Just saw a news brief in a small town local paper (travelimg S. Oregon this weekend–beautiful!) about the new encyclical on the environment. I’m assuming Repubs heads will explode, it looks like prime trolling: we have a “structurally perverse” economy that exploits the poor and is turning the earth into an “immense pile of filth.”
Strong stuff. I’m sure it will be fully rejected bey Jeb!, Santorum and our other “catholic” presidential clown contenders.
3.
Cacti
Statement I’m waiting to hear from any of the 20 or so Republican candidates on the Emanuel AME Church shooting:
“White supremacist ideology is wrong, and should have no place in our national discourse.”
4.
Linda Featheringill
Betty, look at the twitter account of girlsongrass.
:-)
5.
different-church-lady
I think we should use “Here’s a pretty bug of some sort” as our all-purpose default response to trolls.
6.
Linda Featheringill
I’m probably late but Happy Juneteenth anyway!
7.
Benw
I need some DFWM doodads.
8.
EZSmirkzz
Has anyone else noticed that the Republicans are waffling on the motives behind Charles Manson’s Dylann Roof’s trying to start a race war?
“Guns don’t kill people, gun control laws kill people.”
I’m watching a YouTube video of an American trying to pronounce Bratwurst the German way, and not really succeeding. It keeps coming out as “brat worst”.
11.
Brachiator
A bit of international news. Anti immigration conservatives did well in the recent elections in Denmark:
Denmark’s opposition parties have beaten the governing coalition after a close general election.
The centre-right group led by ex-PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen beat Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s centre-left coalition, although her party is the largest.
Ms Thorning-Schmidt has now stood down as Social Democratic Party leader.
The right-wing, anti-immigration Danish People’s Party will become the second-largest in parliament.
With almost all votes counted, the centre-right bloc led by Mr Rasmussen had secured the 90 seats needed to form a government in the 179-seat parliament.
Turnout was 85.8%, the interior ministry said.
There were about 10 parties overall seeking voter approval. One sign that may resemble impatience with the status quo here in the US
Perhaps due to frustration with this binary choice, the similarity of the domestic policy agendas, and the technocratic nature of the debate, voters have turned their attention away from established parties with government experience and towards newer, ideologically purer alternatives.
The best examples of such alternatives are the self-declared green party, Alternativet, literally meaning “the Alternative”, and the libertarian, right-wing party Liberal Alliance. Both appeal to younger voters in particular.
And of course, some of the concerns over immigration have echoes of the debate here at home.
@Cacti: has it been said by Hillary Clinton either? if so when/where?
13.
bystander
A friend of mine who is liberal in some matters gloms on to whatever current RWN meme is being spread. She started to share that she was hearing about how horrible lefty PCness is shutting down discussion in the country. Since we were in a restaurant, I excused myself so I wouldn’t start screaming, “It’s getting so you can’t call a fag a fag.” Of course the real objection is to people re-directing whatever economic power they have away from businesses that support racism, sexism, homophobia. and using social media to spread the word. The guys who started the Fire Island Pines boycott have been doing a superb job of keeping the boycott alive.
Common decency and sheer dread had us presuming the opposite. Finding the truth is really depressing.
15.
KG
@The Moar You Know: wtf does “traditional marriage has to be respected in the long haul irrespective of what the courts say” even mean? are there courts contemplating ruling marriage laws as unconstitutional? this there some sort of motion for an injunction to force straight people to get gay married without the right to divorce?
16.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: Thank god there’s billions of dollars of information infrastructure behind that.
@Amir Khalid: I feel for him / her. I embarrassed myself all over Germany and Austria with my atrocious pronunciation.
19.
Big ole hound
Waiting for a ANY candidate to cut down the confederate flag in the SC capitol. That might separate a winner from all the losers. Not a one has the balls to do anything except talk. C’mon Bernie. It’s probably the only illegal gesture in SC.
20.
different-church-lady
@Big ole hound: That act of Northern Aggression will not stand, man!
21.
shawn
@bystander: “PCness is shutting down discussion in the country”
It kind of is. What SOME on the left do is say you either fully embrace the new – immediately and without reservation or you are the worst person ever and should be fired and ruined for life. It feels so noble and righteous because of course they are on the correct side of the issue but they WANT people to be on the wrong side so they can remain outraged. It’s the only explanation to how they react. And I am not talking about how they react to a Westboro Baptist or Indiana cake (do I have the right state and food?) shop type (that can be understood and expected), I am talking about how they react to the guy or gal who expresses some doubt but also expresses some openness. Outrage is a sweet, sweet, cheap high that lefties are addicted to every bit as much as anybody on the right.
has it been said by Hillary Clinton either? if so when/where?
This. Her carefully calculated fence sitting over the Charleston massacre – designed to offend nobody rather than to take a position on anything – is every bit as offensive as the garbage being spewed by Republicans.
23.
WaterGirl
I keep wondering whether I’m the only person around here who watched Larry Wilmore. Yeah, sometimes it’s lame, but mostly I find it very refreshing that they say things out loud on TV that no one else seems willing to say.
Last night, they focused the show completely on what happened in Charleston and it was not about comedy. Last night it seemed like either Larry or one of the guests said every good thought I had or heard on BJ yesterday. It felt good.
24.
Amir Khalid
@The Moar You Know:
¡Jeb! still takes pride in not letting Michael Schiavo unplug his dead wife from the machines and bury her, a decade after the autopsy proved Schiavo was right and he was wrong. Talk about obtuse.
25.
shawn
@Big ole hound: YES. This seems like such an obvious move. I get playing to your base but you also need to lead and you are exactly right. Just take it down.
26.
JGabriel
Interesting bug, Betty. It reminds me a little bit of Hallucigenia.
27.
The Other Chuck
@Amir Khalid: how hard is it to say “brought versed”?
@bystander: My favorite response to people whining about how they can’t say anything because “PC” is “perhaps, but you’re still an asshole.”
30.
Cckids
@WaterGirl: I watched Larry too, and you’re right, he did a good job addressing this. The sorrow & anger were palpable. Especially about that goddamn flag, and Fox News.
His show is improving all the time. I keep telling people if they didn’t like it at first to try it again.
31.
Tree With Water
“The question is why so many Republicans are unwilling to admit this obvious fact. Why do they object so strenuously to anyone looking too closely at this surge in extremist activity? Who are they afraid of offending?”.
So asks Digby about republicans and acts of domestic terrorism. She could as reasonably ask democrats about their party’s refusal to speak of the Bush-Cheney plot to war. Most especially now, a full twelve years later, I wonder who are democrats afraid of offending?
I embarrassed myself all over Germany and Austria with my atrocious pronunciation.
I empathize. I managed to learn, “Entshuldigen, Ich verstehe nicht deutch. Sprechen sie Englisch?” and “Toilette?” when I visited friends in Munich and Vienna — but I’m told I was pronouncing all the vowels and consonants wrong.
@The Moar You Know: wtf does “traditional marriage has to be respected in the long haul irrespective of what the courts say” even mean? are there courts contemplating ruling marriage laws as unconstitutional? this there some sort of motion for an injunction to force straight people to get gay married without the right to divorce?
The day some law exists requiring a quota of arbitrarily chosen straight people to gay marry to satisfy diversity and rainbow affirmative-action requirements (especially if it’s upheld by SCOTUS) – I might reluctantly find myself in an odd-fellows coalition with the RW traditional marriage forces on that particular issue. But until that happens with pigs flying overhead, they’re a bunch of asshole bigots. Actually, they would still be a bunch of asshole bigots even if hypothetically I was forced to temporarily, reluctantly join them in coalition on this one issue….
36.
Bobby Thomson
@Mike J: wasn’t he in Vegas? And he’s the only candidate to mention race in his reaction to the shooting.
37.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid: That’s exactly the timid pablum I find offensive. President Obama went a lot further than she did.
When conservatards like yourself squeal about “PC”, you are simply insisting that you have the right to be rude as shit to people you think you may not like.
You do, of course. But don’t be surprised when people call you out for being an asshole when you are, in fact, acting like an asshole.
Where I come from, you pronounce the first part of that word like it’s an annoying child (long A). Of course, we also pronounce “Goethe” as “Gothee,” so our German pronounciation skills are definitely lacking.
Though I can’t talk about the crappy family part of my trips to Florida, I think I can safely say that I’ve acquired three new nieces. Two of them are 17-year-old twins (who hate each other and can’t live in the same state, but that’s a story for another day) and the other is a very cute 7-year-old. They’re the daughters of my late brother’s girlfriend, and I’m not quite sure how to refer to them. Semi-nieces? Quasi-nieces?
