It means people who work for the University of California, not the system itself.
Oh, that's unsurprising then. Let's hear it for my lack of reading skills.
It wasn't in the story. It's just what those figures usually mean.
Well, my lack of critical reading skills, at least.
Yeah, it has to mean "people who work for..." because otherwise having the US government as his biggest campaign donor would make no sense whatsoever.
Still, I have seen this reported a couple media outlets, and no one does anything to clear up the ambiguity.
2 is correct, they ask your employer every time you donate which is what generates reports like this.
Thread over. Now, where's the drinking, crying, and/or masturbating on Tuesday night?
"Dave donated $65 to our campaign. Is that O.K. with you?"
Yes, it's totally misleading and irritates me no end. NO END.
I just wish journalists would pay attention to the meanings of words. It doesn't seem like too much to ask.
where's the drinking, crying, and/or masturbating on Tuesday night
We're planning to go to Precinct in Union Square.
As long as you aren't disturbing the other prisoners the cops probably won't mind.
I personally gave the Obama campaign a bit more than $327 million*. I didn't think anyone would notice. [blushes]
* I was going to give the money to Josh Mandel, but I didn't get a dinner invitation from this one Jew on the East Side of Cleveland, so I'm affirmatively pro-Holocaust now and purchasing Zyklon B futures.
Von Wafer, is anything you write here remotely true?
Yeah, Von Wafer! Tell us the truth for once.
6 : USG-supplied matching funds could qualify it as the largest donator, if they were the largest donation
I don't think USG matches political donations.
is this "text" a rogue postmodernist? a former star under an old name? or?.....
I've been lurking here since, let's see, maybe six months before ogged left; it seems unlike this site to allow such consistently dull fuckwittery to proceed unchallenged....but maybe I missed a few threads. is there an unofficial ignore policy in place? if so, my apologies....
||
So apparently it's a big topic: whether or not to go ahead with the NY Marathon on Sunday. I find myself not caring even a little, but I think this might just be overflow from how much I don't get marathons.
|>
Ahem, and it has been brought to my attention that this has come up in another thread. Carry on.
22: there seems to be no official policy -- other than LB's usual default assumption that banning is a Bad Thing. There is, however, an emerging policy to ignore text on an ad-hoc basis. A sort of don't-feed-the-trolls approach. At least that's how I'm handling it.
24: I just assumed you were, very kindly, trying to deflect attention away from my serial mendacity.
so, damn it jim, you've been just reading this blog and scrolling through all the comments for six years? why?
I mean I've been reading the blog, scrolling through the comments, and then writing comments for about 8 years, with long periods of absence. Actually writing things makes it all a bit more interactive and fun, just my opinion. Still, I've come to believe that a lot of that time was wasted. How do you feel about the time you've spent here?
Von Wafer, how are you not a troll? You're neither informative nor amusing. It's used to be, you had to be one of those, or people made fun of you until you left.
From the incredibly stupid article linked in 1: These idea wielders make fortunes not through tangible goods but instead by manipulating and packaging information, and so are generally not interested in the mundane economy of carbon-based energy, large-scale agriculture, housing, and manufacturing.
Ooh, idea wielders! I'm so scared! They're so much more out of touch than the Wall Street bankers supporting Romney, who as we all know care a lot about housing and manufacturing!
And the other really scary thing: Obama's biggest contributors are people who have a lot of money! How do you explain that?, Obama?
I read that as "idea welders", which seems much more blue collar.
"Stege School , one of the first schools in Richmond , was named after Richard Stege, a wealthy frog farmer on whose estate the school was built. It opened in 1903..."
See, that's the kind of money that made this country what it was. Frog farming, IYKWIMAITYD.
Second, a broke-ass public university system is one of Obama's top five donors?
Another vote for Prop 32
Post title edited for pronoun appropriateness, redirected to 33.
I am under the weather, attempts at humor obviously impaired.
32: Francophobe.
Talking about frog politicians, anybody been following the saga of former Justice Minister Rachida Dati's attempt to get (one of) her ex(es) to take a paternity test? Apparently there are eight possible fathers, including tycoons, Spanish prime ministers, presidential siblings, and tv anchors. Yeah, yeah, prurient gossip /bad teraz.
At least Buddy Rich dodged a bullet this time.
37:Yeah, yeah, prurient gossip /bad teraz.
So bad. This reminds me of newspaper stories a while back contrasting allegedly chic French female politicians with allegedly frumpy British female politicians. Sexist sexist amusing sexist tsk tsk tsk.
newspaper stories a while back contrasting allegedly chic French female politicians with allegedly frumpy British female politicians
One member of Parliament harrumphed, "Mrs. Cresson has sought to insult the virility of the British male because the last time she was in London she did not get enough admiring glances." He then sought revenge upon the 57-year-old Cresson by introducing a resolution which stated, "This House does not fancy elderly French women."
37: I don't know how she was as minister of justice, but I'm interested in her views on monetary policy.
Von Wafer, how are you not a troll? You're neither informative nor amusing. It's used to be, you had to be one of those, or people made fun of you until you left.
Text, I remember you of old, but let me suggest that, at present, VW isn't the only one to benefit from the change to which you allude.
If you want me to leave, neb, you need only send me an e-mail. Really, I'm easy that way.
Can anyone do this, or does it have to be neb?
(I just want to know how easy you really are.)
23: NMM. That is to say: No More Marathon.
44: not anyone, no. But certainly if I hear from the right people, I'll be happy to move along.
That doesn't sound easy at all. In fact that sounds rather selective.
I thought 17 was pretty amusing... but it was clearly a joke intended for the gentlemen-adventurer in the art of multi-thread banter, a game both subtle and intensive for which text has perhaps gotten a tad long in the tooth (or swelled in the liver).
Neb's Mom is neither informative nor amusing, but she's OK in the sack.
Really? I found her both informative and amusing in the sack, but still subpar.
Also, you'd be amazed at the things the Dutch Cookie will do in response to an email. I never thought I'd be writing a letter like this, but . . . .
Yeah, I'm not seeing VW as a trolley problem these days. Text, OTOH, I just don't get. The characterization of "chatbot" sounded about right.
Oh, really, this is rich. Let's have some more tedious criticism.
47: I'll be happy to move along.
Fuck you. You'll be moving along to my ass, asshole. You're in the Unfogged Ghetto for the duration.
Hmm, two different 4-letter lower case pseuds corresponding to common language-related English words.
Must try and think ...
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a meta thread or a pile-on-text thread. I was just surprised to see neb indicate that he wants me to move on. I was serious (always a mistake, I know) when I told him to e-mail me with my marching orders.
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a meta thread or a pile-on-text thread. I was just surprised to see neb indicate that he wants me to move on. I was serious (always a mistake, I know) when I told him to e-mail me with my marching orders.
Why doesn't anyone ever post their favorite four-letter word? This is a language blog after all.
pile-on-text thread.
Pile on neb's mother is what I gleaned from it.
62: Good, Godwin pseud violations are auto-banned.
Let's have some more tedious criticism.
I also think you should eat more bran and wear pastels more frequently.
Pile on neb's mother is what I gleaned from it.
This might take it just a bit too far, JP.
Let's have some more tedious criticism.
I sometimes feel like you're emotionally unavailable, and that you shut me out. It's really tough for me when I'm feeling vulnerable, like right after we make love.
Let's have some more tedious criticism.
The real text would never say "this might take it just a bit too far." You've changed, man. It used to be about the music.
Uhh, any FPP want to fix 59 & 60? The lability is getting a little scary. More or less drugs, a little outside help, or maybe just waiting til after the election or after the surgery.
I myself would be really sorry to see the divine wafer go. I know my vote doesn't count.
I also think you should eat more bran and wear pastels more frequently.
Just so long as I don't have to be nice to people.
I have nothing against you, VW. I was making an internal critique.
Let's have some more tedious criticism.
I do not like your stupid hat. I wish to beat it with a bat. Or maybe stab it with a fork. It makes you look like such a dork.
I don't really want anyone to leave here on my account. Let's just remember that when you point one finger, the other four are probably writing an unfunny comment.
Lord Castock, you are on fire. What do you think about my nose?
Let's have some more tedious criticism.
Where did you get that dress, it's awful, and those shoes and that coat, jeeeeez!
Let's have some more tedious criticism.
Alright, text, your nose was on time but you were fifteen minutes late!
I'm not seeing VW as a trolley problem these days.
Well, he is a fat man...
fat man
Jethro Tull in their heyday before they sold out like VW did.
A gentleman always keeps a lady waiting fifteen minutes.
You take the text,
You take the read,
You take them both
And there you have...
two highly combustible elements with impulse control problems.
If someone wants to clean up 59 and 60, that would be great.
Nobody is here because the thread became all weird.
This thread is kind of a trainwreck. All I want to say is that I enjoyed doing Nosflow's mom.
It's about text,
It's about read,
About strange people in the strangest place.
It's about text,
It's about time,
Travelin on' faster than the speed of light.
Some of you bitches are really bitchy lately. Does the election have your underwear all knotted up? Will you feel better after Tuesday?
Your mom is a gendered insult.
Fortunately Jesus has a license to kill... women.
88: Experience teaches us that is the best way to get the Unfogged brawl going.
82:See! I'm the only one who really cares.
The election really is driving everyone insane, right? Discussions seem much more hostile than they did a couple of months ago.
This is a way better version of the ad linked in 90.
If you're wondering what my life is like from reading my commentary here, it's pretty much that.
Let's you and you and you and you and you and you fight.
92: Sticks and stones. Anyway, you better remember that I'm posting from your basement, motherfucker.
Also contains one of the better Youtube comments ever:
This TV commercial exemplifies Fatherland Dominator indoctrination for the Women's Holocaust, conditioning consumers to support the murder of all things feminine, in the process over millennia brutes have set back human progress & "Retarded History" leaving us today defenseless against asteroids & coming impact extinction. This aftershave cologne ad is in fact the trigger that instigates the collapse of civilization & end of the whirld, as explained at rockprophecy com ADD DOT
That comment sounds like TimeCube guy.
94: I haven't felt hostile toward anyone except PGD lately. And that's pretty much a constant for me, though I do get more annoyed when he bloviates about politics. So maybe?
May I change the subject? Have we recently discussed the most loathsome person in American politics? Well, I'd like to, and I'd like people to show their work.
I'll go first. As I've said lately, it's Molly Munger. An heiress (a plutocrat who didn't lift a finger to earn her riches), she just knows better than the rest of us. And rather than compromise with a seated governor in her own party, she chose to mount her own proposition and defend it to the death.
Now, is she more loathsome than Dick Cheney? Probably not. But I think timing should figure into one's reasoning, so it's the Divine Ms. M. for me. Death by pressing for her.
Paul Ryan is a close second, by the way, and Josh Mandel rounds out the top three.
So 1/3 are Jewish. Are there quotas?
I'm tense for the same reason as Lee at Petersburg. I'm worried about a grant.
94: I am finding that I am having some anger management issues of late. That's why I only participate in cock joke and debate threads these days.
101: Turning your aggression outward is just running away from the problem. You need to keep it in the family. Punch Stormcrow in the head. He won't even feel it -- his physical body has been consumed in the fires of his incandescent rage.
I'm cool as a cucumber. It's all you other shitsipping moronic fuckmonkeys who have a problem.
JP Stormcrow has hypothesized a deception so vast and so explosive that I can't bear to imagine it might be true, and yet it seems so disturbingly plausible that I just...
I'm just enraged that the people of Haiti are still suffering, and all I hear about is Sandy this and Sandy that.
Holy shit, I just saw the best Prop 30 ad ever.
Open with negative 30 ad on tv. A pretty elementary school teacher turns off the tv. She turns to the camera and says, "I'm not an actor, I'm a teacher, and I support Proposition 30. Don't listen to out-of-state millionaires. Listen to California's teachers, like me, and nearly every newspaper in the state. Vote yes on Proposition 30."
See, I don't get the Munger hatred because it feels like you've abandoned the classics. I'm old school, so I don't see why anyone but Howard Jarvis should be at the top of that list forever. Munger is only a reaction, a side effect of the problems Jarvis got us into. He will always be the root cause.
109: Eff you, I'm still at the office.
But working on a spreadsheet, so, fun and marketability!
But Munger's not anti-tax. She's just convinced that her understanding of the problem, an understanding rooted in a very serious study of the fact that she grew up exceedingly wealthy and has in time become super rich, is much more acute than the experts'. And you know, that's fair enough. I mean, she is fabulously loaded. Why should I think she doesn't understand the complexities of the state budget and funding public education?
Put another way, her brother is the spawn of Jarvis. He wants to kill public goods out of conviction. But not Ms. Munger. Oh no, she wants to protect our children. And how dare Governor Brown stand in the way of her philanthropy? Doesn't he understand that this country was built upon a foundation of noblesse oblige?
Dan Lungren is going to beat Ami Bera, isn't he? Man, I see eleventy billion ads for Lungren for every one of Bera's.
The only need for Munger activism is that Jarvis fucked us eternally. No Jarvis and Munger wouldn't have been set in motion. Munger may be annoying, but she's just an offshoot of the original. Hate the source, man.
I'll hate the player and the game, thanks.
Jarvis is dead and is immune from shame of the likes of us anyway. Munger is still alive and wants sort of to be in the liberal's club. Fortunately, now everyone hates her so she'll just have to take her billions and be a pariah. It's not much revenge but at least it's something, so fuck that sizzletit.
Yeah, but you asked for "most loathsome". Surely the originator is more loathsome than the offshoots.
I feel like I should be yelling at somebody in this thread, but I have no idea who.
Shut the fuck up, um, read.
But I also timing should be part of the equation. Even still, I think it's regrettable that Halford called you squizzleshit. That was rude.
Is there stuff on the ballot in NYC I should be thinking about/having anxiety dreams about other than that one guy versus that other guy?
The most loathsome person in American politics is Gabby Giffords, of course.
