That’s our president pic.twitter.com/9whpXozbpx
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 27, 2023
From visiting eight countries to participating in dozens of bilateral meetings and global summits, I was proud to represent the United States around the world this year. pic.twitter.com/SCnILDgs58
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 27, 2023
2024 will give way to something less chaotic:
• Pandemic-disrupted supply chains are pretty much righted.
• Inflation is already back near normal levels.
• Labor shortages have eased.
• The Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates next year.https://t.co/fDUh27j3Zr— Axios (@axios) December 26, 2023
"Symbols matter. They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be. By removing the confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity."–Mayor Donna Deegan #CivilWarMemory https://t.co/vDNZ6JI2VC
— Kevin M. Levin–Historian, Teacher, Public Speaker (@KevinLevin) December 27, 2023
======
Another small good thing: Gift link for the Washington Post, “Jacksonville removes Confederate monument after years of controversy”:
A massive Confederate memorial in a city park in Jacksonville, Fla., came down Wednesday morning after years of controversy over the statue, preempting proposed state legislation that would punish local officials who vote for the removal of such markers.
On orders of Mayor Donna Deegan, crews moved in equipment overnight to Springfield Park — formerly Confederate Park — and had the first part of “In Memory of Our Women of the Southland” on the ground shortly after dawn. Though many residents had long demanded such action, it still came as a surprise as the sun rose — with a TV station’s live stream allowing both critics and supporters of the monument to watch its dismantling.
Deegan (D) had promised after her election in May to have the statue taken down but couldn’t get agreement from the city council’s 19 members. Then last month, a Republican state representative from Duval County introduced a measure to fine local officials who vote to remove historical monuments…
The 12-columned, 41-foot-tall memorial featured three figures high atop a pedestal: a mother embracing her two children. The plaque included at its dedication made its intent clear. “Let this mute but eloquent structure speak to generations to come of a generation of the past,” it read. “Let it repeat perpetually the imperishable story of our women of the ’60s, those noble women who sacrificed their all upon their country’s altar.”
The monument, erected in 1914 after a fundraising effort by the Florida division of the United Confederate Veterans, was the centerpiece of what for more than another century would be called Confederate Park…
The first changes came in 2020 with the park’s renaming and the removal of a statue of a Confederate soldier across from City Hall. Yet still the monument remained, despite weekly protests from the group Take Em Down Jax and others.
A spokesman for Deegan’s office said Black’s proposed legislation “had no bearing” on the timing of the mayor’s order. “We have been exploring options since the first day in office, and the planning process took several months,” Phillip Perry said in an email. “We wanted to ensure public safety around the removal during a slower week.”
Crowds, singing and chanting, gathered at Springfield Park as the crews worked and wound thick straps around the three bronze figures. A fourth figure, which had stood atop the dome holding a furled Confederate flag, had already been pulled down and placed on its side in the grass…
On The Road – HinTN – NYC Christmas
OzarkHillbilly
To get everybody’s day off on the right foot, I give you the latest edition of “An armed society is a polite society.”
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
At least they kept it in the family.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: A couple years ago I went to the funeral of a young man (18? 19?) who had committed suicide. He’d gotten into an argument with his father. Grabbed a pistol off the coffee table and blew his brains out..
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: You neglected to mention it was Florida!
MagdaInBlack
@OzarkHillbilly: I know I can be remarkably naive about some parts of society, but “…grabbed a pistol off the coffee table…” is just so wtf to me. Just kept there by the remote in case of…what?
Betty
Those ladies sacrificed their all on the altar of which country?
Ben Cisco
@MagdaInBlack: In case a black guy knocked on the door, duh
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: DOH!
@MagdaInBlack: I have no idea why.
Once when dropping my sons off at my ex’s house I espied a 9mm on the kitchen table. I said, “WTF???” took the magazine out and cleared the chamber as I gave her a lecture about leaving loaded guns laying about. Took it into her bedroom and put it up on a shelf in the closet. Probably stayed there for about 5 mins. Her husband was an asshole and she was… wrong. Just wrong. Too many drugs maybe.
NotMax
Knowing there are fans afoot here, a seasonal serving of Doyle a la carte —
A (belated) Merry Christmas, Mr. Holmes.
;)
dmsilev
A couple of words got dropped from that title, no doubt completely by accident.
bjacques
@OzarkHillbilly: Knowing how to safe a loose firearm, alas, would be a very useful skill. Are there firearms courses designed for people who don’t want guns but can’t avoid being around them?
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: I still very clearly remember the funeral of one of my sixth grade students who had been shot by his best friend while they were playing with a pistol. More than fifty years ago.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I believe that suicide is the largest category of gun deaths in the US.
OzarkHillbilly
@bjacques: Sure, but you’ll have to be around guns. If you have a friend, s/he can show you easily enough, at least on what they have. It’s pretty simple.
@Lapassionara: I had a HS friend of the family kill himself while playing Russian Roulette with his buddies.
OzarkHillbilly
Deleted
Chris T.
@OzarkHillbilly: to which the Republican reply is no doubt “well, the sister should have had a gun so she could shoot and kill the brother first!”
(I don’t need a /s on this, do I? I’m more pissed off than sarcastic here though)
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris T.: The story is nothing but enraging. 3 lives sacrificed upon the altar of the gun.
Burnspbesq
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. It’s an appropriate time to recall how much significant environmental legislation—the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act, and the enabling legislation for the EPA and OSHA—became law under a Republican presidenti. And to note how far the Republican Party has deviated from that course.
