FIRST DRAFT

Weiner whips it out

Yeah, I know ,I don't have any class but I never claimed to. Neither, however, does Anthony Weiner. Chutzpah? Absolutely. Class? Absolutely not.

You would think that tweeting pictures of your junk would disqualify you from being Mayor of Noo Yawk, not because it's skeezy and creepy-which is it-but because it's STUPID.

The real reason that I'm pulling against the Hot Dog Man is the way he won his first electoral victory by race baiting. You know, before he was briefly a left wing cable news icon. Here's how Steve Kornacki described it in Salon before *he* was a cable news icon:

It was at this point that Weiner’s campaign decided to blanket the district with leaflets attacking his opponents. But these were no ordinary campaign attacks: They played the race card, and at a very sensitive time. They were also anonymous.

Just weeks earlier, the Crown Heights riot — a deadly, days-long affair that brought to the surface long-standing tension between the area’s black and Jewish populations — had played out a few miles away from the 48th District. The episode had gripped all of New York and had been national news. It was just days after order had been restored that Weiner’s campaign distributed its anonymous leaflets, which linked Cohen — whose voters he was targeting in particular — to Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins, who was then New York’s mayor. It is hard to imagine two more-hated political figures in the 48th District at that moment. Jackson just a few years earlier had called New York “Hymie town,” and it was an article of faith among white voters in Weiner’s part of Brooklyn that Dinkins had protected the black rioters in Crown Heights — and thus endangered the white population — by refusing to order a harsh police crackdown. (Two years later, Dinkins would lose to Rudy Giuliani by an 80-20 percent margin in the 48th District.) The leaflets urged voters to “just say no” to the “Jackson-Dinkins agenda” that Cohen supposedly represented. At City Hall, Dinkins held up the flier and branded it “hateful.”

It’s impossible to say what precise effect this all had on the election, but it clearly didn’t hurt Weiner. In a surprise result, he finished in first place — 125 votes ahead of Garson, and 195 ahead of Cohen. Only after the ballots were counted did he admit that he’d been behind the leaflets, claiming that “We didn’t want the source to be confused with the message.” This prompted an editorial rebuke from the New York Times, which noted that “Mr. Weiner’s hit-and-run tactics tarnish his come-from-behind campaign.”

I'm interested in hearing what our New York readers think of the Weiner mobile rolling towards Gracie Mansion or something along those lines...

Another Day, Another Online Beating for Sen. Flaming Bag of Dogshit

The commenters aren't getting any friendlier: 

What does God say about hoarding? Need a reminder? DON'T. What does God say about leaving the f'ing corners of your fields for the widows and poor????? Withholding aid to those in need is a sin. Call yourself whatever the hell you want, but I call you a hypocrite who is going to face the wrath of the God that you claim to serve. FEEL THE BURN.

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Hilarious that people on this thread are defending that they don't want government money but want other people's money in the form of PRIVATE DONATIONS. 

What the heck do you think PRIVATE DONATIONS are?? Other people's money you shouldn't have either!

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Witholding money from the victims is disgraceful because you are afraid of pork being put into the bill?? Well, it's time you politicians hold each others feet to the fire. No pork in any bill and then you can actually pass bills. Shame on all of you!!!!!! You are all a total disgrace!

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People need help now. The government is supposed to provide for the safety of the people. Let's not muddle it up with politics. Give Oklahomans what they need to get up and running. Tackle the budget on the other days. Stop waiting to hold needy people hostage for help so we can clean up our budget - something that's your job on every day that ends in "Y" anyway...

A. 

A polite smackdown

I am on record as loathing CNN's bombastic and pompous anchor critter, Wolf Blitzer. I recall when Bernie Shaw and Judy Woodruff were the faces of that network and Wolf's, uh, stature is evidence of the decline and fall of the CNN brand. His, uh, eminence there could also serve as a refutation of the theory of evolution but I'm not going there.

Back to the post title. Wolfie is a champion conclusion jumper and he assumed that a woman in Moore, Oklahoma would be a biblethumper who would speak in tongues and bathe in the blood of the lamb. Instead, he met Rebecca Vitsmun who is a bona fide atheist:

   

What a wonderful moment. I suspect Rebecca's baby would score higher on Jeopardy that Wolf did. I only hope that Senator Flaming Bag of Shit (tm Athenae) and his colleague Dim Jim Inhofe do not declare her to be an honorary New Jerseyite hence unworthy of federal funding. Yeah, I exaggerate but only a bit...

Btw, Coburn and Inhofe are *worse* when it comes to disaster relief than Diaper Dave. The latter at least feigns gratitude for the federal dollars that have flowed Gret Stet-ward after our manifold recent disasters. In contrast, Coburn and Inhofe continue to, uh, cry wolf:

 

God's Plans

"Even our savior on the cross believed that the Lord had forsaken Him." 

"You don't want to try that with me. It was all over for Jesus in three days." 

-- Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

I often wonder why nobody has politely suggested to Him that He let somebody else plan the damn parties from now on, because when He does, we always run out of beer early and somebody winds up having to drag a goat out of the swimming pool: 

Abed, the truck driver, said that God, not he, had caused the crash (adding that he had lived an unholy life before the crash, partying in Tel Aviv and Haifa). He did not note that he had ignored large yellow signs instructing him to shift his truck into a low gear (evidenced by police photographs of his brake pads). And he did not note that he had already been guilty, at age 25, of 26 driving violations.

But I noted these things. And what for so many years had seemed to point to the arbitrariness of life was soon evidence of the opposite -- my broken neck the almost inevitable consequence not of a divine plan, but of a reckless driver, a truck loaded with four tons of tiles, a backseat with no headrest, and a dangerous road. And it was out of this recognition that the narrative of a slim book grew, careful always to make sense, to reflect, to contextualize -- the obvious efforts of a once passive victim to exert agency over an ungovernable act.

That agency is important for the writer. It is what enables him or her to wring meaning from facts and observations, and then be free of them. And because agency informs the narrative, it is important for the reader too. Millennia after Job suffered, my Chasidic crash-mates put him forth to me as an example of faith in the face of sorrow. But he had ached to write his own narrative too.

Can I be blunt? People who say "it's God's plan" to you after something shitty happens are assholes. They just are. Assholes who just want you to stop being so damn SAD. Assholes who don't know what to say and so instead of saying nothing say the thing they've heard a thousand times that everybody says that means nothing and helps not a whit. 

God may, indeed, have a plan. You may, indeed, come to believe that, in your searching to make sense of the lousy way your life has twisted this week. But nobody else gets to make that decision for you. Nobody else gets to suggest how you think, or how you grieve, or how you believe or don't believe. Trust in God? What is that, an order? Is this my inherent rebellion against authority, that I hear somebody tell me to trust in God and want to say NO just to piss them off? 

It's not as if I'm unfamiliar with the benefits of the concept. One of the great solaces of my life during a really, really crappy time of it was looking upward and saying, "KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF, YOU JACKASS, GO FUCK WITH SOMEBODY ELSE FOR A WHILE." The best part of belief, for me then, was having somebody to argue with, kick, and blame. I know people who've been made immensely happy and peaceful by the idea that somewhere in their suffering is a deeper meaning. I have no quarrel with them.

For me the key is the same as the author's above: The agency of the thing. I don't like the idea that we're not in charge of our own lives. I don't like being absolved of responsibility. I don't want to kick back and let God handle things. I guess I am a spiritual control freak. Besides, the couple of times I have let Jesus take the wheel, He's wrapped the Porsche around a tree and staggered off into the woods singing Danny Boy, leaving me to wait for the cops.

I know, okay, that we're trying to make sense of things. And I know that most of our stories, most of our poetry that we call scriptures, is the way that people made sense of the world and still make sense of things they can't understand. What frustrates me is the unwillingness to let things NOT make sense. Things don't make sense. Why do they have to? The universe is awful and random and life is short and it sucks a lot of the time. Why, why, why shove a God with a plan in there? To make it bearable? Does it make it bearable?

It doesn't, for me. I despise easy answers. I loathe them. They make me want to hit things. I get so angry at the harmless people saying the harmless shit everybody says, the "thoughts and prayers," the "God's will," the "trust that there's a deeper meaning in some dead kids," the comparisons to Job and Lazarus. Did either of them ask to play a part in this mess? Did anybody ever bother finding out if THEY thought it was all worth it? 

Or is that just something we said to make ourselves feel better? And if so, how dare we make this all about us? 

A. 

Album Cover Art Wednesday: Feats Don't Fail Me Now

I used to have a promotional poster for this LP hanging on my wall eons ago. I have no idea whatever happened to it, but the image of GW and Marilyn cruising together still makes me smile. It's another cover by Neon Park who did a lot of work for LA rockers such as Little Feat:

Here's the entire classic elpee featuring some of Lowell George's best work:

 

Sen. Inhofe is Dumber Than a Flaming Bag of Dogshit

Apparently we de-annexed or excommunicated or whatever the Virgin Islands, because we don't have any responsibility to take care of them anymore: 

“[Sandy aid] was totally different,” Inhofe said on MSNBC Tuesday morning. “They were getting things, for instance, that was supposed to be in New Jersey. They had things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Why, it's almost as if the Virgin Islands are part of the US or something. And were affected by the hurricane, as was Washington, DC. What a garden weasel. At least Coburn knows what country he's in.

A.  

Quote Of The Day: Tory Grandee Edition

I have a friend who maintains that mainstream European Conservatives aren't all that wingnutty. I hope that he's paying attention to the intra-Tory party debate over marriage equality. Here's what former Party Chairman and Thatcher intimate, Lord Norman Tebbit had to say yesterday:

"When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?"

 I wonder if ole Norm has been trading emails with Rick Santorum? If Tebbit weren't such an old fart, I'd accuse him of being the love child of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell but he is, so I won't.