Aw hell, Gabby Giffords just doesn't have the longevity of a real monster. My impulse was to go with Grover Norquist. Then again, Wafer has written the guidelines in such a way that only loathsome creatures of a particular state in the last couple of years count.
Norquist counts. He is alive. He is currently monstrous. Why not Norquist? I mean, he's no Gabby Giffords, but not everyone can be worse than Hitler.
Not even Hitler could be worse than Hitler.
Well, why not Norquist? Seems like you're forgetting the perennial bad guys here.
What about smug/dick fusion? Yeah, ima smick it girl.
My personal archnemesis is John Sununu.
Somehow I missed that David Mamet has become an idiot. ( I link the blog post in which I've seen this, rather than the original, because.)
I do not mean this to derail the much more interesting question of the most loathsome political actor in America. I just hadn't particularly glommed on to this kind of strange rhetoric.
In just two day days, Dick Morris has gone from calling a Romney landslide to saying that Obama can win because of a hurricane/tubby governor/rich mayor.
Which is really hilarious, except that I wouldn't be at all surprised if, "And we would have won if it wasn't for a storm" meme to become the new rallying cry of obstruction.
I'm not suggesting Dick Morris for most loathsome political actor. Just mocking him.
Lakers-Clips! Hopefully, the Lakers will win so I can tease this obnoxious 11 year old who routes for the Clips because the Lakers are "too ghetto" on Sunday.
It's tough being too ghetto on Sunday. That'll smick it for real.
What about smug/dick fusion?
Or smarmy/douche? Lemme smouche it, gurl.
"routes for the Clips". Into the drug business so early. I blame Apple Maps.
Gabby Giffords just doesn't have the longevity of a real monster
Longevity? She took a bullet point-blank to the head and kept on keepin' on. Rasputin's got nothing on that woman.
Dick Morris dancing before it dicks you.
Or smarmy/douche?
William Kristol.
146: I know, sweetheart. Was a weird, inverted joke.
146 - When Sen. Richard "Dr. SWAT" Carmona gets his flying exoskeleton, I know who he's going to have to fight to prevent the nuclear balloon from going up.
You know, I kind of have to hand it to Chris Christie, though. Maybe he has an agenda, but whatever; he's one of a few people uniquely placed in the Republican party to call bullshit on what we apparently now call partisan politics. Apparently he knows it.
I'm ready to think he's done a valuable service. The Republican party needs to get its head out of its ass.
To erg Tigre
I like the way you're branching out with names of African ethnic groups, but you misspelled "Touareg."
Remember when Cory Booker (D, Newark NJ mayor), hero to many and surrogate for the Obama campaign, made a video or two with Chris Christie (R, governor of that state) which looked as though they were, if not pals, working together? So many people were upset; Booker was unapologetic about it.
Perhaps I'm overreacting, but if we think that the GOP is in trouble and needs a correction, Christie's doing a provisional, and advance, job of that.
135: Mamet has been an idiot for a looong time.
I hate Chris Christie, but I have to admit he's done a good job with the storm response.
Hey, where'd text go? I hope he didn't have to leave on account of himself.
This is the kind of thread that makes me glad I now have less time to spend on Unfogged.
I think you have me confused with Paul Ryan.
155: Aw c'mon, you're excellent at it when you put your mind to it.
I know somebody who looks way, way more like Paul Ryan than you do, actually.
Like, really disconcertingly similar.
Are you sure it's not just Paul Ryan under an assumed name?
I don't usually think of the villain as having a secret identity.
Huh. teo is all about the pleasant.
Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. Now, it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.
Apparently, if you click on the links in 138, you get Romney ads following you around the whole internets. Sorry.
Well, we're safe for now. Thank goodness we're in a bowling alley.
||
Oh, shit. Now I'm worried about next Tuesday. Between that and Dick Morris allowing for the possibility of an Obama win, I'm starting to get nervous. Somebody please tell me that Bill Kristol is predicting a Romney landslide.
|>
If I could remember why I know the name Robert Shrum I'd be worried.
If I could remember why I know the name Robert Shrum
170: You made me go look and see if Pat Caddell had weighed in. So now I'm damaged and it's your fault. He's apparently been too busy laying the groundwork for impeachment scenarios based on Benghazi and warning about Kenyan-engineered October surprises to make a prediction.
But of course both of those contain implicit predictions.
Psheew, now I'm feeling better.
172: He looks like he should ask his uncle if he can be the new night manager at the Boar's Nest.
Cripe, I thought 170 was going to be about the incoming possible Nor'easter this coming Tuesday or Monday or Wednesday.
153: seconded. That said, I think the measure of the man will come after the crisis. It's worth recalling that Rudy Giuliani was pretty impressive post-9/11. He then used that adulation he enjoyed at the time to propel himself to world-historical shithead levels. It seems possible, based on past performance, that the same could happen with Christie. On the other hand, he pretty clearly just wants his state cleaned up, which is fair enough. And all this talk of him stabbing Mitt in the back strikes me as cynical even by my lofty standards for cynicism, not to mention deeply unfair.
Personally, I think Christie owed it to Romney to let the residents of New Jersey suffer until next week in order to avoid giving Obama the opportunity to look like he was doing something.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where Christie goes from here. The parallel to Giuliani is interesting.
179: I like the theory that Christie is mostly being nice to Obama to make Bruce Springsteen say something nice about him. I don't think this theory is correct, but I still like it. In any case, if that is what he was doing he succeeded.
And I am interested in the measure of the man that is Chris Christie. Because making fun of fat people is comedy gold!
I have vague hopes that the Republican party can rehabilitate itself. Christie could be a part of that, as could Marco Rubio.
182: I love that theory, though I too think it's totally wrong. Again, I think he just wants his state cleaned up. I don't believe I've ever told stories of going to NOLA* a couple of weeks after the storm -- and, because they're really boring, I'm not going to tell them now -- but I spent a fair amount of my time there crying. I'm not the most emotional guy in the world, but it was completely overwhelming to see what had been functioning neighborhoods, places where I used to go out to eat or watch music or visit friends, completely washed away. Christie seems like he wears his emotions on his sleeve. He also seems like he really likes his state. I imagine that he's suffering a lot and just appreciates that President Obama isn't a fucking shithead and doesn't seem to have any plans to fuck over New Jersey.
* Please understand that, although I'm a man of tremendous physical courage, I was doing nothing at all heroic there. Please understand that I was taking basically no risks at all -- though it was hard to find good food. Please understand that I don't mention this anecdote to suggest that I suffered in any way during Katrina.
Now all them things* that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don't remember
Barry acts like he don't care
* You know, like that stuff I said in the keynote.
184: no offense, but you don't have the first clue what you're talking about. Chris Christie is a loose cannon, sure, which means that he sometimes says and does things that aren't necessarily horrible, but he's also a complete fucking asshole who hates unions and public goods of all kinds. Marco Rubio, for his part, is a reliable movement conservative and would cut the beating heart out of the dying corpse of the New Deal if given the chance.
183: A noun, a verb, a cheeseburger, and the Sandy cleanup.
184: Remember when Mitt Romney was the focus of vague hopes like that? Look how that turned out.
Looking at 185, I feel like I need to make it clear that even suggesting that I was equating my own experience with Christie's is absurdly stupid. I shouldn't have written that comment. I've just been spending a lot of time thinking about New Orleans lately, and that's where that came from. Still, a totally stupid thing to have written. My bad.
Chris Christie is a loose cannon, sure, which means that he sometimes says and does things that aren't necessarily horrible, but he's also a complete fucking asshole who hates unions and public goods of all kinds.
Agreed. He's doing a good job with the cleanup, and the fact that he's in New Jersey limits how much of a right-wing extremist he can be in public, but overall he's still been a terrible governor with repugnant positions on most issues, and I don't regret voting against him.
And though it don't seem fair, for every smile that plays a tear must fall somewhere
President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land."
you don't have the first clue what you're talking about
That's a conversation ender.
189: And no, I don't remember ever having vague hopes like that about Romney.
58
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a meta thread or a pile-on-text thread. I was just surprised to see neb indicate that he wants me to move on. I was serious (always a mistake, I know) when I told him to e-mail me with my marching orders.
FWIW I like your comments better than neb's.
That's a conversation ender.
Well, yeah.
191
... and I don't regret voting against him.
You voted for Jon Corzine?
||
I got an email from a senior colleague that is so amazing I have to quote it in its entirety, with mild anonymization. The cryptic one-line email is said colleague's favorite medium but this one really reaches astonishing new heights.
From: Senior Colleague <bigshot@institution.edu>
Date: November 2, 2012 6:47:07 PM EDT
To: essear <me@institution.edu>, awesome postdoc <collaborator@institution.edu>
Subject: best i fou/nd--i lost websi/te but you can find
--
Senior Colleague
Someone Important, Jr. Professor of Whatnot
|>
200: That seems more like a zero-line e-mail, if I'm interpreting it correctly.
If you need to borrow my Enigma machine, just let me know.
201: Well, yeah. The one line is the subject. But what a subject! I think it means there is a good website somewhere and I should find it. Said colleague will probably get upset with me if I don't.
204: "Oh, yeah, I know that one. It's really more of an eclectic web magazine."
197: teo, I'll say this once only: if that's to mean that you agree that I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, go fuck yourself.
See, this is why I usually ignore you. And now I'll go back to doing so.
I think it means there is a good website somewhere and I should find it
I think it means that he found the best website for lost-and-found things?
Another interpretation of 197 is that it expresses agreement that "you don't have the first clue what you're talking about" is indeed a conversation-ender.
Though teo might have meant that by 197 while also thinking that you don't have that ordinal clue.
200 just looks like total viral spam to me. It could only be more definitively so if it was offering to enlarge your penis. But presumably he sends out e-mails almost like that all the time? Perhaps he's pursuing viral spam as a poetic?
206 does seem like rather an overreaction. As to 195, fair enough that you may not have done so, but many people evidently did -- or at least so they claim -- regard Romnery this way until the primary process.
212.2: Teo has been a dick to Parsimon lately. He's a bit of a mean drunk.
It's true that I've been a dick to parsimon lately, but I wouldn't attribute it to alcohol. She's been pissing me off for a long time, and I've only recently decided to say so.
Huh. I miss out on so much little-bitchiness reading as little of the blog as I do these days.
And 216 written without even having seen the little-bitchiness of 215. Okay then.
You should perhaps even put it into practice.
Oh come on, is there anyone whom parsley doesn't piss off?
I really should spend less time here than I do (and I do spend a lot less than I used to).
220: Methinks the nosflow doth protest too much.
Whatevs: like I've said before, I can see how some people grate on other people and that's fine, it happens to the best of us. But I've rarely seen parsimon do or say something genuinely piss-off worthy. Maybe that's what pisses these sundry people off about her? Meh.
Come on guys, Unfogged sing-a-long!
Oh, can't you see the morning after
It's waiting right outside the storm
Why don't we cross the bridge together
And find a place that's safe and warm
For my part, teo, I wish you were around a lot more rather than less, even though, other than lately, I don't spend much time here at all any more. Of late, though, because I've had a hole in my research agenda and an injury that's left me unable to do much beyond lying around, this place has been a great time-waster.
Also, I think the people who sense a lot of tension lately really don't remember what this placed used to be like. Maybe it's better now. Maybe it's worse. But it's certainly a lot more placid. And if saying that parsimon is annoying is little bitchery, I've never understood the meaning of that phrase. Okay, I'm off to take my meds.
You want this, don't you? The hate is swelling in you now.
225: Little bitchery was canonically confined to debating quirks of grammar. I'm including high dudgeon over minor quirks of personality on account of the absurdity factor isn't much different.
(Or to put it another way, I have no respect for someone who will bitch at parsimon but tolerate James B. Shearer.)
222.2: since I'm one of the people most vocally pissed off by parsimon, I'll say for the umpteenth time that I find her habit of telling other people how to comment annoying, that I find her unwillingness to google even the most basic things absurd, and that I find her use of "we" -- as in "we must solve the problem of hyper-partisanship" or "we must figure out what to do about Gov. Walker" -- unworthy of adolescent megalomania. Add to all of that, she insults people regularly and then either is oblivious to her actions or pretends to be oblivious to her actions. Either way, yuck.
Having said all of that, I've come around to the idea that she's basically a pretty good egg and doesn't actually do any real harm, so whatevs. But it hardly seems surprising that some people choose to ignore her.
For the record, I generally ignore both parsimon and Shearer.
OK, everyone name three posters they generally ignore.
The various meds I'm taking obviously are making me more verbose than usual, so I should probably avoid this place like the plague. On the other hand, I'm bored and this place is here, so there's that.
(I had a very successful bitch session lunch with two colleagues the other day where I required us all to name three people we hated. It was utterly juvenile and liberating.)
LALALALALALA IM IGNORING YOU LALALALALALALA LOOK AT ME IM IGNORING YOU ARE YOU LOOKING WATCH ME IGNORE YOU
VW's my second favorite commenter here.
I find her habit of telling other people how to comment annoying
I found this annoying too, as it tends to discourage conversation (something it has in common with disportionate sniping). I have noticed, however, that she's stopped doing it.But it hardly seems surprising that some people choose to ignore her.
It's more surprising when otherwise good, friendly people go out of their way to hurt each other.
230: So then just go about doing it, rather than telling us about it. Is there anything less interesting than talking about how we feel about each other?
Anyway, I love you all, and while I can't claim to be as Christ-like as Von Wafer, bearing the suffering of an entire city with a single manly tear, I offer myself up for abuse.
I don't see what's so wrong about hoping for a more moderate Republican Party. I don't think you'll see the trend start, if it ever does, with any current prominent Republican, but that's a separate point.
It's more surprising when otherwise good, friendly people go out of their way to hurt each other.
I suspect that I find this less surprising than you do, or at least I think it's unlikely that people are actually trying to hurt one another here, but the point is nevertheless well taken.
Is there anything less interesting than talking about how we feel about each other?
