.
Goddess knows we could use a reset. Today’s adorable Google Doodle combines the New Year animal and the Winter Olympics.
Incidentally, Dog years are not necessarily good ones for those born under the Dog star, per Quartz…
… In Chinese culture, it’s widely believed that people born under the same zodiac sign as the current year will face bad luck, believed to be cursed for offending the god of age. And Donald Trump, who was born 72 years ago during a “fire dog” year, is expected to see his share of challenges in the coming year of the dog, which begins on Feb. 18, three prominent Hong Kong feng shui masters tell Quartz…
All the masters are in agreement that Trump is heavily influenced by earth and fire elements, but they differ slightly in their outlook of how it will impact his coming year. Based on Trump’s birthday (June 14, 1946), they foresee relationship problems, policy failures, and possibly even being removed from office….
In general, those born on dog years will likely encounter challenging relationships at work in 2018, and Lee predicts Trump will see further upheaval in his staff, which could “affect the world.” He also suggested a power shift in the US this year, with Republicans losing ground in the midterm elections in November, and that Trump’s policies, such as his proposal to build a border wall, would fail…
Trump will continue to provoke the world, maybe even try to start a war, but because luck isn’t in his favor this year, “none of the bad plans he has will become the reality,” says Yeo Tin Ming.
Using I Ching, one of China’s most consulted books that’s believed to be the guide to everything, Yeo, who’s often featured as a feng shui expert on Hong Kong television, predicted health problems and accidents this year, especially from early October to early November. This will be a rough period for him, and “he might be removed from the office,” he adds….
One can but hope, she said piously. (I seem to recall at least one front pager was also born during a Dog year, but not the same dog year, so hopefully their luck will be better!)
raven
And just for fun The Year of the Cat
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don’t bother asking for explanations
She’ll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat
satby
新年快乐
Still feeling not so great, but trying to get it together to drive in and meet a friend for lunch. It’s her 60th birthday, so I want to go.
raven
@satby: Don’t push it, it took me a month to shake that shit. I missed the National Championship game because of it.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Kimmel raked Drumpf and the NRA over coals last nigh (video)
Maybe we can get him to run in 2020. He’s quit witted, he’s knowledgeable, and he’s likeable.
NotMax
May it not be the Year of Wag the Dog.
@satby
Take it you retrieved your vehicle. Did that go okay?
Baud
节日快乐
NotMax
Popping sinus pills like bon-bons. Glad had the foresight to stock up during last Costco visit. Winds shifted to blow in vog from the Big Island.
Amir Khalid
A happy and prosperous Chinese New Year to one and all.
These videos are very nice. I love the one with the dog, who is a better actor than some humans I’ve seen. But the second one presents a sugarcoated image of race relations in Malaysia. A Chinese lion dance troup performing in a Malay-owned rice field, uninvited, would never actually happen — there’s not much of a potential audience to entertain/collect money from (such troups used to raise money this way), and there are people who would see the choice of site as a provocation rather than a mere annoyance.
satby
@NotMax: I did, Tuesday. My dog sitters (they’re family friends) picked me up and we went and dug it out. It was pretty buried, but the snow was soft, not icy. Started right up too, though we did bring the jumper box.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
The Countdown Is Over
WAKANDA is here!!?????
satby
@NotMax: I alternate between Advil Cold and Sinus and the Mucinex DM with expectorant. I feel like a glop factory.
Baud
@satby: Having been there many a time, I sympathize.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?! Enjoy that movie!
NotMax
@satby
Gotta link to it, just for grins. The Glop.
satby
@raven: I remember! I’ve basically sat like a zombie or slept since I got back. I’m a tiny bit better, and need to start doing a few things or I may fossilize.
@Baud: Yeah, not the best feeling. Getting better slowly though.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So yesterday was the family courtiest day of family court days.
I got to spend about two hours of an 8.5 hour hearing out in the nether regions asking questions about and arguing over the character and behavior of a dead horse.
The hearing will take another full day – it isn’t done – and we’ll undoubtedly flog that dead horse some more.
satby
@NotMax: how’d you get my chest x-ray?!?
NotMax
@satby
LOL.
