When I sit with old school pals and listen to their endless grievances, the police are always in the mix. They never describe anything that compares to what is visited on Black people, but the anger is there. “He coulda just gave me a warning, but no, he had to make his quota,” or “They should have taken me straight to the hospital but instead they arrested me and threw me into the back of the van.” So some of them, when they repeatedly see this bad stuff with their own eyes, start to believe it despite what Fox tells them.
Another Scott
@Benw: I assume most of the deliberation time was deciding on what particular charge they would convict him of, not whether he would be convicted.
Just a guess though.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Censors always claim to have good intentions.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Gin & Tonic: TV and movies have a bunch of conventions designed to move the plot along and to hell with verisimilitude. People don’t say “good-bye” on telephone calls, they just end it. Drivers always find a parking place in front of where they are going (in NYC!). Etc. It used to bother me and now I just see it as moving briskly on to the next plot point and not wasting time on every day life delays.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@James E Powell: My husband and I (2 white Boomers) have been transformed by the videos. We knew intellectually about racism and discrimination and police brutality, but it took the videos to really bring home the reality of what people have to live with. A trivial comparison, but the use of pictures in animals available for adoption has transformed the animal rescue world. Pictures bring it home. So true, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Karen S.
@Steeplejack (phone):
From my perspective, as a Black woman, you sound a bit callous here, but I suppose I understand. I do not ever watch those videos because I’ve known since I was a child how bad everyday life can be for people like me. Oh well. Carry on.