A day and a half left of 2013 – what’s on your mind?
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
One Toke Over the Line
Here’s Ted Cruz talking about renouncing his Canadian citizenship. He, Princeton ’92 (cum laude), Harvard Law ’95 (summa cum laude) didn’t know he was automatically a dual citizen because his mother told him otherwise. So now, 42 years after his birth, he’s taking steps to deal with the situation, even though he says “My political perspective is focused on representing the State of Texas.”
And here’s Ted Cruz again, focusing on representing the State of Texas by giving an exclusive interview to stenographer/fellator Jonathan Karl, telling us that he doesn’t regret a single thing about his Tortilla Coast putsch, and isn’t it a funny thing that his coloring book is the top-selling coloring book on Amazon. That said, Ted does not agree with the coloring book that Obamacare is worse than any war. Everyone knows that the Civil War was worse than Obamacare because Ted’s side lost.
At what point do the starfuckers in DC realize that this obviously ridiculous human being is ridiculous? I’m thinking he’s about at his Rand Paul moment, to name another ridiculous figure who was their crush for a few months, until he repudiated the Civil Rights Act.
By the way, don’t miss the reviews of Ted’s coloring book on Amazon. Along with one of the reviewers, I do wonder who thought that partial birth abortion was appropriate in a coloring book for kids, though it will probably justify the purchase of a 120 crayon Crayola set.
Complications, Complications
I decided to convene a death panel of one and pull the plug on my ancient LaserJet printer this morning. It had been printing in funny colors for a long time, and today it started leaving poop marks on the page. I’ve cleaned it out and changed cartridges and it’s still doing it, so euthanasia was the answer.
The new HP Color LaserJet I purchased was cheap (since it’s just a ploy to get you to buy cartridges — a full cartridge load costs more than the printer) and full of features. You can print from a smartphone, from anywhere on earth, using Google Cloud Print or HP’s ePrint. You can print over a wired or wireless network, or directly connected to your computer.
It’s a great device, but I have no idea how regular folks configure the damn thing. This is the second HP networked color printer I’ve set up this year (the other was for my brother) and both of them have required a little bit of troubleshooting and basic network configuration. Two different networks, two different PCs (a Mac and a Windows 7 machine) and two problems. The fix involved stuff I’ve done for 20+ years so it wasn’t a big deal, but I know that Joe Average Computer User would have been stuck.
These are the bog-standard, entry-level HP devices. Millions are sold every year. I either hit the jackpot twice, or people are spending many hours on the phone talking to HP support to get these printers working. I wonder how many other devices are like this.
Here’s another open thread to discuss your computer woes, or anything else.
It’s the Suburbs, Not the Kids
Clive Thompson at Wired has a piece debunking the notion that the time kids are spending so much time on social media that they are losing their social skills:
If kids can’t socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd—full disclosure, a friend of mine—has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives.
What she has found, over and over, is that teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won’t let them. “Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other,” Boyd says. “They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.”
Kids live in suburbs with very few gathering areas, and the areas that exist aren’t within walking distance of most houses. So you need some kind of wheeled transportation to get to those places. But it’s “too dangerous” for the kids to ride their bikes by themselves, so they’re isolated in their big suburban houses every day after school. In the late 90’s, they used AOL instant messenger, then they transitioned to texting, then Facebook, then Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. They don’t use those tools because they are some kind of fucked-up devil spawn, but because their opportunities to socialize are limited by car culture and fear.
South Dakota Spoiler Alert
Larry Pressler, former Republican Senator, crush of every South Dakota grandmother, and perhaps the dumbest Rhodes Scholar who ever lived, is running as an Independent in the South Dakota Senate race. Halle-fucking-lujah, say I, but, unfortunately, Larry’s been a bad, bad boy:
South Dakota never has elected an independent to the Senate, and Pressler knows he’s a long shot. But he said his experience as a campaigner and senator give him a shot at winning a three-way race.
“I think there’s an increased level of people wanting an alternative to the Republican-Democrat thing,” Pressler said.
Lloyd Ringrose, a Sioux Falls Republican who came to Pressler’s announcement, said he liked Pressler in the 1990s and voted for him. But when told Pressler had endorsed Obama, Ringrose was shocked.
“I’m afraid Mr. Pressler just lost my vote, but I’ll hear what he has to say,” Ringrose said before the speech.
This breathes new life into a campaign that was going to be an easy pick up for Republicans by former Republican Governor Mike Rounds. Rick Weiland, the presumptive Democratic nominee, must have been very good indeed for Santa to bring him this present.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that in addition to the toxic Obama endorsements, Larry has been killing what little was left of his Dakota political credibility by working as an East Coast lawyer since he lost to Tim Johnson in 1996. I doubt that he’ll even rise to the level of spoiler, because by the time he was voted out of office, everyone was pretty sick of the guy. He was honest–his main political distinction is that he was perhaps the only member of Congress to refuse an ABSCAM bribe–but he was also useless at bringing home the bacon and his retail political skills didn’t go much further than his pretty face. Still, this is good news for Democrats in a place where there isn’t a lot of it around.
Broadband as Today’s Electricity
Here are nine minutes well spent with Susan Crawford, formerly President Obama’s Special Assistant for Science Technology and Innovation Policy, who’s just written a book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Gilded Age. Two points in this interview stood out, at least for me. First, Internet providers are being treated the way that power companies were once treated — as independent monopolies with vast power, free to set prices and determine service levels in the areas they control. Just as those power monopolies were brought under control by government regulation, the Comcasts and Time-Warners of the world need a good dose of regulation so we aren’t stuck with a second- or third-world Internet infrastructure. Second, she’s given up on Congress and is looking to mayors to set the standard for dealing with Internet monopolists by installing community fiber.
Advancing the Gay Agenda
You might have seen this picture of a Boy Scout and his leader (in the rainbow kerchief) distributing pizzas at the Salt Lake County Clerk’s office after Utah’s ban on gay marriage was overturned. Here’s the backstory on the leader, Peter Brownstein and his son Michael, an Eagle Scout:
As leader of Boy Scout Troop 351, he’s long advocated for the Scouts to accept all boys and men into the organization. He was reprimanded last June for participating in full uniform in the Utah pride parade in Salt Lake City.
“We are very disappointed that you used Scouting to advance the gay agenda,” wrote Bry Davis, council president, and Rick Barnes, Scout executive.
The United Jewish Federation of Utah, the sponsor of Troop 351, suspended all its activities in September. Executive Director Alex Shapiro said the federation does not discriminate against any groups. He said the troop was shut down because families of the Scouts felt Brownstein’s focus had shifted away from their children.
“It is true that Troop 351 is no longer active, however, that was a decision that was made solely by the Scout families and did not involve the federation,” Shapiro said.
In a few years when gay marriage is just “marriage”, there’s going to be a reckoning. Rick Barnes and Bry Davis will be on one side of history, and Peter Brownstein will be on the other.
(via OTB)