First Draft

Stop the Presses, Somebody's Making Sense

Whip me, beat me, take away my charge card, I would like to kiss this entire speech by Digital First CEO John Paton with tongue:

All of us have been subjected to the annual spectacle of a gaggle of print publishers gathering on a panel – Doug Knight, our moderator this evening, has officiated over a couple of these – to declaim they are not dead yet.

It’s an embarrassing display played out time and time again at conferences where our industry heads look like aging ingénues at Stratford declaring they can still play Juliette. And nobody has the heart to break it to them.

Or worse still, mediocre journalists, wrapping themselves in the flag of long-form journalism, to deride the value of social media as a reporting tool. A tool they don’t understand or care to understand.

And then having to watch them use that ignorance to dismiss the phenomenon of participatory journalism.

When I hear these hacks cry out that their work can’t be reduced to 140 characters I always think – if only – and pine for the useful hours I could get back in my life if spared their thumbsuckers.

And while these false, zero-sum arguments play themselves out, Rome burns.

And in the United States of America, where I work, the fire is burning faster and fiercer than ever before.

I wish I could quote the whole thing. It's glorious in its righteous fury and assignment of blame exactly where blame is deserved: On the people who killed newspapers on purpose, for years, and then had the temerity to encourage reporters to turn on their fellow writers, in many cases their fellow journalists, and blame them for the deaths.

It continues to boggle my mind that we spend more time attacking one another -- endless defensive pieces railing against "citizen journalists," who one acquaintance sneered were like "citizen surgeons" -- than we do attacking the powerful interests who stymie the public's pursuit of free exchange of information. We would rather sit around the table and sort out who is and who isn't a journalist than we would actually go out and do some journalism ourselves.

We would rather fight over who truly has earned an Extra Shiny Real Journalist's Cracker Jack Badge than talk about whether the revelations uncovered by a blogger, or someone with a Twitter feed, are true or false. The Authenticity Olympics, I suppose, being easier to compete in and win than the Talent ones, but how pathetic is that? The work is what matters, at least to the people you're supposed to be serving. And they are what matters to you:

If it is not core to your business- and in newspapers core means content and sales – then reduce it, stop it, sell it or outsource it.

And for God’s sake stop listening to newspaper people. We have had since the mid-90s to get this right and clearly we are no good at it.

Put the digital people in charge – of everything.

They can take what we have built and make it better.

It is so very important we get this right – not just for the industry and investors – but for our communities.

Swooning, via Romenesko.

A.

x-posted to FireDogLake

I Guess I'll Walk Away

Something I've got on continuous repeat right now. 

A. 

How Life Began at Conception

Via Ntodd, here's a great piece of history: 

That year, Christianity Today — edited by Harold Lindsell, champion of “inerrancy” and author of The Battle for the Bible — published a special issue devoted to the topics of contraception and abortion. That issue included many articles that today would get their authors, editors — probably even their readers — fired from almost any evangelical institution. For example, one article by a professor from Dallas Theological Seminary criticized the Roman Catholic position on abortion as unbiblical. Jonathan Dudley quotes from the article in his book Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. Keep in mind that this is from a conservative evangelical seminary professor, writing in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold Lindsell:

God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.

Christianity Today would not publish that article in 2012. They might not even let you write that in comments on their website. If you applied for a job in 2012 with Christianity Today or Dallas Theological Seminary and they found out that you had written something like that, ever, you would not be hired.

Quite frankly I think the debate over when life begins is a way to distract people from the fact that this entire debate is about the power of the state, and whether government should have the ability to force you to bear a child against your will. Not to mention prevent you from obtaining much-needed medical treatment in the guise of morality, should your pregnancy go terribly wrong in the way that pregnancies can. 

Nevertheless, it's fascinating to see the way the desire for power has shaped the public positions of evangelical Christians who claim their authority comes straight from God. Go read the whole thing. 

A. 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Palin Drone Edition

Good morning, all - it's been a quiet week in Freeperville, and I thought I would have to do another Putrid Potpourri Edition, when suddenly, a gift from the gods whistled out of the sky and fell into my pond with the resounding smack of a dozen King Logs.

Suit up, and we'll find out what the hubbub is all about!

It's The Great White Mope!

Sarah Palin, could she be ...
Nolan Chart ^ | February 15, 2012 | Mark Vogel

Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:39:38 PM by 2ndDivisionVet

If Sarah is flirting, I was seduced a long time ago! For everyone who doesn't want Romney, this is huge!

A huge horselaugh, maybe.

It's only in the modern era that Presidential nominations have been locked up before most American voters even tuned in.

You need a helmet with a flashing red light and "Hopelessly out of touch" stenciled on it. Most "conservatives" only want to go back to 1956 or so.  These yahoos want to go all the way back to 1948 and Thomas Dewey.  How did that work out for you guys, by the way?