Daytime television, Richard Ford's later work, all of Adam Gopnik's work, faculty meetings, pondering assessment metrics, youth soccer, worrying about this coming Tuesday, obsessing over not getting one's work done, balancing the pH in a backyard pool, and probably some other things that aren't coming to mind right now.
240: I don't think it's wrong. It's just that it's a little like hoping for the Camorra to go straight.
236 and 237 are exactly right.
I know people miss Community, but that's no reason to bog down threads by talking about the group and who's potentially in or out.
Come on, "Winter: Five Windows on a Season" was prettyyyyaaaggghhhh okay you may have a point
Everybody else tied for first.
(But just about Adam Gopnik. The rest of those things in 241.2 are far more interesting than who teo is currently ignoring.)
When I see people praise Adam Gopnik I feel like I'm wearing those special glasses from They Live. I just want to yell at them, "can't you see! he's horrible!" and then get into a 10 minute fight.
241: You make me feel like a natural woman.
I moved a chair over by the window.
I don't even get Adam Gopnik. Like, what the fuck, people of literary taste? Among the many propositions I've been contemplating lately, there's the one that says that he's not allowed to write anything about Lincoln ever again.
Come to think of it, it wouldn't be the worst idea if we just declared a fallow period -- say a couple of decades -- on all writing about Lincoln.
248: do you have a dropbox account? If so, I feel the need to share with you the rough draft of the Gettysburg chapter from my Civil War graphic history.
Gopnik has a very smooth writing style. If you're not careful, you miss that there's nothing behind the words.
253: I do. I may have a pseudonymous one too but I can't remember. Anyway, I can email you.
vw, you worthless pontificating shithead, I'm back. And I can make you one promise: I am going to bloviate about politics. Oh yes. I don't have much to say about the election right at the moment because I'm sick of it, but I'm sure there will be some vote counting clusterfuck on Tuesday I can comment on. And that will just be the beginning. Get ready for a new update on the budget situation every damn day of the lame duck session. And it's going to be a loooong session. I'll be linking Washington Post updates every day. With exegesis. Get ready for a world of pain, motherfucker. The only thing that will stop me is actually having to work at work, which has been happening too often lately. But that's just the price I pay for having a hot Washington insider job where, unlike windbag academics, I actually wield real power. You're in my crosshairs now. Get ready.
Bloviator 2: The Revenge
This Winter, Politics is Perfectly... Goddamned... Delightful.
GET READY.
A better movie idea than a 5th Die Hard movie.
255: if you're interested, you should.
256 is really funny, PGD. Well done.
What, you're the official humor arbiter of Unfogged now? None of this shit is a joke, it's as real as it gets. And if you don't like what's waiting for you in the politics threads, wait till you see the history posts. I'm sick of foreigners coming in here with pretensions to understanding American history based on their experiences with happy-ass, tourist-guide places like New Orleans and Northern California. Places that have nothing to do with the real America. I was memorizing the Gettysburg Address and checking out Grant's autobiography in junior high, back when you were studying the collected speeches of Pierre Trudeau or the history of the Mounties or whatever it is you useless Canadian fucks do. I've visited twenty eight Civil War battlefields, along with Yorktown, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Liberty Bell. Spielberg is coming out with a Lincoln movie. Soon. For Oscars season. I'm going to hire a sitter, I'm going to see that movie, and then I'm going to tell everybody here what to think about it. Including you. Get ready.
You're killing, dude. Really, 256 and 262 are excellent.
OK, everyone name three posters they generally ignore
And then guess how much they make.
264: Thanks for making that explicit.
three posters they generally ignore
I don't so much ignore them as indulge in hathos. It's that much more satisfying when I can scorn exchange scornful emails about them behind their backs with other commenters. If only they knew how two-faced their purported friends are!
268: If you promise to vote for him, he'll stop. That's all he asks.
Why won't the President stop his campaign of hate? (Really. An ad just said this.)
Reading this thread and skipping the comments I usually skip is hilarious!
270: maybe he's bored and laid up with back trouble.
268: just think of it as one-percenters' money being incinerated at a rate of $30,000 per minute. It feels better that way.
Oh my Jesus god. I just saw the REPUBLICANS LUUUURRRRVE BLACK PEOPLE! ad. Holy crap. Did you know Republicans founded the NAACP? That Lincoln was a Republican? That the Democrats hated the Civil Rights Act?
273: at that rate they'll be broke before the sun collapses into a blackened husk!
If you promise to vote for him, he'll stop. That's all he asks.
So not true. I promised the person on the phone I would vote for Obama, and now they keep calling wanting money. Give 'em an inch...
Some folks nearby have signs up for the whole slate of Republican candidates. They have another sign up scolding people for stealing their signs, adding that they'll donate more money to the candidate each time a sign is stolen. This makes me want to steal all their signs every day.
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Oh man, so, not so relevant, and probably more than I should be talking about, but I have semi-recently become acquainted with a young gentleman of the one (0.01) percent and OH WOW the crappiness is worse than I thought. He recently sold the financial enterprise (fund that invests in [ moderately reprehensible industry ]) he started just out of [ privileged college ] so he is burning up the private jet miles trying to make sure that he doesn't spend too much time in any one of three states, lest he have to pay taxes there. This is a little tough to arrange, because he has started a PhD program (away from his primary residence in -- guess -- Manhattan) at [ other privileged university ] in what I believe is also a tax dodge, although it's a little hard to tell (it would sure be a weird school to attend as a tax dodge). He invited one of his fellow (female, come on!) grad students to his apartment in NYC last weekend because he was having a black tie masquerade party there. It just wow man people are really like that.
He actually comes off as a nice guy in direct interaction, which is fascinating, because I sort of peer at him like "hmm, no, you're evil!" I probably won't ever get to ride in his Maserati.
I haven't asked who he's voting for.
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277: At least steal the sign explaining the rules.
The mood in here is terrible again. Is it the political ad bombardment? It sounds hellish.
On 40, the Edith Cresson quote is probably explained by the man she said it to, slimy hyper-Thatcherite skirt-chaser Alan Clark*. In context, I presume he tried it on and she came out with that crack to shut him up - as a trade minister he regularly dealt with her and his diary suggests he spent most of their bilaterals lech-ing all over the place while his civil service aides tried not to vomit.
I've actually met her, and she is not like the woman in the quote at at all, which confirms me in the belief that it was Clark being a shitbag.
Oh yes, the *.
If you're unfamiliar with Clark, think half Rmoney, half Roger Simon in his Plato's Retreat years.
277: On a properly run planet, you and I wouldn't be so fantastically privileged either. I don't suppose I've ever interacted (other than professionally) with a member of the upper, upper crust, but this guy doesn't sound so bad.
I mean, unless he's voting for Romney.
think half Rmoney, half Roger Simon in his Plato's Retreat years.
That's fucking terrifying.
282.1: I mean, he takes short hop (or moderate hop; there is an article in [ reprehensible industry company town monthly ] about his bachelor pad in the r/tz there) private jet flights two or three times a week to avoid paying state taxes.
267: Presidential ads have been ticking up here--primarily for Romney. It might have been the specific ad in 269, but one of the "hate" ads was so over the top that my wife was sure it was an Obama ad illustrating how crazed the Republicans have become until the reveal at the end. Her reaction may have been influenced by the context of seeing it on MSNBC during "UP with Chris Hayes". Way to hit the demo., good use of funds, keep it up.
I recently had to spend a couple of days over in the private part of the airport (some evidence related to a case is stored there, and was being examined by an expert) and I was really surprised just how much private jet traffic there was. I hate flying steerage more than Commenter X hates Commenter Y, but geez, people, there ought to be some limits.
Jesus,264 is an awesome comment and obviously a terrible idea.
286: I assume a lot of it is stuff like this.
285 -- My newly formed theory ex recto is that they are trying to discourage the youth vote by making the whole process seem dirty and petty. This is probably because I think the most likely scenario for losing this thing is that youth stay away from the polls in sufficient numbers (and recent conversations with a member of the Class of 2016 were particularly troubling about this).
285: Probably the same ad -- I saw it on UP with Chris Hayes.
284 -- I thought there were rules to avoid this, specifically that you have to be domiciled in at least one state, and that if you have something that looks like your most permanent residence, that is where you are taxed.* I could easily be wrong, but that also sounds like precisely the kind of bullshitty tax-avoidance scam that state agencies are aggressive about catching.
*i had a client who got a very large settlement check, and arranged to move to Nevada immediately before the check was paid for tax avoidance reasons. I think that probably worked for him (I don't know) but he really did move permanently to Nevada. Also Jesus was his life depressing.
277: there was a New Yorker article about people who have apartments in NYC and monitor how much time they spend there in order to get out of paying city income tax. One guy didn't worry about it when his wife was dying of cancer, so when he cut it close to the line, the judge accepted his accounts. Some lawyer dude got hosed. One of the billionaire's mistakes was not waiting an extra 20 minutes at La Guardia, because--by leaving before midnight--he wasted a precious NYC day. He didn't mind being New York state resident, though. I think he was from Locust Valley, but I'm not sure.
Reading the article was a disconcerting experience. I got caught up in the game of it all. I wanted him to fall under the threshold. And then, after I finished I thought. What a waste of that administrative assistant's time! What a pointless job with no useful purpose. (Just to be clear, I've got no beef with her and don't judge her for taking the job.). Just pay the goddamn taxes.
But there's no denying that for a little while getting out of the taxes seemed like fun.
I would live in Nevada if I could live in the Corleone house from Godfather 2.
And the other prong of that is Village articles saying 'oh don't worry about all that Radical R/R shit, Senate Democrats will be a bullwark against redistribution from 99% to 1%.' Have these people ever *met* a Senate Democrat? Have they looked at the map for 2014, where once again we'll be defending more seats, and our will be in places like Louisiana, Arkansas, SD, NC, WV and Montana, while theirs are in the Plains and South (ok and Maine)?
292 - But I think the "day" thing is more of a guideline or evidence of domicile than a strict rule. At least I'm reasonably sure that's how CA enforces it. Anyhow you definitely (I think) can't just keep rotating between multiple locations to avoid paying in-state resident tax anywhere.
291.1: I suspect that's the reason for the three states; the state of his actual residence and the state where he attends school are both somewhat famous for their high taxes, but what I imagine to be the third state (where his bachelor pad in a hotel was the subject of a fawning profile) is likely to be much more amenable to plutocrats keeping their spoils.
... which would mean that yeah, 295.last is an unlikely scenario now that I think about it.
You should try to convince him to buy Sealand and commute from there.
I do not think the wackjobs who own Sealand want to sell.
I have invented a totally novel form of butt hurt.
I'm having one of those surreal moments where I know that all these people seem super weird because
I don't really know them, but wow the bride's family is intense. And there is all of this men/boys = bad and mischievous, and women/girls = religious and pious, and tons of praying by the latter during the day and secret trips to strip clubs by the former, by night. And lots of darling presents at morning brunches packed with prayer for the latter.
300: Sounds like a perfect excuse to post lots of snarky comments from your phone during all the festivities!
It always weirds me out when I'm around groups of people that are super gendered like that. No wonder people have all sorts of weird stereotypes about men and women, they're living in groups where those stereotypes are actually true!
303 gets it exactly right, although I never phrased it that way before.
It's kind of breathtaking how there can be on the one hand this INTENSE policing of gender boundaries, and on the other hand this strongly vocalized belief that gender differences are innate and carved in stone. Do these beliefs not seem in tension to you, people?!
this INTENSE policing of gender boundaries
If it involves a strip club, I think you have to police the gender boundaries. If you touch the dancers in the wrong way, it becomes prostitution.
It's a big secret from the bride that the groom got dragged to a strip club last night. They literally put a bowling ball on his leg, with a chain screwed into it, and shackled him to that, and hauled him there at 2 am. (He cancelled his bachelor's party a few weeks ago (among other things) and has been getting lots of shit, (somewhat deserved), for not staying true to his friends and family, etc.)
Anyway, I'm so perplexed by the idea that this is a secret. How do you keep a secret from the bride that involved 20 people, all staying at the same hotel? Is it a joke that it's a secret? It really doesn't seem to be a joke, at least for the next 24 hours.
But I can't imagine some groomsman not flirting with some bridesmaid and letting it slip at some point. Is the point that it's almost choreographed that it's supposed to be a big giant blow-up at some point? Is it a test of the bride? I feel kind of bad for her, because I assume she would actually be really upset to know, or else it wouldn't be such a big secret secret.
I think embedding dishonesty at the front end of a marriage is the only real form of relationship honesty there is. That's from a De Beers campaign, right?
How do you know about it? (I mean, how secret is it? Are you one of the groomsmen?)
Jammies and his cousins (male and female) were there when he got shackled at the hotel bar, and were invited along. So it's openly known on the groom's side of the family.
(They declined.) (And I've gotten several comments to the effect of Jammies KNEW he'd better not go with me being four months pregnant and blah blah blah!, which is kind of annoying. Jammies can make up his own mind and I'm not going to give him shit if he decides to go exploit hot methheads in Tulsa for a night.)
Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very secret secret. I'm excited for the coming hijinks!
After the rehearsal last night (Hawaii is a flower girl), the minister or someone official called a huddle for all of the wedding party. They were told to start praying Saturday morning and not to stop all day long, and this is all part of supporting the bride and groom. Lots of prayer. I've been eyeing the kids to see what they do when everyone else bows their head, just to see how they figure out the custom. My strategy is to act like a little kid, basically, and peek to see who else is peeking.
Kids meaning Hawaii and her cousin. I've never said anything explicitly to Hawaii about what to do during a prayer.
Also: File under Euphemisms for Recommendation Letters - "X is an excellent candidate for this position based on, first, the remarkable progress he has made as a scholar in this program, and second..."
So while at this wedding you're also writing and/or reading letters of rec?
...is the hottest methhead in Tulsa who doesn't have racist tattoos.
yeah, I'm holed up in my hotel room cranking through this giant stack of applications and not procrastinating at all on Unfogged.