Rusty
@MagdaInBlack: If you really have time, it’s worth listening to the SCOTUS oral arguments for the case about taking guns from domestic abusers. You will have the pleasure of listening to Kavanaugh and Alito wanking on about how even domestic abusers need to protect themselves in their homes and getting fired up about someone defining responsible gun ownership. My God, what if someone decided leaving loaded firearms on your coffee table was irresponsible? This bizarre broken mindset goes all the way to the top of our government.
Ben Cisco
@Burnspbesq: Never thought the old Nixon “Miss Me Yet?” meme would become relevant in my lifetime, but here we are.
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It is, and the attitude of the gun-fondlers is basically “well those don’t count.” The usual rationale is that someone who wanted to kill themselves would have found some other way, absent guns.
Which is total bullshit. Other means of suicide require more persistence and determination; a momentary urge to end your life will have come and gone before you find that bridge to jump off of, or before your overdose of pills takes effect, or so forth. That young man whose funeral OzarkHillbilly went to: if there hadn’t been a gun right there, he’d probably be alive today. A gun can turn that momentary urge into a permanent death in a way that no other means of self-harm can.
Burnspbesq
Haley is getting mugged all over the internet for refusing to admit that slavery was one of the causes of the Civil War, but she knows what MAGAts do and don’t want to hear.
Chris T.
@lowtechcyclist: Yep – I know someone who cut himself in a tub but didn’t actually bleed to death something like 30 years ago and he’s still alive today.
(Gave his then-apartment-mate quite a shock though!)
TBone
My mid December holiday greeting card to state Congress person who doesn’t read anyway, but damnit his “newsletter” is infuriating:
Dear Senator Yaw:
Shame on you! Are you going to pose for Christmas photos with automatic weapons next? Blocking even a mild, common sense gun control effort like this is truly despicable, especially as our nation crosses a milestone in the number of mass shootings. Can you look a mother in the eye and deny her, tell her that her child’s disease, a child dying of a rare cancer IN A CLUSTER of rare cancer cases, had nothing to do with fracking chemicals and then ALSO tell her that she’s getting a tax refund from the University of Pittsburgh? WTF! How do you sleep at night?
YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris T.:
Yeah, one of my first cousins tried to kill himself by OD’ing on pills. I can’t remember whether someone found him in time, or whether he changed his mind, or whether he just didn’t have enough pills. But he was taken to the hospital, got his stomach pumped, and four decades later, he’s living the good life – met and married a wonderful woman a few years later, has two grown daughters, and is living a happy and comfortable retirement.
Without a gun, it’s just not that easy to kill yourself.
Subsole
@lowtechcyclist:
I met an individual who decided to end it by lying down in traffic. Got run over by an 18 wheeler. Lived.
I think a lot of folks don’t grasp just how resilient a human body can be.
OzarkHillbilly
@Subsole: And the miracles of modern medicine. If Republicans allow them.
m.j.
People can certainly afford to buy guns and ammo.
These seem like rather specialized and pricey items to me.
Subsole
@lowtechcyclist:
Yeah. A lot of folks don’t realize the body wants to live, even when you don’t.
3Sice
@Burnspbesq:
Even so, starving Tiny Tim is going to win the week in the Trump VP stakes. Kim Reynolds has the right kind of commitment to the cause. Noem and Haley are squishes with an eye out for their own political futures.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s a link to the local (Tampa Bay Times) report on the shooting, which contains more detail on how the incident unfolded, including this:
The parents and/or any other adults responsible for the teens should be charged with criminal negligence for allowing that, IMO. They won’t because Florida. I’ve yet to hear of a parent or guardian charged in this state after allowing their kids access to a firearm that’s used in a homicide. It’s like the authorities think guns grow on trees, so parents can’t be expected to control their children’s access to them. If more states handled this issue like Michigan is against the idiot parents of a school shooter there, we might see gun safes flying off the shelves…
OzarkHillbilly
Today in “I never thought the Leopards would eat my face” news:
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Soprano2
Good morning. We got our first snow of the season last night- it was light and is already mostly melted away. They’re saying we might get more tonight or tomorrow, but it’ll be the same. That’s the only kind of snow I like!
Subsole
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s the truth.
I’ve watched them rebuild hip joints that weren’t even there anymore. I mean the acetabulum was gone. Ischial spine, gone. Person’s walking again.
artem1s
this is the part that is really just the white privilege icing on the racists cake = that public officials, doing the job they were elected or appointed to do, should be fined and/or punished for governing (while Black, I’m sure).
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: It is not good for democracy that there is a significant block of people who will not believe an election is legitimate unless their candidate wins it every time.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: That does not surprise me.
Yes, they should be. As well as have any other children taken away.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
They’d probably give up their children before they give up their guns.
artem1s
a sane society would also make sure the whole damn clan never owns guns again too. but thats even less likely than losing custody.
CliosFanBoy
@Burnspbesq:
hell, her OWN STATE, SC, was explicit when they declared they were leaving the Union in December 1860. It was all about slavery!
Ben Cisco
@CliosFanBoy: That state was not the only one. IIRC, all but one (?) explicitly said as much.
