He’s been ducking your calls, refusing to introduce you to his mom, describing you to his friends as “that stalker chick,” throwing out the toothbrushes you keep leaving at his place, and the last time he caught you doodling your names on a piece of paper HE SET IT ON FIRE.Take the hint. Go home. Have a drink, take a shower, get a haircut, and move on with your life. A. Continue reading Justice Anthony Kennedy is Not That Into You
Edith Windsor, on her victory today: I do think, in many ways, the fact that the federal government will no longer discriminate against us — I understand “us” is we who are already married — but that’s a huge step. When people asked, “What do you think will happen if you win?” I talked about, in some ways, the beginning of the end of stigma. It’s the beginning of the end of a lot of internalized homophobia, it’s the beginning of kids and teenagers falling in love for the first time and knowing that they can marry someday. It’s already … Continue reading ‘The Beginning of the End’
Chicken’s a grump: We have him on new meds, as his adrenal cancer’s really kicking his ass (his pancreatic cancer’s still under control) and they haven’t quite kicked in yet, so he’s really crabby, chewing on Claire and Bucky and giving me this ferret bitch-face like, “DON’T YOU FEEL GUILTY FOR TRYING TO MAKE ME BETTER GIVE ME A TREAT PINK THING.” The vet says give it another week or so. The treat supply will be exhausted by then. A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging
Print is dead, is dead: For years, the digital zealots have been telling us that newspapers were dead in the water, a relic of the past destined to go the way of the dinosaurs and eight-track tapes. But, in what must be a big disappointment for the digi-geeks, newspapers have stubbornly clung to life. Sure, some have closed, but the U.S. is still home to roughly 1,300 of them. And while these are tough times for the newspaper business, barring some wildly unforeseen calamity (say, an asteroid hitting the earth), it’s difficult to imagine all of them suddenly disappearing tomorrow. … Continue reading All in the Context
Have you ever lost your taste for something, either by growing out of it, an illness, or some other change in your life? I used to loathe most vegetables, but now I love carrots so much I actually crave them if it’s been a while. Glazed carrots, raw carrots, steamed carrots all mashed up, OM NOM NOM. A. Continue reading Weekend Question Thread: FOODZ Edition
David Bowie had a direct connection to the cultural zeitgeist for a very long time. He adopted a series of personas during the 1970’s and ’80’s, all of them successful and very interesting. In 1983, he decided he wanted to be the biggest rock star in the world and released Let’s Dance. It worked. This video documents the wildly successful and popalicious tour in support of that album: Continue reading Sunday Morning Video: David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight Tour
I just got an email from the AMC movie chain.They’re proud that their smart phone/tablet app has added a practical but somewhat gnarly feature: Plan potty breaks with RunPee. Click the ‘RunPee’ button on any movie page and find the best times to go, so you don’t miss any crucial plot twists or action sequences. We’ll let you know what you missed, and if there’s anything after the credits. Given the size of the big ass uber diuretic sodas they sell this is practical, but calling it RunPee? Sheesh. It should, however, make New Orleanians feel like it’s Mardi Gras. … Continue reading There’s an app for everything
It’s been a great week for Democratic women. Real disabled veteran Tammy Duckworth eviscerated a fake disabled veteran at a Congressional hearing the other day. It’s a thing of beauty. I saw it on the Last Word last night, so I’ll let veteran name dropper Laurence O’Donnell provide you with the set-up: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Continue reading Tammy Duckworth is a Badass
I’ve been on a bit of a Johnny Clegg bender lately. This song combines the African thing with the Ska thing. The result is pop magic: Continue reading Friday Night Music: Rolling Ocean
I’m back on the Bob McDonnell aka Governor Enema beat. I’m using the word watch literally because the latest questionable “gift”Bob and his grifter wife, Maureen, have received is a $6,500 Rolex: A prominent political donor purchased a Rolex watch for Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, according to two people with knowledge of the gift, and the governor did not disclose it in his annual financial filings. The $6,500 luxury watch was provided by wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the people said. He is the chief executive of dietary supplement manufacturer Star Scientific and the person who paid for … Continue reading The Governor Enema Watch
This is an old picture of Oscar taken before he moved into Adrastos World HQ. I believe he just took a look at his receipt from Whole Paycheck and attacked the bag. Or maybe not: Continue reading Friday Catblogging: Bag Boy
Broken clocks, blind squirrels, etc. But still: Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who was a key player in getting the Voting Rights Act legislation renewed in 1982 and 2006, said the Supreme Court may have ruled Tuesday to strike down a critical portion of the act, but the “threat of discrimination still exists” and he will put “partisan politics aide and ensure Americans’ most sacred right is protected.” Looks like at least one Republican actually got the memo about the rebranding. A. Continue reading When JAMES SENSENBRENNER Thinks We Are Still Racist …
When people are paying tribute to Nelson Mandela: Really, I have no desire to hear them from leaders of parties who described his organisation as terrorist, who believed that sanctions were wrong, whose jolly young members wore T-shirts demanding he be strung up. Of course, not all Tories were pro-apartheid, but I can already feel the revisionism revving up. [snip] By 1984Jerry Dammers had written Free Nelson Mandela. But apartheid continued to exist, propped up by the Tories. Some of their elder statesmen, such as Norman Tebbit, still see Thatcher’s policy as a success.David Cameron denounced it in 2006, saying … Continue reading Remember What The Rememberers Remember
Chief Justice Roberts’ openly gay cousin Jean Podrasky is itching to get hitched now that Prop-8 is toast. She hasn’t decided if she’ll invited him to the wedding but I really hope she does. He could also bring his cranky little friend Tony Scalia, who increasingly reminds me of Louie DePalma. Of course, Danny Devito is much better looking than Nino. Now that I think of it, don’t invite Nino to your nuptials, Joan. He’ll end up giving you The Wedding Bell Blues: Continue reading I hope she invites the Chief to the wedding
