Remember when I first got Steve and he never meowed? He was just saving it up. Chattiest cat ever.
Three earworms I have had all day:
Random.
This post is in: Open Threads
Remember when I first got Steve and he never meowed? He was just saving it up. Chattiest cat ever.
Three earworms I have had all day:
Random.
This post is in: Open Threads, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Decline and Fall, Security Theatre
As wise observers pointed out post-9/11, if you give every local police force military toys, some proportion — the least suitable — will find the use of their new toys irresistable. Here’s Mr. Charles P. Pierce, on the worst HOA-enabling Small Gubmint supremacists ever:
… Speaking of the harmless behavior of a small group of people different from ourselves, let’s move a few degrees south to Texas, where the essential logic of the “war” on drugs itself played out as The Powell Doctrine of massive force was employed against… okra.
They came here under the guise that we were doing a drug trafficking, marijuana-growing operation,” said owner Shellie Smith. “They destroyed everything.” An Arlington police investigator laid out her marijuana suspicions and probable cause in a search warrant It was signed by a judge on August 1. The SWAT Team then went to the property on Mansfield Cardinal Road one day later to execute the warrant around 7:30 a.m. They found nothing….
According to inventory documents, some of the items seized included compost, wooden pallets, and furniture. Smith said code officials took away their food, and everything they need for a sustainable lifestyle….
“There were 15 to 20 blackberry bushes. There were sunflowers for our bees and gifting. Lots of okra, and we had a sweet potato patch that they whacked down with a Weed-Eater,” Smith said. “The weeds that we used to shade our crops are also gone.” City of Arlington spokeswoman Sana Syed said the Garden of Eden has been cited for numerous violations since 2011, and that the owner refused to make changes. “The purpose was to improve the quality of life, to resolve life safety issues within neighborhoods and to hold the property owner responsible for creating blight conditions on their property,” Syed said in a written statement.
Wait. What’s this about safety regulations? I thought it was to see if there was a “drug trafficking, marijuana-growing operation” going on there. That’s what the warrant said. You’d almost think that the “war” of drugs was just a front for busybodies. Letting a SWAT team enforce violations of a city’s zoning and health regulations is not something I would expect from a small-government state like Texas. I look forward to the first traffic stop that occasions the arrival of a Huey gunship…
Open Thread: SWAT Teams Against <del>Drugs</del> OkraPost + Comments (107)
This post is in: Open Threads
So in a development that stunned NO ONE, the members panel found MAJ Nidal Hassan guilty on all 13 charges and specifications of premeditated murder and 32 charges and specifications of attempted premeditated murder. MAJ Hassan did not put on a defense case. Nor did he question any of the government’s witnesses. During his opening statement he said “I am the shooter.” Also, SSG Robert Bales, having plead guilty to multiple counts of premeditated murder and other charges, thereby avoiding the death penalty, was today sentenced to life without parole for the murders of 16 Afghan civilians last year.
Proving once again just how batshit insane he is, my junior Senator, Tom Coburn recently said that he considers President Obama a friend, and that he has no idea what if anything the President might have done to warrant impeachment, but some of the rumors on far right websites and blogs are perilously close to impeachment. Remember kids, he’s the honest one.
I am going to see The World’s End and Kick Ass 2 this weekend. Or I’m doing laundry. Probably laundry. What plans do you all have?
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement
.
Eugene Robinson, in the Washington Post:
… No matter how contemptuous they may be about Obamacare, opponents have only two viable options: Repeal it or get over it.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) the Canadian American who appears to be running for president, has grabbed headlines and air time by being the loudest advocate of an alleged third option: Congress could refuse to fund Obamacare, thereby starving it and effectively killing it. This is a ridiculous fantasy, as Cruz, who has brains beneath all that bombast, surely knows.
Congress needs to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government beyond Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The idea, if you can call it one, is that Republicans can refuse to pass any funding bill that contains money for implementing Obamacare…Cruz gets to preen before a national audience and demonstrate the fervor of his opposition to Obama and all that he stands for. “If you have an impasse, you know, one side or the other has to blink,” he said recently. “How do we win this fight? Don’t blink.”
The GOP establishment is blinking like crazy. Trying to defund Obamacare has little support among Republicans in the Senate. “I’m for stopping Obamacare, but shutting down the government will not stop Obamacare,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said recently, demonstrating a grasp of reality.