Not knowing what else to do, I sent the following out to email list and also to the local paper.
“Nine people were just gunned down in a church in Charleston, SC. The public reacts as predicted, with hand-wringing and calling for new gun laws. And for praying and calling for a national “healing”. But, nothing is done. We just go on to the next mass shooting, when the same thing happens all over again. Well, maybe it’s time to show the carnage. Why aren’t we seeing the slaughtered dead bodies, or if not the bodies, why not a picture of the bloodied room where it happened? After WW2, brutal and graphic pictures of concentration camp victims – both those laying dead as stacks of wood and those still surviving, looking like human skeletons – served to bring home the obscenity of the camps. These pictures were shown in newspapers and magazines, and films were shown in theaters. As odious as these images were, they represented the truth of the murders.
We need to show the images of modern-day slaughters. The victims may be much fewer in number than those murdered in WW2, but the photos of the carnage of 20 first graders and their teachers might actually spur more action towards gun safety than all the “prayer” and “healing sessions” currently taking place. Or we just go back to waiting for the next slaughter-of-innocents.”
@Ruckus: I just found it ironic but you are right that it does’t make a difference.
51.
Benw
@CONGRATULATIONS!: thanks. I’d been trying to compose a more measured reply in my head, but I like yours better. What a bunch of “both sides do it” so the outrage is equal baloney.
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
I believe that changed during Vietnam. We would see daily the stills and movies from the battlefield, on the nightly news, but someone determined that these were causing people to find war horrible and couldn’t have that.
@Ruckus & @Amir Khalid: I meant to order milk! I just pronounced it incorrectly — added an “L” and mispronounced a vowel or something — and set the waiters at a fancy hotel to snickering.
58.
Bruce Webb
@NCSteve: “With the single, wonderful eponymous exception, orange is Nature’s way of saying “you eat me, you DIE motherfucker!” ”
Wow! So we were worrying about Nemo for nothing? What a relief.
59.
Ruckus
@JPL:
OK, I wasn’t sure if you were commenting or not. I don’t find it strange that two killers would be in the same maximum security facility.
60.
raven
@Ruckus: There wasn’t a dead GI shown in film or still until Tarawa and then they were face down in the surf.
I thought people were incorrect when they said the confederate flag was not at half mast in SC. It just didn’t make sense to me that you would put the US flag half mast and not the confederate flag. Didn’t believe it till I saw a pic last night. I wish somebody would set fire to it. That particular flag in SC.
64.
Eric U.
@trollhattan: GWBush had that fake southern accent that made him sound like the idiot he is. John Bush has a very neutral accent, so he sounds smarter.
“PCness is shutting down discussion in the country”
It kind of is. What SOME on the left do is say you either fully embrace the new – immediately and without reservation or you are the worst person ever and should be fired and ruined for life. It feels so noble and righteous because of course they are on the correct side of the issue but they WANT people to be on the wrong side so they can remain outraged.
Like these PC gems:
“Everything the government does is evil and if you do anything to support it or anyone in it, you want everyone to be a slave.”
“You must support the troops in all things.” (These incongruous ideas often derive from the same people)
“Climate change is just a theory, don’t you go talking about solutions.”
and my personal favorite…
“[Insert anything] is just another example of the war on Christmas and Christians in this country.”
Because of PC attitudes, we can’t have a reasonable discussion about tax policy, guns, or improving the lives of working people. Fuck the PC assholes, who in this day and age hail predominantly from the Republican half of the political spectrum.
She could and should have said what President Obama said: that she was really angry about what happened, and that it was very clearly a hate crime, that it obviously arose from racism, and that there was clearly a problem unique to the United States that gun massacres happen so frequently.
But she just waffled, and sat on the fence. Zero leadership, and plenty of pearl clutching about alienating potential voters.
My brother and his girlfriend never married, because neither of their divorces were finalized (did I mention that it’s a mess?) so I would feel weird putting the word “step” in there. POSSLQ nieces?
She said we needed to have a conversation about what happened. That’s better than nothing I guess.
O’Malley has come out strong for gun control and mental health legislation at the federal level. I am one of the 5 people who cares what he says though so not sure it matters.
Bernie talked about racial issues and ignored guns completely.
I wish somebody would set fire to it. That particular flag in SC.
I wonder what the reaction would be if someone climbed the flagpole with a lighter and set the damn thing on fire.
They’d probably get shot. If they did it at night it would probably provoke more outrage in Columbia than the church shooting has.
ETA: I should probably clarify that it would need to be a white person who does it. I know that any black person who did it would get shot, but perhaps a white guy could get away with it.
73.
shawn
@Kropadope: thats not PC bs, that’s group think bs – but nice try
74.
scav
@Betty Cracker: If they didn’t giggle at that point, I’d be far more worried about the culture. All my poor mother did was order a quick pepper/leek/pear ice-cream in the south of France (which at least brightened the waiter’s day a bit).
Someone said yesterday that the governor of SC has the power to order the state and US flags lowered to half-mast, but by SC law only the legislature is allowed to vote to change the position of the Confederate flag. Because it’s about heritage, not hate, don’t’cha know.
More seriously, I hope you can build a good relationship with your nieces (no reason to qualify anything) to offset the strained situation with some of those involved.
78.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
When I traveled to europe I tried to learn a few words from each language well and use them in the way the locals did. Hello, please, thank you. Even so it was universally recognized that I didn’t speak the language but the attempt was well received. Once in Copenhagen had a wonderful discussion with a local woman, who had what I considered a most unusual accent, Oxford english. Asked her if she was english, she said she was born and raised in Denmark. Her english professor was from Oxford and everyone in class learned to speak english that way. She was more interested to know how I recognized her accent.
79.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): pish on the niggle-haggle of law, the genetics and family bonds are there. Or, cousin covers a lot of ground and aunt is sometime extended to generic female relative of the generation above. Why don’t you ask them?
They were OUTSIDE OF HIS HOME ON THE STREET…
but, HE felt THREATENED?
get da phuq outta here.
He had to OPEN HIS DOOR AND LEAVE HIS HOME.
…………………………………………….
Send the n*****s back to Youngstown where they belong:’ Ohio man terrorizes children with gun
June 19, 2015
An Ohio man harassed a group of children, at least some of whom were black, while pursuing them on foot through his neighborhood, hurling racial epithets in their direction, threatening them with a gun, and urging police to come arrest the children, WKBN reports.
On Monday Gust Mamounis observed two children outside his home begin to fight, while five other children looked on. In a video obtained by police, Mamounis exited his house and cocked his gun.
The children, feeling threatened, dispersed. But Mamounis, a 38-year-old man, followed them, shouting racial slurs. Police can confirm Mamounis did this because he was on the phone with 911 at the time, and the four-minute recording is part of the evidence police used to charged the Struthers man with aggravated menacing, disorderly conduct, and inducing panic.
WKBN obtained a recording of Mamounis’ 911 call, which it says it will not publish because the tape is “filled with so many expletives and racial slurs.”
The news outlet reports Mamounis used the word “n****r” nine times and the word “fuck” 29 times during his phone conservation with the Struthers police.
The tape catches Mamounis yelling at the group — whose only apparent offense is walking in the neighborhood — threatening to harm them, and calling them “n****r.”
………………..
When police arrive at the scene, Mamounis instructs the officers to arrest all of the children. The cops arrested Mamounis instead
Only if you assume that “PC” is solely a phenomenon of the left. To many of us, it seems pretty clear that the right has their own version of PC that they refuse to recognize as such. Kind of like conservative Catholics who claim that liberals are “cafeteria Catholics” while ignoring the teachings against the death penalty — it’s not “cafeteria” if THEY do it.
I have seen some of the PC you describe on some websites, but they’re usually ones that have either announced that they are “safe spaces” for a particular group or are trying to turn themselves into safe spaces. I usually end up leaving those websites because they usually become too narrow in focus to hold my interest.
Of course, we also pronounce “Goethe” as “Gothee,”
There’s a park in Sacramento that used to be called “Goethe Park”, named after Charles Goethe, founder of Sacramento State College. The park’s name was pronounced GAY-tee. It was renamed along with everything else named after him because Goethe was a prominent eugenicist.
85.
raven
@Litlebritdifrnt: Haven’t seen you here since we went to Topsail!
86.
Kropadope
@shawn: It’s deemed beyond the bounds of polite discussion to talk about things like gun control and climate change and racism, to the point of chilling free speech. If that isn’t political correctness run amok, I don’t know what is.
87.
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
There we differ. I see no cause for dissatisfaction with Hillary’s comments as quoted in that story.
88.
