My little girl is getting bigger every day.
I just needed to share one of my prouder parenting moments as a momentary break from current event craziness:
Baby’s first keg stand from oh so long ago.
Open thread
by David Anderson| 66 Comments
This post is in: Beer Blogging, Open Threads
My little girl is getting bigger every day.
I just needed to share one of my prouder parenting moments as a momentary break from current event craziness:
Baby’s first keg stand from oh so long ago.
Open thread
by $8 blue check mistermix| 57 Comments
This post is in: Are these Nazis Walter?
I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the Daily Stormer. First, GoDaddy nixed their domain. Then they moved to Google, which dropped them like a hot potato a short time after they registered. Then their site went down because CloudFlare (a caching system) puked them out like a bad clam. Then they registered themselves in Russia (of course). The Russians saw a moment for some good PR and shitcanned them this afternoon.
“Russian law has established a very strict regime for combatting any kind of extremism in the Internet,” said Aleksandr Zharov, head of the Roskomnadzor, the Russian government agency responsible for media and Internet regulation.
Don’t worry, the Nazi in charge says they’ll be up on “the darkweb” soon. Let’s face it – your average Nazi has enough problems with the “lightweb”, so I’m gonna guess that these assholes are going to lose a few readers. Not that it will make a big difference, but it’s nice to see them have to work for it.
This post is in: Because of wow., Cat Blogging, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Serenity Now!
Someone asked last night how we all cope. It’s worth considering that. Even Erick Son Of Erick tweeted that he doesn’t see how the country survives 3.5 more years of this. It’s hard on us individually, too. We need to think and act deliberately to maintain and protect our mental health. It’s different for everyone. Ric (at top) loves my orange and black caftan. Zooey likes at least partial enclosure.
As I walked out of the house to go shopping this morning, I had to stop and look at the sky and mountains and take a deep breath. I’m lucky to have great views, but there is usually something beautiful – the pattern of raindrops on asphalt or a flower peeking through cracks in concrete. I also listen to and play music – the Enigma Variations, which I posted a while back, are still in my car’s cd player, so I listened to them on the way to the store.
People are important too. I’m having lunch with a friend today, and I’ve got a bunch of connections going in different ways. The internet has been a boon to my interactions. The community here is comforting.
How do you cope?
by Betty Cracker| 163 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Assholes, General Stupidity
The only extended time I lived outside of Florida was a few years I spent in Massachusetts in the late 80s. I moved there right after college (yes, I’m old — Mr. Catch-22 himself, Emmitt Smith, was a classmate — Go Gators!).
One lovely summer day during my Beantown sojourn, some friends and I took a ferry boat to Georges Island in Boston Harbor for a picnic. I knew nothing about the place. But a nice Park Services lady told us the island had once housed Confederate prisoners of war.
There was a small, modest monument to said Confederates who had died on the island. Just 13 names. I was startled to see that one of them was from Florida, like me, and he had MY last name.
Thanks to a great-uncle who set store by such things, I was well aware at that time of my ancestry on my mom’s side of the family, which included several Confederates as well as some virtuous Revolutionary War heroes. But seeing my father’s last name on a Confederate monument — in Massachusetts, of all places — was my first inkling of Confederates in my paternal line.
I was curious enough to check it out — not easy in those pre-internet days — and it turns out, yeah, the coal-shoveller on a Confederate steamboat who died on Georges Island was a relative. I suspect his short life sucked. I further suspect the Massachusetts winter rattled his bones, maybe even killed the poor sumbitch, more than 120 years before that same chill drove his descendant, me, back home to Florida.
But should Massachusetts maintain a memorial to the likes of my unlucky relative? To be fair, it is about as inoffensive a Confederate memorial as you’ll find on the planet, comprising mostly the names of the dead, like a tombstone. But whether to remove the monument or not is apparently a controversy in Massachusetts right now.
Well, if the input of a descendant of one of the 13 Confederate dead has any weight, Massachusetts, I say take it down. Why? For starters, it was put up under the auspices of the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the less you have to do with those myth-making coots, the better.
But more importantly, the monument is injected with the same poison that blights our fate as a country — the conceit that God had any part in the foul business of the Confederacy, and the insinuation that there was anything remotely honorable or noble about “the cause” it represented.
So take it down, Massachusetts. You have the blessing and encouragement of this descendant of the dead. But more importantly, you have the moral imperative of the living, and a responsibility to those yet to be born.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
A van has crashed into a crowd in the Las Ramblas section of Barcelona.
Reports are fragmentary and contradictory on Twitter. Here is the Guardian’s article, to be updated.
Keep in mind that early reports in a situation like this are often inaccurate. There has been a report of two gunmen, but also reports that that is incorrect.
by Betty Cracker| 257 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity
Twitler’s on a tear this morning. He began by attacking two fellow Republicans (Senators Flake and Graham) and urging their constituents to boot them out of office. Then he moved on to decrying the removal of monuments to white supremacists and again compared founding fathers to the traitors who attempted to destroy the country:
Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
You know Kelly & Co. are itching to Gorilla Glue oven mitts onto Trump’s teeny-tiny hands. But I’m glad he’s letting his freak flag fly for another news cycle.
This is the unstable, vindictive, racist goon the Republican Party rallied around as their standard bearer. They should marinate in his indefensible awfulness.
He’s right about one thing — you can’t change history, but you can learn from it. I hope the lesson of the Trump Error is clear: Electing an unhinged demagogue is a catastrophic mistake, even if his opponent once used a private email server and was seen as too friendly with Wall Street types.
by David Anderson| 97 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Good News For Conservatives
Axios is getting fed a line of bull:
The White House chief strategist has told associates he never intended to do an “interview” with an editor at the American Prospect, a left-wing publication.
Bannon has told associates that he admired the author’s stance on China, and so called the journalist, Robert Kuttner, on Tuesday, to discuss his piece. Apparently Bannon never thought that the journalist might take his (very newsworthy) comments and turn them into a story. It’s Anthony Scaramucci all over again (minus the curse words.)
Bull.
I’m a health policy analyst with some press contacts but I am a virtual no one in the grand scheme of things.
I know that everything I say starting with “Hello” is on the record unless both parties specifically agree that a conversation or part of a conversation is either off the record, for background or not for attribution. Yes, I know that some of my comments will never be printed. Those are often comments regarding how freaking adorable the puppy pictures on Twitter are but everything can be printed.
Several months ago, I was in DC for work. I try to get my work down and I also try to meet with people I talk to on Twitter so I can put names and voices to Twitter accounts. I arranged a coffee with a reporter. We met and as soon as I finished stirring my coffee, the reporter had a tape recorder out just in case we discussed anything super interesting. Did that shape how I expressed some ideas? Yes, but we still had a great conversation and we both came out of it with a better understanding of the other. That’s life when talking with a reporter.