Dick Powellhad a remarkable film career. At a time when typecasting was SOP, Powell was able to move from being the star of light musical comedies to the tough guy roles he perfected in films like Murder, My Sweet and this week’s PFT entry, Cornered. It’s a multi-genre movie that hops from film noir to revenge flick to social commentary. It works on all those levels, plus the night photography is to die for. Here are the lobby cards: Here’s the trailer: Continue reading Pulp Fiction Thursday: Cornered
From Album4 But after declaring “Texas value life and want to protect women and the unborn,” Governor Goodhair had Kimberly McCarthy executed, the 500th person since the death penalty resumed in the Lone Star State. Continue reading I Doubt He Grasps The Irony
Oh baby, is it too early in the day to break out the champagne WHO THE FUCK CARES. Marry me, Anthony Kennedy. Marry each other, people everywhere! Dancing. Just dancing. A. Continue reading DOMA DOWN LOVE WINS
This is what a badass looks like. This bill was gonna pass, you guys. I mean, come on. It had passed other places, this was a red state, and how many times have we lost these fights? How many times have we had our hopes crushed already? How many times have we heard people talk nobly about how they did all they could, and what more do you expect? I’ll tell you what more I expect. I expect this. In every state legislature. In every state in the union. In every day of every month of every year in which … Continue reading Then Sometimes You Win
THIS is what standing up for women looks like. God, look and learn, lazy-ass lawmakers. Look and learn. This is what you do when something REALLY matters. This is what you do when you really want to fight. Wendy Davis for president. This, now, today. A. Continue reading Wendy Davis is a Badass
Quote of the Night Continue reading
It has been a remarkable 24 hours. First, there was the Supremes deeply cynical and otherworldly ruling on the Voting Rights Act. They urged Congress to update and fix the “defective” bit. The teabagger controlled House cannot pass even minor pieces of legislation let alone “update” landmark legislation that might hurt them politically. LBJ, HHH, and MLK weep this morning. The only good thing about the decision is that a hand grenade has landed in the laps of the Congressional GOP leadership. Kaboom. I stayed up way too late last night watching the Wendy Davis filibuster in the Texas Senate … Continue reading Political Blood Sports
I get a kick out of hearing people argue as to who made the first concept album. The Beatles? The Who? I’d like to throw Frank Sinatra’s fedora into the ring. Sinatra made a series of thematic albums in the 1950’s that surely qualify as concept albums. Sinatra, in fact, was the first artist to fully exploit the expanded format offered by the LP. A quaint concept in the day of the download and audio stream but it was groundbreaking in its day. This LP is referred to by multiple titles but I’ll stick to the most concise one. It’s … Continue reading Album Cover Art Wednesday: Only The Lonely
After the bunny went away, there was a hole in our house. The room we kept her in was quiet and empty. Even though she wasn’t the most friendly of pets, we still had a void that I hadn’t expected. The Midget wasn’t taking it well. She had a stuffed bunny she renamed Abby. Abby the fake rabbit came to meals and was a surrogate for whatever our child was missing. For years, the Missus had argued in favor of a dog. I adamantly opposed it. My parents had always rejected the idea of a dog, based on the fact … Continue reading Puppy Love
Stay classy, Mr. Justice: The most remarkable thing about the Supreme Court’s opinions announced Monday was not what the justices wrote or said. It was what Samuel Alito did. The associate justice, a George W. Bush appointee, read two opinions, both 5-4 decisions that split the court along its usual right-left divide. But Alito didn’t stop there. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, Alito visibly mocked his colleague. Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, was making her argument about how the majority opinion made it easier for sexual harassment to occur … Continue reading Samuel Alito: Frat Boy Justice
Okay, look, I get that not everybody mainlines CSI on afternoons when they’re trying to procrastinate a book project, but surely everybody on EARTH has caught at least one episode by now, right? Apparently not: The bill’s sponsor stopped answering questions about her bill after the first two hours after she got into trouble denying Democratic amendments. When Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, called for an exemption for women who were victims of rape and incest, Rep. Jody Laubenberg, R-Parker, explained why she felt it was unnecessary. “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can … Continue reading Too Dumb for This Ride
The dumb/evil half-plus-one of the Supreme Court strikes down a key part of the voting rights act, saying that eh, no big, it’s not like there are attempts to restrict voting based on race anymore, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg responds by ripping a honey badger-sized hole in their faces: The number of discriminatory changes blocked or deterred by the preclearance requirement suggests that the state of voting rights in the covered jurisdictions would have been significantly different absent this remedy. Surveying the type of changes stopped by the preclearance procedure conveys a sense of the extent to which §5 continues … Continue reading In Which Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes A List Of Ways You’re an Idiot
Don Draper has finally lost his shit. He’s been teetering on the edge forever, but the meltdown happened in the season 6 finale, In Care Of. Don’s gotten very drunk many times but he’s never gotten in a bar room brawl and ended up in the drunk tank before. It wasn’t even the point where Don hit rock bottom. Crash. He’s consumed with guilt over Sally walking in on him and now she’s showing signs of alcoholism as well. Hell, even Betty is more sympathetic than Don right now and I’m a confirmed Bettyphobe. Like his mentor, David Chase, Matthew … Continue reading Mad Men Thread: Jesus Had A Bad Year
Good morning, happy campers! Let’s suit up and spin the wheel on that airlock, shall we?