Ruckus
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
@raven: Has it right as far as I know, he is much more up on this than me. But look what the public feeling is about war when they do and when they don’t see it. Dead bodies with bullet holes and arms/legs shot off get one’s attention. How many videos do we see today that are taken by cell phones that are highly disturbing? Exposure to good or bad shapes our opinions of things. Repeated exposure can set them as if in solid concrete. For example, faux news.
89.
Origuy
@JGabriel: From what I remember from German class, if you pronounced it right in Munich, it would be wrong in Vienna and incomprehensible in Frankfurt.
90.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Are they collecting the entire set, or something? Is there a collector’s-edition display box? Here’s hoping there is, and it’s called the State Penitentiary.
@Kropadope: I hear what you are saying, i don’t know that i would call it the same thing as PC – i think it is a different brand of unhelpful silencing (im casting about for the right phrase) but youre not wrong to say that it is in the same neighborhood. not at all true to say one side does it more than the other but ok i can meet you in the middle on what it actually is :)
Right now, I’m leaning towards “Facebook nieces” since I probably won’t see them in person again for quite a while.
93.
Amir Khalid
@Origuy:
That does explain how Böhner became “Beh-ner”.
94.
trollhattan
@rikyrah: He sounds nice. Definitely a different spin on “Git offa mah lawn.”
Am I wrong in assuming since it’s Ohio it’s legal to run around outside waving a gun?
95.
Josie
@Betty Cracker: My late husband and I grew up near the Mexican border. His Spanish was pretty good but not grammatically correct. He used to frequent a certain restaurant in Mexico as a teen and mistakenly thought he was ordering pork chops and french fries. Imagine his surprise when a friendly waiter after several years told him he had been ordering shit and french fries. I would like to have heard the conversations in the kitchen over that.
96.
CONGRATULATIONS!
When police arrive at the scene, Mamounis instructs the officers to arrest all of the children. The cops arrested Mamounis instead
@rikyrah: Give an order to a cop and it doesn’t matter what else is goin’ on, your dumb ass is going to jail. They’ll find a reason. You, the citizen, is there to take orders from police, not give them.
are there courts contemplating ruling marriage laws as unconstitutional? this there some sort of motion for an injunction to force straight people to get gay married without the right to divorce?
No, but the facts don’t matter. The right wing noise machine is trying to convince their followers that something like that is going to happen. The whole point about fear mongering future events is that you can lie through your teeth without fear of getting caught. After all, when your direst predictions don’t come true, it’s proof of your effectiveness in protecting people.
100.
jl
I see in news that Jeb!, who is supposed to be the smart one, still can’t seem to figure out what the SC shooting was about.
The dog whistles have to change with times, I guess. Or the triangulation. Whatever it is, a sad spectacle.
101.
mai naem mobile
@Eric U.: do you think if stuff was reversed and a black racist had gone into Nikki Haleys church(shes Xtian convert) and shot dead 9 people, she wouldn’t have her cracker flag flying at half staff? You think a bunch of her white cracker legislators wouldn’t have run in at 7AM and voted for it?
102.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Honestly, I’d ask, because Facebook Friends has a connotation of being not really real that might bleed over, as though you could un-neice them with the click of a button. That might not be the message to send right now, especially for the littlest one. My cousin’s kids are my cousin’s kids, no matter that they’re scattered over a few continents and we don’t see each other that often (they’ve all chosen the cousin route as shorthand, for what it’s worth). Letting the three have a bit of personal control over the relationship might be beneficial for them as well after the recent high seas and upset.
103.
msmooth
The caterpillar is for a Gulf Fritillary butterfly.
104.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
I think Jeb’s problem here (and for the past few weeks as well) is that he’s not the brave one, either.
@scav: I had to jettison a woman today that I hated to do. Her late husband was a marginal friend of mine, a Nam Vet, gunsmith and mechanic. He died about 5 years ago and I’ve tried to help her with some property issues and other small stuff. She went through a cancer situation and it looks like it’s back but she’s a pretty dim, right-wing gun nut. She had to chime in on my “Take Down that Flag ” post with all this horseshit about “honor, legacy and all that tripe”. It was the last straw since I don’t want to hurt her feelings by arguing with her so, boom, she be gone.
107.
trollhattan
Chait has an interesting piece on Kasich, who evidently has been riling the party some.
John Kasich is earnestly running for president, perhaps blissfully unaware of just how deeply he violated his party’s moral code. As governor of Ohio, Kasich accepted the Medicaid expansion that is part of the Affordable Care Act, thereby providing medical care to some half-million Ohioans. Worse still, Kasich framed his decision not just as a concession to his state’s budgetary needs but as a matter of conscience.
Alex Isenstadt reports that Kasich offended a number of party donors at a Koch-organized conference last year. Randy Kendrick, a major party contributor and wife of the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, objected to Kasich’s moral defense of the Medicaid expansion:
The governor’s response was fiery. “I don’t know about you, lady,” he said as he pointed at Kendrick, his voice rising. “But when I get to the Pearly Gates, I’m going to have an answer for what I’ve done for the poor.”
The exchange left many stunned. Around 20 audience members walked out of the room, and two governors also on the panel, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, told Kasich they disagreed with him. The Ohio governor has not been invited back to a Koch seminar — opportunities for presidential aspirants to mingle with the party’s rich and powerful — in the months since.
The scamp. Also, too, if I were “fortunate” enough to life in Phoenix, the owner’s wife would keep me the hell away from any Diamondbacks games. Who do these people think they are?
The gunman tried really hard to be really clear what it was about. He effing explained what he was doing at the scene and made sure there were witnesses to spread the message.
The shooter might be stark raving nuts, and may be very confused. But whatever else was going on in his mind, he was coherent enough to know, and say that racism, starting a race war, genocide against African-Americans, was his motive.
So… what excuse do the likes of Santorum, Jeb!, etc. have for avoiding this issue. I see in news that Kasich can face the reality. Maybe he should get into the primary. I would like there to be one GOP presidential candidate who does not speak and act in utterly contemptible dishonest and nightmarish ways, on pretty much everything.
109.
jl
@trollhattan: Interesting coincidence that you posted that just as I was writing my previous comment. As I noted Kaich seems to be a Republican who can say honest things where a few things others are too warped or cowardly. Kasih is willing to say the SC shooting was about race.
No wonder pundits say Kasich will have trouble in the GOP presidential primary. I really want an explanation why Santorum and Jeb! cannot speak the truth. I mean, show some respect for the shooter. He went out of his way to explain what he was doing, didn’t he?
110.
trollhattan
@jl:
Roof’s attorney’s #1 job is to keep his client’s yap welded shut, but since he’s gone and done the Big Deed I suspect we’ll be hearing some of his thoughts, unfiltered. And if that happens all of the countervailing theories on “why” go down the crapper.
These are different kids than the ones lawyers are being consulted about — basically, before my trip, I had 2 nieces in Florida, and now I have 5 nieces in Florida. This is more “how do I explain the sudden acquisition of additional nieces to my friends and acquaintences who thought I only had 2?”
112.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
The most obvious rhing i can think of is that there’s a constituency they dare not piss off — one that actually sympathises with Dylann Roof’s motives even if it thinks his methods somewhat extreme.
113.
jl
@trollhattan: As I said above, the shooter, no matter what happens from now on, now matter how crazy he may turn out to be, really tried to be clear about what he was doing. That should have been clear a few hours after the shooting after the witness’ accounts hit the news.
114.
trollhattan
@jl:
Maybe he can be this campaign’s Huntsman–he of the “perfectly lubricated weathervane” quip about RMoney.
I think the way it works is whichever Bush you haven’t heard from in the longest time becomes The Smart One.
116.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: My first thought was wow, those two racist murderers should have a lot in common, lots to talk about.
117.
jl
@Amir Khalid: The GOP voting base, especially in primaries and off-year elections has been winnowed down to a (thankfully) relative small, but very special, group of people, hasn’t it?
Ideas have consequences, and the GOP has been pushing certain ideas ever since Nixon, even if it has been considered impolite to openly discuss what those ideas are. The bigshots who push these ideas always have the ridiculous conceit that the inevitable consequences of these ideas can be kept under control. But they cannot be kept under control.
So, you have extremists, confused or not, insane or not, going out and assassinating random cops, taking a shot at a liberal politician, shooting Hindus, Sikhs, Christian Arabs, and random Muslims, defacing Jewish places of worship, and shooting blacks. At some point people have to speak up, and cannot be silenced by charges of opportunism and politicization. The attempt to silence people is part of the game plan of the cynical reactionary manipulators.