God save the lesbian queen. England is definitely screaming and this subject has made Norman a moron to paraphrase the Sex Pistols:

 

Sen. Flaming Bag of Dogshit is All Butthurt Over People Asking Questions

How dare journalists question his stance on disaster relief after a disaster in his state: 

Funding questions show the crassness of Washington over the sensitivity we need for Oklahoma. 

Oklahoma does, indeed, need "sensitivity." They also need money. Lots of it. In quantities you really only want the federal government to be able to distribute with all due speed. 

And I fail to see how it's insensitive to ask when the damn money comin' given that serving his constituents is Coburn's entire goddamn job. This is what politics IS, making decisions about what money goes to what. If reporters were haranguing this nice lady and her dog, I could see the issue, but Tom Coburn is in government, he should get used to people speaking to him about things that matter. 

Was Coburn flattened by a tornado recently? Did he lose everything he had? Is his car in the neighbor's tree? Christ, what, are we supposed to observe a moment of silence for his ears having been assualted by the sound of words? 

The commenters are even unkinder to his follow-up effort: 

How about the crassness of our Oklahoma politicians who would limit the needed help to our fellow Oklahomans, only to make a political point. If a vote for additional aid helps one person, it is worth it, even of it slightly elevates our debt. To limit it is what is crass...

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Funding questions show the crassness of degenerates like you. Not Washington; you. It is you, Senator, who needs to focus on recovery and not play dirty politics in the midst of tragedy. Shame on you, Senator. We all know what you really care about, and it is not your constituents.

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Its absolutely unconscionable for you to say that any funding for disaster relief should be offset,sen. vote for the funding stop playing politic, and s the people in Oklahoma need tornado shelters I think its despicable for you Politicians to not have shelters for the schools you all are shameful

A. 

Sen. Flaming Bag of Dogshit's Facebook Page Getting Slammed

Surprisingly, people are not satisfied by his "thoughts and prayers:" 

Your thoughts and prayers are wonderful, Senator, but they're not going to house, feed, and clothe the families that lost their homes. It is not governmental overreach to help those in need after a natural disaster--it's just common decency. It's sad that you are so invested in this selfish Libertopian delusion that you won't allow people who need help to be helped.

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You are posting a link to tell people how to help the folks who voted for you? Are you kidding me? Try doing your job Senator. Try upholding your oath of office and helping your constituents. Stop playing politics when people, your people, are in need. What you are broadcasting loud and clear is you hate this administration more than you want to help those who need it. You are pathetic.

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We have a national government to provide necessary assistance after natural disasters along with its other duties. If this wasn't true, we would need to come up with an alternate national system to help with the problem. We could call it, oh, how about "national government." Sometimes local problems are too big to be dealt with locally. That's what the national government is for. I learned this in 9th grade civics class in a public school. What was your grade in civics?\

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"Thoughts?" Yeah, they surely need your "thoughts," Senator. But after you're done thinking, they're going to need cold, hard cash for medical care, disaster relief, and rebuilding. So get off your cold-hearted a**s and do the right thing -- and the next time you're tempted to kick people in NY or NJ to the curb, remember what we all did for YOU. We're the "United" states, remember?

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Dear Senator Coburn, I noticed you are sending prayers to those affected by the tornado. Just wondering, what prayers were cut so that you could afford to pray for these victims? I am afraid that, somewhere, an orphanage that needs prayers might be burning. If I may suggest, sir, could you maybe offset the necessary prayers by sacrificing those you're about to use to keep your job? Surely a man as righteous as you has God on his side and can withstand a slight personal prayer deficit. Just a thought. Continue being a festering herpe on the penis of everything for which this country stands. Yours in Christ.

A.

Sen. Tom Coburn is a Flaming Bag of Dogshit

Or, at the very least, needs to fire his press secretary: 

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn will seek to offset federal aid to victims of a massive tornado that blasted through Oklahoma City suburbs on Monday with cuts elsewhere in the budget.

"That's always been his position [to offset disaster aid]," a spokesman told the Huffington Post Monday night. "He supported offsets to the bill funding the OKC bombing recovery effort."

Coburn, who intends to retire in 2016, joined his fellow Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) last year in supporting an amendment that would have substantially cut a package of $60 billion dollars intended for reconstruction of the East Coast in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. 

If you are not a cactus-brained sociopath and actually want to help in OK, which got nailed today, try here. 

A. 

Mad Men Thread: The Crash

Style and substance go hand in hand in the best episodes of Mad Men. It is *always*stylish in a variety of ways and sometimes style overwhelms substance, The Crash is one of those episodes. It's made up of some great moments: Kenny Cosgrove tap dancing and pretty much everything involving my boy Stan. BUT it didn't hold up that well on a second viewing as the best episodes do.

The style was trippy, man. The shots adminstered by Cutler's Doctor Feelgood got them fired up and ready to go. Without Joan and Ted in the office, there was no adult supervision so it was anything goes writ large only without a glimspse of stocking, which come to think of it, would not be shocking in 1968.

