Watching the worst bowl game ever. Rutgers and Va. tech have the worst offenses I’ve seen since, well, every Steelers game this season.
Open Thread: Something Upon Which We Can All Agree
From Gawker:
On the day of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, two new petitions were added to the Obama administration’s home-brewed “We the People” petitioning system.
One called on the White House to “immediately address the issue of gun control” through legislation; the other demanded the Westboro Baptist Church be “legally recognize[d]” as a hate group.
The former has nearly 200,000 signatures. The latter is well on its way to 300,000.
Spurred by WBC threats to picket funerals of deceased Sandy Hook victims, the petition is now officially the most popular “We the People” petition ever posted on the site since its launch in September of last year…
Apart from denigrating IRL trolls, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Open Thread: Something Upon Which We Can All AgreePost + Comments (54)
Open Thread
I stayed up half the night watching “The Walking Dead.” God, how did I get sucked into that series? I usually don’t watch serials at all, especially anything horror-tinged, but I’m hooked. They do explore some complex moral issues while hacking zombies to bits.
Open Thread: NeoFeudalists, Meet the Company Town
Hey, remember the proposed walled Citadel and its Best H.O.A. Ever? It’s an even bigger grift than it looked at first notice (surprise!). Commentor Trollhattan links to an update from the Seattle Times:
… The group has purchased 20 acres atop a mountain in the county and hopes to break ground shortly after summer 2013, the website said. More than 200 families already have applied to join the Citadel, according to its website.
The project would be a “martial endeavor designed to protect residents in times of peril” and “built as a fortified bastion of liberty,” the website says…
At least one core member lives near Coeur d’Alene, the group said. “It is our hope that the residents of Benewah County will quickly learn that our intent is to be an asset to their lives, not an intrusion,” the website said. But the project could move to Montana, Wyoming or a different Idaho county, it said.
At the center of the development is a firearms-manufacturing company, III Arms, that would employ residents and raise money to help fund the Citadel. The company was incorporated in Idaho in August, its headquarters listed in Gaithersburg, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C.…
Foxconn must be sooo jealous. Sure, they have a captive workforce living in company dormitories bound by company rules, but I don’t think they’ve been able to demand their serfs buy Apple products as a condition of employment.
One or two square miles of the Citadel would be protected by walls and towers, the website said, adding that the community “intends to become a premiere tourist destination for Americans from sea to sea and border-to-border.”…
The application, with a $208 fee, asks if the person plans to raise livestock, farm or start a business at the Citadel. Residents also can choose to live inside or outside the community’s walls….
My emphases. You can join the Society for Creative Anachronism for only $45 — maximum family fee $75 — you won’t have to move to Idaho to participate, and you get to design your own coat of arms. On the other hand, SCAdians don’t encourage gunplay, at least with live rounds, which I guess is key to some peoples’ enjoyment.
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Outside the Barony of Ye Gonne (Pratchett joke), what’s on the agenda tonight?
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Thursday Evening Open Thread: Willard Expects
Because there are some indulgences that can’t be resisted, I share. Mr. Charles P. Pierce indulges in a victory tap-dance on the corpse of the Romney family’s ambitions:
“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire… to run. If he could have found someone else to take his place… he would have been ecstatic to step aside…(Willard) is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them. He loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention.”
Now, ever since this quote hit the papers, young Tagg has been the subject of much mockery and ridicule, and suggestions that he join that nice Mr. Aesop in the Produce section, over by the grapes. It has been hinted that Tagg has the same largely accidental relationship with the truth that his father so vividly demonstrated over the five years in which he pursued the job he really didn’t want anyway. I choose to believe Tagg Romney entirely. Willard Romney didn’t want to be president. Willard Romney expected to be president, and that was his real undoing.
It has been years, probably, since Willard had to go to all the emotional fuss and bother of actually wanting something. If there was something that caught his eye — a slow-moving company’s fat pension fund, a nice house in La Jolla, the governor’s office in Massachusetts — there would be a deal to be struck and whatever it was that should be his would be his. This is not a man who tolerates disappointment well, not because he burns with ambition and avarice — although he profited for years from very effective simulacrums of ambition and avarice –but, rather, because he rarely has experienced disappointment in his life. He does not want. He expects….
Also to be savored, the japester who visited LGM’s comment section:
My friends, those of you who are parents can certainly appreciate the enthusiasm with which your children might rise to your defense and the defense of the vast monies and business contacts they stand to inherit. All five of our boys–Tagg, Nog, Zip, Korg, and Biff–are good boys, despite their near-pathological habit of lying to me at each and every turn. But I wanted to take this opportunity to speak to you all here, at my favorite blog of the 47% who are unstoppably bound to government largesse, and explain what Tagg meant…
Thursday Evening Open Thread: Willard <em>Expects</em>Post + Comments (64)
Serious Interlude: AIDS Isn’t Over
Commentor Keith G posted on Xmas Eve:
There are a handful of places that, aside for holiday decor, continue to do what they do without regard to seasonal festivities.
A hospice is one such place.
Today we did what we do. We provided a warm and caring place for a family to gather as their loved one died – which she did at 9:13 AM. With hugs and tears we comforted the family and they in turn comforted us. The heartfelt thanks from everyone of the family was the best present I could think of receiving.
Later on, we sat down to share a pork loin roast (brined with my special recipe), dressing, wild rice, and greens.
Tomorrow back at the hospice which is located in an historic home built in 1919. A grand holiday buffet will be provided to staff, residents and families by a local gay bar (we are a nonprofit serving patients who are fighting AIDS).
Which reminded me that I hadn’t posted a link to Harold Pollack’s piece at the Washington Monthly
AIDS Is Still with Us, Still Taking Too Many Lives
Overshadowed by the tragedy in Newtown and the fiscal cliff farce, CDC’s latest report–Estimated HIV incidence in the United States: 2007-2010–didn’t get the attention it deserves…Recent news is not very surprising. It is not especially good, either. An estimated 47,500 Americans became HIV-infected in 2010, about the same number of new infections as occurred in 2007.
Call These Fuckers
According to Ari Melber, this group of tradition fetishists “on the fence” about filibuster reform. If one of them represents you, call their office and tell them to get off the fence.
I don’t know what Boxer is doing in this group, but is anyone surprised to see DiFi? At the moment, she’s arguing that we don’t need to have any privacy amendments on the FISA re-authorization. Pat Leahy is about as bad. Both of them represent blue states, and both would have to be found in bed with kiddie porn, a case of roofies, six minor children and a couple of fifths of tequila in order to lose a seat, yet their fingerprints seem to be on every piece of shit that emanates from our most deliberative body.