The Founders they claim to venerate would have wanted people to speak up. Consider Franklin after massacres of Native Americans. He charged ahead doing the right thing and did not give a damn about being intimidated. We should follow his example.
What’s also sad is how low the bar seems to be. Kasich’s act (which I am glad he did) comes off by comparison as magnanimous, when it’s really not that at all.
121.
WaterGirl
@chopper: I read somewhere that carrots were originally purple, which is probably why your orange carrot didn’t kill you. Or one of the reasons, at lest. :-)
open thread. do “marital aids” come alive in the Toy Story universe as they are also toys? i watched the honest trailer for Toy Story this morning and that question has kind of dominated my thoughts today – im a sicko :P
Est ist mir wurst, aber… in Bavaria, the second word would be something like “voorsht”.
(I couldn’t resist the idiom at the beginning there. It’s just so Germanic that “I don’t care” can be expressed in terms of sausage’s relationship to oneself.)
This gave me a vision of Bo and Luke Duke cosplayers shooting a flaming arrow into that flag. For some reason that thought amuses me quite a bit more than it should.
129.
Botsplainer
Youngest daughter has made her transition from her archaeological dig in the hot, humid, bug-snake-frog-howler monkey-jaguar jungles of central Belize (where she actually managed to discover some new significant site to dig up, along with some sort of significant stone), and is now in Greece at another site. She had about 40 hours here in the US before she was outbound again, and she’ll have to deal with her erupting botfly bites from the jungle while in Greece.
We have some trepidation – the girl only has 300 euros in cash and a decent balance on a debit card, but there’s talk of bank runs and a new round of austerity riots. We told her to pick up more euros every time she gets a chance, and to not encroach on the current cash in pocket.
@shawn: I completely agree. I recently left a professional facebook group because every single post devolved into a demonization of white males (and some females) for not correctly jumping to exactly the party line on several issues. Those demonized were people that were pro-diversity, pro-women, etc. but insufficienctly “pure” in reasoning and therefore horrible people who needed to be branded as racist/misogynist for their own good. Totally toxic atmosphere and the first time in my life I felt like backing away from being called a “leftist”…
The most obvious rhing i can think of is that there’s a constituency they dare not piss off — one that actually sympathises with Dylann Roof’s motives even if it thinks his methods somewhat extreme.
What makes you think they see his methods as extreme?
133.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I’m not sure many of them think his methods are too extreme. They may not think of doing as Roof has done themselves but they for sure don’t condone it when someone does.
134.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Don’t even bother, they are all nieces. The folks who care will understand. I’ve quit using step-whatever as it gets too confusing (step-grandson WTF?). They are my kids of grandkids or nieces or whatever. They are family.
135.
Frankensteinbeck
@KG:
Officially it means ‘We will continue to discriminate, and try to find new ways to discriminate, even though it’s illegal.’ What it actually means is ‘WAAAH, stop telling me what to do!’
Like I said, it’s more to explain the sudden acquisition of new family members. If you were getting new unrelated “uncles” as an adult, well, Elvis Costello has a song about that:
open thread. do “marital aids” come alive in the Toy Story universe as they are also toys? i watched the honest trailer for Toy Story this morning and that question has kind of dominated my thoughts today
“S#x Toy Story.” Different movie. And Buzz and Woody, very different types of toys. Mr Potato Head is the same in both. Go figure.
Exactly. Simply not doing something that punishes the poor as much as one would like qualifies a politician as moderate, regardless of their professed beliefs.
I have three nieces in Thailand that are not really related to me at all but I always refer to them as my nieces and my daughter refers to them as her cousins. My wife was raised by a cousin she refers to as her mother (both of my wife’s parents died before she was three) and this lady also took in an orphan who now has three daughters. These three young ladies are all adults now, but we still have a nice relationship.
144.
mai naem mobile
@trollhattan: this.Kendrick.bitch is bitching about medicaid expansion.but.her husband is the beneficiary of millions of taxpayer dollars used to build his baseball park that he also gets tax breaks for. She.needs to be slapped upside her head.
Like I said, it’s more to explain the sudden acquisition of new family members.
I think the answer to that is that they aren’t new, but that you just found out about them. If somebody really wants details, you can fill them in (“They’re my late brother’s not exactly stepchildren”), but the basic point is that you didn’t know about them until recently.
146.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid: I suppose they don’t see his action as extreme, as hard as it can be for me to imagine that.
Join the club. Many of my fellow citizens amaze me every day, that they can be such assholes towards others and yet expect only perfection to be headed their way.
I’ve avoided making a lot of comments about another mass shooting, that some asshole thinks that shooting others because of skin color is the way to make his life better. I am depressed that we have only moved forward what seems like about a foot in the last 150 yrs. I’m depressed that I’m in the, at best, last third of my years and still see people having to fight to just live. I’m depressed to be able to say, just another in a long line of events that have hate as their center. I’m depressed that so many of our politicians either agree with this type of event or at least can not even see that their ideals beget this type of action.
My other two nieces have a crazy effed-up mom, so it would also be a way to differentiate between “nieces with crazy mom” and “nieces with normal, if grieving, mom.” The first set of nieces are in a very, very complicated situation that I can’t really talk about because we’re hoping to take legal action, but the second set are just fine.
148.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): My input would be that the “nieces with the crazy mom” need all of the inclusiveness they can get while going through this stressful transition. This is just reflecting my experience with blended families. But you are closest to the situation so I’m not going to second guess.
149.
NCSteve
@Bruce Webb: Well, sometimes it’s just an obvious bluff . . .
The “semi-nieces” are the second set (normal mom). Plus, this is more for IRL/Balloon-Juice purposes to clarify if I’m currently talking about Crazy Mom Nieces or Normal Mom Nieces, not language I would use with them.
151.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Returning late, but in that case, I think you just explain it when it needs to be explained, the same way everyone has to sometimes clarify your brother bob’s kids from your brother Rick’s kids (and sometimes distinguish first from second marriage kids) — they don’t need a special long-time term for that purpose. You’re going to have to explain what going on with the shorthand Facebook nieces in much the same terms to people in any case. For shorthand maybe just GF-nieces v. W-nieces without additional qualifiers. Other qualifiers just feels to me like one set are less “real” somehow, or tainting your relationship with them with stuff that involves their mothers. But it’s clearly your call.
152.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I understand that your “crazy/normal” is for blog purposes, anonymity etc. Just throwing out a reframe of the situation for you. I sincerely hope you can integrate these new additions into your family.
Back when I was working as a family therapist I found working with the kids was great. It was dealing with the parents who acted like assholes that drove me crazy. Hope you are able to see this through. It sounds like an ugly situation.
Outrage is a sweet, sweet, cheap high that lefties are addicted to every bit as much as anybody on the right.
I’m so fucking addicted to outrage that I’m still waiting for my sweet sweet hit when you answer the questions put to you when you said that people “using abortion as birth control” were evil.
People asked you to flesh this out a bit, but you didn’t bother. Was that the time that people oppressed you on Balloon Juice or was it some other occasion? Just wondering.
Just say that they are your late brother’s partner’s kids (or girlfriend’s kids) and that the death has brought the whole extended family together to support one another. Over time, friends will either (a) not know that they aren’t technically nieces or (b) will know and won’t care.
When I see an acquaintance refer to a niece, I don’t immediately start wondering about the family tree, I just think, “Okay, somewhat related person who is probably somewhat younger.”
FWIW, the consensus with my coworkers seems to be “new niece.” As in, “Did you get any more texts from your new niece?”
(The 7-year-old recently discovered texting and texts me a couple times a day. Right now, I am trying to convince her via text that processing invoices is Fun! She remains skeptical.)
158.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sounds like you are doing a great job as the new aunt. Hoping for the best for you.
159.
mclaren
That’s the larva of the Gulf Fritillary, or passion butterfly — technical name Agraulis vanillae. That caterpillar turns into a particularly beautiful orange butterfly (pics here).
The spines don’t sting, but that caterpillar is poisonous if eaten, so avoid munching on ’em. It feeds exclusively on various varieties of passionflower.
160.
central texas
Caterpillar of a Gulf Fritillary butterfly. They eat passion vines and their native relatives.
161.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sounds you are doing a good job of blending the children as they would have been at some point anyway. I think it’s nice that you want to be a presence for them.
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BGinCHI
Donald Trump is also a prick.
RaflW
Just saw a news brief in a small town local paper (travelimg S. Oregon this weekend–beautiful!) about the new encyclical on the environment. I’m assuming Repubs heads will explode, it looks like prime trolling: we have a “structurally perverse” economy that exploits the poor and is turning the earth into an “immense pile of filth.”
Strong stuff. I’m sure it will be fully rejected bey Jeb!, Santorum and our other “catholic” presidential clown contenders.