Baud
Winning (CNN)
Amir Khalid
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You’ve piqued my curiosity. What is the hearing about?
NotMax
Was presented with a banner pushing a new original series via Amazon, so went to poke around for info on it. Wow, talk about a scathing review.
Shall be giving that series a pass.
MomSense
Jesus Christ, these idiots who want all the teachers to be armed have not considered how much that will cost. I’d love the teachers unions to put some numbers on paper. There is the purchase of the firearms, ammunition, training, certification (like police officers) other equipment like vests, and then the salary increases for the additional training and responsibility.
Oh and the feds won’t pick up the tab for these gun fantasies so get ready to see yuuge increases in your property taxes you stupid MAGAts.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Amir Khalid:
Child relocation.
Baud
Anne Laurie is going to jail.
engadget.com/amp/2018/02/16/tweet-embed-copyright-violation-judge-ruling/
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
Also, schools will need to be insured against firearms-related incidents, e.g. a child getting his hands on a teacher’s mislaid gun, or an accidental shooting, or a teacher taking kids hostage (hey, it could happen).
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: Going today when I leave work.
Good morning!
Ben Cisco
DIS chu’ DatIvjaj
debbie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Yep, caught it. Good for him! I was especially glad he mentioned Trump had just rolled back the previous administration’s regulations on gun purchases by the “mentally ill.”
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Add it in. I’m so sick of these gun nuts getting away with such obviously ridiculous responses.
debbie
@Baud:
I don’t think that courtroom drawing of Brady is copyrighted. They should start using that.
Eural Joiner
I’m going to crowd source this one to you guys and see what we find. Per a FB discussion yesterday – has there ever been an instance of a mass school shooting by a black person? (For that matter, a mass shooting by anyone other than a white man?) The discussion quickly got off track since many wanted to cite instances of a shooting of one or two people at a school. I’m looking for the kind of premeditated mass shooting that dominates our news every week or so these days. Thanks for any help or feedback!
Amir Khalid
@Eural Joiner:
I remwmber a shooting in 1979 by a white teenage girl, which became the topic of The Boomtown Rats’ song I Don’t Like Mondays.
satby
@Eural Joiner: I think all discussions about mass murders like this are where red herrings are deployed to knock it off track. Then people start arguing about mental illness, race, one I saw yesterday tried to throw in a Asian school mass stabbing to derail the thread. Anything, anything to not discuss gun control and how this is the only nation where these shootings are routine.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Eural Joiner: That is an excellent question…
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: It’s so beyond stupid at this point, isn’t it? Some moron at Fox News had the bright idea to eliminate veteran joblessness and bolster school safety in one fell swoop by assigning three armed veterans to each school. Well, yeah, but we’re at almost full employment levels already, and there are something like 130K schools in the U.S., including schools located in the butt-crack of Alabama and the armpit of Nebraska, etc.
Where do these geniuses expect to find 390K veterans who want to stand around all day with a gun in unglamorous outposts like Asshole, Oklahoma? What are they willing to pay for that service? Who is going to pay for the training that would be necessary to turn former infantrymen into school security guards who know how to deal with rowdy children? Why do they believe a former soldier would be quicker on the draw than the armed policeman who was at the high school that was shot up this week — or the one who was at Columbine?
I was getting exasperated reading about this foolishness earlier, but I’m choosing to take it as a positive sign: The answer is so obvious, and normal people are getting so angry, that it’s driving the ammosexuals to desperation.
Brachiator
@NotMax: Wow. That review was more interesting than the show it was rightfully knocking.
Implausible dumbness is also a good description of the Trump administration.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
School shooting?
I don’t think so
adults-there was the DC Sniper, and the guy in Dallas that they used the drone on, and the dude from California that they burned to a crisp.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Of course we can’t actually collect or analyze data on this subject, but the pre 1996 data was pretty conclusive that the more guns in an environment, the more likely accidents and suicides will result.
And I don’t want my kids to have to live surrounded by guns! I still don’t understand why people need to carry them in the first place.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Mr WereBear said the pushback on the “thoughts and prayers” whining from NRA-shills was enormous yesterday. I think a Rubicon has been crossed.