In the spirit of the episode, I'm writing in short bursts and may not even proof read. You're probably asking, and that's different, how? On with the show this is it:

This is your mind on drugs: The Mad Men labored all weekend and produced gibberish. Ted was disgusted that they even misspelled Chevy. But Ginsburg was sober and his work sucked too. So it goes.

Slow train to Snoozevile: I've never been a fan of the Draper flashbacks and these were pretty boring. Also, neither Dr. A nor I think that that kid is handsome enough to be Don Fucking Draper. Enough with the heavy handed hooker analogies. Oy.

Stalkers and Peepers: Don is stalking Sylvia and littering outside her door. Of course, some smokers don't consider their butts to be litter. They're wrong. The Pegster catches Cutler watching Stan and Gleason's hippie daughter having at it. It's his partner's kid. Gross.

Are we negroes? Bobby had the best line during the bogus Grandma Ida's crime spree in the Draper's luxury digs. This was entertaining but Sally was wasted. More and better Sally and now, Mr Weiner. I expect to see her smoking weed with Weird Glen some time soon...

Mother's little helper: Betty is blond and has shed January Jones' pregnancy weight. I wonder if she got some help from Cutler's quack?

Culture watch: The Draper younguns watched The Prisoner while Megan donned her go-go boots. Hmm, I wonder if she knows how to ride a unicycle? 

The manic style of the episode was entertaining, but it was really much ado about nothing other than Gleason's passing and Don's foisting the Vega campaign on Teddy Turtleneck.

What a drag it is getting old:

  

A Poor Neighborhood is Not For You

Via Jeff on Facebook, sweet baby Jesus: 

Last week, on the first stop of the $45 tour, guide Lynn Battaglia, from Pittsburgh, pointed out a housing project. She then mocked the Grand Concourse, modeled after a Parisian boulevard.

“Do you feel like we’re on the Champs-Elysées?” she teased a couple from Paris.

As the bus idled across from historic St. Ann’s Episcopalian Church, Battaglia launched into a description of the crime, poverty and violence that plagued the South Bronx during the 1970s recession.

As she spoke, a line of two dozen poor people — including one man visibly agitated by the onlookers — waited for handouts from the church pantry.

“I don’t know what that line’s about, but every Wednesday we see it,” Battaglia told the tourists. “We see them go in with empty carts, and we see them come out with carts full.”

The bus stopped in front of St. Mary’s Park, where she credited Mayor Rudy Giuliani for curbing crime.

“If it were 1980 and you said to me, ‘Lynn, I want to die.’ My answer would be, ‘You’re in the right neighborhood,’ ” she said.

Chicago does some of these types of things too, true-crime tours and mob-themed tours and things, and it's always gross, but not quite as gross as making people's poverty your fucking theme park. Do all your proceeds, and not profits, I mean proceeds, go to helping this neighborhood? No? Then how dare you use it as your set piece? Even then, how dare you? THEY LIVE THERE. This is their HOME. If it seems so horrible to you, if it seems so unsafe and scandalous and you're being so very daring, think about how it must be to be there, all the time. 

("They should move then." I can hear it now from Smuggy McPublican. Bitchass, not everybody sees problems where you do, and also, abandoning your parents' and grandparents' homes is hard, even if you do have the means. All things being equal, moving is fucking expensive. Even if you and a few friends and a case of Bud Light do it, moving is expensive. Do YOU have the equivalent of first and last month's market-rate yuppie-ville rent plus security deposit on you at all times, and a job from which you can take time off to look for a new place without losing more money? If not, STFU.)  

This goes back to the whole "I can't go there without a sidearm" kind of thing I was talking about before, where you assume people who don't live in your neighborhood aren't real. They don't, say, get up and go to work or come home and sit on their porch reading or listening to the game. They don't love their children or drive through the hamburger place or check books out of the library or get their hair cut or drink coffee. They think violence is normal and gang affiliation is awesome and everybody be slingin' tonight. Their ways are strange to us all. I mean, God Almighty: 

“I don’t know what that line’s about, but every Wednesday we see it,” Battaglia told the tourists. “We see them go in with empty carts, and we see them come out with carts full.”

GO ASK JESUS HOW HARD IS THIS SHIT. Go over to the strange "natives" and ask what's up. Nine times out of 10, someone will tell you, gladly. This is America, almost everybody speaks enough English to satisfy your curiosity about almost anything at all, and even those that don't will find you somebody who does or get by with hand gestures, because 90 percent of people are basically decent and want to help your clueless ass so long as it doesn't unduly interfere with their days. 

I am all for visiting everywhere in a place when you visit it. And I know that sometimes that can be a knife-edge of difference between looking and gawking, and I'm absolutely sure I've come down on the wrong side of it in my life. But there are about a hundred miles between going to see a place you are curious about, and making a buck alienating human beings from one another. This company is gross. 

A. 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Roamin' Scandals edition

Good morning, everyone!

I see there's quite a few drums of concentrated stupid lined up in the staging area with "Ben Gazzara" stamped all over them. Let's suit up and investigate, shall we?