So this year, for the nation, the Republican Primary is kind of a return to older times, when all Americans counted, not just the few power brokers. The race has been a very rich blue blood from New England ( where he would not carry one state in the general election ) and a group of three, Newt, Rick and Ron scrambling for the 60 plus percent of Republicans who won't be bought!

If that means 60% of GOPers who won't be voting, I can live with that.

And now, a new card is thrown into the game,

Sarah Palin coming off the bench to be the choice at a divided GOP Convention! And with just a hint, she will stir the pot and drive the media nuts! Hurrah for Sarah.

In one of my most recent columns I told you about a conversation I had with a friend who had attended CPAC. He told me that Sarah had been the closing speaker, and the best. And he said, she had indicated she was not out of the game, and he even predicted she would be the horse to mount for the General election race.

 

Wow.

That's the only verb that describes this possiblity. Did the Governor from Alaska out fox the pundits, the consultants, and the power elite in the GOP to dance right around all the murderous press that she would have had to endure?

Because she certainly won't have to deal with any press should she snag the nomination. Uh huh.

Looks like this lady is not someone to play with.

I have been a Palin supporter from the beginning. For me, she was the choice by lengths. None of the rest of the candidates have her charisma, her grit, her unique character. For America, in this time of crisis and cross roads, there is only one person who can truly change the course of the ship of state! And that's Sarah.

So is this for real?

We can't know. She did not hint towards jumping in now. She hinted that she could be the one to pick in a brokered convention.

But this does provide a ray of hope. It provides one more reason NOT to vote for Romney. But it also provides a reason to go to the polls and vote for anybody other than Romney.

These bozos are actually "Operation Chaos"ing themselves. God can't love me this much.

It does provide a real reason to be involved. For the grass roots, make your choice from Newt, Rick or Ron but do it and be there on Primary Day. Don't let Romney buy you, or win because of apathy.

America does not have one flat tire. We have four flat tires, a blown engine, no battery, and a leaky gas tank where fuel is running ...and may ignite if it hits something electric or hot.

Ignite, sweet prince!

We need someone with a renewed vision of the old America. Yes, the old America. The one that put a man on the moon. The one that on Decemeber 25, 1991 won the half century Cold War liberating 500 million souls in 13 nations! We need the old America that when I was born was unquestionably the wealthiest, most powerful, most successful nation in the entire world. And we need someone who knows why all that happened.

Huge revenues from a top marginal tax rate of 90%?

Sarah proved in Alaska she could be an executive. She went against corruption in her own party...and beat the oil companies at the same time! In her third year as governor her approval ratings in Alaska were over eighty percent!!!! 80 percent!

You're kinda glossing over what they were after that (and now), aren't you?

A new Alaska Poll released today shows 61% of Alaskans have a "very unfavorable" or "somewhat unfavorable" opinion of Palin, a former governor and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.

Thirty-six percent view Palin positively, according to the survey by Dittman Research and Communications

So... we wait. But now, on the horizon, we see a light. So GOP grass roots, get to the polls, and pick anyone but Mitt!!!

1 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:39:46 PM by 2ndDivisionVet

To: 2ndDivisionVet

*Facepalm*

2 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:42:23 PM by thoolou ("I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous." - David Bradley, inventor of Ctrl-Alt-Del)

Commie.

To: 2ndDivisionVet

First, I seriously doubt she would take nomination. Second, if by some very huge fluke she was nominated over her objection, I more seriously doubt that she could beat Obama.

I love her zeal, and would celebrate her as president - but, we Palin lovers are but a tiny piece of this nations citizenship.

9 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:48:59 PM by Ron C.

To: 2ndDivisionVet

No, not likely.

You just cannot decide at a moment’s notice decide to run for president, especially after publicly denying she would. If she decided tomorrow to do it, she would not find enough support to accomplish this.

She is either better off to stay at Fox news and give the occasional statement of conservatives ideals or run for the House or Senate.

I hear there's a position open at MSNBC.

That has always been my position about her.

10 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:49:17 PM by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)

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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Amazing she had no time for CPAC the last four years that they’ve asked her and now she does....she’s trying to play kingmaker.

There was a movie out a few years ago with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves called the the Devil’s Advocate where Al Pacino who plays the devil says at the end “Vanity my favorite sin of all.” That’s Sarah she can’t live without the spotlight.

15 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:57:54 PM by Leclair10

Well, this is discouraging.

Have the Freeperati finally wised up? Have they, at long last, learned to detect when they're being played?

.

Nah.

To: Leclair10

Actually during her 20 year in politics, Governor Palin earned her reputation as being a strong leader, a reformer, someone who can take on the establishment and beat them.