They were told to start praying Saturday morning and not to stop all day long...
My family is very religious and yet the only thing the priest has ever asked of the wedding party is that they be sober until the ceremony is over. I don't get Protestantism.
Making a big naughty secret that everyone but the bride is complicit in is vital to a really solidly inegalitarian marriage: starting somewhere round about the wedding night, she'll know that her husband can step out and be naughty no matter how many people pray, and that everyone in both familes will back him up.
I mean, can't you take a joke? Boys will be boys. Don't make a scene, it isn't ladylike. You wouldn't want a sissy husband. Antibiotics will clear that right up.
It feels like the subtext is that she's being taken down a peg for being too high-maintenance or something. I suspect that her side of the family and bridesmaids are not actually complicit in the secret, and that's why I assume it's choreographed that she'll find out at some point. But maybe not.
Oh, and Hawaii goes to have her hair and make-up done at 3 pm. I didn't care that she was having her hair done, because whatever, rituals can be fun. I was surprised that the bride wants make-up for a 3 and 4 year old. I still don't really care, because my general approach to make-up and jewelry is that costumes are fun and it can be fun to dress up, but I was surprised.
It's much less creepy if the bride's family isn't in on it. On the other hand, sure sets up for some inter-family grudges.
Does she actually seem `high-maintenance', or is that the double standard?
She wants make-up on a three year old. She's high maintenance.
Without justifying the secret-keeping, she is intensely interested in appearances, etc. Cute-ish story: the groom planned a big day-long series of events before proposing. When she figured out what was going on, she halted the whole thing so that she could go get her nails done, for the hand photos of the ring. Apparently she'd been keeping her nails in spotless condition for four months and had let it lapse like a day or two earlier.
What sort of make up does one put on a 3 yo? Will Hawaii have rosy-circle doll cheeks? Mascara?
I'm finding it hard to respond to events upthread. I will, though, reply to 229 in a bit of detail.
I find her habit of telling other people how to comment annoying, that I find her unwillingness to google even the most basic things absurd
You mean like the time I provided you with a link to the thread from the archives here in which you made a bet with Megan for a Coke?
I haven't done the sorts of things described in quite some time (barring the political remarks you find off-putting); I'm also pretty sure I haven't insulted people in a while. I'd ask that you update your perceptions.
If I can't comment here without feeling the need to look over my shoulder for a source of attack, I'll stop participating. There's no doubt that some people annoy some people all the time. There's no need to advertise the fact.
Aside from chewing them, I never do anything to my nails. If I have a longish nail and I know I have something tense to do in the next few days, I save it so I have a stress coping mechanism available when I need it.
329: Don't snort coke when you're stressed, Moby. It makes it so much worse.
327: I will post photos to the pool. If it's kewpie doll make-up I'll be delighted.
Although I just googled "kewpie doll" and what popped up was not what I'd pictured. I thought there'd be two perfect disks of bright red rouge and tons of mascara, and maybe a bowtie mouth.
How long does it take to get your nails done? Also, I am having a grandmother visitation telling me that the whole point of femininity is that you should always be ready to be seen. (My underwear is clean and not ratty. And black! Otherwise probably too utilitarian for grandmother voice. Back to the grave, ma'am, I'll sweet-talk the Dwarf Lord in your memory.)
I went to a great wedding a while ago in a Navy town. The bride and most of her bridesmaids were serving in dangerous places, and the groom and most of his men were bartenders. On the bus between venues, the tipsy bridesmaids had a fine time discussing defensive driving and weaponry, and the groomsmen all briefly lost their equilibrium and then did a truly gentlemanly, egalitarian and commonsensical job of not trying to one-up the bridesmaids. The bus driver was so relieved.
There was a dessert made of pretzels, Jell-O and marshmallow fluff that was perfectly balanced. So good. So messy looking. Kind of a 7-11 trifle.
When she figured out what was going on, she halted the whole thing so that she could go get her nails done, for the hand photos of the ring.
Aaargh, run away! Run away!
At the last wedding I went to, the dessert was pot based. Magic Somethingorother.
I've kept many secrets for years from friends' wives, including ones that at least 50 other people close to them must know about, and including ones about strip clubs. That's what friends are for. I didn't keep those kinds of secrets in my own marriages, but theirs are still going strong and mine hit the rocks so whatever.
I mean, I'm also professionally employed to keep secrets, but that's different.
I know, I know the thread has moved on, for good reason. I hate to pound on this, but apparently I've googled in public before here.
269: Why won't the President stop his campaign of hate?
They were probably planning to go with that theme anyway, but apparently at some rally when people booed a reference to Romney/Ryan/Republicans Obama countered with something like "Don't boo; voting is the best way to get revenge". So as always they've de-contexualized that to Obama wants you to vote to get revenge while we want you to do it because you love your country. It's amazing how many breaks you get when you're an affirmative action president.
read, I'm seeing your comments before they're deleted, but they're apparently going to be deleted, so you might as well leave off. I'm not going to go to war in solidarity with you.
Live-blogging the trick-or-treaters. So far I have accidentally asked one Incredible Hulk if he was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. I have also had a cowboy-police-officer-football-player.
(We had to cancel Halloween on Wednesday because the neighborhood was still full of downed trees and power wires, and people were JUST getting their power back.)
They cancelled our Halloween, basically out of either fear or cross-state sympathy. I have to go out in two hours.
read, one last time: I'm not interested in being a drama queen.
I was horrified by the strip club secret until I read 326.
An kid in a Yankees uniform just showed up. I told him I wasn't sure if I could give candy to a Yankee, and he said earnestly, "I'm Lou Gehrig! From the old times!" And indeed when he turned around I saw that he was. Pretty adorable.
Wow, I just got a seven- or eight-year-old in a frighteningly realistic Union Army uniform. Odder still, I immediately got it. I didn't know I knew my military history that well.
So, in building a workbench, I would like to, as is traditional, include a bench vise. Of course, quite often people affix their bench vises directly to the work bench, either by means of screws, or, if it is a portable one, the little cranky thing on the bottom. However, in reviewing workbench plans online, I noticed that apparently some people make a separate little block out of scrap wood that the bench vise sits on and is attached to. This seems like it would be less stable, and yet it would give you more flexibility to use the whole top of the workbench. Thoughts?
345: whatever your moral issues it's a tough costume to pull off and the kid should be congratulated.
In other news, as long as I'm serial posting, if any sociologist or anthropologist wants a dissertation topic, you could try Evidence of the Persistence of Crude Racial and Sexual Stereotypes from a Review of iStockPhoto.com
I honestly cannot believe how hard it is to find a picture of an Arab Muslim man not wearing a keffiyeh.
I would go with the removable vise if that's your only workbench -- unless it's so big that you could still get, for instance, your largest door onto it. If you can clamp down once and have a firm hold, you can clamp down twice. (Gemmunz.)
I'm not sure the nail-doing justifies the strip-club secret (stipulating that all parties claim to believe that strip clubs are wrong). The nail-doing would have justified not proposing, in my mind, but it's not like the woman didn't give clear warning. May be true of the man as well -- did the elaborate day of events include body shots?
I bet Flickr would treat you better. If you need that specific combination, you might search for a Yemeni, who wear an amazing sarong/dagger/suit jacket combination.
348: I still need to put a vice on my bench. I'd think you'd want to attach it directly to the bench.
what's wrong with arabs wearing keffiyeh, would a white man in fedora evoke the same thought, mentioning that is more racist than taking exotic man in their hats imo
it's really strange how even the most sympathetic whites are so self-centered that one's wearing one's own ethnic hat would seem to them othering, taking those pictures included of course, casual racism indeed, so in order to not be exotic one shouldn't wear their own hat or what
Or you could have a flush inset vise or, hah, do what the Dwarf Lord and I did a few houses ago, and have a bench each, one smooth for fine work and painting and one that had the vise, the anvil, and most of the barnacles knocked off. Oh, and I had pegboard, too. I love pegboard. And baby-food jars with the lids screwed under shelves!
Does everyone else get a whole lot of Veritas when searching for bench vises, or is that my personal shopping bubble?
I had no idea there was such a thing as an inset vice. Now I must have one.
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I have been sitting outdoors in the cold watching rugby since noon. I think I may die soon.
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355: Oh, and I had pegboard, too. I love pegboard. And baby-food jars with the lids screwed under shelves!
Well of course, it would hardly be a workbench at all without that!
The thing is, this is going to be 100% built out of scrap from around the basement, and my shop room is kinda small, so I think the only way I'd be working on a door, for instance, is putting it on sawhorses right in the middle.
It would be nice to have a super Fine Woodworking set up, but then I'd probably just mess it up, so scrap wood it is.
351: I would not propose at that point, but I'm guessing that I would never reach the point where I'd be proposing. The secret-strip-club-going and nail-doing go together -- each is a coping mechanism for the other. It's a complete interlocking system of suck.
355, 357: oh, that is a cool thing.
Our benches of yore were built out of scrap found in a port town. Barnacles would not have been impossible, though I was joking about them. (Sharp. Smelly.) Anyway, even with scrap wood, having the vise in the middle so you can maneuver annoying things to it is important, and then having the vise not be in the middle so you can get big things on the bench and whang on them, also nice. (Maybe your sawhorses are exactly the height of the bench so something can be stable on bench & sawhorses together?)
The two-bench setup didn't make it impossible to also get the car in the garage, but it was such a pain we never did.
(LizardBreath: where?!? This is a rapid return to normalcy.)
358: our older boy had a swim meet last weekend. It was absurdly cold on the second day, and I got quite wet early in the morning. By day's end, I was pretty unhappy. Also, I have a limp. So, even though your suffering is as nothing compared to my own, you have my sympathies. Youth sports generally sort of suck for the parents, I think, though I keep reminding myself that the group identity is good for my kid. Plus, he's keeping in shape.
It's a complete interlocking system of suck.
Mouseover text!
358: Enjoying a sporting event while people are homeless? So insensitive!
I have a limp now. Did you infect me, VW?
362.1 Well, yeah, definitely it would be nice to have some flexibility. That's why this idea of putting the vise on it's own block seemed appealing, but of course that sets a limit on how heavy/unbalanced a thing you can clamp in the vise. That's a good thought about making the bench surface the same height as the sawhorses, I will see if I can do that.
367: it's not my fault you think dental dams are gross.
Flickr can be useful, for sure. Unfortunately the ratio of unusable:photos that are Creative Commons licensed, high-quality enough for me to use, AND have relevant subjects is poor.
The secret-strip-club-going and nail-doing go together -- each is a coping mechanism for the other.
Yup.
Oh, speaking of sawhorses, I inherited two of the basic all-steel kind with this house, and screwed 2x4s onto the tops. But my former employer has the same, except with 2x6s, which seemed like an interesting innovation. Should I swap out the 2x4s for 2x6s?
I was in fact thinking yesterday about how dental dams are gross. Are we psychically linked? Is that how you transmitted your limp to me?
I am just going outside and may be some time.
Is Randalls Island the one with the pedestrian bridge that goes up and down? At like 100th and the East River?
I thought Randalls Island had the gondola. But wait, that's Roosevelt* Island, isn't it?
* Probably named for Teddy, right?
Nope, used to be named Welfare Island. Renamed for FDR in 1973. Now has a Four Freedoms Park. Which begs the question, should we add a fifth freedom in these hard times? As a kind of Keynesian freedom stimulus?
371: Using a 2x10 might make people think you're compensating for something.
Which begs the question, should we add a fifth freedom in these hard times? As a kind of Keynesian freedom stimulus?
My mom and I once visited the son of a friend of her's at a summer camp where they had the "fifth freedom". It was nudity.
That apostrophe was insufficiently wrangled.
2x10 with the 10 parallel to the floor, or to the walls? If walls, ripping that until the sawhorses match the bench should work.
and if you could put a sawhorse under the other end of a heavy unbalanced thing, the vise wouldn't need to be as strong.
Aha. The pedestrian bridge can get to you to Ward's Island, but from there to Randall's Island. Several years ago I started walking over there just out of curiosity and got about 3/4ths of the way across the bridge when I realized that everyone walking back the other way was either a 16 year old boy with a midriff-baring tshirt and poorly applied eye makeup and lipstick or a sheepish middle-aged dude.
This is definitely the most metal thread we've had in a while, up to and including rugby in the cold.
Fear of living on
Natives getting restless now
Mutiny in the air
Got some death to do
Mirror stares back hard
Kill is sch a friendly word
Seems the only way
For reaching out again
I realized that everyone walking back the other way was either a 16 year old boy with a midriff-baring tshirt and poorly applied eye makeup and lipstick or a sheepish middle-aged dude
It took me quite a while to parse what this meant. High-school football tournament? Cure show? Some kind of... ohhhh.
Tigre, do you have conflicted feelings about the Vegan Black Metal Chef?
Admit it: he is kind of awesome. CRUSH! THE PEANUTS! CRUSH! THE PEANUTS!
I admit it. I just wish he would use his powers for good. Well, for evil, I guess, but maybe evil good? The world of metal and meat eating is confusing.
Do we really have to fall back tonight? Can't I declare my block part of Hawaii or something?
Grumble, grumble, so begins the useless six months of my year.
389: Chaotic Neutral is what the cool kids are reclaiming nowadays.
Do we really have to fall back tonight? Can't I declare my block part of Hawaii or something?
If you were part of Hawaii you never would have changed in the first place.
The house with the Romney sign wasn't giving treats but the Obama house was.
The reserve bag of peanut butter cups hasn't been tapped yet. As long as the lesser candy holds out for ten minutes, they're mine.
What was the Jill Stein house giving out?
The promise of a hot fudge sundae!
The Gary Johnson house was giving out liquor.
Ralph Nader gives out packs of Texas Rangers baseball cards.
The Romney house isn't giving you parasites any handouts; they're offering you a hand up.