MomSense
@WereBear:
I hope so. I really do.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
To me it’s just more of what we’re willing to do to protect the gun. We can’t threaten the gun so instead we have to load up on security and put everyone who doesn’t have a gun on lockdown.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That could also describe the 2016 election.
WereBear
@MomSense: To me, Trump is so OBVIOUSLY who he is that the veil of plausible deniability has been ripped off the face of Republicanism.
This is who they are.
satby
@MomSense: I’ll believe it when all those “pro-life” voters start voting to protect lives already born. Not holding my breath.
aimai
@Baud: Its all good from the NRA’s point of view–if their customers get frightened that the democrats and society are coming for their guns they will go back to stockpiling. Its win win for them. Gun sales were crashing because the fetishists were soothed by trump. If they go back to agitation then they will start spending again.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Brenda Spencer did indeed shoot up an elementary school across the street from her home, as you will see at the Wikipedia link. She wrote to Bob Geldof from prison, to thank him for making her famous. He later said that was not a good thing to live with.
Kay
@Eural Joiner:
This one probably came up but it’s cited in every scholarly attempt to understand school shootings I’ve ever read because it was one of the first:
She famously (allegedly) said “I don’t like Mondays” as a reason.
Kay
I got an email from the local Chamber of Commerce that the sheriff is holding an “active shooter” training course for us civilians. I was personally invited to this- I’m not in the Chamber- it felt like trolling of me but that’s probably not true and I’m over-reacting.
The last time they did this they hired an “expert”, who turned out to be some grifter “consultant” who said he was a Marine veteran but was actually not a veteran at all. This time it’s just the sheriff.
Baud
@Kay: Why does the Chamber want to train civilians to become active shooters?
WereBear
@Kay: I am a child of the 80s; I like my action movies big and bold and ludicrously over-the-top.
They are not a form of government!
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Eural Joiner: Mother Jones has a data base of US mass shootings. All but two of the killers they list are male. They don’t list race of the shooter but they do link to accounts of each shooting.
Lapassionara
@rikyrah: Yea! One of the positive things I read yesterday is that people have organized voter registration drives outside theatres showing the Black Panther. I hope it breaks all records.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think it’s slowly dawning on conservatives that if they are planning on winning elections by fear-mongering on crime, ignoring mass shootings will be noticed as weird and contradictory. Donald Trump sees blood running in the streets everywhere but at the scene of a mass shooting. In that instance and that instance alone Nothing Can Be Done.
Your whole manly-men of the Right theme rings hollow if you can’t keep a 1st grader from being slaughtered, and not just “can’t” but won’t even TRY.
Schlemazel
@satby:
They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. Titus 1:16
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
Ah, when the vog comes in on little bat feet . . . And then it sits looking over harbor and city on silent paunches, I’ve heard.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
Maybe you answered me yesterday, but I will ask again
Is Black Panther coming to rural Ohio?
Can you see it where you live?
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: @Amir Khalid: And the Virginia Tech shooter was South Korean.
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
The database only lists one or two a year until 1990 (none in ’83 or ’85), and then it’s multiple mass shootings almost every year from 1991 onwards. I wonder what changed.
Eric S.
@Kay: About 4 years ago my company held active shooter training. They deemed it so vitally important that contractors – always previously excluded from any training of any kind – were required to attend.
It was 60 minutes of repeating, Run! If you can’t escape, hide. If you get found, fight. We all left thinking it was quite pathetic. Just more wasted money some executive thought should be spent after attending a conference I’m sure.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Unless it’s one that can be categorized as Muslim terrorism, like the San Bernardino incident.
Baud
God, however, steadfastly denies any knowledge of these people.
Kay
@Baud:
Hah. You know the national chamber is not the local chamber but I dropped out about 10 years ago anyway because it’s too far Right and blatantly political. It’s not the Chamber of Commerce anymore. It’s a far Right wing grifting organization. I’m keeping my 100 dollar membership, thanks. They were apologetic and shame-faced when I told them why I was quitting- they know it’s true. They have a sovereign citizen on their board who I know personally and well and he is a godammned nut case. He’s dangerous. They better take training. They are going to need it.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: I think the question is “What changed before 1991?” Because these instances have a long incubation stage.
