Tip of the hat to commentor Anoninimous in the prior thread.
Also, after reading this article in The Atlantic, I’m glad we have better commentors here than the National Journal:
… A couple of weeks ago, National Journal changed its comments policy, opting to eliminate comments on most stories as a way to stem the flood of abuse that appeared on the site. Naturally the comment-section reaction to that announcement helped reinforce the reason editors said comments had to go in the first place…
For all the boycott threats and comparisons to Hitler, though… the site seems to be doing better now. If anything, user engagement has increased since the comment policy changed. Pages views per visit increased by more than 10 percent. Page views per unique visitor increased 14 percent. Return visits climbed by more than 20 percent. Visits of only a single page decreased, while visits of two pages or more increased by almost 20 percent…
***********
Apart from mocking the competition, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
? Martin
Making a nice dinner. Hoping to get lucky with the AR-15 tonight. She seems flirty today. I’m optimistic.
Amir Khalid
@? Martin:
What if the Smith & Wesson gets jealous?
Ash Can
Who says it wasn’t us BJ commenters going over to National Journal and dropping F-bombs and shit in the comments that convinced the editors there to close the comments?
raven
Um, a chance at the first triple crown in 36 years in 15 minutes.
Pogonip
@Ash Can: Hey, we all agreed to keep quiet about that!
Suffern ACE
Roller Derby tonight.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Go California Chrome!
36 years is too long a drought.
Violet
@raven: I don’t care about horse racing, but the chance at the Triple Crown has me watching anyway.
raven
@Violet: Well there you have it!
? Martin
A friend of ours just bought into a few race horses – quite a bit of money actually. He’s always been a huge horse racing fan and has even called a few races at his local track. I don’t possibly see how that can be a wise investment, but whatev. Everyone’s got their hobbies, I guess.
Violet
@raven: Love all the excitement and the pageantry. And love watching the horses run. I just don’t know much about it. Apparently the guys who own California Chrome aren’t big time racing horse owners–they’re just two average guys from Nevada or something.
Luthe
Hey Anne Laurie, why isn’t Pierce linked to in the sidebar? You quote him often enough.
raven
@Violet: Oh yea, most horses get flown across country, these dude trailer the big fella.
raven
@Luthe: Got a reading problem there bucky?
raven
Most bet on horse ever.
Violet
@raven: Seems like they don’t have enough money for fancy things like flying their horse around.
raven
rats
SiubhanDuinne
Sigh. Not this year.
Violet
Guess the Triple Crown trophy goes back into the case.
Mike in NC
California Chrome blows it; Village Idiots will pillory Obama on their Sunday shows.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Impeach!
(Hey, that might not be a bad name for a racehorse. Impeachment, by Benghazi, out of Obamacare.)
Edited for reasons.
TaMara (BHF)
Ok, I’m bummed about the Triple Crown. Love California Chrome’s spirit.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
Fixed.
big ole hound
Chrome was raised 50 miles from me so I was rootin’ for him but as the jock said he just ran out of gas after 3 races in 5 weeks.
Violet
@Mike in NC: They’ll also blame the brown, non-native-English-speaking man who was riding the horse. If the jockeys were white and spoke English, as God intended, things might have gone differently.
Roger Moore
@Luthe:
He’s in the blogroll under “Charles Pierce”.
gene108
Finishing up some work-work this evening and tomorrow.
Looking to get my resume together and hunt for a new job.
17.5 years at my current employer, but I think it is time for a change.
Hal
These open carry guys remind me of the guys who used to appear on Phil Donahue wearing diapers while sitting in a crib. How completely insecure in yourself are you that you have to walk around with a giant assault rifle around your shoulder?
For arguments sake, let’s say they are at the local homestyle buffet and the place is being robbed. Could they take out the robber or robbers without hitting other patrons? I wouldn’t want to be within a 1000 feet of these morons. I’m sure they all have metal testicles hanging from their trucks too.