The first one just says - But...but....but....BENGHAZZZZZIIIII!‏

Gallup: Americans' Attention to IRS, Benghazi Stories Below Average Gallup ^ | 05/16/2013 | Frank Newport

Posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:35:37 PM by SeekAndFind

Slim majorities of Americans are very or somewhat closely following the situations involving the Internal Revenue Service (54%) and the congressional hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and its aftermath (53%) -- comparatively low based on historical measures of other news stories over the last two decades.

These results are based on a May 14-15 Gallup poll. Despite extensive news coverage of these stories in recent days, the level of attention being paid to each is below the average 60% of Americans who have closely followed more than 200 news stories Gallup has measured over the past several decades. Additionally, Americans appear to be paying almost exactly the same levels of attention to both stories, despite the relative newness of the IRS story during the time in which this survey was in the field.

Republicans More Tuned In

Republicans are much more likely to say they are following these news stories closely than are independents or in particular Democrats. There is a 21-percentage-point gap between Republicans and Democrats in terms of following the Benghazi story closely, and a 27-point gap on the IRS story.

1 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:35:37 PM by SeekAndFind

You know, if you don't provide something at least as interesting as "Swamp People", folks are apt to change the channel. Just sayin'.

To: SeekAndFind

Gallup: Americans are stupider than we ever imagined.

3 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:37:39 PM by brownsfan (Behold, the power of government cheese.)

Blaming the audience for your poor ratings is the hallmark of the soon-to-be-unemployed Producer.

To: SeekAndFind

There’s that 46% number again...

4 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:38:21 PM by neodad (USS Vincennes (CG-49) Freedom's Fortress)

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To: SeekAndFind; All

The question is not how much attention the sheeple are giving to IRS, Benghazi, imo, but how much attention the corrupt, Obama-protecting media is giving to IRS, Benghazi.

5 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:40:13 PM by Amendment10

Let's look at this (Saturday) morning's headlines, shall we?

CNN:

"Shots fired at Cannes send actors scrambling".

.

Hmmm - maybe FOX has something?

.

"Powerball at 16 million"

"U.S. slams Russia for sending Syria anti-ship missiles"

"Missing men mystery in US boomtown oil fields"

.

Damned corrupt, Obama-loving FOX news!

To: SeekAndFind

Not surprising. I mean, they did vote for obama — twice.

6 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:41:22 PM by jersey117

BREAKING NEWS!

Out of work, crap economy, defeated, socialized... numb.

7 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:42:46 PM by Gene Eric (The Palin Doctrine.)

....but enough about Sarah Palin....

To: SeekAndFind

Nice to know comrade gallup is still keeping Goebbels going.

LLS

8 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:43:02 PM by LibLieSlayer (FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!)

Let's see what advice oberstgruppenfuhrer Gallup has for the Freeperati, shall we?

"....If you want more from your Customers, rethink your marketing efforts"

Word to your mother.

To: SeekAndFind

I think more folks are paying attention than we actually know.

A caller in to Rush, today, said

.

To: brownsfan

American proved their stupidity in 2008, reaffirmed it in 2012. I truly believe Ronald Reagan would have had trouble beating 0bama last year with the dumbing down of the American public, and the 24/7 propaganda effort by the socialist run media/entertainment complex.

10 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 1:45:49 PM by henkster (I have one more cow than my neighbor. I am a kulak.)

I'm sensing a theme here...

.

 

.

To: SeekAndFind

Calls were made to 0bamaphones.

21 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 2:03:44 PM by windsorknot

.

To: SeekAndFind

Sad. This has NO traction. None. GOP blowing it.

34 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 2:59:00 PM by RIghtwardHo

.

.

To: RIghtwardHo

RE: GOP blowing it.

What do you suggest they do that they aren’t already doing?

35 posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 3:03:25 PM by SeekAndFind

.

More after the click through.

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A Different Kind of Prison: Game of Thrones Thread

These two. It's like somebody sat down and said let's invent something that will make your heart explode. If the actors sucked maybe my chest wouldn't ache. 

My Governor Is A Vapid Fool

Governor PBJ has weighed in on the fake IRS "scandal:"

“You cannot take the freedom of law-abiding Americans, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom, When you do that, you go to jail."

The "scandal" involves tax exempt status, "Bobby."  Nobody lost their freedom, numb nuts. 

That is all.

Sunday Morning Video: Trekkies

I still have Star Trek on my mind. I stumbled into this documentary on cable the other day and watched it again. The fans are a bit nutty but also pretty darn intelligent, just like my readers. My favorite is the woman who is devoted to Data from TNG and calls herself a Spinerfem. Now, that's a suffix I can get behind:

 

 

Quote Of The Day: Tory Party Edition

As you may have noticed, I love British politics; especially when one of the major parties is committing seppuku. The quote comes from an unnamed close associate of David Cameron's and it is aimed at local constituency branches of the Tory Party:

“The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons.”

 Sounds like the Tea Party, doesn't it?

