Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

In my day, never was longer.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

“woke” is the new caravan.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

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

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Consistently wrong since 2002

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106Comments

  4. 4.

    Raoul Paste

    Frank could really hold his own, well spoken with such a command of the facts.  He was unfazed when he testified before Congress, completely at ease.

    Just as it is today, the only thing his opponents could do was try to shout him down

  6. 6.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Fun fact: Zappa was on an episode of Miami Vice. A villain I think? He was a good actor

  7. 7.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, he played (unsurprisingly) a coke dealer.

    He was indeed, in the overused term, a genius, and not just musically. His bands were like the Art Blakey or Miles Davis bands, like grad school for musicians.

    I had the good fortune to see him in concert about a half-dozen times.

  8. 8.

    AlaskaReader

    Quote from Frank’s 1968 Life Magazine interview:

     

    a lot of things wrong with society today are directly attributable to the fact that people who make the law’s are sexually maladjusted

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    “This old world, it is exploding…”

    Fighting erupted today in Khartoum between  Sudan’s Army and a rival paramilitary force. There were clashes in other Sudanese cities as well.

    Things were better a few hundred miles to the east. 900 former Yemeni fighters spent time with their families and friends after a prisoner swap yesterday. This was an important step in ending the civil war that started back in 2012

    And up north next to the Mediterranean Sea, an estimated 100,000+ Israelis marched in Tel Aviv for the 15th week of protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Protesters turned out in other cities all over the country including 40,000 in Natanya.

  12. 12.

    AlaskaReader

    For those wanting a more in-depth view of Frank and his activism,

    Here is a good start.

    Frank was instrumental in opening the minds of many people of my generation and I surely wish more of succeeding generations will learn from what Frank had to offer.

  13. 13.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Gin & Tonic: That was a great episode.  It starts with Roberto Duran committing graphic suicide in prison to frame Crockett.​

  14. 14.

    Tony G

    @Miss Bianca: Ha ha.  Zappa was indeed a genius, and he died way too young.  (He’s be a little bit older than Dylan if he was still around.).  The funny thing about this clip is that Zappa — the “crazy rock star” — is obviously working at a much higher level of intelligence than the other guys on the panel.  It’s like watching the LA Lakers play against a middle school basketball team.  And he’s absolutely right on the facts.  The alliance between the Reagan Administration and the evangelical religious fanatics was the beginning of the path toward fascism that we’re on right now.

  16. 16.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Frank used to call Tipper Gore (head of the infamous PMRC) “Reich Marshal Tipper”🤣

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    It’s apparently summer (“farmer’s” at my local market) sausage season already!

    Happy summer sausage season to all, and to all a Go Cubs Go!

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    Again, Frank’s the smartest guy in the room there. He also had a special affinity for Jimmy Swaggart.

    Cautious good news on energy and climate.

    This year, the world is predicted to pass a critical turning point in renewable energy.

    Greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, the largest source of the world’s emissions, are expected to fall for the first time, according to London-based think tank Ember. That’s despite the fact that the world’s demand for electricity is still growing. Emissions are set to fall because expansion in renewable energies such as solar and wind is outstripping that growth in demand.

    It’s a crucial moment in the effort to tackle climate change, and the report, written by Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, senior electricity analyst at Ember, and colleagues, argues that we are fast approaching a positive “tipping point” in the effort to curb climate change.

    “This marks the point where power sector emissions stop rising,” Wiatros-Motyka and her colleagues write. “Clean power can actually go to replacing fossil fuels, instead of just meeting rising demand.”

    Just how important are positive tipping points in efforts to tackle climate change? And are we really about to pass an important one in 2023?

    Future Planet editor Martha Henriques puts these questions to Simon Sharpe, author of Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change.

    MH: We’re used to hearing about dangerous tipping points in climate change, like the loss of sea ice or forests. What is a tipping point, and why are some of them good?

    SS: A tipping point in general is a point where a small input change leads to a large change in outcome. An example I give is, if you lean back too far in your chair, there’s a certain point where just a tiny bit further and you’ll fall over backwards.

    In climate change, as you say, there are bad tipping points, like when a forest might be lost irreversibly, or ice shelves are tipped into irreversible melting and disintegration.

    When we talk about good tipping points, then we’re referring to technology transitions and the move from old technologies based on fossil fuels, to new ones, the zero-emission technologies.