That, or a quitter. It was one of those two things.

Since Palin came on the national scene 3 1/2 years ago, she has helped conservatives her bank account make historical gains.

FIFY.

Palin is currently playing an important role in the effort to defeat Mitt Romney.

By endorsing Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell.

21 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:06:44 PM by ansel12 (Romney is unquestionably the weakest party front-runner in contemporary political history.)

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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Dang man, this lady’s playing with me. We had a name for girls like that in high school.

Hmmm.  Just did a Google Image search on the words "prick tease" and there were 5 pics of Grifterella on the first two pages. Try it yourself.

Problem is, I keep falling for her. She’s still got me hooked and knows it. Why doesn’t she just play nice, quit teasing me (us), and jump in?

27 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:18:04 PM by PapaNew

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To: ansel12

Why did she show up at CPAC this year and not the last three despite being asked repeatedly? She thought she was to big for CPAC till the last year she saw her star fading she can’t live without that once you get that taste of power you do anything to keep it.

26 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:17:41 PM by Leclair10

To: onyx

If there is any reality to this, the convention will be a blood-fest worse than ‘64 ‘76 or ‘80.
.

35 posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:29:44 PM by editor-surveyor (No Federal Sales Tax - No Way!)

Hell - why wait for the convention?

It's not entertaining enough that Jim Rob jumped the gun endorsing Newtie, and that the resulting Newt/Santorum factional wars have torn Freeperville up the middle - now we have this??

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Internecine wars continue after the convenient "Contnue reading" link thingy.

A Losing Issue

In my frustration that we were event talking about birth control at all, I missed how completely sure those mythical "some Democrats" and "even the liberal media's" Howard Kurtz thought for sure Obama should capitulate to the bishops in order to secure the votes of ... stuff: 

Last week, even Democrats were nervous the White House was screwing the decision up. "Why aren’t we messaging this better?," Sen. Barbara Mikulski demanded of President Obama's campaign manager, Politico reported. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski sounded triumphant February 9, telling ABC News, "The reality is Democrats are starting to break from the president because he overstepped on a fundamental right we all believe in whether we are women, men, Republican or Democrat." The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz declared his own colleague Andrew Sullivan "wrong" for arguing that the contraception debate would help President Obama in the longterm. "The White House got killed on this issue last week," Kurtz said emphatically February 13. It was "a losing issue."

If Kurtz meant "losing" the sense that "Republicans have become a national joke" and "Darryl Issa being a fuckstick is now an actual meme" and "seriously, you guys, the aspirin joke even my grandmother thought was oldsauce," then yes, Democrats were losing horribly. 

I know there's no amount of being wrong about politics that can get you fired from being a political commentator so long as you continue to slap your byline on the table, but can we at least get together on the idea that one should understand what politics IS and that sometimes it involves standing back and letting your opponents fall dick-first into the bees' nest? 

Kurtz went on to say Obama was "losing the culture wars" and I have to say, I can't fucking WAIT for everybody who was old enough to get media boners over Bill Clinton's sex life to fucking retire already, because if there's one surefire way for Obama to lose the culture wars, it's to fucking HAVE the culture wars at all. We are sick of the culture wars, out here. We are done. We don't have time to worry about other people's abortions. We do not give a shit who you love. We cannot fathom why we have to keep talking about how the pill is a thing, like we're our mothers and have to attach maxi pads to fucking belts. 

I'm not saying Obama should do nothing, any more than I agree with Kurtz that he should wade into this fight and find a way to surrender. It's not having "the culture wars" to promote and defend common-sense healthcare for women. It's not having "the culture wars" to sign legislation saying if you want to die for your country we really don't care who you fuck. It's not having "the culture wars" to not lose one's damn mind every time a girl wears a low-cut top on TV and it's not having "the culture wars" to refrain from using every moment at the presidential podium doing anything BUT denouncing hip-hop lyrics and talking about how ladies these days are such sluts. 

The best way to win the culture wars is to just do the stuff that makes sense, and let others scream "culture war" and "God, guns and gays" and let accomodationist morons like Kurtz blither all over TV that Obama is sure to lose the presidential election in 1988. Out here in 2012, we'll be getting back to work. 

A. 

Weekend Question Thread

Have you ever met someone famous, or someone you greatly admired? How did you react? 

A. 

The Golden Ticket (and what it took to get it)

“You are out of your goddamned mind!”

Not exactly the support I had hoped for when explaining my plan for this Friday to The Missus.

About six weeks ago, a company that does massive estate sales posted early pictures as to what was going to be present at a sale that kicks off at 9 a.m. Friday. I had made it a policy to avoid estate sales after my last few escapades had yielded a ton of shit that costs a decent amount of money and was slow in turning around. Still, I’m always on the look out for a good bit of luck and some nice dishware for The Missus. It turns out she grew a fetish for a Depression-Era glassware known as jadeite. Turns out, Martha Stewart had just done a big spread on it and she loved it.