Weekend Question Thread

We're having a few friends over at Casa Athenae today, and I'm making spinach-sweet-potato pizza, loosely based on this recipe. 

What's your favorite party food? 

A. 

NOLA Notes: Mother's Day Shooting Follow Up

The good news is that they got the putrid gangbanger who opened fire on the second line in Treme. I should say alleged shooter but the case looks rock solid unless, that is, they blow it. Mayor Landrieu and Chief Serpas are spending way too much time boasting about it for my taste but that's what pols and po pos do.

NOLA blogger Deb (Big Red) Cotton is going to make it, but she's still in the hospital and faces a long and costly recovery. If you'd like to help defray her medical costs CLICK HERE.

Deb moderated the closing panel at Rising Tide 6, the one that Athenae attended. The panel included members of the TBC Brass Band who were at the second line on Mother's Day. Their gear got stomped on but otherwise they're okay. Here's the video of Deb's panel:

Rising Tide 6 - Brass Bands, New Orleans Music from Jason Berry on Vimeo.

 

Seattle Basketball: A Steal at Any Price!

Every fan who has ever experienced it has “that moment” etched in their minds. For the folks who loved the Brooklyn Dodgers, it was the demolition of Ebbets Field by a wrecking ball that was painted to look like a baseball.

For fans of the Baltimore Colts, it was the Mayflower moving vans tearing ass out of town under the cover of night.

The Raiders, understanding that you can actually unmake a mistake, moved from Oakland to L.A. and then back to Oakland. The Cardinals flew the coop from St. Louis and landed in Phoenix. (Shortly there after, they were renamed the Arizona Cardinals, in order to diffuse the blame for this horrific assemblage of misery. Hey, why should Phoenix alone have to suffer?)

For me, it was a cartoon on the cover of Sports Illustrated: A caricature of Art Modell sucker punching a Cleveland Browns “dog pound” fan. The article spoke of hope that the city could some way stop Modell from squiring the Browns out of town. In the end, it couldn’t. My team was gone. It would never be the same again.

Basketball has been no exception to this, even if you discount the ridiculous ABA days when teams seemed to move more often than most people change socks.

The only reason there is jazz in Utah is because the Utah Jazz were taken away from New Orleans. The same thing is true of the Los Angeles Lakers, as they came from Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes and ended up in the land of 10,000 flakes.

The list of “who-came-from-where-and-landed-over-there” is endless. Some of this stuff is easy enough to understand: teams were losing money or teams couldn’t find local owners. The Brooklyn Dodger president, Walter O’Malley, had an ongoing feud with New York “Don” Robert Moses as he attempted to build a new stadium in Flatbush. When years of efforts had failed, he took the advice most notably attributed to Horace Greeley: “Go West, young man.”

What is a lot less easy to understand are the cities that are pillaged who return and pillage others. In one of its few cock-block moves in the last 112 years, the NBA vetoed the sale of the Sacramento Kings to an investment group that would move the team to Seattle. The group was attempting to replace the lost NBA team (the Supersonics/Sonics) that left when Clay Bennett bought the team and moved it to Oklahoma City. Sacramento and its mayor, former NBA star Kevin Johnson, were fighting to keep the team local and pushing for the Maloof (if ever there was a perfect dumb-ass rich-guy name, that’s it) brothers to sell to a local group. Finally, after the NBA owners refused to let them move, the Maloofs agreed in principle to sell the team locally.

Seattle rich guy Chris Hansen expressed disappointment in the decision but swore he’d bring basketball back to Seattle. As much as this probably makes the Seattle fans happy, it should worry the hell out of everyone else. Any team that needs a free new arena, isn’t getting 41 sellouts per season or a fan base that’s not pouring buckets of cash onto a sub .500 squad will likely have Hansen circling like a beneficent buzzard.

And after he snakes it away from it’s current home, the carousel of “who’s-going-where” will start all over again.

And that sucks.

Say what you want to about my Cleveland Browns, but at least Cleveland didn’t steal someone else’s team to replace its own. We came by this steaming pile of poor play honestly. The fans there knew how much it sucked to have a team pulled out from under them, so they got on the expansion wagon and got a team as part of a really bad deal.

Of all the places I thought my Browns would land, Baltimore was the LAST place I would have imagined. The fans in Maryland had the image of those damned moving vans etched into their brains as their team fled to Indiana. The fact they would be OK with someone else doing this to someone else on their behalf was mindboggling.

L.A. went from having two football teams to having none in a matter of years. In the case of the Raiders, at least Oakland was taking back what was once its own. The Rams? They fled to St. Louis, which had lost the Cardinals to Phoenix.

The same is true of New Orleans, who got a kick in the balls back in 1979. That year, the team not only moved to Mormonville, but kept the city’s moniker and colors. When the city smelled blood in the water, it grabbed up the Hornets from Charlotte. (Of course, they had to take owner George Shinn as well, so I guess the punishment might fit the crime.)

I now live in one of the last truly safe vestiges of team sport: Wisconsin, where the Green Bay Packers are community owned. Of course, after the NFL became big business, the owners grandfathered in this concept for us and outlawed it from ever happening again. Still, somehow, we keep doing OK. The facilities are nice, the team is good and people are happy, shocking as that may be.