    Continues here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230414-climate-change-why-2023-is-a-clean-energy-milestone

    This afternoon CAISO says California’s grid supply is 59% renewables and that we’re even exporting to other states. This year, large hydro will be back after a few drought years of vacation.

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    @Hungry Joe: ​IDK other than “john” when a supply-sider correctly says “John, you don’t have to buy them.”

    John McPunchableface?

  26. 26.

    zhena gogolia

    @Raoul Paste: Brilliant man. As a Slovak, i was very proud when he was one of the first people Václav Havel invited to Czechoslovakia after he became president.

  30. 30.

    oatler

    According to Deke Leonard’s “Twang Dynasty” book, Zappa had been approached by Dylan in the 80s to produce an album. Despite assurances from Dylan there would be no “J-word” in the lyrics Zappa found several and left (that’s during Bob’s J-word phase).

  32. 32.

    AlaskaReader

    @Tony G: Those beginnings weren’t unknown in Nixon’s time, …and unsurprisingly, Frank was on to that at that time too.

  33. 33.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Geminid:

    Am in Cape Town at the moment. Did some driving about – despite a 35% unemployment rate, the populace doesn’t appear to be seething in rage – yet.  It actually appears on the surface to be more prosperous than it was 5 years ago when I was last here. I understand that COVID did a number on a lot of economic sectors.

    The Rand is crazy cheap – we’re eating great meals and drinking topnotch wine for next to nothing. We’re eating full meals for two with wine for about $35USD. I think we paid $450 for 8000ZAR yesterday.

    Started anti-malarial for upcoming Kruger visit in a few days. Took it with Xanax to ease off the crazy dreams. Will report results tomorrow.

  35. 35.

    lowtechcyclist

    Don’t know if it’s already been said in one of the earlier threads, but Glenn Youngkin has joined Pompeo in pre-dropping-out of the 2024 race, IOW dropping out before they ever dropped in.

    Guess he can fleece his followers in other ways.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @trollhattan: The U.S. hit an important waypoint last year when renewable sources of electricity surpassed coal for the first time. It was also the second year that combined hydro, solar and wind generation exceeded nuclear.

    Generation from natural gas still leads with about 40%; renewables account for a little over 20%, coal is 20% and dropping, and nuclear is about 18%.

  39. 39.

    Sister Golden Bear

    I’m gonna have to take another Covid-recovery nap, but before I do, I needed to call out another major step toward #TransGenocide.

    Thursday Missouri’s AG essentially banned gender affirming care for most trans ADULTS via emergency rule, starting April 27.

    It would require that all trans people have 3 years of severe, persistent gender dysphoria to obtain care, and would require 18 months of therapy sessions designed to “explore influences on the patient’s gender identity and mental health comorbidities.” It would require things like depression and anxiety to be resolved before starting gender affirming care, and would also ban that care for trans adults with autism. It would require tests for [non-existent] “social contagion” and would require 15 years worth of medical follow-ups for all trans adults.

    Needless to say, the requirements are completely at odds with the consensus of medical professionals in the field, and world-wide standards of care.

    Much like Republicans are doing with abortion, gender care treatments may remain technically legal, but impossible to get in real-life. In both cases, it’s all about denying bodily autonomy.

    This includes hormone therapy, seemingly including trans people who are already on it, also including those of us whose bodies, no longer produce any testosterone or estrogen. Not having hormone replacement therapy available can cause long-term health issues.

    The ban on gender care for those with depression is like requiring that the migraine is cured before you can get pain pills for it. Many, many trans people are depressed and/or anxious before gender health care because dysphoria fucking sucks. The ban on autistic people is infantilizing, presuming they’re not competent to make decisions about their own bodies.

    While I assume organizations are already seeking temporary restraining orders, we’re gonna see other Republican states follow suit. Just the uncertainty alone has caused a number Missouri doctors inform their patients that they’ll now longer be able to prescribe/renew prescriptions for fear of losing their medical licenses.

    And of course the Missouri AG cited FTFNYT anti-trans hit pieces in his justification for the order.

  40. 40.

    Another Scott

    I’m sure he’d have opinions about the “AI” stuff happening now.

    Thirteen.

    I remember hearing an interview with him where he said something like it’s composing that matters. Machines will eventually be better at playing music, but it’s the human creativity in actually coming up with the composition that matters. (And improvising a piece of music is composing.) I don’t think he’d be a fan of ChatGPT and the like, but whatever view he had on it would be well thought-out.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Yeah, it was all about the children for about five minutes there. I’d add “before they showed their true colors,” but even their child-specific legislation went there.