Since anything goes at this point, I finally got my confirmation that Mara's mom is pregnant and I would be shocked if the state didn't take custody at birth. Fuck, I don't want a baby now(ish) and yet I don't think I could say no and have Mara's sibling go somewheree else. Fuck. Lee needs to get a job so I can take parental leave. That might work, except we'd be back to three-carseat land and fuck fuck fuck I don't know.
Oh wow, Thorn. Hooking your life to some one else's in such a generous way sure does create dilemmas for you. I have every faith in you, no matter what you do.
Yikes, that sounds very stressful Thorn. Thinking good thoughts at you.
Oh, there's still a lot of uncertainty and I've been pretty sure this was in the works since July, but it feels a lot more real to know for semi-sure. Maybe her ex has stable relatives who'd be interested and able to pass a background check or maybe she could get a frind to take the baby like she did with Mara's little brother. I can't see either parent leaving the hospital with a child, but she claims she's been taking parenting classes and so maybe she'd just have to have a safe place to live to be able to parent. I have no idea at this point and don't know whether we'd be signing on for good if we said yes. Probably, one way or another, and I don't know how Lee would/will feel.
Right now Lee is livid because I brought Mara's middle siblings (10, 9, 6) over for her birthday party and then as agreed on took them back to their aunt's at 6, except no one was there. I ended up successfully dropping them off two hours later but it was with the family friend who's raising Mara's other sibling, since I was not about to just leave them in the projects with someone I didn't know. The aunt half-heartedly apologized for losing track of time and going to Walmart rather than coming home like she'd said she would, but the other aunt went to meet them at Walmart and therefore wasn't around for me to leave the kids there either. Lee called the custodial aunt and ranted about how disrespectful this was, and at least she understood that I wasn't being a pushover for staying with the kids because someone needed to do that. So annoying, though. I took them to see their mom. When I see her again with Mara tomorrow, I'm going to finally ask about the pregnancy and what her plans are, which I've been avoiding since I hoped she'd tell me. But apparently the same weekend she let me overhear her saying she wasn't pregnant though I suspected otherwise was when she let her sisters know. Ugh.
Fine, whatever, you're not a saint, Thorn, but you're making the world a better place in a rather obvious way for some very lucky young people, and it comes at real cost to you.
What are some things you like? Chocolate? Good wine? Snuff pr0n? Why don't you tell us some of those things and maybe a few of us can send you a care package. Is that too much to ask for inspiring us to be better people?
Don't be selfish, is what I'm saying.
If you have been very, very good, VW and I could send you some of the pron we've won at Pub Quiz (not snuff) I know he'd hate to give that up, but this is a special reason.
I, too, agree with 404-5. I continue to be amazed at your good-heartedness, Thorn.
We could consider you for those if you adopt a couple more toddlers.
I'm thinking of tipping well before I leave the bar. Can I have the porn where women crush small animals under high heel shoes?
409: I long ago gave that pr0n to Mr. Fontana Labs, Megan. I'm sorry about that. Plus, I think Thorn deserves better than used pr0n.
I'm rewatching Chinatown for the first time in forever. It's making me think of Megan.
We will win new porn for Thorn! It is the least we can do!
I've never seen Chinatown or crush porn.
And we'll send it to her without even watching it first!!
418: Heh. That occurred to me after I wrote it.
Didn't someone set up a gin-and-chocolate paypal link for Thorn?
Since this is the kitchen sink thread of the moment, I will note here that Cambridge headquarters for Elizabeth Warren this afternoon were like something out of central casting. Old people, young people, cute multiracial kids! A range of races! Several handicapped people! Lesbians! Lots of nerds, one hipster!
Then I went over to a private home that was staging area for a bunch of canvassing, and things there were much more predictably Cambridge-y: lots of earnest couples in their late 40s or early 50s in Patagonia and sensible shoes.
Let's all list what we find most sexually arousing to watch die.
General description only. No individual names please.
lots of earnest couples in their late 40s or early 50s in Patagonia and sensible shoes.
At least I'm a few years young too young and have Land's End clothes (fucking recession).
There might be an extra word there.
Thorn, I sent a little money toward the gin and chocolate fund.
I'm opposed to clear liquors for reasons I can't quite verbalize.
The part of Chinatown that makes me think of me is the part where he's looking over the San Fernando Valley and imagining it all developed, because I did grow up in San Fernando Valley on a converted orchard. The rest is just soap opera, far as I'm concerned.
422 is neat.
When I did my Voter Protection Training (which sounds way more ninja-y than it actually is), it was in a faaaaaaaaaancy law firm with an enormously and stunningly gorgeous wooden conference table.
Everybody seemed to fall into one of three groups: 1) late-middle-aged lawyer, 2) starry-eyed 20-something, or 3) 30-something single women. Most of the last group were African-American, but everybody else was white.
As far as I can tell from demographic stereotyping, my partners on Election Day are both going to be white. No idea if either of them speak Spanish (which would be handy).
At least one of them seems to have experience in the neighborhoods, though. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will not be like the last person I got paired with for something like this, who actually said, as we turned from the poor neighborhood onto the main commercial drag, "Back to civilization."
That's when I have trouble verbalizing.
Like a man who defines masculinity in terms of tannins.
One of the most satisfactory definition of tannins was given by Horvath (1981):
"Any phenolic compound of sufficiently high molecular weight containing sufficient hydroxyls and other suitable groups (i.e. carboxyls) to form effectively strong complexes with protein and other macromolecules under the particular environmental conditions being studied"And yet I find myself curiously unsatisfied.
Try changing your particular environmental conditions.
Just got back from seeing Cloud Atlas. I found myself interpreting nearly every subplot in terms of the current election. Not healthy.
The rest is just soap opera, far as I'm concerned.
I believe the technical term is "noir."
Biff Tannin is the true exemplar of masculinity.
Of course tannins are confusing. Iconoclasts are now claiming humic material itself isn't a well-defined category.
Witt, anyone I know? Email me.
I'd really want the UC Davis football team to win next weekend. How can we make that happen? Southern Utah also. Although if Cal Poly can win it's final game, the Thunderbirds are off the hook.
Thorn, I agree with comment 406 so much I'm tempted to make the same joke I made before about 406 t-shirts.
429: How can I do that? All I can find are the umpteen threads where we discussed setting it up....
444: right? Is this the buy-a-car fund? Or is there another?
Just send the money via PayPal to motherissues@gmail.com
Why did that have to be présidentielle?
350: Witt, if you go to an Arab country, you'll find it is really difficult to take a picture of an Arab Muslim man not wearing a keffiyah, because they actually pretty much do all wear keffiyahs. (Next up: grotesque stereotyping on Nigerians as all being black, French people all speaking French, etc...)
403: That all sounds really stressful, Thorn. I hadn't realized that Lee wasn't working. I knew that there was some stress in the employment area, but I didn't know that she didn't have a job. That's got to be an extra added stressor.
||
Right now, I am reading unfogged, because I woke up at 6:00 DST which means 5:00 in depressing winter time, but I couldn't fall back asleep.
I turned on the radio and listened to Marketplace for a while. It was good and accurate for once--but mostly depressing with a focus o the decline of the middle class and the current election. There was a segment on Food stamps, Medicare and the end of retirement as a middle class reality. I couldn't bear to listen to the last one.
The Medicare piece focused on how Medicare is a program which benefits a lot of under-65 people indirectly in that before it passed their adult children frequently had to bankrupt themselves paying for medical care for their parents to the neglect of themselves or their children.
This is all sensible and good and hugely worht remembering. But my mind was on the conversation I had last night with my parents about their health care proxies and who should be the alternate for my mother. She kind of wanted her friend to do it, but she won't quite reasonably. Then she mentioned her sister M. I said that M wouldn't do it. I told her that if she thought she would then she'd better call to ask M.
Watching that call was one of the most painful things I've ever seen.
First call
Mom: I'm calling to ask if you'll be my healthcare proxy. Umm, what's a healthcare proxy? I don't know. BG says I need one. Oh ok right.
Abrupt hangup
Then my Mom needs to explain it --even though M knew perfectly well what it was. So I wrote down a definition and then I wrote, "you need an alternate in the event thatI (BG) am incapacitated or otherwise unavailable."
So she called back.
She reads the description out loud. I'm assuming that M. said, Why can't BG do it, because my mother said, "I need an alternate." Then my Mom said, "Because Younger Daughter is having emotional problems and isn't returning our phone calls. So then M. asked whether my mother wanted her life prolonged or what etc. which actually surprised me, and my mother said that she wanted it prolonged and M. said she would have to think about it. I doubt that she's really thinking about it.
What made it so heart-wrenching was the look of terror on my Mom's face. And afterwards she said that she wanted her best friend to do it. Her best friend's been very clear that she does this for her husband and her mother and several immediate family members already. And my sat down and said, "What am I going to do if neither M nor onlyfriend won't do it?"
I mean, we could put my sister down and pray to God that I'm never incapacitated and never go anywhere.
She needs to know the truth (or does she?), but it was so painful to watch it.
|>
That sounds incredibly hard, BG. Is M your aunt who had refused discussion of financial help earlier?
282: don't worry, he's dead, leaving a trail of tormented ex-wives, a term as minister of defence procurement that cost the taxpayer billions and left the military without a decent platoon radio or a maritime patrol aircraft, and three volumes of diaries in which he bitches endlessly about Kenneth Clarke, specifically because he's fat and he smokes and he occasionally displays empathy, and therefore he's bound to die young.
Alan Clark was writing this stuff in 1985, he died in 1999, Kenneth Clarke is not only still enjoying good health but he's still a government minister (and he's still fat and smoking*). living well is the best revenge, as they say.
*which is at least honest of him, what with being a director of British American Tobacco and therefore jointly responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler.
454: Yes. Not only refused financial help but refused to talk about anything other than how she felt I was not sufficiently grateful for her offer to be a "supportive presence". I'm working on coming to piece with it for myself, but I never said anything bad about her sister M to her, so she thought that their improving relationship meant something to M that it didn't. I have mixed feelings about how much I should strip my mother of her illusions.
BG, I'm so sorry you have to go through all that and that there aren't more good options to be backups for you, because you've been more than pulling your weight.
Lee is not working but I don't really talk about it because of potential pending litigation. It's actually been nice to have her at home and we've both calmed down about the job loss a lot since it became a reality. She cashed in some retirement and has made home improvements that make her feel better and has 1.5 years of mortgage squirreled away plus bought herself a whirlwind birthday vacation trip to NYC, which is not what I would have done but seems to be working. She's getting unemployment now and we're not in any special financial stress.
I did get one submission to the gin and chocolate fund and thought I'd written a thank-you email to the person who sent it, though the unsigned comment above makes me think it didn't go through. I was grateful and delighted, though a litle embarrassed too. It was enough to spur me to make sure I'm giving myself little indulgences, which is easier than getting money from people on the internet. I am eating candied ginger and drinking tea now and when Lee takes the girls to church without me (hooray!) I'll make kimchi shrimp pancakes and be truly decadent. My life is actually pretty good and relatively low-stress now. Nia has been with us almost as long and Val and Alex were and the experience is just so different and so much easier.
Oh BG, that's really hard. And you are REALLY brave. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was push my mother to dictate a living will (when she was in the hospital during what turned out to be her last illness) and that was nowhere near as emotionally fraught a situation as you describe.
All my good wishes to you as you navigate this difficult process. Take good care.
Wow. The Republicans DO Care About Black People! ad is back with a twist. Now, instead of focusing on how Lincoln was a Republican and Dems opposed the Civil Rights Act, it tells us the Obama gives all the money away to his rich white friends! Etc.
459: who on earth is that supposed to work on?
They're just trying out the weaker Monkey Island ripostes. This is "I am rubber, you are glue". With luck, they'll soon advance to "how appropriate. You fight like a cow".
Oh, and to 450: ?? Ajay, if you come to Philadelphia I'd be glad to introduce you to a great many Arab Muslim men who do not commonly wear keffiyehs. I suspect there are equal numbers in other UK cities with substantial immigrant populations.
That's one of the frustrating things about stock photos. It's not that they depict common images, it's that they often depict ONLY one flavor of common images. Try finding a photo of an Afro-Latino or a Latino with indigenous heritage. It's really, really difficult.* And yet there are millions upon millions of people in each of those groups.
*Which makes me a teeny bit more sympathetic to the people who designed a Hispanic youth scholarship poster featuring five light-skinned young people -- but only a little.
When you're trying not to signal colorism, you REALLY don't want your publications to undercut that message.
453 -- Won't the aunt reveal the truth herself soon enough? Sounds like you might have to designate the sister 'for now, until the aunt comes through' and move on.
Your mother wanting her life prolonged seems alien to me. Maybe I just live in a bubble.
Witt -- 462.2 seemed implausible to me, and indeed if you do a google images search for "Latino" about half the photos that come up immediately are of Latinos obviously with indigenous heritage. You also get a whole bunch on the first page of a search for "Latino" on istockphoto.com.
Try finding a photo of an Afro-Latino or a Latino with indigenous heritage. It's really, really difficult.
I'm not quite clear on what this would mean. Other than darker skin, what would be the other physical markers? Could you find something like what you're looking for by searching for stock photos of Brazilians, or does that just yield people in carnival costumes?
Didn't expect this: I just searched "Brazilian man" on istockphoto.com, and got a decent amount of beach volleyball and capoeira.
I'm a little confused on what the desired visual for "Latino" is at all, other than "Probably not pale/light-haired/blue-eyed Caucasian unless the image was a big crowd in which case maybe one or two who looked like that." I mean, medium brown skin/mixed race is the primary image I'd think of, but pretty much anyone non-Asian could be Latino.
I feel like I'm being nitpicky about this, but it really seems like if you want stock pictures to illustrate something with, you could search for the look you wanted regardless of whether the pictures were labeled 'Latino' or not.
Do people call Spanish-speaking Filipinos Latino? If so, correct the non-Asian bit above.