Betty Cracker
PSA: If you like DYI, cooking, gardening, etc., TV shows and have the free Roku streaming channel, you can access buttloads of that sort of content 24/7. It’s not new stuff, e.g., there’s a Martha Stewart channel with episodes that appear to be from the 1990s (going by the hairstyle and fashion). But it’s all still entertaining if that kind of show is your jam.
narya
Of the three people I’ve known who took their own lives, two did so with a gun (one was a cousin I grew up with). For all of the ways that my brother can be an ass, he is rigorous about gun safety and drilled it into my nephews from the very start. I still think he likes guns way too much and has bought too much of the NRA bullshit, but he has never treated guns casually or like toys.
On a somewhat more positive note, I continue to be heartened by the efforts to take down confederate statues and rename official US property (e.g., bases, streets) so that the traitors no longer have a place of honor.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Despite popular belief, chocolate doesn’t work that well.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s even worse when you consider he shot his 23 year old sister while she was holding her 11 month old baby…was everyone in the family packing a gun for a fun day of shopping and visiting grandma…WTF?
Ken
Wild boar attack.
Eunicecycle
@Betty Cracker: the boys were 14 and 15 years old and routinely carried guns??? WTF truly!
Chris T.
@Baud:
No, but it can give you (or worsen) kidney stones… (I suffer from these, and half my favorite foods are bad this way, which probably explains why I suffer from these.)
zhena gogolia
Reposting from possibly dead thread:
The NYT opinion page told me last night that voters want “order,” and they feel Biden hasn’t delivered it, so they’ll take a chance with Trump again.
CliosFanBoy
@Ben Cisco:
Oh I know. The first batch (the lower South) were especially explicit about it, as were the reps they sent to the other slave states to convince them to join them. I just think it’s especially lame for someone from South Carolina, of all places, to try the “slavery, what slavery?” gambit.
CliosFanBoy
@zhena gogolia:
Oh great. Yeah, voting for the candidate that promises to “restore order” always works out so well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@zhena gogolia: Good lord. Trump created chaos every day he was in office.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Happens every election. The attempt to sell pretexts for voting Republican.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I guess they’ve forgotten the part where we couldn’t leave our houses, or the part where people were trying to kill police officers in the Capitol.
OzarkHillbilly
I’ll just bet it did.
Something like this happened to a guy I worked with. He went off the side of Hwy 19 during a heavy snowstorm. Went down a long steep hill (if where I think it was, 200′ vertical to the tree line) rolled his jeep and broke his back. He was there for 3 or 4 days (his wife was going crazy) before they found him. Super nice guy, never walked again.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin, y’all!
Confederate monuments: Years ago when one of my sons went on a school field trip to Vicksburg National Military Park. While navigating through the park, one of the volunteer tour guides with us on the bus, an elderly lady (white, of course), repeatedly promoted the ridiculous “fact” the Civil War was all about states’ rights, not slavery. Growing up in the South, I’ve heard that bullshit for years. Being the malcontent that I am, I publicly called her out and asked her if she’d ever read Mississippi’s Declaration of Secession. She had not. I then proceeded to educate (hopefully) her, the kids on the bus as well as a few adult chaperones as to what “right” Mississippi was fighting for: the “right” to continue the institution of slavery.
The rest of the bus tour was kinda quiet after that. Was I the asshole? I don’t care.
Guns: While it hasn’t resulted (yet) in the kinda violence some of you have already presented, I give you the Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture’s Christmas greeting:
https://twitter.com/CommAndyGipson/status/1739305501546992045
MURKA! HELL YEAH!
Kathleen
Nice outline of the top 10 democracy wins in 2023 at his Substack
https://davidpepper.substack.com/p/2023-review-top-10-democracy-wins. Excerpt:
Lapassionara
@zhena gogolia: I saw that piece. What planet is she from? The crime rate is down, including homicides. Inflation is moving in the right direction, as is consumer sentiment. Not to mention that the person in the Oval Office hasn’t divulged any national security secrets. The mind, it boggles.
Betty Cracker
@Eunicecycle: Both kids also have fairly extensive criminal records, including previous charges of being minors in possession of a firearm. But who could have possibly guessed the situation would end in tragedy?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Fox was on yesterday in my building’s cafe. They were talking about caravans.
I will say that Fox is on less frequently than it used to be here. I think January 6 sobered some of my R neighbors.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: To me what that means is “I see too many homeless people and there are too many migrants in my city”. They want someone to remove those people from their lives; in their minds, that would create “order”. ETA – I also think this is what a lot of people mean when they say crime is up. How can you as a person know whether “crime” is up or down? I read somewhere that regardless of whether actual crime is going up or down people have been consistently telling pollsters for 40 years that crime is rising. I think it can also mean “I was a victim of crime” or “someone I know was a victim of crime”. It’s actually a dumb question to ask people, because most of us cannot know the answer to it.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: When I saw email alert from NYT with headline “The Best Times Opinion Coverage of 2023” I wanted to throw my laptop but I’m too weak from illness and too poor. I don’t know if I can summon the courage to open it.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Mathguy
Ken
In the spirit of DougJ, let’s compose our own list.
“Putin and the Art of Diplomacy”
“Is Biden Too Old?”
“The Case for Insurrection”
“Where is the Vice President?”
“Is Biden Too Old?”
“Dobbs Will Have No Further Impact”
“Sam Alito: A Thinker for the Ages”
“Is Biden Too Old?”
“Re-Examining Hitler: Six Positive Accomplishments”
“Is Biden Too Old?”
Harrison Wesley
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They’re not talking about this, are they?
https://youtu.be/r95flkZciJE?si=mvbTBlne54im51gt
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Nukular Biskits
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The restaurant at the hotel I was staying at while on business travel in San Diego had two TVs playing (sound off) at the buffet every morning. The one on the left was Fox News, the one on the right CNN.