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: Foungkin’ Youngkin has General Assembly elections to worry about this Fall. He won’t be on the ballot, but he’s the party leader and he’s got to campaign, so his prestige will be on the line.

  43. 43.

    Delk

    Some of you might not agree
    ‘Cause you probably likes a lot of misery
    But think a while and you will see…

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Let’s not forget about Dee Snider saying Tipper Gore had a dirty mind.

    Psychiatrist: OK, Johnny, look it this picture, and tell what you see [shows him a picture of a circle)
    Little Johnny: That’s a porthole on a ship, and that man and woman are doing all sorts of dirty things in their room — boy oh boy!
    Psychiatrist: OK, Johnny, how about this one? [Shows him a square]
    Little Johnny: That’s their bedroom window, and boy oh boy that man and woman are doing all sorts of dirty things in there!!!
    Psychiatrist: OK, Johnny, one last picture, what do you see? [shows him a triangle]
    Little Johnny: That’s the keyhole in their bedroom door, and boy oh boy that man and woman are doing all sorts of dirty things in there!!!
    Psychiatrist: Hmmm. Johnny, you seem to be preoccupied with sex.
    Little Johnny: ME?!?!??? YOU’RE the one showing me the dirty pictures!!!!!​

  46. 46.

    RaflW

    Richmond Dispatch ripping into Youngkin for halting a major Ford battery plant. It would have created 2,500 jobs per the daily paper. But rock-ribbed Republican had to say “shove it” because it’s a JV with a Chinese company. Because something something communists or whatever.

    Oh, and Glenn is following Mike Pompous in declaring an unwillingness to be humiliated by MAGA voters in the 2024 potus contest.

  47. 47.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @lowtechcyclist: Yep.

    BTW, I forget to mentioned this will forcibly de-transition tens of thousands of trans Missourians.

    Also too, the FTFNYT has front-paged numerous anti-trans hit pieces. Their coverage of the Missouri ban… buried on page A17, written by a sport writer, who as far as anyone can tell has never written about trans issues previously.

  49. 49.

    Geminid

    @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Sounds like a good trip. My friend Joan visited Cape Town a few months ago. She liked it.

    Joan gets around. She visited Puerto Rico in February, and next week she’s heading to Vera Cruz, Mexico for two weeks. I told her that Ulysses Grant passed through Vera Cruz on his way to Mexico City, but there may not be any plaques commemorating it.

  50. 50.

    zhena gogolia

    @AlaskaReader: Yeah, I couldn’t remember the details, but I was too lazy to look it up. Havel’s Plastic People of the Universe were inspired by Zappa.

  51. 51.

    Cameron

    @HumboldtBlue: I think that might be the stupidest thing I’ll read today.  Which is pretty remarkable when one considers the number of stupid ideas/statements/thoughts we’re constantly exposed to.

  53. 53.

    divF

    @Gin & Tonic: I saw Frank Zappa in 1974 or so, and his opening act was Tom Waits. Before the show started, someone from Zappa’s team came on stage, and told the audience that Frank wanted them to be nice to Waits, ’cause he is really good.

  54. 54.

    AlaskaReader

    @Another Scott:

    In 1984, Zappa was the keynote speaker at the American Society of University Composers 19th Annual Festival Conference, held at the Ohio State University School of Music.

  56. 56.

    bbleh

    MEANwhile, anybody happen to notice that Grand Inquisitor Judge Kacsmaryk happened to evidently falsely remove his name as author of a “law” review article explicitly endorsing a particular theological viewpoint and using incorrect and inflammatory terms to describe approved medications coincidentally just before his Senate hearing?

    I realize that pointing this out is almost certainly Woke, broadly speaking, but I’ll take that hit.

  57. 57.

    Kent

    Since this is an open thread I gotta share that last night my 16 year old daughter turned me on to Randy Feltface who is a purple puppet comedian from Australia and honest to God the best and most funny comedy show I have seen in years.  Bar none.  Apparently the kids these days love him.

    If you guys haven’t heard of Randy Feltface or seen it, take a look.  Pure genius and pure talent:  https://youtu.be/ooUWO8BMSuo

    Or maybe you have all seen and heard of him and its just me who is the old boomer.

  63. 63.