Cacti
Statement I’m waiting to hear from any of the 20 or so Republican candidates on the Emanuel AME Church shooting:
“White supremacist ideology is wrong, and should have no place in our national discourse.”
Linda Featheringill
Betty, look at the twitter account of girlsongrass.
:-)
different-church-lady
I think we should use “Here’s a pretty bug of some sort” as our all-purpose default response to trolls.
Linda Featheringill
I’m probably late but Happy Juneteenth anyway!
Benw
I need some DFWM doodads.
EZSmirkzz
Has anyone else noticed that the Republicans are waffling on the motives behind
Charles Manson’sDylann Roof’s trying to start a race war?“Guns don’t kill people, gun control laws kill people.”
The Moar You Know
Jeb! is running around today punching himself in the dick.
W. really was the smart one! Who knew?
Amir Khalid
I’m watching a YouTube video of an American trying to pronounce Bratwurst the German way, and not really succeeding. It keeps coming out as “brat worst”.
Brachiator
A bit of international news. Anti immigration conservatives did well in the recent elections in Denmark:
There were about 10 parties overall seeking voter approval. One sign that may resemble impatience with the status quo here in the US
And of course, some of the concerns over immigration have echoes of the debate here at home.
Background on the election here
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33132172
shawn
@Cacti: has it been said by Hillary Clinton either? if so when/where?
bystander
A friend of mine who is liberal in some matters gloms on to whatever current RWN meme is being spread. She started to share that she was hearing about how horrible lefty PCness is shutting down discussion in the country. Since we were in a restaurant, I excused myself so I wouldn’t start screaming, “It’s getting so you can’t call a fag a fag.” Of course the real objection is to people re-directing whatever economic power they have away from businesses that support racism, sexism, homophobia. and using social media to spread the word. The guys who started the Fire Island Pines boycott have been doing a superb job of keeping the boycott alive.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Common decency and sheer dread had us presuming the opposite. Finding the truth is really depressing.
KG
@The Moar You Know: wtf does “traditional marriage has to be respected in the long haul irrespective of what the courts say” even mean? are there courts contemplating ruling marriage laws as unconstitutional? this there some sort of motion for an injunction to force straight people to get gay married without the right to divorce?
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: Thank god there’s billions of dollars of information infrastructure behind that.
jeffreyw
Open thread for bugs?
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: I feel for him / her. I embarrassed myself all over Germany and Austria with my atrocious pronunciation.
Big ole hound
Waiting for a ANY candidate to cut down the confederate flag in the SC capitol. That might separate a winner from all the losers. Not a one has the balls to do anything except talk. C’mon Bernie. It’s probably the only illegal gesture in SC.
different-church-lady
@Big ole hound: That act of Northern Aggression will not stand, man!
shawn
@bystander: “PCness is shutting down discussion in the country”
It kind of is. What SOME on the left do is say you either fully embrace the new – immediately and without reservation or you are the worst person ever and should be fired and ruined for life. It feels so noble and righteous because of course they are on the correct side of the issue but they WANT people to be on the wrong side so they can remain outraged. It’s the only explanation to how they react. And I am not talking about how they react to a Westboro Baptist or Indiana cake (do I have the right state and food?) shop type (that can be understood and expected), I am talking about how they react to the guy or gal who expresses some doubt but also expresses some openness. Outrage is a sweet, sweet, cheap high that lefties are addicted to every bit as much as anybody on the right.
Mandalay
@shawn:
This. Her carefully calculated fence sitting over the Charleston massacre – designed to offend nobody rather than to take a position on anything – is every bit as offensive as the garbage being spewed by Republicans.
WaterGirl
I keep wondering whether I’m the only person around here who watched Larry Wilmore. Yeah, sometimes it’s lame, but mostly I find it very refreshing that they say things out loud on TV that no one else seems willing to say.
Last night, they focused the show completely on what happened in Charleston and it was not about comedy. Last night it seemed like either Larry or one of the guests said every good thought I had or heard on BJ yesterday. It felt good.
Amir Khalid
@The Moar You Know:
¡Jeb! still takes pride in not letting Michael Schiavo unplug his dead wife from the machines and bury her, a decade after the autopsy proved Schiavo was right and he was wrong. Talk about obtuse.
shawn
@Big ole hound: YES. This seems like such an obvious move. I get playing to your base but you also need to lead and you are exactly right. Just take it down.
JGabriel
Interesting bug, Betty. It reminds me a little bit of Hallucigenia.
The Other Chuck
@Amir Khalid: how hard is it to say “brought versed”?
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
She’s been reported as saying this.
The Other Chuck
@bystander: My favorite response to people whining about how they can’t say anything because “PC” is “perhaps, but you’re still an asshole.”
Cckids
@WaterGirl: I watched Larry too, and you’re right, he did a good job addressing this. The sorrow & anger were palpable. Especially about that goddamn flag, and Fox News.
His show is improving all the time. I keep telling people if they didn’t like it at first to try it again.
Tree With Water
“The question is why so many Republicans are unwilling to admit this obvious fact. Why do they object so strenuously to anyone looking too closely at this surge in extremist activity? Who are they afraid of offending?”.
So asks Digby about republicans and acts of domestic terrorism. She could as reasonably ask democrats about their party’s refusal to speak of the Bush-Cheney plot to war. Most especially now, a full twelve years later, I wonder who are democrats afraid of offending?
JGabriel
Betty Cracker:
I empathize. I managed to learn, “Entshuldigen, Ich verstehe nicht deutch. Sprechen sie Englisch?” and “Toilette?” when I visited friends in Munich and Vienna — but I’m told I was pronouncing all the vowels and consonants wrong.
Mike J
@Big ole hound:
Bernie didn’t even postpone his event in SC. Don’t look to him to care about minorities.
JPL
This was on the guardian
Dylann Roof is in a maximum security cell next to cell of Michael Slager, officer charged with killing #WalterScott.
cmorenc
@KG:
The day some law exists requiring a quota of arbitrarily chosen straight people to gay marry to satisfy diversity and rainbow affirmative-action requirements (especially if it’s upheld by SCOTUS) – I might reluctantly find myself in an odd-fellows coalition with the RW traditional marriage forces on that particular issue. But until that happens with pigs flying overhead, they’re a bunch of asshole bigots. Actually, they would still be a bunch of asshole bigots even if hypothetically I was forced to temporarily, reluctantly join them in coalition on this one issue….
Bobby Thomson
@Mike J: wasn’t he in Vegas? And he’s the only candidate to mention race in his reaction to the shooting.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid: That’s exactly the timid pablum I find offensive. President Obama went a lot further than she did.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@shawn: you are chock full of shit, my friend.
When conservatards like yourself squeal about “PC”, you are simply insisting that you have the right to be rude as shit to people you think you may not like.
You do, of course. But don’t be surprised when people call you out for being an asshole when you are, in fact, acting like an asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: I like it.
NCSteve
With the single, wonderful eponymous exception, orange is Nature’s way of saying “you eat me, you DIE motherfucker!”
NCSteve
@shawn
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/valdenia-winn-kansas-racist-sanction-hearing
Damn those leftists in the Kansas legislature.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Amir Khalid:
Where I come from, you pronounce the first part of that word like it’s an annoying child (long A). Of course, we also pronounce “Goethe” as “Gothee,” so our German pronounciation skills are definitely lacking.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Though I can’t talk about the crappy family part of my trips to Florida, I think I can safely say that I’ve acquired three new nieces. Two of them are 17-year-old twins (who hate each other and can’t live in the same state, but that’s a story for another day) and the other is a very cute 7-year-old. They’re the daughters of my late brother’s girlfriend, and I’m not quite sure how to refer to them. Semi-nieces? Quasi-nieces?
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
Then what should Hillary have said?
Mandalay
Here’s a great photo of the First Lady visiting a school in England.
Betty Cracker
@JGabriel: I ordered dick in my coffee!
Ruckus
@JPL:
And this makes a difference how?
phoebes-in-santa fe
Not knowing what else to do, I sent the following out to email list and also to the local paper.
“Nine people were just gunned down in a church in Charleston, SC. The public reacts as predicted, with hand-wringing and calling for new gun laws. And for praying and calling for a national “healing”. But, nothing is done. We just go on to the next mass shooting, when the same thing happens all over again. Well, maybe it’s time to show the carnage. Why aren’t we seeing the slaughtered dead bodies, or if not the bodies, why not a picture of the bloodied room where it happened? After WW2, brutal and graphic pictures of concentration camp victims – both those laying dead as stacks of wood and those still surviving, looking like human skeletons – served to bring home the obscenity of the camps. These pictures were shown in newspapers and magazines, and films were shown in theaters. As odious as these images were, they represented the truth of the murders.