I guess they were trying to be “balanced” (?)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Harrison Wesley: I wish!
Mathguy
@Ken: “Why Trump’s latest indictment is bad for Biden.”
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
Got a link?
Nukular Biskits
@rikyrah:
Second attempt at wishing you a good morning!
The first resulted in a sternly-worded “You are posting too quickly! Slow down!”
🥺
Eunicecycle
@Betty Cracker: the original story I read about this did not give the boys’ ages and I assumed they were adults. Although arguing about Christmas presents sounded pretty juvenile.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: Bravo! I’d have given you a standing ovation on that bus. Also, I am a terrible person and find myself hoping that that gun humping family has an argument like the Florida family.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: That very same thing happened with some folks I knew back in the day. They were that strange hybrid of hippie and redneck (hipnecks?) that you seem to find in most abundance out here in the West- sort of socially liberal but way into guns. The husband had always been a depressive sort, and after an argument with his wife, went into the bedroom and blew his brains out. With his wife and daughter in the next room.
Guns, man. They’re hardly ever the right answer to any question.
Kathleen
@Ken:
Top 10 Reasons Why Trump Really Won’t Set Up Detention Camps
p.a.
I’m re-reading (more re-scanning tbh) Richard J. Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich and boy is the Venn diagram of Republicans & Nazis getting closer to a single circle daily. I guess for (some) R’s substitute migrants for NSDAP’s Jews.
And for tRump himself, it’s 1-to-1. His only wobble is that he’s too mentally and emotionally deficient to be tactically consistent.
Redshift
@artem1s: Present-day Florida is uniquely horrible, but it wasn’t that long ago when Republicans (the old-school kind) still controlled the legislature in Virginia, and Alexandria in Northern Virginia just wanted to move a Confederate monument because it was a traffic hazard, they wouldn’t allow it. One particularly special downstate legislator said that if they did, he’d get a law passed requiring them to put up bigger monuments at both ends of town.
(The monument in question was in the median of the main road through town, which had to bend around it on both sides, and impaired or inattentive drivers ran into it fairly regularly.)
citizen dave
@Subsole: Can’t imagine the quality of life after getting run over by an 18 wheeler. I just finished the excellent, Family-approved 4 part Willie Nelson doc on Paramount Plus last night, and he says he tried to off himself (more or less) a couple times in the old days.
“Maybe I was looking for an out, or maybe I was just taking a break or a chance. It’s tough to know exactly what I was up to. I was drunk, and as a rule, drunks do crazy shit.
I can’t tell you that I was trying to commit suicide, because I wasn’t. In those days, I usually packed a pistol. In my young and stupid macho mind, I thought that’s what ‘real men’ did. If I were interested in ending it all, I could have shot myself in the head, but that thought did not cross my mind.
Instead, it was just a matter of reclining in the middle of the street on a snowy night in Nashville. I might have written a song about it, but I didn’t.” (source: https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2022/08/15/willie-nelson-recalls-career-low-point-when-he-laid-down-on-broadway-in-a-snowstorm-i-was-in-my-who-gives-a-fck-mind/)
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: I read it in the paper paper, and I don’t want to go to the digital version because I refuse to give it clicks. It was by a Republican focus-group manager, but I don’t remember her name, sorry.
Suzanne
@m.j.:
I pissed off an ex-friend who would lament about not having ever traveled due to the cost that she and her husband could sell some of their arsenal.
I found out secondhand that when their dog needed to be put down, they took him out to the desert and shot him instead.
Redshift
@Soprano2:
Yeah, but apparently it generally doesn’t. In polls that ask both, a majority of people routinely tell pollsters that they feel safe where they live, but “crime” is rising. I agree a lot of it is “I see too many of those people when I venture out of my neighborhood,” but I wonder how much is local TV news that always features the most lurid crime anywhere in the country in the crawl if not in the actual broadcast, and you have to be paying attention to notice the location.
narya
@Soprano2: I wish the clowns in the House, and Congress more generally, were really willing to address the folks who are coming here from other countries, in a compassionate and thoughtful way. Folks are being dumped in big cities like Chicago, with no clothes, no resources, no housing, and no ability to work legally. Surely we as a country could do better–if it weren’t for the aforementioned clowns who merely want to use folks as a bludgeon. There is barely a person in Congress whose family weren’t immigrants at some point.
Redshift
@p.a.:
And because he’s too greedy. According to Rolling Stone, he’s pissed off because the wingnut “think tank” that’s producing “governing plans” for his dictatorship (a new MAGA-specific one, not the Heritage Foundation), is “raising money off his name and brand,” and he thinks he should get a cut. Something reasonable, like half the money they raise. Which of course they’re not legally allowed to do, because they’re a nonprofit that can’t get involved in partisan politics (except at the “ideas” level.)
BlueGuitarist
Balloon-juice postcard writers helped elect Donna Deegan mayor of Jacksonville!
Kathleen
@Kathleen: OK I had to click. One of the “best” columns they selected was Maureen Dowd’s column on “The Seventh Grandchild”. Like I want to read her opinion about why Joe Biden doesn’t value family.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/opinion/hunter-biden-child.htm
Baud
@Kathleen:
What a disgusting human being she is.
Chief Oshkosh
@Burnspbesq: And to recall that it was nearly unanimously voted in by Congress (just 4 Republican Congressmen voted against it).
UncleEbeneezer
So we just got back from a pretty great week in Taos and then two nights in Denver. There were only two social/political things that annoyed me.