The 1991 shooters would have been 8-10 years old in 1980, when Republicanism-as-we-know-it-now began taking over. That is a crucial stage that some theorize sets a template for the future personality.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Until we, as a nation, stop coddling the trembling fears and Walter Mitty fantasies of pathetic snowflake, camo clad, low T white men on firearms, this will continue.
In light of that, I’ll say that your best bet in a mass shooting is to scramble and run. Sheltering in place (like they do in school) increases your chance of death – when my kids were in school, I told them to ignore the commands and make their way outdoors immediately – window first, hall second. The theory is that it is hard for even trained cops or marksmen to hit a running target – an untrained nutbag is even less likely.
Sheltering in place makes you an easier target.
Kristine
Year of the Dog person here (1958). Hoping all goes well.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
Fromv the Wikipedia article on that shooting, I get the sense that he was American rather than a foreign student.
clay
@rikyrah: I am a complete mark for Marvel, but can I say that you’ve got me more excited for this movie than all of the advertising put together!
Elizabelle
Good morning, BJ pals.
Flew back from Iceland yesterday. Woke up at O dark hundred to check the news from the States, and … another mass shooting. Check. Florida school. Check. Student who was expelled from school for behavior issues and known threats against others was able to purchase an AR 15 legally 3 days (??) after. What the fuck.
I am in a really sour mood. Although glad to be back here, where I can march and protest and attend meetings.
We have gone so far backward in the last 20 to 40 years. You don’t see it as much, unless you travel through the advanced Western European democracies. They are where we should be, too.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I don’t know. I hardly ever go to movies. We have a small movie theater and there’s a larger one about 30 miles away. The larger theater is in a county that has a substantial minority population and they get newer stuff so I would imagine they;ll get it.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: He was a permanent resident who’d immigrated as a kid, not a foreign student.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Worth noting that even with the current “good” economy, we are lagging behind the economic growth rate in Europe and Asia. The media doesn’t point that out as much as they would if a Dem were president.
ETA: Have a safe trip.
laura
@rikyrah: Can’t wait for your review! Enjoy that movie.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Looking at a graph of the numbers, it looks to me more like an exponential rise with some bursty noise in it than a sudden change. There was a temporary relative lull in George W. Bush’s first term, the war-fever years, but I don’t know if it’s significant–the end of it coincides with the end of the assault-weapons ban, but there was a relatively active period during the first half of the ban era (including Columbine, which I think used weapons not covered by the ban).
And then you have the huge explosion of mass shootings with AR-15 Bushmasters just in the past several years.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Schools struggle with just that issue- they usually come down to “what is best for MOST?” just as a general leaning. They’re not really in the business of “everyone just go their own way- may the fastest runner win!” :)
The thing has this basic operating philosophy of “what about…THAT kid” – the one who can’t or won’t run- that conservatives hate but is really kind of nice. What people complain about in schools- the lack of individuality- is actually a core operating tenet of that institution. It’s a trade off. They have to accommodate ALL – that underlies everything.
It’s really hard to run a good public school. We don’t value their basic tenets, the whole world view that (ideally) grounds the thing. It is ABOUT the group. Most. That’s the trade off.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: In the early recession years, the US was hit less hard than a lot of European economies because Obama, for all we complain about the inadequate stimulus and the sequester, wasn’t as big on austerity responses as many of the European governments in place at the time.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
“Shelter in place” also came from Columbine. In that shooting, the perps intended to bomb. The guns were for students fleeing the bombs. The bombs didn’t go off so it ended up primarily as a shooting although there was damage from explosives.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: It sounds like you’re saying austerity was the correct response.
Amir Khalid
There was a post headlined Donald Trump Is a Traitor that was put up after Mayhew’s morning post on Idaho, but it’s disappeared. Deep State censorship?
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: …Also, it looks like that Mother Jones spreadsheet started including incidents with only three fatalities in recent years, which might exaggerate the increase. But there’s clearly an uptick in really huge-body-count ones too.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: Probably pulled it to prevent stomping. Cheryl is relatively new to Balloon Juice, and so she is still considerate.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Welcome back! We need your commitment and passion.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: No, the US suffered less, for several years at least. But we were behind in lots of things like infrastructure development to begin with. And our public sector did keep contracting through the recovery, which was stupid.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Still???????