We need to show the images of modern-day slaughters. The victims may be much fewer in number than those murdered in WW2, but the photos of the carnage of 20 first graders and their teachers might actually spur more action towards gun safety than all the “prayer” and “healing sessions” currently taking place. Or we just go back to waiting for the next slaughter-of-innocents.”
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
A good day for you?
JPL
@Ruckus: I just found it ironic but you are right that it does’t make a difference.
Benw
@CONGRATULATIONS!: thanks. I’d been trying to compose a more measured reply in my head, but I like yours better. What a bunch of “both sides do it” so the outrage is equal baloney.
Nile Kinnick
Could be an oleander caterpillar, larvae of the polka-dot wasp moth. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntomeida_epilais Special thanks to Google images reverse search.
Ruckus
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
I believe that changed during Vietnam. We would see daily the stills and movies from the battlefield, on the nightly news, but someone determined that these were causing people to find war horrible and couldn’t have that.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): “Step-nieces”, perhaps?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Brat = short A. Date = long A.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
I’m dying to know what you actually wanted in your coffee.
The American-tourist-in-Germany experience, courtesy of Monty Pythons Fliegender Zirkus.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus & @Amir Khalid: I meant to order milk! I just pronounced it incorrectly — added an “L” and mispronounced a vowel or something — and set the waiters at a fancy hotel to snickering.
Bruce Webb
@NCSteve: “With the single, wonderful eponymous exception, orange is Nature’s way of saying “you eat me, you DIE motherfucker!” ”
Wow! So we were worrying about Nemo for nothing? What a relief.
Ruckus
@JPL:
OK, I wasn’t sure if you were commenting or not. I don’t find it strange that two killers would be in the same maximum security facility.
raven
@Ruckus: There wasn’t a dead GI shown in film or still until Tarawa and then they were face down in the surf.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Nieces pieces.
wrb
@RaflW:
Which small town?
mai naem mobile
I thought people were incorrect when they said the confederate flag was not at half mast in SC. It just didn’t make sense to me that you would put the US flag half mast and not the confederate flag. Didn’t believe it till I saw a pic last night. I wish somebody would set fire to it. That particular flag in SC.
Eric U.
@trollhattan: GWBush had that fake southern accent that made him sound like the idiot he is. John Bush has a very neutral accent, so he sounds smarter.
Kropadope
@shawn:
Like these PC gems:
“Everything the government does is evil and if you do anything to support it or anyone in it, you want everyone to be a slave.”
“You must support the troops in all things.” (These incongruous ideas often derive from the same people)
“Climate change is just a theory, don’t you go talking about solutions.”
and my personal favorite…
“[Insert anything] is just another example of the war on Christmas and Christians in this country.”
Because of PC attitudes, we can’t have a reasonable discussion about tax policy, guns, or improving the lives of working people. Fuck the PC assholes, who in this day and age hail predominantly from the Republican half of the political spectrum.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Betty Cracker:
Whatever floaten zie boaten. We don’t judge.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid:
She could and should have said what President Obama said: that she was really angry about what happened, and that it was very clearly a hate crime, that it obviously arose from racism, and that there was clearly a problem unique to the United States that gun massacres happen so frequently.
But she just waffled, and sat on the fence. Zero leadership, and plenty of pearl clutching about alienating potential voters.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@dmsilev:
My brother and his girlfriend never married, because neither of their divorces were finalized (did I mention that it’s a mess?) so I would feel weird putting the word “step” in there. POSSLQ nieces?
@Steeplejack (phone):
Well, I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right.
Eric U.
@mai naem mobile: the pictures I see make it look like the U.S. flag still flies higher than the racist traitor flag, so the flag code isn’t violated.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid:
Why won’t we just take her at her word?
askew
@Mandalay:
She said we needed to have a conversation about what happened. That’s better than nothing I guess.
O’Malley has come out strong for gun control and mental health legislation at the federal level. I am one of the 5 people who cares what he says though so not sure it matters.
Bernie talked about racial issues and ignored guns completely.
NonyNony
@mai naem mobile:
I wonder what the reaction would be if someone climbed the flagpole with a lighter and set the damn thing on fire.
They’d probably get shot. If they did it at night it would probably provoke more outrage in Columbia than the church shooting has.
ETA: I should probably clarify that it would need to be a white person who does it. I know that any black person who did it would get shot, but perhaps a white guy could get away with it.
shawn
@Kropadope: thats not PC bs, that’s group think bs – but nice try
scav
@Betty Cracker: If they didn’t giggle at that point, I’d be far more worried about the culture. All my poor mother did was order a quick pepper/leek/pear ice-cream in the south of France (which at least brightened the waiter’s day a bit).
different-church-lady
@mai naem mobile:
Somebody did. His name was Sherman.
Oh, wait.. never mind…
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@mai naem mobile:
Someone said yesterday that the governor of SC has the power to order the state and US flags lowered to half-mast, but by SC law only the legislature is allowed to vote to change the position of the Confederate flag. Because it’s about heritage, not hate, don’t’cha know.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Demitasse? Semiquaver? Quasimodo?
More seriously, I hope you can build a good relationship with your nieces (no reason to qualify anything) to offset the strained situation with some of those involved.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
When I traveled to europe I tried to learn a few words from each language well and use them in the way the locals did. Hello, please, thank you. Even so it was universally recognized that I didn’t speak the language but the attempt was well received. Once in Copenhagen had a wonderful discussion with a local woman, who had what I considered a most unusual accent, Oxford english. Asked her if she was english, she said she was born and raised in Denmark. Her english professor was from Oxford and everyone in class learned to speak english that way. She was more interested to know how I recognized her accent.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): pish on the niggle-haggle of law, the genetics and family bonds are there. Or, cousin covers a lot of ground and aunt is sometime extended to generic female relative of the generation above. Why don’t you ask them?
Litlebritdifrnt
@EZSmirkzz:
Eddie Izzard is spot on with this one “guns don’t kill people, people kill people, yeah but guns help”
rikyrah
They were OUTSIDE OF HIS HOME ON THE STREET…
but, HE felt THREATENED?
get da phuq outta here.
He had to OPEN HIS DOOR AND LEAVE HIS HOME.
…………………………………………….
Send the n*****s back to Youngstown where they belong:’ Ohio man terrorizes children with gun
June 19, 2015
An Ohio man harassed a group of children, at least some of whom were black, while pursuing them on foot through his neighborhood, hurling racial epithets in their direction, threatening them with a gun, and urging police to come arrest the children, WKBN reports.
On Monday Gust Mamounis observed two children outside his home begin to fight, while five other children looked on. In a video obtained by police, Mamounis exited his house and cocked his gun.
The children, feeling threatened, dispersed. But Mamounis, a 38-year-old man, followed them, shouting racial slurs. Police can confirm Mamounis did this because he was on the phone with 911 at the time, and the four-minute recording is part of the evidence police used to charged the Struthers man with aggravated menacing, disorderly conduct, and inducing panic.
WKBN obtained a recording of Mamounis’ 911 call, which it says it will not publish because the tape is “filled with so many expletives and racial slurs.”
The news outlet reports Mamounis used the word “n****r” nine times and the word “fuck” 29 times during his phone conservation with the Struthers police.
The tape catches Mamounis yelling at the group — whose only apparent offense is walking in the neighborhood — threatening to harm them, and calling them “n****r.”
………………..
When police arrive at the scene, Mamounis instructs the officers to arrest all of the children. The cops arrested Mamounis instead
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/send-the-ns-back-to-youngstown-where-they-belong-ohio-man-terrorizes-children-with-gun/
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Ruckus: Maybe we need to seize back the narrative…
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@shawn:
Only if you assume that “PC” is solely a phenomenon of the left. To many of us, it seems pretty clear that the right has their own version of PC that they refuse to recognize as such. Kind of like conservative Catholics who claim that liberals are “cafeteria Catholics” while ignoring the teachings against the death penalty — it’s not “cafeteria” if THEY do it.
I have seen some of the PC you describe on some websites, but they’re usually ones that have either announced that they are “safe spaces” for a particular group or are trying to turn themselves into safe spaces. I usually end up leaving those websites because they usually become too narrow in focus to hold my interest.
Origuy
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
There’s a park in Sacramento that used to be called “Goethe Park”, named after Charles Goethe, founder of Sacramento State College. The park’s name was pronounced GAY-tee. It was renamed along with everything else named after him because Goethe was a prominent eugenicist.
raven
@Litlebritdifrnt: Haven’t seen you here since we went to Topsail!