The Republican majority in the House, though, is . . . what’s the word? Unpredictable? Uncontrollable? Unhinged? They pay little attention to wise political advice and less attention to their leader, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. And while they can’t lay a glove on Obamacare, they’re fully capable of knocking themselves out.
Apart from cheering confusion to our enemies, what’s on the agenda for the end of the work week?
Open Thread: Seizing Control of the Wheel of the GOP Clown CarPost + Comments (141)
This post is in: Open Threads, Popular Culture
Phbbt to you outraged Batman fans — at least Ben Affleck is always worth looking at, and he’s a competent actor. This, per the Atlantic Wire, is an outrage against at least four of the nine Muses:
Small child Sophia Grace Brownlee, she of Ellen appearances and tutus and “Super Bass” covers, has been cast in Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Entertainment Weekly has confirmed. The news confirms that the cinematic approach to this classic musical is completely off.
Okay, so it might sound like we’re being complete jerks to an innocent child, but it’s not really Sophia Grace’s fault. She’s just a kid who gets a chance to star in a movie with Meryl Streep. So, note that all our complaints are directed toward Disney and Rob Marshall. Brownlee is simply wrong for the role. As Erin Strecker at EW points out: she’s 10. Sure, the character cutely chirps the show’s titular “into the woods” chorus, but the Red of the musical also has a thinly disguised sexual flirtation with the show’s Wolf, who will be played by Johnny Depp. It’s, yes, supposed to be creepy, but Red is typically played by a teenager or a young-looking adult—Danielle Ferland was 16 when she appeared in the original Broadway cast—making it not that creepy. So either the movie has to be really creepy, or do away with those sexual undertones, which are ultimately important in context.
Aside from that, while Brownlee can surely belt, singing Sondheim is not that simple. It’s all about phrasing, and, let’s face it, Brownlee (who takes large gasps for air when she sings) doesn’t have great technique. The charm of her viral videos is not that she’s fantastic, it’s that she’s enthusiastic. Enthusiasm does not a Sondheim star make. And who knows if she can sit still long enough for Anna Kendrick’s Cinderella to sing No One is Alone to her…
“Isn’t it nice to know a lot… And a little bit — not.”
Late Night Unholy Hollywood Miscasting ThreadPost + Comments (43)
This post is in: Open Threads, Bring On The Meteor
Ben Affleck will portray Batman in the upcoming movie.
The actor will replace Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in the upcoming untitled Superman-Batman feature for Warner Bros., the studio announced Thursday.
So, Ben Affleck is the Batman we get, not the Batman we want or need or…something.
Look, in movies that he directs, he’s been fracking awesome. I LOVED “The Town” and “Gone, Baby Gone” and “Argo” was a great story well told even if it was a little changed from history.
But this? I don’t see it.
Michael Keaton worked as Batman precisely because he was older and had not done super hero or action type movies before, so when he walked around as Bruce Wayne it worked, and when he put on the mask and cape, it looked like Bruce Wayne in a mask and cape and not some super hero. It was realistic in other words. The counter-intuitive casting worked really well for that movie, and he did an excellent job playing straight man to Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I suppose I’ll have to hope for lightning to strike twice.
This post is in: Food, Open Threads
From the BBC (h/t commentor Scav):
Truly an ancient art, no-one really knows exactly when humans began making cheese.
But now milk extracts have been identified on 34 perforated pottery vessels or “cheese-strainers”, which date back 7,500 years that have been excavated in Poland.
It is unambiguous evidence for cheese-making in northern Europe during Neolithic times, scientists believe, and the findings have been published in the scientific journal Nature.
“We analysed some fragments of pottery from the region of Kuyavia [Poland] pierced with small holes that looked like modern cheese-strainers,” says Melanie Salque, a postgraduate student at the University of Bristol’s Department of Chemistry….
Ms Salque and her team then analysed lipid residues on the vessels and detected milk residues, which they say provides a link to cheese-making…
“I think we can say that it’s a key Neolithic innovation to be able to produce a storable product from something perishable and hard to handle like milk, and to do it routinely and repetitively, with continual refinement and that within a few millennia after the domestication of cattle, sheep, and goats we can talk about cheese production.”….
Speaking of cheese — what’s for dinner?
Open Thread: Blessed Are the Cheese-StrainersPost + Comments (71)