“If you see any of that out on your shopping trips, could you pick it up?” she asked in that sweet and hopeful way that says “I love you” and “If you want to keep doing this, here’s an excuse that won’t make me want to kill you.”

Of course, I knew nothing about it, but as an intellectual, I attacked the problem with the idea that knowledge gain would be best. I bought about six guidebooks on this stuff, dug around on the Internet and kept looking for it at estate sales and flea markets.

The shit was ridiculously expensive. When Martha likes something, so do collectors.

Thirty-five bucks for a fucking plate? With a crack in it? Oh well…

Some savvy shopping, good digging and some luck later, she had a cabinet full of light green bliss. Still, you can’t wave off a hunting instinct just because the hunt is over and people are full. There are worlds to conquer, dammit.

Thus, I found myself sorting through the pictures this company posted online.

What I came to realize early in this set of photos is that they were clearing out a hoarder’s home. The place was piled with shit. The thoughts of what might be crawling under those mounds of crap had me thinking, “No fucking way.”

Still, I thumbed through the thumbnails until I noticed a copy of an old Green Bay Packer program. Then another. Then another. Good stuff, but I could probably live without it.

Then, I found a picture that had my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots for about six weeks.

To the untrained eye, they were scraps of paper. To me, it was like unlocking the Ark of the Covenant.

---

The Bible talks about the man who finds a treasure in a field, so he goes and sells all he had and buys that field. When he returns, he rejoices over the treasure and what it has brought him.

This parable was swimming through my head as I quickly Googled some information that I intuitively knew. The image was as clear as a bell and right as rain. The four scraps of paper scattered in the middle of this image were ticket stubs from 1959. They had info about the Packers on them.

They were the first four games Vince Lombardi ever coached in Green Bay, all four wins.

I did a quick search to see how rare they were and what they were worth.

Only one had been found. The first game. Certified. At auction: more than $500.

A unique item in the purest sense of the word.

It was then became determined: I had to have them.

And thus, I revealed to my wife how I planned to get them: I’d camp out in my car overnight and be the first person in this house.

And this is how I find myself in the driveway of a stranger in Kaukauna, Wisconsin at 11:30 p.m., waiting eight hours for a chance at a piece of history.

Here’s the running diary. As I write this thing, I don’t even know how it will end as I'm writing it in mostly real time. Typos will be likely. Verbiage will be wild. Click on at your own risk.

Friday Ferretblogging: Super-Tiny Claire

Hello, I'm teeny and have little ears. 

A. 

Not All Unpopular Things Are the Same

Issa is a bag of assholes, not that we didn't know this: 

We heard from religious leaders whose positions might not be popular, like MLK's position was not so long ago: http://bit.ly/yyNhUb #p2

This is a constant refrain from these professionally aggrieved penile implants, this "SEE, I SAID IT AND NOW I'LL BE ATTACKED FOR IT" wishful martyr bullshit. Their running around yelling the n-word or opining that rape is fantastic is somehow okay because being called a douchebag means they're automatically awarded underdog points and we all have to root for them then, right? 

And, no. Saying something unpopular is not, in and of itself, brave. There is nothing virtuous in hating something other people like full stop. We tend to romanticize the existence of the voice in the wilderness in and of itself, instead of actually listening to what that voice is saying. If a moron yowls in a forest and nobody agrees with him, that doesn't mean he's making a sound. 

Some things — that birth control is evil, for example — are unpopular for a reason and speaking out in their defense is not a brave act but a middle-school cry for attention. Look at me, saying the unpopular thing! Yes, look at you, the lone voice against the world. Look at you, the fucking idiot. 

A. 

Voice for the Voiceless, Silenced

Anthony Shadid, New York Times foreign correspondent, Pulitzer winner, fellow alum of my beloved Daily Cardinal, and a personal hero of mine, has died in Syria: 

The death of Mr. Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent who had a wife and two children, abruptly ended one of the most storied careers in modern American journalism. Fluent in Arabic, with a gifted eye for detail and contextual writing, Mr. Shadid captured dimensions of life in the Middle East that many others failed to see. Those talents won him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2004 for his coverage of the American invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed, and a second Pulitzer in 2010, also for his Iraq reporting, both of them for The Washington Post. He also was a finalist in 2007 for his coverage of Lebanon, and has been nominated by The Times for his coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings that have transfixed the Middle East for the past year.

Mr. Shadid began his Middle East reporting career as a correspondent for The A.P. based in Cairo, traveling around the region from 1995 to 1999. He later worked at The Boston Globe before moving to The Post, where he was the Islamic Affairs correspondent and Baghdad bureau chief. He joined The Times at the end of 2009.

