Month: May 2012

Athenae, Big Damn Heroes, On Wisconsin17 Comments

Tomorrow, Just Hours Away

Allison Hantschel

Quick takes: Shortly after noon tomorrow I’ll be heading up to Madison where Jude, Scout and Joanie will join me in presiding over one of the following: The wildest victory party in the history of cheese, a wee-hours recount-worthy scenario whereby nobody really wins, or a series of posts that will be just the word “fuck” and rehashings of things I wrote back in 2004, which is sort of how this feels right now. Doc will be running a Tuesday night crack van for you all starting probably around poll-closing-time, dependent on his schedule, and reporting in as well. You … Continue reading Tomorrow, Just Hours Away

Adrastos, Big Damn Heroes, On Wisconsin, Political Crack4 Comments

Bonne chance, Wisconsin

Peter Adrastos Athas

I’ve been missing in inaction while dealing with a string of crises but wanted to briefly chime in on the recall. It looks a bit dicey right now but with Athenae joining Scout and Jude on the barricades anything can happen. Finally, on a quasi-practical note, Richard Adams and the Guardian’s crack team of reporters are live blogging Wisconsin’s recallmania. Continue reading Bonne chance, Wisconsin

Athenae, So Called Liberal Media5 Comments

Is This Asshole Less of an Asshole Since He’s Been to Prison?

It matters so much, guys, that Conrad Black is sorry: Brian Stewart said Black now believes that many people — including himself — have been wronged by the U.S. justice system, giving him a sense of sympathy for those who have had the “roughest rides in America.” “Once he saw the real injustice around him like that, which in his past life he wasn’t really in a position to see, he reacted,” said Stewart, who visited Black three times in prison while he served the first part of his sentence. “Everyone who knows him that I’ve talked to — who’s … Continue reading Is This Asshole Less of an Asshole Since He’s Been to Prison?

Adrastos, LOL, Television1 Comment

Sunday Morning Video: The Laff Box

Here’s a cool appraisal from theAntiques Roadshowof a laff box; that’s right a laugh track machine. I gotta get one of these in order to have self administered rim shots when I’m on a roll: http://www-tc.pbs.org/s3/pbs.videoportal-prod.cdn/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf WatchAppraisal: 1953 Charlie Douglass “Laff Box” on PBS. See more fromAntiques Roadshow. Via Ken Levine. Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: The Laff Box

Uncategorized12 Comments

Weekend Question Thread

There were most definitely parts of my high school years that sucked donkey sack, but I think some of the best times were spent with my friend Carrie at a little coffeehouse (back when such things were unusual in small midwestern towns), talking about our futures. They made this thick dark coffee with whipped cream on top, and the place was full of proto-hipsters playing chess and reading books. What’s your happiest adolescent memory? A. Continue reading Weekend Question Thread

Current Affairs, Doc, Weblogs7 Comments

Dissing the Disses

In one of the more entertaining shit-fights I’ve seen in a while in academia, Naomi Schaefer Riley took it upon herself to read the titles of several black studies dissertations and then declare the field a complete waste of time. Her blog post on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website takes three particular grad students to task for their topic selection and then mocks them mercilessly. In Episode V: The Interwebs Strike Back, folks almost wore out their keyboards beating the shit out of heror defending her for having the courage to take this position. As you would expect, the … Continue reading Dissing the Disses

Athenae, On Wisconsin, Scott Walker's Horcruxes5 Comments

Everybody Still Hates Scott

He’s spending money hand over fist, and yet the state still overridingly considers him a bag with which one douches: In January, Walker’s job approval was 51 percent; in March, it was 50 percent; and this month, it’s 47 percent. In January, Walker was leading Barrett 50-44; in March, 47-45; and this month, he trails 46-47. (Among likely voters, Walker leads by a point; all of these findings suggest a mostly unchanging dead heat.) “There’s been a great deal of advertising in the state, especially from the Walker campaign and Republican supporters, and we’ve seen virtually no movement in the … Continue reading Everybody Still Hates Scott

Adrastos, Economy, Political Crack, Propaganda4 Comments

The Real Europeans

As a part of their endless campaign to “otherize” President Obama, Republicans are fond of talking about his radical Marxist Socialist “European” policies. They rarely let the facts get in the way of their propagandizing, European politics have been drifting rightward in the last decade and Center Left governments have been defeated and replaced by conservative governments that are well to the Right of previous ones. Jacques Chirac was smack dab in the middle of the political spectrum but Sarko is flapping mostly his right wing and rather woefully at that. Neo-Thatcherite economic policies are in place throughout the continent … Continue reading The Real Europeans

Michael F2 Comments

White Rich Man’s Burden

FromAlbum4 For all of Conard’salleged daring todefend the obscene amounts of money he and his kind accumulate, it’s really just an updated version of uplift and Christianize, minus any acknowledgement of the circumstances that allowed them to become so obscenely wealthy. Circumstances in no small part the function of a civil society that owes a substantial debt to government. In a genuinely competitive world, I doubt Conard would last twenty minutes. Continue reading White Rich Man’s Burden

Do Something, Jude9 Comments

Your Help Is Needed

Internet, this is Ginnie. Ginnie, Internet. See that doggie right there? She belongs to the mother of someone who is very dear to me. And, as noted above, your help is needed in this little doggie’s case. I’ll just let my friend say it: My mom’s dog, Ginger fell and broke 2 vertebrae in her neck. She is an adorable miniature brown dachshund who LOVES everyone! She needs surgery and has an 80% chance of a full recovery. The surgery could cost anywhere from $3000-$5000. She is only seven years old. Without meds, Ginger is in a lot of pain … Continue reading Your Help Is Needed

Adrastos, Television7 Comments

Mad Men Thread: Ooh La La

It happened again:Mad Men has followed up a shitty episode with an hour of awesome. Roger’s good acid trip and exit from his bad trip of a second marriage have restored the twinkle to his eyes and the bounce to his step. It’s a pleasant curveball thrown at us by Matthew Weiner’s merry band of scribblers or is that scripters? Whichever. Here are a few random, discursive and arguably pertinent comments about an episode that could have been calledFamily Affair. It was, however, more like the Sly song and less like the sitcom with gruff Brian Keith and his relentlessly … Continue reading Mad Men Thread: Ooh La La

Athenae, Diary, Kids Today, So Called Liberal Media11 Comments

An Empty Room

Updated with corrections. The room was empty. I kept telling people that all night, when they were looking at me like I’d lost my mind. People look at you like you’ve lost your mind when you’re wandering around either grinning like an idiot, bursting into tears, or hugging random basically-strangers because they showed up at a party. But the room was empty. It was the hottest summer any of us can remember to this day, 1995, andour student newspaper had stopped the presses back in February. In that time the people I’d come to regard as not just friends but … Continue reading An Empty Room

Big Damn Heroes, Current Affairs, Do Something, Science9 Comments

Best Healthcare In The World Blah Blah

One of the arguments we always heard during the healthcare debate was that America is the driving force behind every major medical advance in the universe, since forever. Indeed, Tennessee’s ownJunior Senator Bob Corker had the nerve to tell Canada’s former Public Health Minister that Canada and France weremooching off of American innovation: we’re the ones coming up with all the technological breakthroughs, whichthey benefit from! And dammit, it’s unfair! It’sour money paying to develop cures for cancer! Parasites! Oh yes, that was embarassing. I thought of that when I read about a Cleveland researcher’s struggle to get funding to … Continue reading Best Healthcare In The World Blah Blah