Betty Cracker
@Baud: LOL! So true! I didn’t see it, but I hope it’s about the James Risen article in The Intercept, which I am reading this morning. Could be Mr. Omidyar doesn’t want The Intercept to be on the losing side of history, noted primarily for Greenwald’s Russia apologia…
Kay
There’s personal tragedies around preventing school shootings. When my middle son was in high school there was an eccentric boy who he had known since first grade. I made him invite this boy to his Christmas party and the boy’s’ mother wrote me this heart-breaking note thanking us for inviting him. Anyway- a decade later this boy is in high school and he makes a list of students he hates and my son is on the list. My son didn’t feel threatened and he though the school over-reacted by expelling the note-writer, but they have “zero tolerance” so he was expelled. So now he’s this isolated person who is tutored by the district at home and probably increasingly alienated and eventually an adult, out there with a zillion guns around – there’s just no way to win this. People get hurt. It ripples.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I’m still angry about how little credit we got for saving the country. The 2016 election really brought it all back, and now I think my feelings on the subject are immutable and permanent.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I told my kid that too — if you’re near a door or window, run like a mofo, and zig-zag while you run. (The zig-zag tactic also applies to escaping a charging alligator.)
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I managed to read it before it was pulled. It is about the Intercept article.
WereBear
@Baud: These are people who pretend FDR had nothing to do with lifting the Great Depression.
Baud
@WereBear: Yeah, but the voters recognized what he had done for at least 20 years, if not longer. Now, we don’t get more than two years, and then we get blamed for not fixing everything within that time.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: “Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!”*
*The Inlaws, original
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: It wasn’t FDR that ended the Great Depression, it was the Great Prozac that did it.
satby
@Kay: my youngest son once befriended a kid most people avoided. I was concerned when my older son said the kid had some swastika drawings in his notebook and spoke to my younger son about it. He told me “yeah, I know he had Nazi stuff in his notebook, that’s why I thought he needed a friend”. They were about 10 at the time. The other kid ended up as friends with my kid’s friends, and is basically an ok adult now. It makes such a difference when kids are kind to the odd ones. Won’t always help all of them, but maybe enough to matter.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
You went to Iceland?
While there, did you see the AURORA BOREALIS?
Is it as beautiful as it looks in pictures?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
My theory is that an active shooter loses effectiveness in chaos. It is unexpected in his deranged plans.
rikyrah
I think Kay was the one who brought up that she didn’t believe the 130K to Stormy was a payoff…it was for ‘ services rendered’
Donald Trump, a Playboy Model, and a System for Concealing Infidelity
newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-a-playboy-model-and-a-system-for-concealing-infidelity-nat…
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
And updated in one of my favorite Archer episodes.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Maybe Megan McCardle was right.
germy
Black Panther is so good, even the National Review couldn’t figure out how to give it a bad review. “Believe The Hype” they said. “Black Panther Delivers”
But then they had to go and be all National Reviewy in their analysis:
LOL
germy
@rikyrah:
It was to pay her drycleaning bill. But instead she kept the dress uncleaned and now she’s talking about DNA samples.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: They’re even better than the pictures. They change minute to minute.
Dave
@Baud: No Europe’s economy recovered more slowly than ours so he’s saying austerity was the wrong response one that we didn’t avoid completely but didn’t embrace as aggressively as most of Europe did either.
WereBear
@satby: Thank you from the bottom of my Weird Kid heart :)
WaterGirl
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Oh my god, that clip of Trump on the Kimmel link it looks like a hostage video.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker:
Serpentine, Shelly, serpentine.
My son and I would run like this for fun when he was little. I never imagined it would be real life training.
Immanentize
@WereBear: I put up the link to that clip for you and us all!
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Hello there, rikyrah. Is WAKAWANDA anything to do with Black Panther? Anyhoo, lamh36 has convinced me to see it — soon — and in 3D.
Yes, spent two nights in Keflavik (near airport) in Iceland on way home from Germany.
“Technically” I did “see” the Northern Lights, but not really. Tuesday night, we saw two kind of cloudlike things in a cold starry sky (no moon). Nothing that special. One could imagine the faintest of green tinges involved.
