I’m not sure it is fair to say I have been awol. I just had a busy morning. I had to work on my stance, go over my playbook, and watch film to get used to Ben’s snap count and the blocking assignments, because there is a very solid chance I may be playing tackle for the Steelers in a couple weeks. At least at the rate things went last night.
I could never take the place of your man
John is one AWOL motherfucker these days.
Unfortunately, this is one of the busiest weeks of the year for me, so I can’t pick up much slack. Here’s an open thread. I’ll give you a topic to get things rolling: this is the best cover of a Beatles song ever, agree or disagree, even if it was in the worst Beatles-themed movie ever.
I could never take the place of your manPost + Comments (48)
More of this
Not to be too much of an Obot, but I’m happy to have a president who talks this way:
“You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change,” he said according to the White House pool report of the event. Texas has been hard hit in recent weeks with a series of wild fires that have only recently been brought under control.
The president didn’t limit his comments to the candidates. He also took the opportunity to address recent audience behavior at the debates, singling out those who applauded the prospect of a young man dying because he didn’t have health insurance and those who booed a gay service member.
“That’s not reflective of who we are,” the president said of the GOP audiences. “This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country. 2008 was an important direction. 2012 is a more important election.”
Open Thread
Insert Monday, sports team or hangover comments, or anything else, here.
Open Thread: Making Noise
(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)
Making A Stink in Public is a form of power, as every tantruming three-year-old discovers. The more powerful an individual, the more “right” they have — or are perceived to have — to Make A Stink. That’s why would-be Big Men make themselves unpleasant to waiters (and loathed by every other diner). It’s why Donald Trump, whose “power” is based entirely on the perception that he’s got a lot of money, is so publicly, obnoxiously obsessed with demonstrating that money gives him the right to Make A Stink in Public.
The “Rise of the Tea Party” was a public demonstration that the GOP’s voting base had the power to shut down discussion of the President’s healthcare proposals by Making A Stink in Public. As we now know, it was a demonstration (“movement”) entirely conceived, funded, and controlled by the Koch brothers and their fellow billionaires, but there were plenty of unwitting volunteers ready to stand up and Make A Stink, to out-shout everyone else’s ideas and questions with a selection of easily-memorized talking points. And the mainstream media outlets — also owned, funded, and controlled by the same small cadre of billionaires — were all too happy to concede that the Tea Party volunteers had the “right” to out-shout, to drown out, all dissenting voices.
That’s why this Spring’s Wisconsin labor protests were such an unpleasant shock, first to the major media and then to the Koch cadres funding that media. The teachers, public workers, and their supporters in Wisconsin “took back” their right to Make A Stink in Public, a tactic the Billionaire Boys Club hadn’t considered possible. But the Koch’s paid lobbyists failed in their frantic search to discover the powerful shadow elite they were sure must be puppeteering the labor protestors just as the Kochs were puppeteering the Wisconsin governor and his fellow GOP legislators. So they were forced back upon the authoritarians’ ever-ready second line of defense: Those labor protestors were unworthy of the right to Make A Stink in Public; they were ridiculous, tantrumming spoiled children, an embarrassment to their fiscal betters, in need of stern correction by a strong paternal authority.
The current GOP obsession with keeping the government from functioning uses Making A Stink in Public as its most powerful tactic, but if you listen to the Koch-bankrolled lobbyists, the Murdoch-bought media, and their wholly-owned (mostly) GOP legislators, it’s that Black guy in the White House who’s… Making A Stink in Public. Who gave him the right — the power — to stand up in public and argue against them?
Lately it occurs to me
I’m probably one of the least anti-bankster people ’round these parts, but I don’t agree with John that Occupy Wall Street is a bad idea. New York is a city that goes 80% Democrat in national elections, but it’s also where many, maybe most, Galtian overlords live. If you scare these motherfuckers enough (and I’m as nonviolent as they come, to be clear), they’ll simmer down with the fuck-the-poor, fuck-the-middle-class Pethokoukian/Santellian/Randian fantasies. An extra 3.2% on your taxes is worth if it means you can walk easily from your office to your hired car, if you’re making seven figures.
There are those who say that Broderian “purely democratic” remedies are the answer here, I’m sure. Tell that to reproductive rights providers in the Dakotas, okay?
Scare the overlords now with benign protest or scare them later with Baader-Meinhoff or scare them even later with a real reign of terror. I’ll take the first option please, but let’s stop pretending these aren’t the only options.
Update. Point taken:
Here’s the thing: Are the Galtian overlords afraid of drumming circles when they can muster the thugs/cops to pepper spray people?
Red Sox/Yankees and baseball
I think that covers it