1.) My Centrist Dem Sister made a remark about how Colorado is so purple that you have no idea if someone is a Democrat or a Republican and “I think that’s good.” I’m sorry but what idea, policy, belief, value, perspective etc., does a Republican voter bring to the table that is in any way useful or interesting? Sure some Republican voters are nice people you can co-exist with, but their entire worldview is based on problematic shit and lies. And anything “good” you could possibly name can also be found (and even more so) from Dems.
2.) My Niece is part of a dance team and they do a lot of hip-hop dancing. Her team is all white girls and coached by a white woman. I dunno, there’s just something so gross to me about a bunch of white girls performing Blackness while I’m guessing none of them have any real interest in the history of hip-hop, or Black Culture beyond using it for fun. To me, it’s the worst kind of Cultural Appropriation. Especially since I saw a Facebook post from her dance team coach one time and when I went to her profile the first thing I saw was a Blue Lives Matter image. I love my niece and she doesn’t seem to have any obvious anti-Blackness and seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders, but it will always be weird to me that she’s spent the past five years doing competitive hip-hop dance but probably can’t name three actual hip-hop artists and seems to have zero interest in the culture and people who created the art she spends so much time enjoying.
Baud
Wow
Barbara
@Burnspbesq: But Haley has the dual task of not alienating the kinds of voters who really don’t like Trump. She kind of blew it. She also showed the limits of her intelligence because that really wasn’t a hard question.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
I’m pretty sure Vanilla Ice broke the color barrier on hip hop.
Glidwrith
@MagdaInBlack: I’ve literally had an uncle argue with me that there’s no reason it can’t be there. After all, he says, it can’t move by itself, right?
Ken
@Glidwrith: I imagine there are families out there that put the child-proof safety caps in the outlets and leave a loaded gun on the coffee table.
Jackie
@Barbara: Hailey’s now suggesting the questioner was a….. Democratic plant! She’s grasping.
Baud
@Jackie:
Probably a ficus. We like to use ficuses for easy questions.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Try Blondie, about a decade earlier.
Gvg
@lowtechcyclist: in moments and long periods of depression people can think “no one will miss me, no one cares about my life”. Well when society does not take any steps to protect the depressed suicidal and explicitly says “those lives don’t count as much as my pleasure in fondling guns” that does send a real message that their lives are NOT really valued.
It’s not true though. Their lives are valued by some. They’re family, and decent strangers, just not….the selfish brats. Can’t expect better from those raised to be feral. Even if their family is better, the society they choose is a pack of superficial bad choices.
Eyeroller
@zhena gogolia:
“Republican operative” explains it. However, I normally do not watch network news but have been visiting a relative who does, and every single broadcast since I’ve been here has been shrieking about Border Crisis Border Crisis Border Crisis Migrants Migrants Migrants. As we know all too well, the news nearly always wants to talk about what Republicans want to talk about, with Republican framing.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kathleen:
So, a person whose only family consists entirely of siblings as fucked up as she is thinks she’s in a position to comment on the authenticity of Joe Biden’s view of family.
It is continually amazing to me how un-self-aware these people are. Of course, the real shits are the people at the NYTimes who pay her and publish this crap.
Tony Jay
@Jackie:
And… she didn’t want to upset them by telling them what she really thought? Why is Haley pandering to the feelings of Democrats?
Such a complicated business, this politics.
RaflW
OT: Lauren Boebert is moving from the CO-03 to CO-04 because she damn near lost her last election, and that was before what I’m calling her “attempted hand job” in that theater.
Ken Buck is retiring in the 4th, and Miss Opportunist is joining the open primary hoopla. His district is more conservative (R +13) than the recently redrawn 3rd.
Hopefully this will mean a pickup of another House seat for Dems! The 4th will have a shitty Rep wether it’s Lauren or someone else. That’s their lot in life.
Boebert winning would be just desserts for the CO plains. She’s useless. Doesn’t write or pass any bills, gets nothing done but self promotion. Good luck, ranchers. Climate shifts will be rough, and the GOP treats that like it’s not happening. Oh well!
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Correct. The person most likely to be killed by any given gun is the owner of the gun, or someone in their household, and the most common way is suicide. These outnumber both homicides and accidents.
Another Scott
Meme for the win.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Blondie might have had the lowest quality-of-rapping to general-quality-of-music ratio though.
(But some of that is just that really early hip-hop was Different.)
Another Scott
+1
Don’t let them control the narrative.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chief Oshkosh
WaPo now reporting that Haley says that the Civil War was in part about slavery.
It’s too late to un-shit the bed with the one or two “conservatives” who aren’t rank racists, but now she’s confirmed to the rest of ’em that she’s a squish about their most important concern – white supremacy.
I predict her polling will go now, from “completely unlikely to be the nominee,” to “utterly, no-fucking-way, completely unlikely to be the nominee.”
Matt McIrvin
@Kathleen: Maureen Dowd doesn’t get to judge how dated or authentic anyone’s notion of family is. I declare this a rule.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: To be fair, in the Florida case, that is exactly what happened.
Geminid
@RaflW: Third CD Republicans get to nominate someone more electable than Boebert. This is a problem solved for them, but Fourth CD republicans may not want to make the 3rd District’s problem their problem. Rancher/State Rep. Holthorp will beat Boebert, I think.