He was no stranger to injury, harassment and arrest. In 2002, while working for The Globe, he was shot and wounded in the shoulder as he walked on a street in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. During the tumultuous protests in Cairo last year that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Shadid was hounded by Mr. Mubarak’s police, and during a police raid, he had to hide the computers used by Times reporters.

Mr. Shadid, Mr. Hicks and two other Times journalists, Stephen Farrell and Lynsey Addario, were arrested by pro-government militias during the conflict in Libya last year and held for more than a week, during which all were physically abused. Their driver, Mohammad Shaglouf, died.

In the 2004 citation, the Pulitzer Board praised “his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended.” In the 2010 citation, the board praised “his rich, beautifully written series on Iraq as the United States departs and its people and leaders struggle to deal with the legacy of war and to shape the nation’s future.”

He spoke of the risks he took while reporting in an interview in December with Terry Gross on the NPR program “Fresh Air.”  “I did feel that Syria was so important, and that story wouldn’t be told otherwise, that it was worth taking risks for,” he said of an earlier trip to Syria in which he entered the country from Lebanon on a motorcycle across a rugged stretch of land.

In addition to being one of the best reporters and writers working today, Shadid was unfailingly kind to the place he and I both started out. Whenever I'd send a kid his way for some advice or encouragement he always responded, even if at the moment he was God knows where with the world blowing up all around him, and if he had time he'd give it, and if he didn't have time he'd make it. 

A friend and I used to send his stories back and forth annotated with notes like CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW GOOD THIS IS, marveling at the depth of detail in his reporting and the unforgiving, unrelenting reality of his writing. He did what I tell students to do all the time, what I tried to do to the best of my own comparatively meagre abilities in my own work: Go there, and tell everyone you can everything you see. It sounds easy, but it's not. It's not easy to make people care about the victims of war, the ordinary people caught up in conflict, but he did it, by showing us our common humanity and never losing sight of that no matter what the political situation was. 

We need more like him. My deepest condolences to his family and those he loved. 

A. 

Government Help at the End of the World

Jon Armstrong pulls something out here that I missed when this article originally made the rounds with all the quick and easy commentary that a) conservatives are inherently fact-free and b) as long as a white person's getting it, it's not REALLY welfare. That's all in there, too, but honestly, lately I'm sitting here staring at my screen just waiting for something different to say because of course, and it's all hateful, and I am having such a hard time with everything being hateful things we know all about already. I can't tell you. And from this, it sounds like a lot of other people are, too:

Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

They don't want less help. They want to NEED less help, which means they want things to be easier. And they're not wrong. I feel like this whole country just needs a goddamn nap. Like if we could just shut everything up for about 24 hours, let everybody get enough sleep and a sandwich, and then try this again. The economy, the unwinnable and clandestine wars, the presidential campaign, the health care fight, all of it. Gas prices, I mean, and how much a gallon of milk costs.

And this isn't about technology or "the pace of life these days" or kids with their iPods or whatever. This about things that shouldn't be fights being fights: Being paid fairly for the work you do, being able to buy food to feed your family, being able to see a doctor when you get sick, being able to take care of yourself when you're old. Has anybody noticed that our culture, lately, is obsessed with the end of the world? I see where it's coming from. Everybody is just so tired.

So what's the answer? A lot of people are ready to burn the whole fucking place down and dance around the flames. If you say you've neve thought about it, you're a liar to me or yourself and it doesn't matte which. A lot of people are ready to tear the safety net down, take us back to some place they imagine that this shit was handled without them having to think about it, as if begging in the streets wasn't something that in the timeline of the universe was the snap of two fingers ago. A lot of people would like to put a government in place with the express instruction to clap our national hands over our ears and yell LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

The trouble I think is the impulse to shame, to make "assistance" and "need" into things that give someone else the upper hand over you. We take that shame and we give it the power to stop us getting what we need, and we divorce "government" from "that thing we pay for with our taxes" and make each other the enemy that way. I'm just kind of thining out loud here. We've made compassion a weakness, and so anyone showing us compassion makes us weak or evil, and our own need just becomes one more burden to us.

One more thing to carry, when we're already bent under the weight of the world as it is.

A.

Who Would Jesus Shoot?

From Album4

According to Sioux City bishop Walker Nickless -- hey, shouldn't his last name begin with a D instead of an N? -- anyway, according to him, the local pharmacist...

My new favorite interest group

It's dog day afternoon here at First Draft:

"Yes. This is Dog"

"You think dogs will not be in heaven?
I tell you, they will be there long before any of us."  

Robert Louis Stevenson

As skeptically humanist as I remain about heaven, I still want to believe that all dogs go there. And I believe it looks like this. Or maybe this.