The first page of an istockphoto search for "Muslim Man" has a bunch of people in keffiyehs and a bunch of people* without keffiyehs, as seems appropriate. I am officially declaring this a non-problem.
*OK, some are of the same dude, in a nice grey suit.
I'm figuring Witt was talking about something that we're all missing, because it really does seem like a non-problem.
471: She asked for Arabs, not Persians.
Witt should have known not to search wealthylatinamericaneliteandcrudemuslimstereotypestockphoto.com.
My first read of 463 was that Yemen had died.
I can't figure out who is failing to get what joke.
465 etc: I should have been more specific. I use images whose copyright I can ascertain (thus, Google Image is out) and which are not set in an obviously outside-the-US locale (of course you can crop). Given those parameters, it's obviously still *possible* to find the stock photos you need, but it's still really tough, especially given that any image need is going to have other requirements (you don't want a cheery person if you're doing a grim piece on gun violence).
I've spent enough time in the past few years on iStockPhoto and its ilk to be confident in my judgment on this -- this isn't based on a couple of searches one afternoon.
466: Hair texture, facial features, stature (indigenous Latinos are often shorter). It's not that there is one particular constellation of features that is definitively "indigenous," but a whole lot of photos of people with European-ish features and straight hair sends the message that "indigenous" people should only apply if they've melded themselves to fit that ideal.
479 -- I just had a vision of what Unfogged will look like in the last days, as the global thermonuclear war begins:
NMM to Moscow
NMM to New York City
NMM to Chicago
NMM
FIN
And as the last bombs fell, the final commenter came, and went.
481: you can specify license type (or, at least, you can specify creative commons) on google image search. And then there's this.
484: Oh hey, that's awesome. I've done Creative Commons-limited searches on Flickr but I didn't know you could do it on Google Image too. Thanks!
453: I'm sorry, that is a very unpleasant and painful situation. I suppose this is the kind of thing I really need to think about soon. Luckily, I can think of a dozen people easily who would do this for my parents, but that's only the tip-of-the-iceberg for end-of-life planning, and I know there are a lot of other things where stuff will not be that simple. Depressing.
409: Pub quiz! My team won the month of October and gets a cocktail named after us at the hosting institution. Oh, it is like reliving the glory days of Nerd Bowl, but with booze.
417: I've seen Chinatown, but I've never been to 我.
Maybe I just live in a bubble.
Isn't this all about prolonging your life. Maybe I misunderstood the movie. I probably shouldn't have had Witt explain it to me.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around a pub quiz that doesn't have snuff porn as a prize.
I assume she was being facetious but I really hope that Megan and VW are on a pub quiz team together.
On further inspection, the ad that laments that BHO gives all the money to rich white people, shoes him whooping it up at a St Patrick's Day party when it tells us (with all-cap titling) that Democrats Abuse Black People.
We really are on a Pub Quiz team together. We don't go all that often, but sometimes we do place.
NosfloW, if you are ever out this way on a Sunday night, that would be good reason for us to show up at Pub Quiz. You can be on our team!
I can think of few things I'd enjoy more than playing Pub Quiz with neb.
Who wants to join up on Evil Team to beat Megan and VW? Let's go to Sacramento and do this. Our t-shirts could have a cool skull design and we could be super intimidating. Maybe I'm letting my fantasy life get a little out of control.
To be clear, I'm thinking we could be like the Cobra Kai. At the right moment, someone could sweep VW's limp for the win.
My friend and I won Pub Quiz last Tuesday, but the prize is just three drink tickets and so I broke even.
And since I started the fostering subthread, I'll say that wondering whether to take a new baby is a pretty normal thing a lot of people go through. Lee and I had agreed that we'd say no if she didn't have a job yet because she didn't want to be a full-time caregiver to a newborn, but obviously I'm wavering some.
The guy with the limp wins in the end, Tigre. I've been watching that scene on a loop from my sick bed. It's the only thing sustaining my will to live these days.
Sapping my will to live? The fact that Megan Fox had too much integrity to do Transformers III, but Frances McDormand, my secret love, seems to have accepted a prominent role.
I'm actually not much of an asset for pub quiz type things.
|| I'm curious whether folks are familiar with the Natural Grocers chain. We just got one. |>
Honestly, I'm not either. But I do the inviting and found the Davis ringers, so I'm kindof a pre-condition for the team's existence. That gets me close enough for glory.
495: Let's do it! I've never placed worse than second in Pub Quiz, and the shame of my one second-place finish still burns within me. I was born to be the villain in a feel-good Pub Quiz sports movie.
462: most Arab Muslims don't live in Philadelphia, though. Keffiyah is pretty much universal in, eg, Oman. (Except for the ones who wear embroidered skullcaps, which is probably equally Othering. Bad Muslim! Be more diverse!)
504: most Arab Muslims don't live in Philadelphia
Correct. Most Arab Muslims live in cities like Cairo and Baghdad, where men don't usually wear keffiyeh.
500: we're bringing you in as eye candy. If you know an answer or two, all the better, but your intellect is beside the point.
The Elizabeth Warren people just rang my doorbell. They represented the Patagonia and sensible shoes faction. Lucky for them, it's a beautiful day for GOTV. They had us down as supporters already, and I assured them that Fleur and I would both cast our ballots. Scott Brown got crushed in PDBS by Martha Coakley in the special, so I assume Warren will bank at least five thousand net votes here with Obama on the ballot.
It's all about sowing uncertainty!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/11/banking_on_the_gop_govs.php?m=1
If PA is decided by 1 point or less, I'll eat neb's hat. Still, I fear that the rest of that might be true -- and I'd add FL to the list of likely to be too close to call Tuesday night.
The Ohio scenario, as you know, is really getting me down. Husted is just such a dick. Still, if O wins by enough votes -- 2% margin will be more than enough -- it's not going to matter how evil Husted and Kasich are. Less than a .5 million or so votes, though, and I can't imagine that Ohio will certify its results for weeks.
Still, I fear that the rest of that might be true
Not me.
Hey you read that article about the respective GOTV operations in Ohio, VW? The ineptness of the attempt to make them seem equivalent might cheer you.
One thing, though, Colorado's governor is John Hickenlooper. He's a Democrat. Josh's ignorance of the West sometimes frustrates me.
510: I have. The thing is, I'm worried, with a fair amount of evidence to support my worries, that Republicans, because they don't believe in government, are more than willing to subvert it, especially at election time. Which is to say, I think there's going to be a shitload of nasty stuff happening around the country, particularly in the battleground states, and it leaves me uneasy. This makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, and, as I've said before, I hate that about myself. But 2000 was 2000, and there's just no way around what happened then and in the years since.
509-512: So, sagacious ones, what exactly do you think Britt Hume and Chris Matthews are going to be doing in the wee hours?
"Well, Chris, I think we are going to have to wait to see who the next president is until around Thanksgiving."
"Well, thanks Ezra and Nate, I'll guess we will just have to be patient and let the process work."
The media will fucking call Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania by dawn Wednesday morning, Bet on it.
How will they call it, what happens after that.
The appearance of pro-Romney ads here in Maryland has been puzzling me; I was completely surprised to see American Crossroads ads last night. TPM has a couple of posts on this: the GOP is trying to run up the popular vote, vs. Josh Marshall's theory that they just have money they have to spend.
I'm inclined toward the popular vote theory: it will be a real problem -- for Dems, for the country in general -- if Romney wins there but loses the electoral college. Crisis of legitimacy and all that. The Republican base will freak out regardless, but I tend to think it's fairly important to bring in a popular vote win along with an electoral college one.
453: I wasn't just thinking about her illusions about her sister. And certainly, there are things that my aunt said to me that I probably don't need to tell her. As for my sister, there are real issues about her competence right now and even her ability to take care of herself. We may have to put my Dad down which is less than optimal, but there aren't a lot of good options.
Josh's ignorance of the West sometimes frustrates me.
Didn't Josh grow up somewhere out west?
Not that this makes Hickenlooper magically not a Dem or something, just trying to recall where he's ever lived besides DC, NY, and RI.
Hey is there still any talk of Unfoggedecadecon?
Didn't Josh grow up somewhere out west?
Yeah, in southern California.
515: yeah, it was brutal for GWB in 2000. Seriously, fuck the fucking fuckwits who scream foul or cry crocodile tears when the system works the way the system is set up to work.
(This comment brought to you by someone who believes that movement conservatives will do everything they can to fuck up Obama's second term even if he manages to win 539 electoral votes and has a 37 point popular vote margin; that even if movement conservatives don't do that -- fat fucking chance -- Obama will be a lame duck by the third week of his second term; and that the nation needs NPV.)
I don't think you have a clue about how horrible it will be before certification. I expect violence.
And after, with that PoS in the White House?
"The last six months have shown the worst sides of partisan politics in this nation. A nation divided cannot stand. I will make the first giant step toward making piece with not our enemies, not our adversaries, but what must be our allies in building this nation. So as of tonight..."
Boehner gets to pick the cabinet and all SCOTUS nominees?
517: I meant inner-mountain West. California doesn't really count in these discussion -- says the guy living in California.
Hey is there still any talk of Unfoggedecadecon?
Talk? No. Only whispers.
464: Also, she might just weasel out of answering instead of giving a straight answer.
I expect violence.
No way?!!!? Just so I'm clear, bob, I don't think my namesake is right in that tweet above. I do, though, think it's going to be a very close election; I've thought that all along (Coke incoming from Megan, I expect). And given how close I think it's going to be, and given what huge dickheads Husted and Kasich are*, I don't think it's impossible that Ohio won't certify its results for awhile. Having said that, I actually think it's more likely that Obama will win Ohio by a large enough margin that not even shenanigans will matter, and we'll know the winner late Tuesday night. Or, put as accurately as I can put it, that's my guess. Feel free to nuke me from space if I'm wrong. With this limp, I won't be able to outmaneuver your ICBM.
* Enabled by a press corps that should be put to the flame.
Are the whispers hushed? They are, of course—being whispers. An apter description of the whispers, however, is "furtive".
526:Pam Spaulding is also optimistic
I think you are underestimating the post-election hell by a factor. 5-10 Floridas.
Thinking about the 1850s and 1930s again, and trying to understand why liberals just can't hate hard enough.
1933 Bob:This will not end well. Libs:Shut up, it's ok
1934: Uh-oh Libs:STFU
1935:Watch out Liberals:Fucking pessimistic Cassandra, always wrong
1936:OMG Liberals:We can work with this guy, and you are in the fucking way.
You have to hate enough to kill.
1937 Bob:C'mon people, for God's sake
1937 Liberals: You fucking crazy animal. You want fucking war? You want violence? You are the problem, not the guy with the moustache.
One likes to think that Winston Churchill would have given Bob a punch to the gut, and then spilled his drink on him.
I guess Churchill wasn't a liberal, at least not then.
You have to hate enough to kill.
Metal! 384 to the thread.
Actually, on further reflection Bob's hatred might be just enough to get him into Pub Quiz Cobra Kai.
Fear does not exist in this dojo.
Pain does not exist in this dojo.
Strike hard, strike first, no mercy.
OT: This weekend's This American Life is interesting. As Ira Glass glosses it, it's on the divide between red and blue America. Part two is a fairly detailed profile of the state of affairs in New Hampshire. I heard it yesterday: many things I did not know.
If it's close and litigated and Romney is nominally ahead it will be a constitutional crisis. If Obama is ahead it will be being a sore loser.
But I hold out some hope for it being a walkaway for Obama.
And American white men are the stupidest fucking voters in the world.
518: yes, unfoggedecon is on my to-do list. I'll throw up a post soonish.
Use small words so I can understand it.
If you want your bullshit pure and unfiltered this Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen piece is just your thing. [Not responsible for any self-inflicted eye-gouging or unfortunate hairpin placement that may result.]
The pressure on Obama to deliver for this liberal base will be powerful. Already, top left-wing groups are pressuring him not to buckle on a grand bargain that includes any entitlement cuts....
Win or lose, the Obama strategy in Ohio will be a case study in the politics of precision for years to come. They told us one year ago they would go nasty and narrow and couldn't care less if people found the approach cold and calculating
Remember back when people were all, like, Republicans won't vote for Romney, he's Mormon, and he used used to be governor of Massachusetts! That was funny.
I suppose it was inevitable that as the poll aggregators started to show an Obama victory growing increasingly likely, liberals would put redoubled energy into devising doomsday scenarios.
I know. Honestly, they just want to scare themselves.
We're the architects of the world, and we're taking it all apart. Do you think we can go on forever?
At this point, I am completely confident in an Obama victory. Christie and Bloomberg are both rats, and I trust them to know when Romney is a sinking ship.
But I want it to be a stomp. Both in the EV and the PV.
(hint, hint)
They've stopped early voting in Miami and there are huuuuuuge lines in Cleveland. Why would anyone worry about shenanigans? It used to be that Democrats knew how to steal an election. Ah, the good old days.
I am completely confident in an Obama victory
Yeah, me too. If anybody hasn't read Jack Balkin's pieces on the challenges for a Romney presidency versus an Obama presidency at this point in the twilight of the of the Reagan coalition, they're really excellent.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/why-the-gop-should-fear-a-romney-presidency/263918/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/what-it-will-take-for-barack-obama-to-become-the-next-fdr/264195/
Of one thing I am certain. Bob would get along with Winston Churchill reasonably well.
LB is just trying to lower voter turnout.
551: how else is she supposed to accomplish that? Phonebanking?
I believe the Republicans have some ideas.
They hold up their end she holds up her end.
Other evidence that the word is out among the rat brigade Sunday Talk Show edition: David Gregory and Chris Wallace being aggressive on the Jeep ad lie. The seem to feel the need to chalk up a "good reporting" loss leader now and then.
Also Linda McMahon doorhanger: "President Barack Obama and Linda McMahon will fight for us." Electorally understandable, but still a bit more direct than I might have expected.
||
I don't know if I've mentioned this, but there really is a guy in our neighborhood who yells at the kids when they walk on his lawn. To be fair, he keeps an amazing lawn. It was immaculate the day after Super Storm SandyTM. It looks really nice, if you are into rectangles colored a uniform green, broken only by a Romney sign.
|>
Super Storm SandyTM.