The debate should be a lot of fun to watch, though.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@RaflW: Had Boebert stayed in the district, it would have been an automatic pickup. Not sure now.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: An old friend of mine did kill himself with pills, and he was really methodical and thorough about it, like he was about everything. It was, in hindsight, the culmination of an elaborate plan. He was probably the exceptional case who would have found a way regardless.
Most suicides are not like that, though.
Harrison Wesley
@RaflW: I dunno. She might respond if they ask her to lend a hand.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: The NYT ethics columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, tackled the cultural appropriation issue a few years back in the context of art therapy involving “spirit animals:”
Here’s a gift link if you want to read the whole thing. I’m unsure where to draw the line on issues like that, but I thought Appiah’s take was interesting.
Spanky
@Harrison Wesley: Politicians need to be adroit at pressing the flesh.
Jackie
@Chief Oshkosh: Poor Nikki chose the dead news week between Christmas and New Years to step on her tongue. She and Boebert are fighting for the top headlines this morning!😂
Glidwrith
@Ken: The psychology is fascinating but sickening. A cousin raised in the gun culture went hunting and shot a bear. It wasn’t clean and the bear was in agony before it died. Credit where due, my cousin had the empathy to decide never again would she put a creature through that torment and won’t touch a gun now.
Her family’s response: well she’s just afraid of guns now, so she’s not safe to have guns.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
He broke something on hip-hop!
TBone
Tiedrich today. Nails it!
https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/best-of-2023-the-right-wing-hate?publication_id=1162742&post_id=140133007&isFreemail=true&r=229wz&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNDY1Mzk1LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxNDAxMzMwMDcsImlhdCI6MTcwMzc3Mjk3NCwiZXhwIjoxNzA2MzY0OTc0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTE2Mjc0MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.x0aQiq1_RFxcRaXHwK8yh-QoEztq4HR1LSPg0fAuuZ0
TBone
Tiedrich nailed it today in his Best of 2023 substack, I am a dinosaur and can’t post a link here
Glidwrith
@Betty Cracker: I’ve rather thought that an isolated culture is a dying one. Culture lives and changes with its people, expressing new ideas or, yes, borrowing from others when one’s own community has not conceptualized them.
Having one’s culture spread to other communities is also a means of helping your culture to survive.
RaflW
@Geminid: It’s about 10 months to the general election. Boebert just created a second open seat battle in CO.
Is there a Republican well positioned to be the leading person in the R primary in the 3rd? IOW, “Republicans in disarray.”
It is a red district, but narrowly. Polis actually carried the 3rd, but Bennet didn’t for Senate.
Frisch, the Dem who narrowly lost also is running again and has name recognition now. So we’ll see.
Jackie
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Adam Frisch has a huge war chest and Independents and anti MAGAts might be persuadable.🤞🏻
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: A quick search on Teh Google reveals three other candidates for the CD-3 GOP primary: Russ Andrews, Jeffrey Hurd, and Curtis McCrackin.
I think I’ve read that Jeffrey Hurd, who seems to be a more traditional Chamber of Commerce GOP type, has picked up some endorsements.
ETA: Here’s a little run-down from CPR I found online.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: The person who asked me to add 5 + 5 was a democratic plant – how can I be expected to answer something like that on the fly ?!!!
Another Scott
@TBone: This?
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/best-of-2023-the-right-wing-hate
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I understand where the concern comes from: it’s that for many, many years THE dominant product of United States popular culture was blackface minstrelsy.
And for many years after that, the predominant depiction of basically all non-European, and definitely indigenous American cultures in our popular media was stereotyped and parodic, often when creators and actors actually from those cultures were ignored and not hired.
Maybe we’re overreacting now in some contexts. But it’s coming from a sincere place motivated by real problems.
RaflW
@Miss Bianca: Thanks for the Public Radio link!
re: Andrews, I’m scratching my head “The conservative says he’s running to bring more federal funds to the district.” I thought gubmit handouts were bad?
Kidding. It is telling how shitty Boebert is. “By [Andrews] count, last term Boebert left over a billion dollars at the table for CO-03, when compared to other districts in the state.”
This is what happens when voters choose a performing clown, not a legislator.
Timurid
@Baud: Well, that’s certainly on brand…
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: I used to live in Delta County, so the name Curtis McCrackin rung a vague bell – reading what he’s written I feel safe in calling him Curtis McCrackpot, however. :)
different-church-lady
Guess the disinformation campaign peaked too soon.
Alison Rose
@Jackie: I hope every person who talks to her from now on asks her “Well, if it was ‘of course’ about slavery, why on Earth didn’t that come up in your rambling answer you gave?”
Also, ask her to list out ten things that were done to enslaved people, and then ask her if she thinks the government shouldn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t do those things.
PaulWartenberg
@Dorothy A. Winsor I effing love you, thank you for the Amazon review!!! /hugs
RaflW
I also think the following may prove true for Miss Food Poisoning
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: I think this is about right.
[ Insert link to “How to be a fan of problematic things” ]
I grew up outside of Atlanta in the 1960s loving “Song of the South” and the Brer Rabbit stories. Yes, “please, please don’t throw me in that briar patch!” and the “tar baby” stories were cleaver and had good messages about the importance of being thoughtful and smart when confronted by bullies and danger. And they were based on old African and African American folk stories that are worth preserving. All of that is true.
But they were also illustrated by incredibly racist pictures. And the stories were part of a culture that celebrated segregation, white supremacy, and all the rest as the unchanging natural basis of Southern society.