There's a reason both the links above went viral this week. This is what joy looks like. Throw the ball!

Yeah, we can pretend we're that

My favorite music of any past year is the stuff I'm still listening to the next year and the one after that, long after all the year end lists and taking account is past. Sharon Van Etten's epic has been on lots of "best" lists for the last two years, and her spanking brand new Tramp is already making waves.

epic's "One Day" is one of those songs that always sounds brand new, even after a couple years: 

 

She's the real deal. Go out and get to know her.

Wisconsin Protests: One Year Anniversary

Protesters marched on the state Capitol today gathering in the Rotunda to sing, chant and commemorate the one year anniversary of the start of the protests against Walker's "Budget Repair" bill. It was a year ago on Valentine's Day that UW students and community members delivered Valentines to Walker's office that asked him “not to break their hearts” with budget cuts.

Here is my short video from the march and gathering in the Capitol Rotunda today:

Tuesday Night Music: Two Hearts

Tonight on Adrastos' obsession with the Jayhawks:

Different song, same title, same day, same sentiment:

  

The Suffering Olympics

WHITE PEOPLE WIN THEM ALWAYS AND FOREVER: 

Ness said he's also heard "heartfelt objections" to the campaign from many "thoughtful, well-meaning" Duluthians.

One of those citizens, Phil Pierson, created a Facebook page called "Stop Racist Unfair Campaign" to air objections to it. More than 425 people became members.

Pierson frequently posts messages admonishing members to keep the discussion civil, and he deplores the white supremacist rhetoric showing up in some messages to community leaders.

Still, said Pierson, the campaign erred by opening with such jarring messages and images.

"You can't open a discussion on race and hope to see it move in a positive direction when you raise the topic by stereotyping an entire race," Pierson said. "It spreads animosity and hate, teaches a new generation to point fingers and [focuses] on the color of our skin instead of the idea that we're all human."

Why yes. Imagine what it must be like to walk around feeling like you have to constantly apologize for all the stupid shit people who look like you in the tiniest way are doing. How much would that suck, right? Every time Lindsey Lohan shows her cooter on TMZ or some stupid asshead crashes a car into a kindergarten, there has to be a panel of experts discussing The Problem With Those People and a column or two in the newspaper about what's wrong with Your Culture. Boy, would that blow. 

I am ashamed of my fellow white people frequently. We do fucking stupid things like employ Tim Allen or let people sell us something called a "prosperity gospel," and also tend to go around enslaving other people on the basis of they're weird-looking so fuck 'em. However, lately I'm never more ashamed than when we need to prove we're not racist by throwing this kind of epic hissy whenever somebody points out how racist we are.

Nothing says "I'm not a racist" like comparing being asked to consider your racism with actual, you know, racism.  

A. 

Whoops, You Suck

Wow, Fitzgerald is a moron: 

Specifically, the campaign is asking that a number of signatures be struck because postcards sent to those addresses were returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable. However, checking the addresses on the postcards against those on the petitions shows that the Fitzgerald campaign, either purposefully or accidently, misaddressed numerous postcards, making it likely they would be returned.

The very first challenged address (pg. 8) reveals three glaring mistakes made by the campaign. The postcard it sent out was addressed to "Arnold Sodill" of W857 Eipong Terrace, Wisconsin, with no municipality or zip code listed. In fact, the actual petition was signed by "Arnold Wodill" of W8571 Lake George Terrace, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

What a FUCKING CLOWN SHOW. I seriously hope part of the lesson people take from all this, once these people are thrown out on their anti-democratic asses, is that if you want to be evil you'd better be at least halfway competent, because this is just gross. 

A. 

Two Hearts

I'm not big on Valentine's Day but I do love my wife dearly. So, this is for Dr. A because I do indeed believe that "two hearts are better than one."

 

A Question

This whole presidential campaign is just a giant scheme on the part of the Republican Party to make sure Mitt Romney doesn't have enough money left to ever run for president again, right? 

A. 

Fighter Pilots in Love

Holy shit, these people:

They'd pick a time to meet. Their rendezvous point: 3,000 feet above a bridge at Lake Martin, 25 miles away. He'd be flying a repaired AT6 trainer. She'd be in a much slower Piper J-3 Cub.

"When I'd get to Lake Martin, I'd see this bright yellow Cub putt-putting along," he said. "I'd be real proud: She was on time and on target."

He'd pull down and fly in formation with her. They couldn't communicate by radio; her Cub didn't have one. All they could do was smile, wave and blow kisses.

Seeing each other in flight created a bond. When they flew together, it was as if they were holding hands in midair. At the end of their aerial encounter, he'd peel away, only to circle back. He'd sneak up behind her, pull in front and leave her in a trail of airwash. Her tiny craft shook mightily. She'd come to expect it every weekend.