BUT: those who had cameras on the outing captured amazing photos, taken with a multisecond delay. The Northern Lights were more seeable by cameras than the unaided human eye that night. (I’m told conditions that night were zero to 2 on a scale of 10, and that we were fortunate to see the Lights at all. Big whoop.)
Star of the outing was three Icelandic ponies, including one with Farrah Fawcett blonde hair, who came up to the van a little later. The driver gives them snacks. Wisely, I think; gives the trip something memorable that one can actually see. (Deal is, you’re guaranteed a second outing if the lights are not out the first time. I was too cold to push the question: yes, but what if you wanted the human to see them, and not just the camera?)
Iceland was a beautiful austere landscape. The people were wonderful and friendly, and spoke English flawlessly. Cannot speak to food or wine, because did not spend on any. (Fiendishly expensive, I was a bit under the weather, and purpose of stop was to see the lights.)
Flew home on Wow Air. Liked them a lot. Low budget carrier based in Iceland; good fares (I did Wow Plus, with more luggage and a nice seat assignment; good value). Hot pink/purple planes, wonderful crew, pilots with mandatory British accents, I guess. Highly automated process: you print out your boarding passes and baggage tags and check your own bags through their system, including scanning the barcode. They experience a bit of delays in takeoff time, but are charming about it and made up the time en route yesterday.
I’d go to Iceland again, maybe in warmer weather to see it not swathed in snowcover. But take money — and they don’t do dollars and euros. (On the plus side, their coinage has fish on it. Loved it.)
Also: book the famous Blue Lagoon trip way in advance. (We didn’t go, but hear it’s amazing as well as amazingly pricy.)
WaterGirl
@Eric S.: It’s just like the mandated “ethics training” they instituted in the State of Illinois. A total waste of time – every faculty member, every employee had to sit through an hour of on-line training each year. There was a timer set, so if you just rushed through it, then they contacted you and you had to do it again. I’ll summarize the whole thing in 3 little words.
Cover. Your. Ass.
That’s what the ethics training was about for us, that’s what your active shooter training was about. I’ll bet that’s why the contractors were included, too. grumble.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I watched it live; it’s all like that. It was a truly horrid speech. I hate Trump’s guts, so I know I’m not an objective critic. But he’s not a good enough actor to fake empathy or pretend to give a shit about comforting the nation. If I were White House media guru, I’d send Trump out when the occasion calls for bullying and sneering condescension and find someone else — Pence, maybe, or pretty much any other human being — to pretend to care about other people. Even Hall of Presidents Trump would be better.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: My sister visited Iceland last year and was similarly impressed by the ponies. They are gorgeous, hardy little beasts!
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Serpentine! Serpentine!
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Dammit! I see you got there first. :-)
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: You could not pay me to watch any Trump speech (except a resignation or day of indictment one), BUT I wonder if this one put some steel in the spine of those who want to take AR 15s out of mass shooters’ hands.
I don’t watch cable, and had been abroad, but hearing about the latest mass shooting — after I got over the actual anger, I am so ready to actually go to Moms’ meetings and make myself a nuisance/presence at state and federal legislators’ offices. Virginia is ridiculous on gun laws. (And we’re home to Virginia Tech — 32 dead, by handguns.)
Opponents always count on the “there is nothing we can do” blather — which blankets the airwaves after these things — but actually, there is. Once the bubble breaks, it breaks. I think we’re getting there.
Hearing “if we didn’t do anything after 20 dead schoolchildren” — can it. That was the GOP/NRA legislators. That wasn’t “us.”
You don’t have to put up with this level of anger and insecurity in other advanced countries. We need to take our country back from those who brought us to this.
NotMax
@Kay
The national chamber has been that way for a long time. Must have been about 25 or 30 years ago when they finally stopped coming around to my business to inveigle me to join, after I told the recruiter I would sign up the day after they ceased using the term “death tax” in their literature, press releases, media appearances and testimony before Congress.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
Thanks for the report about Iceland. I have put it on the Bucket List.
Yes…Wakanda is the home country of the Black Panther.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I just can’t watch him – the only time I see him is in clips like Kimmel’s or on Stephen Colbert.