Kropadope
@shawn: It’s deemed beyond the bounds of polite discussion to talk about things like gun control and climate change and racism, to the point of chilling free speech. If that isn’t political correctness run amok, I don’t know what is.
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
There we differ. I see no cause for dissatisfaction with Hillary’s comments as quoted in that story.
Ruckus
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
@raven: Has it right as far as I know, he is much more up on this than me. But look what the public feeling is about war when they do and when they don’t see it. Dead bodies with bullet holes and arms/legs shot off get one’s attention. How many videos do we see today that are taken by cell phones that are highly disturbing? Exposure to good or bad shapes our opinions of things. Repeated exposure can set them as if in solid concrete. For example, faux news.
Origuy
@JGabriel: From what I remember from German class, if you pronounced it right in Munich, it would be wrong in Vienna and incomprehensible in Frankfurt.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Are they collecting the entire set, or something? Is there a collector’s-edition display box? Here’s hoping there is, and it’s called the State Penitentiary.
shawn
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): it’s happened to me here on BJ
@Kropadope: I hear what you are saying, i don’t know that i would call it the same thing as PC – i think it is a different brand of unhelpful silencing (im casting about for the right phrase) but youre not wrong to say that it is in the same neighborhood. not at all true to say one side does it more than the other but ok i can meet you in the middle on what it actually is :)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@scav:
Right now, I’m leaning towards “Facebook nieces” since I probably won’t see them in person again for quite a while.
Amir Khalid
@Origuy:
That does explain how Böhner became “Beh-ner”.
trollhattan
@rikyrah: He sounds nice. Definitely a different spin on “Git offa mah lawn.”
Am I wrong in assuming since it’s Ohio it’s legal to run around outside waving a gun?
Josie
@Betty Cracker: My late husband and I grew up near the Mexican border. His Spanish was pretty good but not grammatically correct. He used to frequent a certain restaurant in Mexico as a teen and mistakenly thought he was ordering pork chops and french fries. Imagine his surprise when a friendly waiter after several years told him he had been ordering shit and french fries. I would like to have heard the conversations in the kitchen over that.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: Give an order to a cop and it doesn’t matter what else is goin’ on, your dumb ass is going to jail. They’ll find a reason. You, the citizen, is there to take orders from police, not give them.
chopper
@Bruce Webb:
i just ate a carrot. now i’m worried.
jake the antisoshul shoshulist
Looks like Red Peril.
The Death of Red Peril
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_short_story_death_of_a_red_peril_by_edmonds_about
Roger Moore
@KG:
No, but the facts don’t matter. The right wing noise machine is trying to convince their followers that something like that is going to happen. The whole point about fear mongering future events is that you can lie through your teeth without fear of getting caught. After all, when your direst predictions don’t come true, it’s proof of your effectiveness in protecting people.
jl
I see in news that Jeb!, who is supposed to be the smart one, still can’t seem to figure out what the SC shooting was about.
The dog whistles have to change with times, I guess. Or the triangulation. Whatever it is, a sad spectacle.
mai naem mobile
@Eric U.: do you think if stuff was reversed and a black racist had gone into Nikki Haleys church(shes Xtian convert) and shot dead 9 people, she wouldn’t have her cracker flag flying at half staff? You think a bunch of her white cracker legislators wouldn’t have run in at 7AM and voted for it?
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Honestly, I’d ask, because Facebook Friends has a connotation of being not really real that might bleed over, as though you could un-neice them with the click of a button. That might not be the message to send right now, especially for the littlest one. My cousin’s kids are my cousin’s kids, no matter that they’re scattered over a few continents and we don’t see each other that often (they’ve all chosen the cousin route as shorthand, for what it’s worth). Letting the three have a bit of personal control over the relationship might be beneficial for them as well after the recent high seas and upset.
msmooth
The caterpillar is for a Gulf Fritillary butterfly.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
I think Jeb’s problem here (and for the past few weeks as well) is that he’s not the brave one, either.
Downpuppy
Gulf Fritillary caterpillar.
Right purty, I must say.
raven
@scav: I had to jettison a woman today that I hated to do. Her late husband was a marginal friend of mine, a Nam Vet, gunsmith and mechanic. He died about 5 years ago and I’ve tried to help her with some property issues and other small stuff. She went through a cancer situation and it looks like it’s back but she’s a pretty dim, right-wing gun nut. She had to chime in on my “Take Down that Flag ” post with all this horseshit about “honor, legacy and all that tripe”. It was the last straw since I don’t want to hurt her feelings by arguing with her so, boom, she be gone.
trollhattan
Chait has an interesting piece on Kasich, who evidently has been riling the party some.
The scamp. Also, too, if I were “fortunate” enough to life in Phoenix, the owner’s wife would keep me the hell away from any Diamondbacks games. Who do these people think they are?
jl
@Amir Khalid:
The gunman tried really hard to be really clear what it was about. He effing explained what he was doing at the scene and made sure there were witnesses to spread the message.
The shooter might be stark raving nuts, and may be very confused. But whatever else was going on in his mind, he was coherent enough to know, and say that racism, starting a race war, genocide against African-Americans, was his motive.
So… what excuse do the likes of Santorum, Jeb!, etc. have for avoiding this issue. I see in news that Kasich can face the reality. Maybe he should get into the primary. I would like there to be one GOP presidential candidate who does not speak and act in utterly contemptible dishonest and nightmarish ways, on pretty much everything.
jl
@trollhattan: Interesting coincidence that you posted that just as I was writing my previous comment. As I noted Kaich seems to be a Republican who can say honest things where a few things others are too warped or cowardly. Kasih is willing to say the SC shooting was about race.
No wonder pundits say Kasich will have trouble in the GOP presidential primary. I really want an explanation why Santorum and Jeb! cannot speak the truth. I mean, show some respect for the shooter. He went out of his way to explain what he was doing, didn’t he?
trollhattan
@jl:
Roof’s attorney’s #1 job is to keep his client’s yap welded shut, but since he’s gone and done the Big Deed I suspect we’ll be hearing some of his thoughts, unfiltered. And if that happens all of the countervailing theories on “why” go down the crapper.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@scav:
These are different kids than the ones lawyers are being consulted about — basically, before my trip, I had 2 nieces in Florida, and now I have 5 nieces in Florida. This is more “how do I explain the sudden acquisition of additional nieces to my friends and acquaintences who thought I only had 2?”
Amir Khalid
@jl:
The most obvious rhing i can think of is that there’s a constituency they dare not piss off — one that actually sympathises with Dylann Roof’s motives even if it thinks his methods somewhat extreme.
jl
@trollhattan: As I said above, the shooter, no matter what happens from now on, now matter how crazy he may turn out to be, really tried to be clear about what he was doing. That should have been clear a few hours after the shooting after the witness’ accounts hit the news.
trollhattan
@jl:
Maybe he can be this campaign’s Huntsman–he of the “perfectly lubricated weathervane” quip about RMoney.
mdblanche
@The Moar You Know:
I think the way it works is whichever Bush you haven’t heard from in the longest time becomes The Smart One.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: My first thought was wow, those two racist murderers should have a lot in common, lots to talk about.
jl
@Amir Khalid: The GOP voting base, especially in primaries and off-year elections has been winnowed down to a (thankfully) relative small, but very special, group of people, hasn’t it?
Ideas have consequences, and the GOP has been pushing certain ideas ever since Nixon, even if it has been considered impolite to openly discuss what those ideas are. The bigshots who push these ideas always have the ridiculous conceit that the inevitable consequences of these ideas can be kept under control. But they cannot be kept under control.
So, you have extremists, confused or not, insane or not, going out and assassinating random cops, taking a shot at a liberal politician, shooting Hindus, Sikhs, Christian Arabs, and random Muslims, defacing Jewish places of worship, and shooting blacks. At some point people have to speak up, and cannot be silenced by charges of opportunism and politicization. The attempt to silence people is part of the game plan of the cynical reactionary manipulators.
The Founders they claim to venerate would have wanted people to speak up. Consider Franklin after massacres of Native Americans. He charged ahead doing the right thing and did not give a damn about being intimidated. We should follow his example.
Roger Moore
@mai naem mobile:
Why limit it to that particular one?
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I had uncles who weren’t actually part of the family, so if I were you, I would call them nieces!
Linnaeus
@trollhattan:
What’s also sad is how low the bar seems to be. Kasich’s act (which I am glad he did) comes off by comparison as magnanimous, when it’s really not that at all.