Yes, cultures need to grow and borrowing from other peoples is part of that growth. But dominant borrowing from other cultures needs to be done in ways that don’t continue to “other” them as somehow being just exotic entertainment by peoples who actually aren’t like real human beings like us.
We (the dominant culture) are slowly learning this stuff, and progress has been made, but there’s still a long way to go.
I hope this is clear.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@RaflW: If Boebert wants to be competitive in that primary, she’s gonna have to bring her C game!
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott: I loved when he said, “You’ve answered my question.”
Fair Economist
@OzarkHillbilly: One of my then-teenage son’s friends ended up in the custody of his half-brother after his elderly father died (the mother, who had not been living with him, was not an option; I don’t know why). The half-brother was an FBI employee and ex-military gun nut and ran the house like a boot camp – crew cut, bed made at 0630, dinner at 1900 sharp, etc.
One afternoon my son’s friend shot and killed himself while home alone. It was pretty devastating to the whole neighborhood. Later it came out the half-brother was NOT an FBI employee but just pretended to be; he got arrested for impersonating a federal officer when he got involved in an office hostage situation and spent several months in jail for it.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: He is usually very sensible. I give my students a handout with his explanation about why you shouldn’t cheat, from three different philosophical perspectives.
Barbara
@Jackie: She blast emailed people like me and my husband. If she doesn’t actually want us to vote for her she should just say so. I am immovable, but not everyone is.
Miss Bianca
@Fair Economist: OMG. What a story. What a nightmare.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: For sure. Even using Appiah’s framing of the issue, i.e., it’s a matter of respect rather than something akin to an intellectual property claim, doesn’t make every case clear, at least to me. The examples you cited are clearly disrespectful, but I can think of scenarios where it’s not so obvious.
RaflW
@Timurid: Kinda think there should also have been a Volkswagen Farrago, given what they got up to.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: I read that and I appreciated what he had to say – thanks for the link!
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: OK, I’m going to call BS on point #2. That’s not how music and art work at all. Let’s turn it around – are you required to know all about Bach and Beethoven in order to perform their music? Should only white people of European ancestry or current Europeans be allowed to perform it, because that’s where it came from? Who can dance to the Nutcracker Ballet, only white Russians? Hip-hop as an art form has been around for 50 years now – everyone who performs it, or who dances to it, should not be required to know its whole history and be Black in order to do so. Can only Black people be in Jazz Band, or are white people allowed to play jazz music also? My Jazzercize studio uses rap and hip hop music for some of their dance routines – are they “appropriators” even though they pay for the rights to use that music? You cannot isolate music and art forms in that way, or they will die. I’m totally against stealing music and art, that’s wrong, but once it’s “out in the wild” people should be able to use it in any way that brings them joy and pleasure as long as they pay for it if they’re using it to make money. In other words, they should be able to use it in any way they are also using music by artists like Taylor Swift.
RaflW
@Jackie: Do these people not realize how weak they sound? “I can’t stand up to a possible Democrat asking a softball question, but I’ll beat Joe Biden!” is not a flex of any sort.
Soprano2
@Jackie: Well that’s stupid, is she saying she can’t be prepared to answer questions from people who aren’t Republicans? She blew what should have been an easy question to answer.
Barbara
@UncleEbeneezer:
If you didn’t ask it might be a little unfair to presume. I don’t know much about hip hop and know only passing references to most popular music over the last 25 years, and I still love watching hip hop dancing. Maybe give her a gift — streaming music, book, whatever — that discusses the hip hop and its roots with an enthusiastic message like “I thought of you when I saw this and I bet you will really enjoy it.”
Especially when the person is under 25, and is mostly just doing what is being made available to her by school and parents, I think it’s good to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@PaulWartenberg: My pleasure
Alison Rose
@Soprano2: But in a case involving racial issues, “turning it around” doesn’t work. It’s the same reason why a Black comedian making jokes about white people isn’t the same as a white comedian making jokes about Black people. Context matters. Societal connotations matter. I’m not going to flat-out declare that no white people should ever do hip-hop style dancing, but it is simply not the same issue as Black people playing Beethoven.
Fair Economist
@zhena gogolia:
Yet somehow the NYT doesn’t mention that crime under Trump rose to 20-year highs, and is now dropping so fast under Biden that property crime is on track for a 60 year low, and violent crime is only 4% above 60 year lows.
Kathleen
@Baud: Indeed she is. I am comforted by the fact that someone as bitter and nasty as she is leads a miserable life.
Barbara
@Alison Rose: I think if you genuinely love an art form it will show in the way you participate in it. However, comedy isn’t really the same, because it is so deeply embedded in current socio-economic status quo.
Jackie
@RaflW: I foresaw “Carpetbagger” as her new first name yesterday, when the news broke 😃
Kathleen
@Matt McIrvin: But NYT picked it as one of “the best”. I knew it would be a mistake to cluck that link but I did it anyway. What else could I expect from her
Kathleen
@Chief Oshkosh: Absolutely.
dnfree
@Ben Cisco: My dad was a diehard Nixon supporter who believed he had been framed by the media. There was a slogan some time in the 1980s like “Nixon—he’s tanned, he’s rested, he’s ready.”
Jackie
@Soprano2: A question any older grade school student would have given the correct answer IMMEDIATELY!
dnfree
@Glidwrith: My dad, born in 1920, was raised on a farm and had a gun for hunting. When he was a boy, he shot a small animal—I don’t remember if it was a bird or a squirrel l. He saw it die, and he said that was the last time he ever hunted anything.
gwangung
Folks should remember that early rock and roll was some of the worst cultural appropriation….And certainly yoga has had more than its share of appropriators…
You should look at the entourages and collaborators of an artist. If it’s all one type/culture/ethnicity, there’s a large chance of appropriation….
satby
@NotMax: oh, cool! Thanks NotMax.