Oh, also:
Really? How long before the type of toiler paper Obama uses is a major scandal?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Hal:
No.
rikyrah
In a article that appears in the June 2014 issue of GQ, the magazine salutes Dave Chappelle’s sold out shows with a look back at what some folks (at least the one’s who were lucky enough to be there) consider to be one of the funniest nights on earth. They literally called it that! One night, Dave made a surprise appearance at the Comedy Cellar in N.Y.C. and he invited several of his famous friends onstage. It turned into a comedy roast/toast/pass the mic session. Here are their reflections:
http://theybf.com/2014/06/06/bobbys-bbq-bobby-brown-debuts-line-of-bbq-sauces-more-dave-chappelle-reflects-on-comedys
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Chappelle said exactly what I thought about Questlove’s story! I guess the date wasn’t going very well.
Elizabelle
Secretariat and Affirmed faced fields of five horses.
California Chrome was one of 11 racing, and several of those horses were fresh.
I don’t blame Chrome’s owner for his complaining — since it’s a Triple Crown event, maybe the field should not include horses that did not race in the Derby and Preakness — and maybe even both of them. Now, you go up against spoilers, and it’s not actually a fair contest, in that aspect.
Downside is, you could end up with more injured horses. Three big races in five weeks.
NYTimes reported that some in horse racing suggest stretching out the Triple Crown season — give the horses (3-year olds!) more time to rest up.
What do you guys think?
kindness
Bill Maher and Jon Stewart give similar monologues.
Fun too.
Villago Delenda Est
Dear Open Carry Texas: I’m really sorry about your very small dicks.
There, now that I’ve said that, can you stop telling us all about how small they are?
Cassidy
Not only no, but a slung rifle is not a rifle ready to be used.
PsiFighter37
@Elizabelle: I don’t give much of a shit about horse racing, mainly because I just don’t see the appeal at all. You’ve got (mainly) rich guys who own horses and programatically breed them based on their bloodlines or their athletic traits. They probably increase their grift by getting a good number of these horses injected with steroids (so at least the sport is not unlike sports in which humans are the main participants), and the masses get to blow their money by betting on them (which is really the only thing to ‘root’ for in the sport – you can’t follow a horse like you can follow a team).
I’m also tired of the owners complaining – first about having their horse wear a nasal strip, then about this? Maybe they’re showing themselves to be the dumbasses (or at least the WATBs) that they jokingly called themselves.
Who gives a fuck. Even the whole pageantry, with the dressing up and the hats, is just a way to make the plebes feel like they’re part of the monied gentry class of yore for a drunken afternoon. Horse racing is a fucking worthless excuse for a sport.
TooManyJens
@Elizabelle: I absolutely blame him for complaining. Secretariat and Affirmed faced few horses because they were so dominant that hardly anybody felt they had a chance, not because there was some rule against new shooters in the Belmont (there wasn’t; there never has been). California Chrome was vulnerable because his pedigree is speed-oriented and lacking in stamina. He was suspect at a mile and a half and all the other owners knew it. I’m impressed that he did as well as he did, with his breeding. His owners should be proud, but instead they’re (at least the one guy) deciding to be assholes. Nobody owes it to you to make it easier for you to win the Belmont, buddy.
The whole thing reminded me of Hillary Clinton complaining about the nominating process in ’08. It was ugly. Somebody at NBC should have done a mercy killing on Steve Coburn’s mic.
Elizabelle
@PsiFighter37:
California Chrome is owned by DAP. Dumb Ass Partners.
MattF
@Elizabelle: You can’t really compare Secretariat with… well, just about any other horse. Here, winning the Belmont:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18ui3Rtjz4
No contest.
Villago Delenda Est
Secretariat for the win. Greatest racing horse, ever. Totally blew away what was left of the field at the ’73 Belmont Stakes.
TooManyJens
And you know what else, I bet CC’s trainer, who led Swaps over when he won the Derby in 19-fucking-55 and knows a thing or two, wishes Coburn would STFU. That’s just a guess, mind you.
Mnemosyne
@Hal:
If you were going to rob a place, wouldn’t you shoot the open carry guys first so they couldn’t interfere?
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle: Just for a moment there, I was wondering why the Democratic Action Party, part of the Pakatan Rakyat (opposition) coalition in Malaysia, would want to own an American racehorse.
Elizabelle
My pups went to a marvelous dog kennel not far from Secretariat’s birthplace. Thought of him every time we passed.
Wag
@Elizabelle:
This.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
No.