"It didn't faze me," she'd say. "I was the better pilot. ... I just didn't fly the fastest aircraft."

 

What a couple of blistering, water-walking badasses. You know, it's easy to forget amidst all the crazy that goes on that human beings have always been pretty awesome, and that whatever limits others set for us, somebody's gonna go out there and blow those limits away.

A.  

Lunch is for Closers

Ugh: 

The bill’s sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. “If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don’t think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,” he said.

Of course, not every employer can be counted to to follow even the easiest of requirements to look after workers’ health and rights. Back in 2005, Walmart was forced to pay $172 million for denying workers their lunch breaks. Pyramid Breweries Inc. settled a case in 2008 for $1.5 million. Just a few months ago, California ordered Embassy Suites to pay workers tens of thousands of dollars for forcing them to skip breaks.

WHY STOP HERE, GUYS? I swear, somebody needs to tell these people that the first couple pages of A Christmas Carol are not, you know, an instruction manual. 

A. 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Primary Colorless Edition

 

Good morning, gentle people - the double iso chamber is still set up, and may remain so until after the election, or until there's nobody left on FR except Jim Rob and his immediate family.

This edition of Obsession is going to be a bit of a grab bag, as the RINOs and No True Conservatives pile up like cars in a Florida chain-reaction car wreck. Let's get started!

Before we get to the evisceration of WND, Ann Coulter, John Bolton, Komen, et. al -

I present - Pissed off!

2 U.S. marines in urinating video ID'd by corps
ap ^ | 1/12/12 | staff

Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:35:31 PM by Nachum

An official says the U.S. Marine Corps has identified at least two of the four marines in an internet video that purports to depict them urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. A marine official said Thursday that the four were members of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, which returned to its home base in North Carolina last fall after a tour in Afghanistan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because a criminal investigation is underway. The official said that at least some of the four marines are no longer in that battalion. He provided no other details. (Snip) Panetta

1 posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:35:35 PM by Nachum

Of course, you'd expect the brunt of the Freeper vitriol to be directed against the Lying Em Ess Em for spreading such scurrilous lying crap against our angels in MARPAT, wouldn't you?

Sadly, non !

To: ColdOne

Where’s the snitch that videoed it?
Surely the ones who did it weren’t foolish enough to HAVE it recorded?!

17 posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 9:04:49 PM by Tucker39

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught."

To: Nachum

Can no one keep their mouth shut?

22 posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 9:42:31 PM by pacpam (action=consequence and applies in all cases - friend of victory

.

.To: Tucker39

“Where’s the snitch that videoed it?
Surely the ones who did it weren’t foolish enough to HAVE it recorded?!”

That is where these guys made their mistake. It’s one thing to what they did but they absolutely knew this guy was filming and went through with it. He told them twice that he was filming it.

War is hell and stuff like this happens. But it happens in battle. To do it for fun on camera and to show off, bad move. These guys are going to pay for their stupidity.

32 posted on Friday, January 13, 2012 6:53:10 AM by Snark

For fun.

For fun.

To: Nachum

An official says the U.S. Marine Corps has identified at least two of the four marines in an internet video that purports to depict them urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan.

So what? My response to the Marine Corp. would be....Nick Berg. Daniel Pearl.

And they're worried about some pee on a corpse?

3 posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:41:46 PM by Bloody Sam Roberts 

I'm sorry - which branch of the military did Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl serve in, again?

And exactly how close to a terrorist cell's actions do the actions of our armed forces have to be, anyway?

Should they practice beheading before cameras, or just pissing on corpses?

If pissing on corpses is the new way, the proper procedure's gonna have to be included in the ITS and MCSS somewhere.

To: tet68

piss on them...all of them!

5 posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:45:42 PM by ldish (Looking forward to Independence Day)

.

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To: Nachum

Let me see if I have this straight.

I doubt that you've ever had anything straight in your entire wasted life.

During war it is okay to shot and kill an enemy combatant.

But you can never ever piss on their dead bodies ?

Geneva Convention II of 1949

Art 18. After each engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled.

There is something wrong with that mentality.

There is something wrong with you, mentally.

The dead seem to have more rights then the living.

24 posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 9:49:47 PM by justa-hairyape

Go fuck yourself.

.

As if that wasn't enough, a gruesome grab bag of gooniness awaits below the End Of All Thngs.

War on the Modern World

Go for it. Just go for it. Burn it all down. Pile everything you've ever said was important to you in the street, douse it in gasoline, and let the blaze light up the sky. 

This puts it all on the table. Republicans and Catholics and Republican Catholics and Republicans who just say they're Catholic and Catholics who are Republican because abortion seems yucky are now all just going to have to say it now. 