    Shana

    @zhena gogolia: You should read Rock and Roll by Tom Stoppard, a wonderful play all about the Czech history from ’68 (?) to freedom with some Syd Barrett thrown in. Saw it on Broadway where it was wonderful and made me think it was production-proof but then saw it in DC a few years later and it was awful. A great read though. Highly recommended.

  66. 66.

    kindness

    Loved Frank.  Saw him in ’74 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester NY during the Roxy & Elsewhere tour.  They killed it.  One of the most alive shows I’ve ever seen.

  67. 67.

    Maxim

    @Sister Golden Bear: I’m autistic. The AG can go fuck himself sideways with a rusty pitchfork. Thank the FSM I’m in California, but I’m so angry on behalf of all the trans folks living in fascist areas.

  68. 68.

    Ajabu

    Sometime in the late 70s, I auditioned for Zappa’s band with a drummer friend. Zappa gave me the black page as an audition piece. (it’s a melody Frank created on top of a drum solo.- titled because the page is so thick with notation it appears to be black.) Three pages of increasingly complex rhythms. I got through the first page no problem, started stumbling on the second page and gave up on the third page. He said, “you’re not much of a reader, can you play?” And kicked off the rhythm section in an odd meter. I jumped in, and did well with that. Frank’s response was. “ OK, you can play. But I need classical readers with jazz chops.” I didn’t get the gig, but my friend did! And I always admired Frank Zappa’s genius!

  70. 70.

    RaflW

    Authoritarianism insanity watch:

    April 14 (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a bill on Friday allowing juries to recommend the death penalty in capital cases on an 8-4 vote, a move spurred by the less-than-unanimous vote that led to the Parkland school shooter being sentenced to life in prison.

    The state’s Republican-led House of Representatives approved the measure with an 80-30 vote on Thursday, following the Republican-controlled state Senate’s approval in March.

    — —

    Hopefully Ramos v Louisiana (Scotus April 2020) will prevail and this abhorrent hideousness will be overturned.

    8-4 is utterly BONKERS in a capital case!!

  71. 71.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @bbleh: You’ll be shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that the article to a Texas law review criticized Obama-era protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions.

    The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

  74. 74.

    different-church-lady

    Zappa wrote a lot of unfortunately puerile lyrics, but he was not at all dumb guy.

  77. 77.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    And of course the Missouri AG cited FTFNYT anti-trans hit pieces in his justification for the order.

    That is seriously fucked up. And there’s another FTFNYT transphobe reporter seeking information for another poorly sourced bunch of crap to write another screed to be cited by the next fascist legislator. Below is the reporter’s solicitation…it’s ridiculous.

    Date: Thu, Apr 6, 2023 at 1:41 PM
    Subject: New York Times article on how pediatricians are responding to rising rates of trans youth

    I am writing an article for The New York Times about how pediatricians, family practitioners, psychologists and other front-line physicians who care for broad populations of children and
    adolescents are responding to the rising numbers of trans-identifying youths. What has it been like for these health care providers to care for such young people of late?
    For one, I am interested in covering this subject from the perspective of a newly fractured legal landscape, in which various states have banned the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors with puberty blockers and hormones. What is it like for health care
    providers to care for trans-identifying kids in these states?
    I am also interested in hearing from physicians who might have
    misgivings about the gender affirming care treatment model or who otherwise have theories about why we have  seen such a recent surge in trans-identifying young people.
    I would greatly appreciate your help in finding physicians for me to speak with. (Note that this article is not focusing on gender-care specialists.) I know this is a highly sensitive topic. So while I would
    prefer to get sources on the record, I am more than happy to accommodate anyones requests for anonymity.

  79. 79.

    prostratedragon

    @HumboldtBlue: “Wonderful World of Tupperware”, a promotional doc that occasionally runs on TCM. First two-thirds describes the industrial process, which frankly I found interesting. Notably, many of the line workers featured were women, this back in the early 1960s. The remainder goes into the multilevel marketing process, as weird as it ever was, complete with Anita Bryant(!) swaying the hips of tradition to a Tupperware-bowdlerized “Blues in the Night” at a sales convention.

  81. 81.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @RaflW:

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a bill on Friday allowing juries to recommend the death penalty in capital cases on an 8-4 vote,

    Part of a much larger picture….

    The Florida House Thursday passed an  bill that seeks to allow the death penalty for people who commit sexual batteries on children under age 12.