I’d shoot them first because they’re morons who don’t deserve the protections of a rational, adult society, and they’re scaring – on purpose – the people that DO. (Actually, I would be OK with just doing it on GP, no robbery required.) As Shakespeare or someone else said: “Think of it as evolution in action.”
Ian
Yeah, NJ was a cesspool. Multiple times, I sent screencaps to their contact address capturing death threats and genocide threats against liberals.
When I responded in that last thread, the conservative response was, no joke, “BLAARRGGHH!!!! YOU LIKE SEMEN!!” (only slightly paraphrased). Swear to god. Take conservatives out of the equation, and it’s amazing how civil the conversation is. And I don’t mean that homogeneous groups are nicer (although they usually are). Go to Free Republic to see what I mean. Miserable bunch, and they all think the same.
SFAW
Re: why do the ammosexuals bring their assault rifles (etc.) to public venues?
As the saying goes: because they can. (For those unfamiliar with it: that saying originally applied to dogs.)
Ken
@MattF: thanks for the link. That was a pretty solid ass-kicking that Secretariat put on the field,
SFAW
@Ian:
Now I know you’re lying.
“Think”? Reichtards?
Tom Q
@TooManyJens: Plus Affirmed raced against Alydar — a horse that might have won the Triple Crown himself absent Affirmed — in all three races, and only nipped him by the barest nose in the Belmont.
J.D. Rhoades
@? Martin:
Here in my part of NC, there’s a fair amount of horse training, boarding, breeding, etc going on. It’s a classic example of a business you can make a small fortune in, but only if you start with a large fortune.
TooManyJens
@Tom Q: Yes, I should really have said that it was the Affirmed/Alydar pair that was dominant that year. A lot of people thought Alydar would finally turn the tables in the Belmont (just as his son Easy Goer did 11 years later).
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It also proves you mean business.
Violet
@PsiFighter37: I could say much the same thing about most professional sports. Rich owners, athletes examined every possible way before being selected for the team, many athletes taking performance enhancing drugs, average people betting on outcomes.
The owners complain because stadiums are too small or salary caps are too stringent or some other reason. Owners generally complain.
And plebes dress up in team attire, painting faces and wearing stupid hats and enjoy a drunken afternoon.
It’s not that different.
srv
Cleek ruined balloon juice
pseudonymous in nc
It’s weird how certain comments sections in relatively dull, neutral spaces — NJ, The Hill, even Bullshitico — become infested with wingnuts. Same with local newspapers.
I assume that if you provide feeding grounds for wingnut shitheels and don’t have the resources to moderate them, then they drive out everyone else?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Violet: That’s all true. Professional sports is a con, less bloody than gladiatorial games (usually), but still designed to distract the plebes from how fucked their lives are.
patrick II
@Ken:
Secretariat’s winning times in the Kentucky Derby (1:59.4, Preakness (1:53), and Belmont (2:24) were all record times that still stand today.
In comparison, California Chrome won the Derby in 2:03.66. Tonalist, the winner of Belmont today won in 2:28.52. One second equals about 5 lengths, so Secretariat would have beaten both California Chrome and Tonalist in their respective wins today by over 4 seconds, or over 20 lengths — about the same distance he beat the second place finisher at Belmont in 1973.
Hill Dweller
@patrick II: Moreover, Secretariat had horrible starts in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but still set the records. He also ran each quarter mile faster than the previous one in the Kentucky Derby, which has never been duplicated.
Secretariat was literally a freak of nature. His heart was nearly three times the size of an average horse heart. Hell, Sham, who finished second to Secretariat in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, would have probably been a Triple Crown winner in any other year.
J R in WV
I thought the horse ran a good race. You can’t win them all. Secretariat, that was a horse. I’ve just watched a couple of his races, and Youtube has the last video of him, just days before they had to put him down for bad hooves. Real tear jerker that was…
Horses are wonderful critters… we had a big one, I bought her from my neighbors, the Bachelor Appalachian Farmers who farmed their place with her. When I bought her they bought a 1948 Ford 9N Tractor. Pet was a bay mare with a white blaze and black mane and tail and feathers around her feet.