For the rest of the world, happiness is apparently only one rich guy away, if he’s willing to steal someone else’s team for you.

Pantsed In The UK

Yeah, I know they call them trousers there but I'm following up on the Pierce/Gohmert theme. The populist right wing UKIP party is facing more scrutiny after its recent success at the polls. One of its donors is engaged in a one malaka protest against women in pants:

Nigel Farage is facing fresh embarrassment over a Ukip supporter after it emerged that one of the party's most generous donors believes that women are guilty of "hostile behaviour" by "deliberately" wearing trousers to make themselves unattractive to men.

Demetri Marchessini, a Greek-born shipping tycoon who gave Ukip £10,000 this year, made the comments in a coffee table book that features photographs of women from behind.

The millionaire teamed up with a photographer a decade ago to find "unattractive backsides", in the words of the Observer writer Liz Hoggard, on the streets of London and New York.

Marchessini wrote in Women in Trousers: A Rear View: "I adore women and want to see them looking beautiful. Everyone has the obligation to look as attractive as possible. It pains me to see women looking terrible.

"Walk along any street and you see women using trousers like a uniform every single day. This is hostile behaviour. They are deliberately dressing in a way that is opposite to what men would like. It is behaviour that flies against common sense, and also flies against the normal human desire to please."

I considered making this guy malaka of the week since he's, alas, Anglo-Greek but I could not resist the post title. I find it astonishing that he's so consumed with this allegedly unattractive sight that he published a book devoted to it. Here's another howler:

Marchessini warned that women are undermining their chances of finding a partner by wearing trousers. "The more women dress like men, the less they are attractive to men. If a man finds a woman attractive, he will find her legs sexy even if they are not perfect, simply because they are her legs. Women know that men don't like trousers, yet they deliberately wear them."

Um, um, um, I like women in trousers and I married one who wears them even though she has great legs. Deliberate pants wearing? Oy. This is just flat out weird. You would think this bozo would have better things to do with his time or money, but apparently not.

Earlier, I said that this is not a malaka of the week post. Strike that. Demetri Marchessini, shipping maggot and anti-trouser fanatic, is definitely guilty of egregious malakatude, but I'm still not changing the post title. 

Paragraph of the day

It comes from the great Charles Pierce in a post entitled Louie Gohmert Gets Pantsed:

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, perhaps the dumbest mammal to enter a legislative chamber since Caligula's horse, and Gohmert's only the half of that, pretty much got pantsed in front of the world yesterday by Eric Holder who, while I still think he should resign, seems to be getting pleasantly fed up with the denizens of the Republican monkeyhouse. By the end of it, Gohmert was hollering incoherently, and the committee chairman, Bob Goodlatte (R-Venti) looked like he would liked have very much to have Gohmert sedated and sent to a quiet farm in Alberta for a few years.

I read this in the wee hours last night, and laughed so hard that my back fence neighbors stoppped squabbling for a minute. Not really, but I wish they had...

Shorter Press: We Have Nothing to Do With this Story Everyone is Talking About

Pick which of these statements "rings truer," because that is the standard by which we measure truth: 

Hard as it may be, then, set aside your own politics and ask yourself which of these Monday statements rings truer:

"The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow. ... And suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story. There's no 'there' there."

— President Barack Obama, dismissing congressional scrutiny of his and his subordinates' statements about Benghazi as a "political circus"

"Americans should take notice that top Obama administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don't have to answer to anyone." 

— House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa

For now, many among us would take Option 2. With each of these troubling disclosures, the Obama administration finds itself reacting to appearances of overreach, of arrogance, of determination to dodge its embarrassments rather than to take ownership of them.

I wonder why the Obama administration finds itself reacting to these things. Could it be because people are asking them to react? This is the kind of passive-voiced, "a firestorm of controversy is swirling" commentary that makes me crazy, because it cites the appearance of a thing as evidence that the thing itself exists. And in doing so, reinforces that appearance, conflates it with evidence, and elevates "stuff we kind of think already" to actual fact. You want to make an issue out of something? THEN MAKE AN ISSUE OUT OF IT. Knock off the fashion coverage. I know that's the only part of this that interests anybody, but come on. 

Am I happy about the AP phone records sitch. Hell. No. Not okay. The administration should be "on the defensive" about that. But here's the thing, even there: The administration "being on the defensive" isn't the story. What is this, the NFL? The story is what was done and who did it, not how the Obama White House is starting to "seem:"

Taken together, though, these controversies project a less flattering image of truth-shading, hubris and intrusion. In the week of humiliating disclosures that started with last Wednesday's congressional hearing on Benghazi, Americans haven't seen the administration exhibit ... one shred of humility:

Ah. So it's about what words they use. The image they project. The proper pantomime of humility. The theater of the thing. If the administration would just be sufficiently servile, people wouldn't have died and none of this would be an issue anymore. If they'd just all hold their pickle forks the right way, I mean, honestly, how hard is that? 