Soprano2
@Alison Rose: But it’s the same idea. How do things become mainstream? They’re adopted by lots and lots of people. If you decree “Only Black people and people who are willing to demonstrate they know the whole back story of hip-hop and how it came to be can perform it or dance to it” then hip-hop as an art form will eventually become isolated and will die out. How long does something have to be around in order for others to use it? Fifty years? One hundred years? I think that’s being way too insular, and is saying that hip hop cannot possibly become part of our culture writ large, and that actually it shouldn’t become part of our culture at all, it should always stay over here in its own little silo.
Am I an “appropriator” because in Jazzercise I dance to hip-hop? Would you deny that artist the income from Jazzercise paying to use that song in their classes because we aren’t all Black and don’t all know the history of hip hop music? It’s a ridiculous standard.
Soprano2
@dnfree: My husband has never hunted because he said once you’re on the other end of that it gives you a different perspective. I think he had enough of killing from when he was in Vietnam.
pat
Just an observation on that shooting by the kids fighting over presents:
The 23 year old sister is reported to have two children, 6 and 11 months. That 6 yo must have been born when she was only 17. I detect a deeply dysfunctional family.
TBone
@Another Scott: yes, thank you! One of these days I’ll devote some time to figuring out how to do that – I’m usually too busy reading (and have come out of lurker status only recently).
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: The whole freaking family was armed!!!! If I’d been packing like that, I probably would have shot my cousin when I was 11.
Captain C
@Barbara: Jeff Chang’s book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is one of the better histories of hip hop out there. There’s also a young adult version.
Earlier this year I put together a Hip Hop at 50 booklist for work which might be useful as well.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: The Russian Roulette thing is Darwin Award stuff. So sorry he was that drunk and/or stupid.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
RE: I believe that suicide is the largest category of gun deaths in the US.
There were some years where this interesting statistic was noted: More women than men attempted suicide, but more men succeeded in killing themselves.
More men used guns.
Many of the women changed their minds about suicide after the failed attempts.
Paul in KY
@Nukular Biskits: Way to go! Thank you.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: TFG will make the trains run on time. They will proceed into the East…
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: I knew a dude (long deceased) who was a kid playing in his grandparent’s living room when his grandfather blew his brains out right in front of him. Guy was a bad alkie till the day he died (in his 30s).
cain
@OzarkHillbilly: apparently both brothers have a rap sheets before the age of 15.
Imagine what kind of impoverished life you lead such that you end up doing these things.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: The controversy over Song of the South (which is distantly playing out today with the conversion of Splash Mountain at the Disney parks) is an interesting one: I’m pretty sure that when that movie came out, Walt Disney thought and intended it to be a respectful tribute to African-American culture. You still see people getting het up over people taking it otherwise. But the NAACP were offended from square one, for a variety of reasons, and they were probably the ones to listen to. Intentions aren’t necessarily enough.
Mai Naem mobile
@3Sice: Kim Reynolds didn’t endorse TFG and he ofcourse dissed her bigly. IIRC she endorsed DeSantis. No way she becomes TFG’s Veep.
Mai Naem mobile
@zhena gogolia: sounds like they’re trying to pull the law and order stuff they tried to pull in 2022 in NY state. I believe they said that was one of the reasons the Dems lost so many NY congressional seats(in addition to Sean Patrick Maloney and Cuomo screwing up.)
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: Your niece may know more hippity hop than you think…
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Not an easy question to answer when you know 80% of your audience loves the CSA and wishes it had won.
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: Agreed!
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I agree intentions aren’t necessarily enough, though it’s valid to weigh them as a factor if you’re trying to make a good-faith assessment. Nothing that’s subjective will satisfy everyone. I don’t think the taking of offense is necessarily dispositive either, especially since it’s almost never close to unanimous.
Another Florida example, this one more contemporary: the FSU sports teams are called the Seminoles. Some in that tribe believe it honors the tribe and its heritage, whereas others think it’s racist. FSU officials took it to the tribal leader, who okayed the usage and then said “Go ‘Canes.” :)
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
The film history podcast You Must Remember This devoted a number of episodes to this. Disney was being willfully blind to objections about the film.
It had a strange history.
There was no creative input from African American writers. Instead:
A misconception from start to finish.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Disney more than willing to cooperate with HUAC.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: The afterlife of it was weird too. I remember Disney still doing quite a bit with the animated segments, which were admittedly the least offensive parts (though not completely unproblematic), in the 1970s–they excerpted them on the “Wonderful World of Disney” TV show, there were Little Golden Books, etc.
But the movie itself, they didn’t do much with. The really weird bit is Splash Mountain: from the way people react to this ride now you’d think it was some hallowed opening-day Disneyland attraction, but it was an Eisner-era addition from the late 1980s. It’s positively weird that it’s a Song of the South adaptation, considering you’d think the movie was memory-holed around then.
But what I think happened was that they did some promotion around the Splash Mountain ride that involved a re-release of Song of the South, and that resulted in renewed scrutiny for a movie people simply hadn’t been thinking about much at all (my impression is it’s, well, just not very good). And at that point the thing went permanently into the vault.
WaterGirl
@PaulWartenberg: Can Dorothy write a review, or can she write a review?
That ought to help sell some books!