She was about 1700 pounds and 18 or 19 hands tall. Feet the size of pie pans. I had a big saddle, and once in a while would ride her up on the ridge. There was a road right on top, and the ridge top trees weren’t often cut, they weren’t straight, so they were 4 feet thick and a couple of hundred feet tall, all twisty giant oaks. When the wind blew and the clouds scudded just over the mountain tops and we ran down the ridge, it was pretty amazing.
The big work horses were, a long time ago, bred from the destriers – the war horses that armored Knights fought from. Pet didn’t have any mean in her, she liked to work slow and hard, pulling a plow suited her fine. But those ridge top runs on cool cloudy days, she liked that a lot. You could get the feel of it riding a really big horse. They go pretty fast, but not for very far…
These are very different from the running horses, the Arabians and such. But very similar in other ways. Horses are great critters, you just need to get to know one. Racing, I don’t know anything about that… but horses are great.
RandomMonster
Fucking hell, why doesn’t Betty C get some royalty points for the ammosexual line? C’mon Bill Maher.
Botsplainer
@Elizabelle:
The Triple Crown is hard for a reason.
I’m a purist. Keep it as is.
TooManyJens
@PsiFighter37:
Huh? People absolutely can and do become fans of individual horses and root for them.
pseudonymous in nc
@TooManyJens:
I think it’s easier to become a fan of a jumper. I give you Desert Orchid, who had a fan club that visited him right through his retirement up to the end of his life.
I do like the gee-gees, but I can’t really get into flat racing on dirt. I’d be very comfortable going to the races out in Ireland where, “well, y’kno, he’s a good haarse…”
@Violet:
The funniest part of that is that all jockeys regardless of origins seem to have the same accent, and they’re generally not the best speakers. Because they ride horses all day.
JoyfulA
@J.D. Rhoades: We had down the road one of most prominent pacer-trotter breeders in the country, hundreds of gorgeous horses grazing on hundreds of neatly fenced acres. And polo matches, too! The state supports raising horses through its cas1no income.
Still, when the owner of the horse business (and the other businesses that made his father or grandfather rich enough to have a horse business) died, it didn’t take long for the heir(s) to clear the fields of horses and start putting up land for sale in what became over the last few decades valuable commercial property.
The horse business, even with the state helping out, is not a way to make money.
DavidTC
and the masses get to blow their money by betting on them (which is really the only thing to ‘root’ for in the sport – you can’t follow a horse like you can follow a team).
Interestingly, horse racing is one of the few places it’s pretty easy to make money while betting, although slowly.
Why? Because horse racing, unlike most casino gambling, is played against others. (And the casino games that are played against others, like poker or baccarat, are full of professional players who will beat you, period. That is how they earn a living, beating people like you.)
But with horse racing, the other players are idiots. They make really dumb bets, absurdly complicated ones that they can pick the winners in ten races or whatever. And all that money goes into a single pool…and is split among the winners, minus the house cut, of course.
If you take a single race, and pick whatever horse is favored, and bet they will place…you’ll pretty much always win, or at least win on average. And as a good deal of the people are betting on the crazy stuff, you’ll make a slow profit.
Granted, it’s not actually a money making enterprise. Winning $1.10 off a one dollar bet is not really worth it when you factor in the time to buy a ticket, and the more money on that side of the pool, the smaller the proportional payout gets, so you can’t walk in with $1000 or whatever and hope to make $200. This trick only works because the ‘sane bet pool’ is almost always under-filled to start with, because the other side is full of insane people with insane bets.
But if you’re watching the races anyway, go ahead, place some tiny bets on the obvious choices, have lots of fun as your bets mostly pay off, and walk out of there with enough won money to cover gas back.
(Other sports betting can work the same way, with people placing dumb bets, but those are big enough pools of money that the professionals have gotten into them, and will quickly correct any imbalance between probability and bets. Individual horse races, however, are happen too fast and the amounts of money are too small for them to try to ‘bet against stupid’.)
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Mnemosyne: If you were going to rob a place, wouldn’t you shoot the open carry guys first so they couldn’t interfere?
Actually, I’d just throw some firecrackers in where these guys are standing, and come back and rob the place a couple of hours later dressed as an EMT while the dead and wounded were being carried out.
r€nato
@Hal: The WH toilet paper roll is under instead of over! USURPER! INPEACH!