They would rather lots and lots of women die from preventable conditions, too many unwanted children, and abortions that should never have to happen, than that they have to put up with the thought that some woman somewhere is making her own decisions regarding who she has sex with and when. 

I got news for a lot of people what think this is some kind of winning argument about religious freedom for Catholics. Catholic women have memories of the battle over the Pill and the issuance of Humanae Vitae the first time around.

For instance, the Belgian bishops stated: "Someone, however, who is competent in the matter under consideration and capable of forming a personal and well-founded judgment--which necessarily presupposes a sufficient amount of knowledge--may, after a serious examination before God, come to other conclusions on certain points. In such a case he has the right to follow his conviction provided that he remains sincerely disposed to continue his inquiry." Of those who arrived at conclusions differ­ent from Humanae Vitae, the Scandinavian bishops stat­ed: "No one should, therefore, on account of such diverg­ing opinions alone, be regarded as an inferior Catholic." The Canadian bishops made a similar statement: ’These Catholics should not be considered, or consider them­selves, shut off from the body of the faithful."

Catholic women remember the woman in the pew next to them in church, dragging 13 children behind her, her husband dead or gone and no help at hand. They remember the neighbor who died in childbirth because her doctor was bound by faith to save her baby at all costs. They remember the relative whose husband defied the hospital's orders to make sure there were no more children, who suffered horribly before the end. They remember their own miscarriages, stillbirths, when God wanted them to have just one more baby, at the age of 45 in 1953.

And those were the married women who wanted the children they had. Those were the ones doing it right, in the eyes of the more conservative bishops and members of the church. That was the fate due the good girls. I don't need to go over what happened to the bad ones, and what we remember about them. 

So go ahead, tell those women that a condom is cause for excommunication. Tell those women that the greatest threat to their liberty is some other lady in their health plan getting the pill for free. Tell those women, who lost their sisters, who lost their aunts, who lost their mothers, who saw the women around them worn out and rubbed down to nothing, that they don't have the right to painlessly, reasonably ensure that they live to care for the family they want. Let's have that fight. Let's haul out all the arguments. 

Let's talk about how God really wants our infant mortality rate to skyrocket. Let's talk about how many women, exactly, God wants dead. Let's make adherence to a rule of the modern world the be-all and end-all test of who is a true believer. That's never gone horribly wrong before. 

Let's have that fight, because there's no way it goes the way the bishops think it's going to go. This is the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, writing in 1968: 

In view of the American tradition of freedom and pluralism, it would be a serious mistake to use the encyclical as a kind of Catholic loyalty test. Nothing could so quickly snuff out the spirit of per­sonal responsibility, which has done so much to invigorate American Catholicism in the past few years.

Nothing could be more discouraging to young people and intellectuals, upon whom the future of our Church so greatly depends. Nothing could be more destructive of the necessary autonomy of Catholic universities and journals, which have begun to prosper so well. Nothing, finally, could be more harmful to the mutual relations of trust and cordiality that have recently been established between bishops and theologians.

He could have been speaking directly to the bishops and their power-hungry enablers in Congress today. Have that fight. Go ahead. You won't like the outcome. I've been saying for years that our vicious abortion politics are burning down everything else the Church has ever considered important, and this? This is like throwing a bottle of lighter fluid onto the kindling before striking the match. 

A. 

Life Imitates art - only with more stupid.

A thousand pardons for getting out of my box, but I know you've all seen this by now:

 

(can an auto-tuned remix be far behind?)

It sounded so very familiar - all I could think of was this:

 

'Someday I Wanna Throw a Wedding for That Kid'

A.

Weekend Question Thread

Via Dan, who wants to know: 

If you could commission a painting from this guy, what would you order up? 

Me, I'm going with Barack Obama performing a partial-birth abortion of a baby seal fetus carried by the Virgin Mary, but he'll use anasthesia because there's no reason to be over the top. 

A. 

A Mini-sota Post

 

To Mr. A, as I'm missing a trip to the Chicagoland area to spend a weekend teaching kids how to report, write and annoy the administrators at their schools. It's convention season, which means I'm running my ass off all over the Twin Cities, dodging people wearing some of the ugliest team colors ever conceived. (Seriously, who the hell looked at maroon and gold and said, "Sweet! Wait until we make polyester uniforms out of this for our MARCHING BAND!")

I wish I could be there, buddy. You are the older brother I never had, desperately wanted and always needed. Miss you more than you know and you are on my mind now more than ever.

I hope you have a great time with The Missus and The Midget. Make sure she gets all the cat-cat time she can handle. Don't let her eat too many ferret treats.

If I don't see you, have a happy birthday and treat your wife to all the love she deserves.

Doc.

Friday Ferretblogging: Pile of Beasts Edition

A.