WaterGirl
@chopper: I read somewhere that carrots were originally purple, which is probably why your orange carrot didn’t kill you. Or one of the reasons, at lest. :-)
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl: That kind of thing worked for Donald Duck.
shawn
open thread. do “marital aids” come alive in the Toy Story universe as they are also toys? i watched the honest trailer for Toy Story this morning and that question has kind of dominated my thoughts today – im a sicko :P
KS in MA
@NonyNony:
How about using a flaming arrow?
trollhattan
@Linnaeus: The Overton window is off the house and down the block by now when Kasich is “moderate” by some perverted re-jiggering of the definition.
NonyNony
@shawn:
I dunno, but Rule 34 suggests that you should only try to google the answer to this question if you steel yourself for what you will find first.
RSA
@Amir Khalid:
Est ist mir wurst, aber… in Bavaria, the second word would be something like “voorsht”.
(I couldn’t resist the idiom at the beginning there. It’s just so Germanic that “I don’t care” can be expressed in terms of sausage’s relationship to oneself.)
NonyNony
@KS in MA:
This gave me a vision of Bo and Luke Duke cosplayers shooting a flaming arrow into that flag. For some reason that thought amuses me quite a bit more than it should.
Botsplainer
Youngest daughter has made her transition from her archaeological dig in the hot, humid, bug-snake-frog-howler monkey-jaguar jungles of central Belize (where she actually managed to discover some new significant site to dig up, along with some sort of significant stone), and is now in Greece at another site. She had about 40 hours here in the US before she was outbound again, and she’ll have to deal with her erupting botfly bites from the jungle while in Greece.
We have some trepidation – the girl only has 300 euros in cash and a decent balance on a debit card, but there’s talk of bank runs and a new round of austerity riots. We told her to pick up more euros every time she gets a chance, and to not encroach on the current cash in pocket.
shawn
@NonyNony: I am SO not going to Google that, lol
sparrow
@shawn: I completely agree. I recently left a professional facebook group because every single post devolved into a demonization of white males (and some females) for not correctly jumping to exactly the party line on several issues. Those demonized were people that were pro-diversity, pro-women, etc. but insufficienctly “pure” in reasoning and therefore horrible people who needed to be branded as racist/misogynist for their own good. Totally toxic atmosphere and the first time in my life I felt like backing away from being called a “leftist”…
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
What makes you think they see his methods as extreme?
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I’m not sure many of them think his methods are too extreme. They may not think of doing as Roof has done themselves but they for sure don’t condone it when someone does.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Don’t even bother, they are all nieces. The folks who care will understand. I’ve quit using step-whatever as it gets too confusing (step-grandson WTF?). They are my kids of grandkids or nieces or whatever. They are family.
Frankensteinbeck
@KG:
Officially it means ‘We will continue to discriminate, and try to find new ways to discriminate, even though it’s illegal.’ What it actually means is ‘WAAAH, stop telling me what to do!’
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@WaterGirl:
Like I said, it’s more to explain the sudden acquisition of new family members. If you were getting new unrelated “uncles” as an adult, well, Elvis Costello has a song about that:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lf1FEJr5Ig
Amir Khalid
@RSA:
I’m more used to seeing the standard “Es ist mir gleich/egal”. Thanks for noting the colloquial expression for me.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
@Ruckus:
I suppose they don’t see his action as extreme, as hard as it can be for me to imagine that. Sigh.
RSA
@Amir Khalid: It may be limited to southern Germany. But happy usage! :-)
Brachiator
@shawn:
“S#x Toy Story.” Different movie. And Buzz and Woody, very different types of toys. Mr Potato Head is the same in both. Go figure.
JCJ
@Amir Khalid:
I have never said “Es ist mir Wurst,” but I always chuckle when I read it/hear it.
Linnaeus
@trollhattan:
Exactly. Simply not doing something that punishes the poor as much as one would like qualifies a politician as moderate, regardless of their professed beliefs.
JCJ
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I have three nieces in Thailand that are not really related to me at all but I always refer to them as my nieces and my daughter refers to them as her cousins. My wife was raised by a cousin she refers to as her mother (both of my wife’s parents died before she was three) and this lady also took in an orphan who now has three daughters. These three young ladies are all adults now, but we still have a nice relationship.
mai naem mobile
@trollhattan: this.Kendrick.bitch is bitching about medicaid expansion.but.her husband is the beneficiary of millions of taxpayer dollars used to build his baseball park that he also gets tax breaks for. She.needs to be slapped upside her head.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I think the answer to that is that they aren’t new, but that you just found out about them. If somebody really wants details, you can fill them in (“They’re my late brother’s not exactly stepchildren”), but the basic point is that you didn’t know about them until recently.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I suppose they don’t see his action as extreme, as hard as it can be for me to imagine that.
Join the club. Many of my fellow citizens amaze me every day, that they can be such assholes towards others and yet expect only perfection to be headed their way.
I’ve avoided making a lot of comments about another mass shooting, that some asshole thinks that shooting others because of skin color is the way to make his life better. I am depressed that we have only moved forward what seems like about a foot in the last 150 yrs. I’m depressed that I’m in the, at best, last third of my years and still see people having to fight to just live. I’m depressed to be able to say, just another in a long line of events that have hate as their center. I’m depressed that so many of our politicians either agree with this type of event or at least can not even see that their ideals beget this type of action.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@realbtl:
My other two nieces have a crazy effed-up mom, so it would also be a way to differentiate between “nieces with crazy mom” and “nieces with normal, if grieving, mom.” The first set of nieces are in a very, very complicated situation that I can’t really talk about because we’re hoping to take legal action, but the second set are just fine.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): My input would be that the “nieces with the crazy mom” need all of the inclusiveness they can get while going through this stressful transition. This is just reflecting my experience with blended families. But you are closest to the situation so I’m not going to second guess.
NCSteve
@Bruce Webb: Well, sometimes it’s just an obvious bluff . . .
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@realbtl:
The “semi-nieces” are the second set (normal mom). Plus, this is more for IRL/Balloon-Juice purposes to clarify if I’m currently talking about Crazy Mom Nieces or Normal Mom Nieces, not language I would use with them.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Returning late, but in that case, I think you just explain it when it needs to be explained, the same way everyone has to sometimes clarify your brother bob’s kids from your brother Rick’s kids (and sometimes distinguish first from second marriage kids) — they don’t need a special long-time term for that purpose. You’re going to have to explain what going on with the shorthand Facebook nieces in much the same terms to people in any case. For shorthand maybe just GF-nieces v. W-nieces without additional qualifiers. Other qualifiers just feels to me like one set are less “real” somehow, or tainting your relationship with them with stuff that involves their mothers. But it’s clearly your call.
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I understand that your “crazy/normal” is for blog purposes, anonymity etc. Just throwing out a reframe of the situation for you. I sincerely hope you can integrate these new additions into your family.
Back when I was working as a family therapist I found working with the kids was great. It was dealing with the parents who acted like assholes that drove me crazy. Hope you are able to see this through. It sounds like an ugly situation.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Maybe call them “nices”?
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: One day of Fox “News” and see what happens?!!?!
P.S. I want interrobang as a character!
muddy
@shawn:
I’m so fucking addicted to outrage that I’m still waiting for my sweet sweet hit when you answer the questions put to you when you said that people “using abortion as birth control” were evil.
People asked you to flesh this out a bit, but you didn’t bother. Was that the time that people oppressed you on Balloon Juice or was it some other occasion? Just wondering.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Just say that they are your late brother’s partner’s kids (or girlfriend’s kids) and that the death has brought the whole extended family together to support one another. Over time, friends will either (a) not know that they aren’t technically nieces or (b) will know and won’t care.
When I see an acquaintance refer to a niece, I don’t immediately start wondering about the family tree, I just think, “Okay, somewhat related person who is probably somewhat younger.”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@realbtl:
FWIW, the consensus with my coworkers seems to be “new niece.” As in, “Did you get any more texts from your new niece?”
(The 7-year-old recently discovered texting and texts me a couple times a day. Right now, I am trying to convince her via text that processing invoices is Fun! She remains skeptical.)
realbtl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sounds like you are doing a great job as the new aunt. Hoping for the best for you.
mclaren
That’s the larva of the Gulf Fritillary, or passion butterfly — technical name Agraulis vanillae. That caterpillar turns into a particularly beautiful orange butterfly (pics here).
The spines don’t sting, but that caterpillar is poisonous if eaten, so avoid munching on ’em. It feeds exclusively on various varieties of passionflower.
central texas
Caterpillar of a Gulf Fritillary butterfly. They eat passion vines and their native relatives.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sounds you are doing a good job of blending the children as they would have been at some point anyway. I think it’s nice that you want to be a presence for them.