    Florida’s Leg has passed/is expected to pass multiple laws that among other things:

    • Define gender-affirming care for children as sexual battery.
    • A trans person being a in public restroom at the same time as a child, even unknowingly, as a sex crime.
    • Drag queens and trans people being in public where children might be present as “sexualizing children.”

    Sensing a pattern here… While they may not be able to actually convict and execute trans people or their allies — and not for lack of trying — FL Republican sure as hell are going to threatened to do so.

  82. 82.

    different-church-lady

    @HumboldtBlue: ​It’s far more likely the downfall is the result of there being 15 trillion plastic take-out containers in the universe. Who needs to buy special plastic for food storage when you’ve probably already got 83 things that do the job already?

  85. 85.

    Dan B

    @Sure Lurkalot:  Both siding trans care.  Zero moral judgement.  If they were writing about AIDS or Malaria they’d want to hear from physicians who believe it is God’s will for punishing sinners.

  86. 86.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Another Scott: On a more practical level, I’m seeing Twitter posts from the likes of the local National Service, BART, CalFire etc. that the changes mean they can no longer automaticallypost weather alerts, alerts about BART delays, fire alerts and updates, etc.

    Ya know, the sorts of things that people found Twitter really useful for.

  90. 90.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Sure Lurkalot: Fortunately there was enough blow back that the FTFNYT retreated (for now) and cancelled the piece (it was by a freelancer). But the tell was the writer explicitly stating that he didn’t want to talk to doctors with expertise in the field of trans healthcare.

    @Dan B:

    If they were writing about AIDS or Malaria they’d want to hear from physicians who believe it is God’s will for punishing sinners.

    I suspect if we checked the FTFNYT’s archives from the ’80s, we’d find at least one AIDS article doing just that.

  92. 92.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Dan B:

    It may take a few years to extend it to black men looking at white women.

    Missouri’s legislature is currently considering — or may have already passed (there’s so many bills it’s hard to keep track) a law that would allow state officials to deny marriage licenses to same-sex and interracial couples,* so it might not even take a few years.

    *Couched in language of “strong moral objections.”

  94. 94.

    Glidwrith

    @Sure Lurkalot: This crap reminds me of when Dick Cheney would plant stories in the press anonymously, then once published, use that as justification for whatever crap he wanted to do.

  95. 95.

    Redshift

    @Cameron:

    I think that might be the stupidest thing I’ll read today. Which is pretty remarkable when one considers the number of stupid ideas/statements/thoughts we’re constantly exposed to.

    Only if you skip reading George Will’s latest incoherent nonsense. He claims that in the late twentieth century, America had the “idea” of a classless society with mobility. (He’s slippery enough not to say we had it in reality, just the idea.)

    But the real stupidity is that he claims – get this – that by opening up college to everybody, liberals created a class of educated people who look down on the working class (which doesn’t exist outside of the Fox fever swamp), so now we have class divisions.

    The fact that Will was ever considered an “intellectual” the political media is a testament that it’s all about how you look and your tone of voice, not about your ideas.

  98. 98.

    Baud

    @Redshift:

    But the real stupidity is that he claims – get this – that by opening up college to everybody, liberals created a class of educated people who look down on the working class (which doesn’t exist outside of the Fox fever swamp), so now we have class divisions.

     
    That is dumb. Real intellectuals blame Hillary Clinton.

  100. 100.

    Cameron

    @Redshift: He’s the Leon Trotsky of conservative idea-pimps!  Yeah, that is remarkably dumb, particularly the handwaving that implies cause and effect without bothering to demonstrate either.  If not dumb as a stump, certainly intellectually lazy.

  101. 101.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Hungry Joe:

    Late to the thread and haven’t read all the comments yet, so it’s probably already been suggested, but my guess is Robert Novak. Well-known (at the time) conservative columnist and commentator, although I think he identified as a Democrat.

  102. 102.

    Miss Bianca

    @Sister Golden Bear: You know, I really, honestly, cannot understand the right-winger’s lust to, as you so succinctly put it, control others’ bodily autonomy.

    I sometimes wonder if it’s not a subconscious desire to still be able to just fucking OWN other people, period. Like they’re still mad that actual slavery was abolished.

  103. 103.

    Central Planning

    @Raven: ​That podcast is pretty good. I think I’m around episode 40 or so. I’ve learned a ton, and you can tell he’s done a ton of research.

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