Remember how I was wondering if I should go in to work last Tuesday? Latest word is that the landlord in the building where my office is still isn't ready to let tenants in. There's power, but no heat -- that doesn't seem like enough of a reason to keep the building closed, but I'm not a commercial landlord. I may never end up working again.
I'm actually not much of an asset for pub quiz type things.
nosflow may not be useful at pub quiz but I totally am! And given the lack of success we've had in luring VW down here, maybe it's time to bring the mountain to Muhammad...
So, I was talking to an insurance claims adjuster this weekend. Apparently, whether Sandy is classed as a Hurricane v. Superstorm affects coverage/deductibles/etc.
Superstorm is a real thing? I thought it was just something they were saying on NPR because it sounded cool.
Wouldn't they -- who is they? NOAA? -- go with the classification at the time of landfall, which I thought was as a Class 1 Hurricane? Wikipedia says this would be according to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
On my mother's insurance, tropical storm damage is paid for in full, but hurricane damage has a big deductible. I don't know from superstorms.
561: Di!
I'm worried that Obama will sell out on Social Security and Medicare. I was talking to the priest at church who is kind of moderately liberal, why can't we all be civil, neither side is as bad as they say and a judge who describes herself as quite liberal. She would be happy to have Medicare for All, but she was also willing to agree with the priest that Social Security needs to be means tested. And he was saying that Obama's going to have to say, "You're all going to have to keep working until you're 68" [not talking about Social Security] "and delay Medicare eligibility until age 68"
NO. I'm confident that Elizabeth Warren will fight that, but I don't know who else will.
Also, a question for fellow MA residents. Let's say that Warren and Obama both win, and Kerry becomes Secretary of State, does Scott Brown run again? What Democrat could win against him? Who would run?
546 is great. And me too on 562.
I just called my Election Day volunteer partners, to discover that one of them has already Google-stalked me. He was very funny about it, though, so it didn't come across as weird.
560: we would love to have you or any other commenters, especially those who know something about movies or popular music, which topics are our team's weak spot (though Megan's sweetie is pretty good, actually).
565: if Obama taps any more Democratic senators, at least senators whose seats aren't securely controlled by the party, for cabinet positions, he really is as stupid as bob thinks.
Much more important, I'm very sorry to hear about your family's issues. We've been dealing with similar troubles, and it's exhausting and sad.
Barney might be bored enough to run.
Just got done going house to house mocking stalkingengaging people for our junior senator and AG. And there's a radio ad -- a compelling ad, no less -- against our anti-undocumented immigrant ballot measure.
Folks hope we win, but there's plenty of concern about cheaters back east.
569: Ha! That would be awesome! He's getting kind of up there in age, though, no?
I must admit this is a puzzler, since Kerry is, at first blush, a pretty damn good candidate for Sect'y of State.
570: Carp, do you have anything interesting to say about Tester's chances? I'm really, really hoping for a win. Can you make it happen? Or do we need to find someone to replace you?
571.2: so's Joe Biden.
Kidding aside, is there some reason that Obama wouldn't tap Susan Rice as Secretary of State? She's a great diplomat, a bridge between the Clinton and Obama factions of the party, a woman, and African American. Oh, and she's not a Democratic senator or governor who's likely to be replaced by a Republican.
Clinton in P'burgh tomorrow. Not too far from where I work, but unfortunately at a time I can't get away.
573: And she lied for him about Benghazi. (Oops, see that we're in a no kidding zone.)
I'm pretty confidant in an Obama victory, but it's mostly irrational. Other people don't seem to be freaked out, so why should I? Surely the Republicans wouldn't steal an election when Obama has sig if any leads in the swig states.
Rationally, I don't see anything stopping them from swinging an election by even 3% in some states, and afterwards I don't think anyone would object, except a few easily dismissed nutters on the left.
What's stopping them? Some respect for our democratic traditions?
575: I sort of think that's a confirmation fight Obama must want. As I've said, I think the Benghazi "scandal" has the potential to be pretty damaging (for no reason at all, of course, but this is the world we live in), and having Susan Rice, who's about as smart and calm a person under fire as I can imagine, answer questions from Lindsey Graham, has the potential to help. But I could be completely wrong about that.
nosflow may not be useful at pub quiz but I totally am! And given the lack of success we've had in luring VW down here, maybe it's time to bring the mountain to Muhammad...
I wouldn't be averse to a plausible[1] excuse to go up that way, actually. This pub quiz, it's not in the middle of the week, is it?
[1] is "to go to a pub quiz" plausible? (Is Rilke of our time?) Maybe not—but isn't everything real plausible, at least after a fashion?
Too close for comfort. 537 is too true for comfort, although I met some fine folk, hafta say.
I suppose this was what Harry Reid was talking about? Maybe?
The thought of pub quiz just makes me nostalgic for Ida Noyes in days of yore. I was never really much good at it, though, and I spent way more time on the second floor of the building than in the basement.
99% of the time I was in Ida Noyes I was watching a movie.
I have often wondered if there are good pub quizzes around here. Also, I have wondered what the categories are in which I would be totally useless.
580: I don't know why that is getting such play today since it's been out since Monday. It's an egregious sucky tax dodge, but probably one of many--did not see where it was big enough to remove his tax burden.
In live-blogging my life, Mara's mom never called today and so we didn't see here and tomorrow I have to do my mandated reporter job and let the social worker what I know about her supposed pregnancy and some not-so-awesome prenatal choices. For the moment, though, I've gotten two girls through their first Moomintroll chapter and asleep early by the new clock and now I'm drinking the hell out of some cheap port. Hooray!
584: I would have expected Boston to be pub quiz heaven. It surprises me that you have to wonder.
587: probably? There are loads of 'em. What's limiting me is never having gone out to one.
585: I always subscribed to the intra-church fight explanation with regard to Reid's remarks about Romney, and this feeds into that (I guess? Maybe?). Still, I can't make myself care about any of it. I'm genuinely hopeful that as of Tuesday evening Mitt Romney will become a person I never have to think about again.
There are at least a couple of bars here with pub quizzes, including the one around the corner from me that happens to be the most famous bar in Anchorage. I've never gone, though.
What's the most famous bar in Anchorage? Or would answering that reveal the location of your secret lair?
589: I always subscribed to the intra-church fight explanation
Right there is that. I don't know how much of the detail the organization getting the donation receives, but you can see where there might be some resentment.
What's the most famous bar in Anchorage?
Or would answering that reveal the location of your secret lair?
Not really. It's in an area with a bunch of big apartment complexes, of which mine is one.
578: Really, to Holland (Waferland)? Interesting idea; I suppose if someone could drive everyone it wouldn't be that difficult.
I have never done the pub quiz thing, although we crushed it in Nerd Bowl.
I've long thought that the "Trusts and Estates" course in law school should be renamed. "Preserving Dynastic Wealth Through Tax Avoidance."
I have never done the pub quiz thing, although we crushed it in Nerd Bowl.
I find that these don't necessarily have a ton of crossover. I think I've told the story here of the time I happened into pub quiz with some fellow lit grad students, and one round the announcer was being all dramatic, "The next . . . category . . . iiiiiiisss . . . " And I joked to my teammates, "The novels of Kafka!" But not as quietly as I thought, because the whole bar heard me and cracked up. But I was serious! I'd kill at that category. Classic television shows, not so much.
Classic television shows, not so much.
Like I said, this, and popular culture more broadly, is our weakness. I'm hoping that Josh and Minivet know a lot about Christina Aguilera and the comedies Judd Apatow.
the comedies [of] Judd Apatow.
Forget Josh and Minivet, you should fly Kotsko in.
Our pub quiz is late-ish on Sunday evenings, which is a trifle inconvenient for Monday mornings. Any who travel are welcome to overnight at our house. 'Cept next weekend, when family is visiting, self-invited.
Every now and then, I let myself hope that the Redskins can win a game. Oh well.
Every now and then, I hope that the Redskins lose every single game until they finally change their fucking team name and mascot, both of which infuriate me in a way that even Chief Wahoo doesn't. For fuck's sake.
Whatever happens on Tuesday, I am increasingly worried that we will never hear the end of the Romneys.
If Mitt wins, we'll have all five Romney sons acting as public-private envoys; this business of Matt Romney's "private" trip to Russia seems predictive. Who knows: maybe the Romney presidency would be fully Kennedyesque, and he would appoint his sons to cabinet positions. I really wouldn't bet against it, and arguably, even the most callow Romney offspring would be a better appointee than, say, Dan Senor.
If Romney loses, I'd bet you anything that we'll see one of the Romney sons (probably Tagg) running for national office sooner rather than later. This family seems SO DETERMINED to prove itself, so convinced that they ought to be recognized as the most worthy political dynasty.
God, I hate dynasties.
603 -- Oh I never want them to win more than once every four years, and very often not then either. And of course they should change their name, mascot, and song.
Charles Pierce is balm for the soul. Here he is deconstructing this week's Sunday Shows,
1. Wow. OK, everyone else probably knows about this, but the latest Romney ad is a weeping dad telling the story of his (runaway?) daughter and how Romney sent 50 Bain employees down to NYC to find her.
2. Another ad is all first debate outtakes.
3. Oh -- mixing it up! -- an Obama ad using the "47%" video.
607.1: Wow.
Can't find them now, but there were some tweets earlier about Romney staffers attempting to not let people leave the PA rally early when Romney was late and they and their children got cold. It's petty, but I'm all about petty.
But also one of the reporters at the rally claims a Romney staffer basically said they are running ads in Pa. because they basically could not run any more in the really competitive swing states. And I guess they have to spend the money some way.
I want it to be such a crush that the big money guys send Vincent and Jules to visit Rove and his SuperPAC buddies. "Check out the big brain on Karl!"
607.1 probably means that the robot/human polling still isn't as favorable as they need.
I'm hoping that Josh and Minivet know a lot about Christina Aguilera and the comedies Judd Apatow.
I'm your man.
both of which infuriate me in a way that even Chief Wahoo doesn't
Waferman, are you trying to piss off every single participant in this thread, or do you just like being wrong? Chief Wahoo is equally offensive. Fact.
Yeah, I don't see how you could possibly claim that Chief Wahoo is less offensive than the Redskins mascot.
Chief Wahoo is a horrible, leering, disgusting feature of a baseball team that I otherwise should like. But he's not called a fucking Redskin. You people can't be serious, right? The Washington football team is, quite literally (in the Biden sense of that word), the equivalent of the New York Kikes or the Atlanta Niggers. Come the fuck on, you trolling bitches.
170: Between that and Dick Morris allowing for the possibility of an Obama win, I'm starting to get nervous
I think we're going to be OK. Dick Morris:
In this special Presidential Election video commentary, I discuss how, by campaigning and not governing during Superstorm Sandy's recovery and by his partisan remarks, Obama blew his last chance to win! Tune in!
Or wait, are you saying that the iconography of Chief Wahoo is worse than the iconography of whatever (presumably generic) Native warrior is on the side of the Redskins' helmets? Because if you're saying that, then yes, I totally agree. Same with the Chicago Blackhawks and even the North Dakota Fighting Sioux (did that rich guy win that fight?).
614: I don't disagree with any of that, but it's not really what you said in 603.
Or wait, are you saying that the iconography of Chief Wahoo is worse than the iconography of whatever (presumably generic) Native warrior is on the side of the Redskins' helmets?
Yes, this is what I meant, and what I interpreted 603 as disputing.
Also, before we go on with this discussion, I'd like to remind you all that my mother survived the Holocaust in hiding and that I walk with a limp. You do not want to fuck with me.
619: yeah, that was my bad. I think we agree, then, which isn't surprising. But I'm pretty sure that Stormcrow is still more racist and antisemitic than David Duke.
Okay, Waferdude, you get a pass. This time.
In other news everyone's probably heard by now, wprld-historical douchebag candidate was an hour late to a big rally near Philadelphia, so by the time he got there people were freezing and wanted to leave. His astute staffers wouldn't let them at first, so there was begging and pleading, and finally an exodus through the fences. Please oh please dear God let there be coverage of this.
Thanks for the good wishes, VW. I'm sorry to hear that you're dealing with the same sort of thing
Thorn, as always super kind.
And Witt, I appreciate your saying that I'm brave. I'm not really though. The PACE program wanted them POAs and Healthcare Proxies, and they have to go to that program, because it's the only way that their medical care will be coordinated and the non-rent portion of their assisted living facility.
621: Never try to pull a deception on a tenured professor of history; the "crow" in Stormcrow is actually a white one, and the whole name is uncomfortably close to StormFront.
608.2 -> 622.2.
A few reporters tweeted about it, but I'm going to guess sit ends up on the cutting room floor as too incendiary or whatever. Earlier I had found a summary from some DNC or Dem site, but now I can only find it on Americablog and I don;t feel lniking there.
624: so, the thing is, I read Jesus McQueen's comment as having been written by you -- because all you goyim look alike to me -- which is why I outed you for your role during the Anschluss plebiscite*.
* Teaching WWII has left me obsessed with this event. Have people seen this? I love Hitler! Ja!
607.1: Kidnapping is the campaign theme of the day.
But why are you teaching the Anschluss - you're an Americanist, right?
630: we're doing WWII from a transnational perspective. It's incredibly challenging but rewarding. Would you like to know how much I know about Garibaldi's campaigns? Or the Meiji Restoration? The answer is, "More than I used to!"
626.2: Talk about your misplaced hope after an election.
Although deprived of the right to exercise their citizenship by voting in Chancellor Hitler's plebiscite on Anschluss, Austrian Jews did not count the day altogether lost, since, rightly or wrongly, the impression is growing that the plebiscite marks a turning point of sorts in the Jewish situation....