Maybe not Pence? He’s dead inside. A person might have to look long and hard to find someone in the White House that isn’t.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Stay tuned for a post on that very topic later, if I have time. I too sense a change! Also, Wayne LaPierre is scheduled to speak at CPAC later this month. Sounds like a good occasion for a massive protest, no?
WereBear
@Immanentize: Thanks!
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
Yes! Absolutely.
NotMax
@NotMax
To be crystal clear, that ‘day after’ never arrived.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: @Betty Cracker: I am reminded of a scene from Generation Kill. A platoon of Marines is running one by one thru an open area under sniper fire. The Rolling Stone reporter embedded with them does the zig zag shit. When he gets to the other side the platoon sergeant says,
“What the fuck are you doing?!?!?!?!!! Just fucking RUN!!!!!”
Or something like that.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Whoa. I am there.
I still treasure the night I was out in an Alexandria restaurant, and there was Wayne LaPierre at the next table, clearly fuming about having had an awful day. Brightened my evening even more.
We need to give that fucker, and all his ilk, a LOT of bad days.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: My father was a rifleman in WWII. He said when the german bombers appeared overhead, he’d see his friends running all over the place trying to avoid being hit. My father would crawl under a jeep and stay in one spot.
He saw his friends blown to pieces.
Hearing his stories, it’s a miracle he survived.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: You are a dear. We are meeting up again, soonest, IRL.
I am angry. It can be a useful sentiment.
James E. Powell
@satby:
I don’t say this to derail the thread or in an attempt to avoid the discussion of gun control, but it’s not just the availability of the guns, it’s the whole gun culture, and the approval of mass violence as a response to unhappiness with the state of the world. It’s a big part of American culture. I mean, they re-made Death Wish.
Elizabelle
@germy: Horrible. And why wouldn’t the Germans have bombed out a Jeep? Random death and survival.
rikyrah
Another woman shooting- Laurie Dann- shot up a school on Chicago’s North Shore in the late 1980’s.
Kay
@NotMax:
You may know this, but there are three “Chambers”- national, state and local. I quit when state went far Right political, which was I think around 2006. I only ever belonged to local. They sent a nice local man out to get me to re-up and I told him why I was quitting and he didn’t deny it’s a far Right lobbying shop now- instead he made a joke about how I could be the only Democrat – I don’t feel like paying to be their token “bipartisan” cover.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I have heard the oft repeated tale of newbie grunts going thru their first shelling and then afterwards trying to dig their way to China. A buddy of mine’s father was a B-24 waist gunner. Before his first mission he laughed at his compatriots elaborate tenting of flack vests around his position. On his return he scoured that base going thru every nook and cranny looking for every last flack vest he could lay his hands on.
satby
@James E. Powell: I agree with that too, to a point, but other countries have a violent entertainment culture and don’t have the IRL carnage we have. And the simple difference is access to weapons.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
新年快乐, y’all!
Elizabelle
@satby: Yep. It’s the guns.
How are you feeling?
NotMax
@Kay
This goes back a long way.
Investigated joining the local chamber here when first opened up my shop and chose not to after discovering that pretty much the only reason for its existence was beer blasts and golfing.
At least then; can’t speak to the present day about that.
satby
@Elizabelle: welcome back. Been enjoying your travels vicariously.
Only fair, I have the lingering cough now. But getting better. That may be my last volunteer trip for a good while though, not bouncing back like I should.
stinger
@WereBear:
And Ronald Reagan single-handedly ended the Cold War.
Elizabelle
@satby: I love that you did the volunteer work. That’s spectacular. Sorry you got the lingering cough/etc to remember the experience.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Ouch. Double ouch since I am, in fact, one of those Stana Katic fans who might have tempted to check this one out.
Miss Bianca
@germy: Oh, that there is some comedy gold.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Black Panther is coming to our nearest Cinema complex, which is only about 20 minutes away from our quite rural WV location. Debating whether to try 3-D or ordinary cinema.
Don’t know about cinema complexes further out into the countryside, will look.
Yes, it looks like all the movie theater complexes in WV with more than one projector will be showing Black Panther. The Hinton theater only has one screen, they’re going with The Shape of Water…..