The easiest way for the president and his White House to further that rising suspicion — we emphasize that it's thus far unproven — is to demonstrate three things to his newly energized foes and to his friends who didn't expect this sort of conduct: that his subordinates will end their egregious stonewalling on Benghazi, will pursue the IRS scandal as high as it goes and will demand full disclosure of whether his Justice Department scrupulously followed the law in its pursuit of journalists' phone records.

We don't know if any of what Obama's critics are saying is true (on the IRS and Benghazi it's demonstrably not and has been proved not to be for some damn time) but the president needs to act like it is, to demonstrate, once again, the proper attitude to us. The president needs to concede every point, to prove that there are no points here, and maybe flog himself in the Rose Garden. You've got people screaming THIS HASN'T BEEN INVESTIGATED! and when you show them the records of the investigations they just keep yelling it, I mean, you tell me what can be done here in exactly 20 minutes that will solve the problem of every single person in America not knowing every detail of what happened. Should Obama go to everybody's house and read the paper to them? 

Maybe that would clear up how he "seems." 

A. 

 

Friday Ferretblogging: Morning Treat Edition

How do we get a Bucky, a chicken-Riot, and an itty-bitty Claire up and about? Tell them there's a treat in the other room: 

A. 

Friday Catblogging: Trunk Show

We have a trunk as a coffee table. It's attractive, sturdy and it's marked House of Representatives. It was a hand me down from my late boss, friend, and mentor Congressman Gillis Long who died many years ago. We used to joke about Mr. Long's remains being inside the trunk but that was in poor taste so I won't do it here. Oops, guess I just did. Never mind.

Anyway, Della Street is obvlivious to the trunk's origin story, she just likes posing on it:

Suffixgate

This is not an original observation, but I'm sick and tired of gate being apended to every political feeding frenzy that comes down the pike. Watergate was a sui generis scandal that was rooted in the sick, twisted and paranoid psyche of Tricky Dick. Gate has been stuck on everything since the Trickster declared his mother a saint, and hotfooted it to San Clemente. It is time to show gate the gate as a political suffix.

That is all.

Pulp Fiction Thursday: The Lady From Shanghai

This was one of the last times Orson Welles directed a picture at a major Hollywood studio. It's a good one, but the stories surrounding it are better than the movie itself. Orson royally pissed off Columbia Studio goniff Harry Cohn by getting Rita Hayworth to cut her hair short and dye it blond. Rita had already changed hair color from brunette to red BUT she was famous for her flowing locks. Cohn essentially blackballed Orson, which wasn't hard to do but this may have been the last nail in his career coffin.

The first image is the poster, which is kinda mundane. The lobby card is special: from the Fun House scene filmed at Playland on the Beach in San Francisco. I have fond childhood memories of it but that's all I got. it was torn down years ago.

Here's the trailer:

 

Villagers Of The Damned, The Sequel

From Album4

In January the puke funnel was strictly partisan, but now the courtier (or if you prefer, courtesan) press is joining in. Sigh.

I noted in a comment to Adrastos' post on a similar article that the only thing missing is some high handed snobbery from Sally Quinn and the reanimated corpse of David Broder insisting that "the Obamas trashed the place, and it wasn't their place... [pause]...braaaaaaaains."

I also likened Vandehi and Smith to the kind of high school cliques portrayed in movies like Heathers, but that's really not fair to high school cliques, since most teenagers eventually do grow up. 

Wednesday Night Music: Baby Blue

Here's a swell cover of the Badfinger classic by the great Aimee Mann:

 

The Beltway Borg Collective

I have Star Trek on my mind. There's a lot of hype surrounding the second JJ Abrams prequel/reboot/whatever in addition to Matt Yglesias' amusing exegesis of the franchise at Slate. It's got me thinking about the Star Trek super villains, the Borg. You know, the cyborgs who assimilate their victims into a hive-like collective. You know, just like the American political media.

It was inevitable that the MSM would revive the Second Term jinx meme. It's inevitable in the same way that 2016 election stories are: they're lazy and focused only on the horse race or scandal aspects of politics.Here's a quick sound (word?) bite from one of the avatars of the Beltway Borg Collective, the WaPo's Dana Milbank:

Well, that didn’t take long.

Four months into a fresh four years, President Obama is already assuming the familiar crouch of a scandal-struck second-termer.

There it is, y'all. There's a second term curse/jinx/hex/spell or a combination thereof. What's really going on is that the news cycle has churned out a bunch of stories that the Beltway Borg Collective is lumping together. I remain convinced that the Benghazi story is phonier than a 3 dollar bill. The IRS story seems localized and undirected by the administration but it does play neatly into the mega-wingnut narrative, which is why it will have legs. I don't personally approve of what happened with the AP but GOPers are now denouncing Holder for doing something that they demanded he do last year. Of course, hypocrisy is as American as Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet.

The main point of this post, if there is one, is that our political press remains afflicted with group think and, as always, resistance is futile.