After Chancellor Hitler's address here last night concluding the plebiscite campaign, the crowd sang the Dutch hymn, "Netherlands Song of Thanksgiving." The version sung was written sixty years ago by a "non-Aryan" poet named Josef Weil.-- Jewish Telegraphic Agency 11 Apr 1938.
I had to say "Anschluss" before a theater full of people* and I'm still afraid of the word.
*If you can't sing and your school does "The Sound of Music," you get to be a Nazi.
(I've mentioned this many times. Do I repeat myself? Very well, then I repeat myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. Very dull multitudes of nearly identical selves. )
because all you goyim look alike to me
But I'm the one who always gets mistaken for one of you. Not fair! Anyway, I missed 608.2, and I'm sure we won't be seeing much about the event.
635: I suppose there's a "Palm Beach county Jews for Pat Buchanan" joke somewhere in there, and I think you're just the antisemite to make it. Or maybe you could collaborate with Jesus McQueen.
630: Will you be discussing the Aleutians? It's a fascinating aspect of the war that rarely seems to get much coverage in American accounts.
626.2: And also Mister Dutch Cookie, if that is your real name, given my lack of a limp and my manifest bigotry I guess you really wouldn't care to know about how the Anschluss affected my wife's father in Vienna along with the rest of his family. Several years later they did all finally get back together in Brooklyn, but I'm sure I wouldn't tell the story right, and it was many years ago anyway , and besides it couldn't happen here.
637: we are! We have some awesome propaganda footage (newsreel stuff) and also some declassified US Navy training film that makes it really easy to teach. I mean, it's not a huge part of the lecture, but it's in there.
453
This is all sensible and good and hugely worht remembering. But my mind was on the conversation I had last night with my parents about their health care proxies and who should be the alternate for my mother. ...
Why is it so important to find an alternative? You will probably be able to do it and if not it is my understanding that your mother's desire (prolong life) is generally what most doctors do by default anyway.
I wouldn't tell the story right
Because in your version, the Jews were perpetrators?
641: Among other things they used money to help get out.
642: until the day she died (well, until she was committed* to a eldercare facility because of her dementia), my grandmother kept $20,000 in cash in her freezer. Cue Stanley with a "That's chilling!" comment.
* I'll use the passive voice here. But let's just be clear that your people were at fault.
I don't mean to just be link machine, but Edroso in the Voice on the Right electoral expectations is a hoot.
This is fun: http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/the_final_obama_romney_showdown_a_note_to_a_stiff_necked_people
(Not really.)
And for my father-in-law himself (he was ~13), actual Rothschilds were involved.
645: We had just had a family discussion at dinner about creative folks who turned into (or always were) political nutters and I had mentioned Mamet. And then about 2 hours later that article popped up on Twitter.
We mostly had a discussion about how horrible it is to watch somebody wiggle a loose tooth while you're trying to eat.
643: True to form, my grandad horded gold nuggets. He had a personal interest in the return to the gold standard---and was the first person I ever heard advocating the overturning of the New Deal. I always thought his political opinions were the kind of crazy you'd see from an elderly frontiersman, and not the sort of thing that a modern state actually had to negotiate with.
especially those who know something about movies or popular music
nosflow could be of service when it comes to unpopular music.
651: I had that thought hours ago, but it was too banal and obvious even for me to post.
How are you Stanley? Don't see you around here much lately.
This thread is dying so was going to come up with a joke about either Mamet or Chief Wahoo or the fact that VW mysteriously thinks that Garibaldi played a role in WWII but it's too hard between the holocaust survivor stories and the election stuff. Anyhow, fuck you all! Cobra Kai!
Inventing traditions involving Garibaldi's role in Italian history was an important part of Mussolini's rise to power. I'd offer to let you take my class, but there's not going to be a University of California after Tuesday, so you'll have to remain ignorant.
Important may be overstating it a bit, but I wanted to learn a bit more about Garibaldi, so I did.
653: I'm fairly busy with school, and there's been a number of gigs. But generally I'm doing quite well. I spent this weekend writing a memo about RICO and half-heartedly attending a softball game.
The story of Von Wafer's first sports memory. David Mamet is pitching for the New York Kikes against the Indians one day and doing poorly. The Chief Wahoo mascot leads the fans in a chant of "Send him to the showers! Send him to the showers!" Von Wafer was in tears so on the way home from the stadium his grandmother told him a bunch of lies about Garibaldi and WWII to get him to shut up. And then they found five dollars and put it in the freezer.
Oh yeah, you're in school now, Stan. How do you like it so far?
You're in school! ...maybe I knew that.
I'm not sure he ever mentioned it here, actually. I knew it from FB.
658 is almost as good as PGD's comments from the other night. Hating me brings out the best in you people. I perform an important public service!
658 seriously cracked me up. Well done, JP.
Oh, I did pub quiz in the basement of Ida Noyes for a year. We always lost horribly to pimply undergrads, but we had a nice time.
The Cleveland Cookie will enjoy this one: "I've got to tell you, I'm proud of our ticket. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan," Boehner said to some claps. "Uh, we've got, uh ... He was just here. I'm going brain-dead. Josh Mandel!" In Painesville.
Holy fuck! Get a chat room you two.
666: beautiful. The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives can't remember his party's nominee for the US Senate seat in his home fucking state. I suppose the charitable explanation is that he's exhausted at this point. But I prefer to think that he'd rather not to get the stink of loser Jewboy on him. What a great election season this has been.
Honestly, four years from now someone please remind me to spend the last month before the election heavily sedated. It's really been great to view the happenings through the soft focus of a Vicodin/Valium haze.
And as though on cue, there's this. Weird indeed.
Right, it was George Will who told you those lies about Garibaldi. He was pissed that the New York Kikes were sullying the purity of the game back in those days.
George Will thinks Romney is going to win Minnesota? Wow.
I have a whole theory, and let me stipulate that it's kind of a stupid theory, and let me stipulate further that's it the kind of theory that can only be born of knowing too much about one thing and not enough about another, but oh well: we're reaching a point that looks alarmingly like the 1850s, when Northerners and Southerners viewed the same events through entirely different lenses. I'm not saying we're on the road to another civil war, but it freaks me out a bit when a significant percentage of the country, including respected people (for reasons that I can't quite fathom, but respected nevertheless) sayi things like Romney's going to win Minnesota. Wait, what?
674
... sayi things like Romney's going to win Minnesota ...
1% chance according to 538.
674: The Wall Street one has got to be ordinary partisanship, in the sports-fan sense, right? Liberals are the outliers here. The only time I ever think my team is going to win in a championship is when the game is at the point where they have like a 95% chance of winning -- say a 3 run lead with one out to go, or up by 14 with two minutes left. (What's the equivalent in soccer? A one goal lead with only 89 minutes to go?)
George Will's comment, on the other hand, is just trash talk. If you made him bet, there's no way he'd take it. As Alex Tabarrok called it (in his one good line in ten years of blogging), betting is a tax on bullshit.
The Wall Street one has got to be ordinary partisanship, in the sports-fan sense, right?
That seems like the most reasonable explanation, yeah.
In the Edroso piece linked above, I'm struck by how many of the rightbloggers he's glossing point to the Chick-fil-A protests as a harbinger of the great numbers the right's going to bring on Tuesday.
I wonder what their rationale is. My stereotypes of Wall Street guys say they will dismiss the polls because they'll assume Romney will cheat, and they're okay with this.
Or maybe Chick-fil-A promised a free sandwich to anyone with an "I voted" sticker.
657: I don't think I knew that. Good luck or, if you went to actor school, break a leg.
AP (via the Times) makes the effort to find out the prediction in Obama's father's hometown.
Here in President Barack Obama's ancestral village in Kenya, witch doctor John Dimo tossed some shells, bones and other items to determine who will win Tuesday's election.
After throwing the objects like so many dice outside his hut in Kogelo village, Dimo, who says he is 105 years old, points to a white shell and declares: "Obama is very far ahead and is definitely going to win."Apparently didn't occur to them to get the mood in Romney's father's hometown in Mexico.
When I've fallen asleep during a car ride and come home, I really shouldn't try to type anything.
I meant to type "their POAs" not "them POAs" in 623, and I just completely forgot to write "paid" at the end of the last sentence.
I'm sure that nobody cares, but I still shuddered when I read it this morning.
682: The press can't go to Mexico. Mexicans are building nukes so we have sanctions against them.
Stanley, are you in law school? What kind of school are we talking about?
682: Just another example of media bias. The media plays up Obama's vote-getting African roots, but ignores Mitt's Mexico connection. As Mitt pointed out:
my dad, you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company, but he was born in Mexico. And had he been born of Mexican parents I'd have a better shot at winning this
685: I'm assuming it's accredited.
687: School of Hard Knocks, Mean Streets School of Law
Not only did the Redskins lose, but Ohio's Sec of State is being a little bitch. Everybody panic.
Husted's behavior really smacks of "people will do anything at all to get out of Ohio."
Hell, my first move out was to Houston, Texas.
But the devolution of the state's politics has been a sad sight. But then again the National Guard hasn't shot any students for a few decades, so it's got that going for it.
but that this state should be my own birthplace, the very cradle of American mediocrity and overzealous lawn ornamentation, is positively terrifying.
A minor but great moment for me was when I chanced upon the Marietta Lawn Ball Co. on some back road in SE Ohio.
Neb's still in bed, so I will link this spot-on xkcd.
I can't stop myself from reading UnSkewed Polls. It's the most fun you can have on the internet with the door to your office open.
Aside from the actual reasoning behind the unskewing, my favorite part is when he misspells university while giving his credentials.
So, I was tired enough with this election to check the odds on the democratic nominee for the 2016 election. The top five: Clinton, Biden, Cuomo, O'Malley, Warren. If a character on the Wire is going to be president, you'd hope for Bunny Colvin, but Tommy Carcetti beats some of the alternatives.
Yes, it is very hard to see that. He'd be 78 at the end of his first term.
Hypothesis: if times are good, it will be a woman or minority. If times are bad, it will be a white man.
I want to give all of you my FB password so you can see the page of the Legacy Lunatic I keep around. There is no one at Obama rallies! Romney is drawing tens of thousands! Romney leads by 22 among independents! Honestly, it's a little frightening.
Oh good, are we sharing INSANE FACEBOOK fuckheads?
I'd like to nominate my friend who posted about how she and her husband are hoarding money in case Obama is elected, because they're so scared of what he'll do. And all these people chiming in "Oh yes, we're hoarding too. We're batshit bonkers. We're scared for our childrens' future."
700: but the new hair plug technology is fantastic. Honestly, though, I've come to love Biden and would, were it not for his age, swallow my hatred of his shilling for credit card companies and work hard on his behalf. Unfortunately, he really will be too old. Clinton, though also quite old at that time, will be able to use her age in some counterintuitive anti-patriarchy jujitsu, I bet. Unless she needs hair plugs.
Also, I wouldn't take any bet, at any odds, on who the Dem nominee will be four years from now.
Hypothesis: if times are good, it will be a woman or minority Democrat. If times are bad, it will be a white man.
when you talk to these friends of yours, what do you say about your liberal pretend internet friends?
701, 702: New Tom Tomorrow: Red State Spex.
Whenever I get the urge to check up on the election, I just watch the "Eye of the Sparrow" video again.
705: They're all listed under He-Man America-Haters Club.
Mine is from your state*, heebie. Where is yours from?
*Well, he is from NJ originally, but he was a Democrat and an 18yo Gore delegate to the 88 convention back then.
Also, I wouldn't take any bet, at any odds, on who the Dem nominee will be four years from now.
When I was was in grad school, I made a bet about whether Tiger Woods would become president. Unfortunately, we can't remember the terms or who took which side.
Also, I wouldn't take any bet, at any odds, on who the Dem nominee will be four years from now.
50 pays 10 it's not Palin?
Clinton, though also quite old at that time, will be able to use her age in some counterintuitive anti-patriarchy jujitsu, I bet.
Is 69 even really that old?
It seems like the demographics make the 2016 elections a shoe-in for Dems. This is, as everyone has said, the last time the Republicans can win entirely on the angry-old-white-man vote. It's going to take them a while to rejigger their coalition to let in Hispanics while hanging on to the core constituencies of the ultra-rich and religious nuts.
711.1: It's the age Reagan was - though there is the whole life-expectancy thing.
Let's see who would be older upon inauguration, Clinton or Reagan.
Reagan was 69 years and 11 months old at his first inauguration; Clinton would be 69 years, 3 months.
Reagan did show signs of Alzheimer's during his presidency, so I take him as a bad example.
I thought that incumbent parties generally do worse than the economic fundamentals would suggest when going for a third term. And I wouldn't put it past the Repubs to go Bush/Rove and push hard on the Latino vote, possibly with Jeb Bush as their standard bearer. So I'm far from confident that Hilary or Carcetti or Cuomo (god please no) would win unless the economy is doing very well.
Sifu, my friends and I (no Chicken, alas) go to trivia fairly often in your neck of the woods. Used to go to Stump, which is everywhere, but it got kind of boring. We go to the more of less monthly Big Quiz Thing (a NYC outfit) at the Oberon which is a lot of fun. Coming up is his first Camberville 10 hour quiz spectacular. We're def going. You're welcome to join or compete against us. If the former, email me. Also, the Druid has. Best food in town, but small. Also Tommy Doyle's is good.
Re: Leaving a line blank
I feel somewhat guilty for leaving the sheriff line blank, but I really knew nothing about the candidates.
I did vote for the unenrolled candidate for Governor's council. The Democratic incumbent faced two challengers in the primary which made me look at her (I.e. I watched a league of women voters debate on the Internet), and I decided that it would be really hard to be worse than she is. The job pays $27,000 a year and she kept going on about how age treated it as s full-time job and that the other candidates weren't willing to devote the necessary time to it. It sounded like she harassed all of the judicial nominees, since she was requiring that they all come to her so that she could meet with them individually.
Is 69 even really that old?
That old chestnut?