Oh – Typepad’s been sending my comments to spam hell (which is funny, since I’m using the same email in comments that I use to log into Typepad), but be assured – I read every comment like a first-time Hot 100 artist reads their fan mail. Now – to business!
In this shrinking sphere of people-the-Freeperati-can-still-trust, none stand taller than their boy Ted Cruz. They’ve even been gabbling about a Presidential run, for crying out loud.
Now – they’re just crying out loud.
Ted Cruz: Let’s not rush to judgment on NSA surveillance
Hotair ^
| 06/17/2013
| AllahPundit
Posted on Monday, June 17, 2013 2:57:42 PM by SeekAndFind
Via the Examiner,
a short but noteworthy clip insofar as it exposes a potential fault
line between Cruz and Rand Paul. McCain lumps them together as “wacko
birds” but I’m not so sure that’s true of Cruz on national-security
issues. His alliance with Paul interests me because it strikes me as a
personification of the uneasy libertarian/tea-party alliance. The groups
overlap heavily on spending issues, and both are deeply suspicious of
Obama’s expansion of government. The master stroke of Paul’s drone
filibuster was that he found a sweet spot for both, making the
philosophical case for due process while humiliating O for having turned
into such a hypocrite about it. Even so, no matter how much Paul
sometimes likes to pretend that the tea party is synonymous with
libertarianism (for his own strategic reasons), various polls show that
it just isn’t so. Tea partiers are more socially conservative than
doctrinaire libertarians, they’re more likely to support entitlements,
and they’re more traditionally Republican on defense/security issues.
That’s not to say that they’re not becoming more libertarian —polls
lately show Republicans are more skeptical about NSA surveillance than
Democrats are, although that’s probably for partisan reasons — but
they’re not all Ron Paul fans either. That’s why Rand is usually quick
to claim the tea-party label. The more he gets TPers thinking of
themselves as allied with him, then theoretically the more receptive
they’ll be to his libertarian ideals.McCain doesn’t seem to
understand the difference between them but comparing Paul’s reaction to
the NSA revelations to Cruz’s is instructive. Paul’s first instinct was
to organize a class-action lawsuit and accuse the NSA of an “extraordinary invasion of [Americans’] privacy.”
Cruz, by contrast, says the revelations are “cause for concern” but
urges Fox viewers to reserve judgment until we know more about the
programs. And from the looks of it here, his chief objection seems to be
that this particular administration can’t be trusted with NSA’s
surveillance tools in light of the IRS scandal, not necessarily that any
administration can’t be trusted with it. He may very well end up
joining Paul’s lawsuit, but I suspect that’ll be aimed at impressing
libertarians whose votes he’ll need if he ends up running for president
someday just as Rand often tempers his own libertarianism in order to
impress more mainstream tea-party conservatives. Cruz’s ally, Sarah
Palin (who returned to Fox this morning, although she doesn’t speak in
this clip) seems to be taking a position similar to his lately. From her
speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference on Saturday:(snip some Palin crap)
I suspect Cruz would agree with every word, and that her former
running mate would disagree with most or all of it. (Palin advocated
“Cruz control” for Washington in the speech, in fact.) She doesn’t want
any more interventions under a strategist as poor as Obama — but she’s
not against intervention in principle. She wants America to listen more
to the libertarians, but when it comes to the lousy Gang of Eight bill,
she rightly opposes it for its weak border security — even though
libertarians are famously comfortable with weak borders. None of this is
contradictory; most tea partiers would, I take it, agree that America
needs more libertarianism while maybe not quite so much as Ron Paul
supporters would prefer. The point is, though, there are real
differences between Cruz and Rand Paul and I think we’re getting a hint
of one in the clip. And the longer the national debate stays stuck on
liberty-versus-security issues, the more obvious I think those
differences will be.
To: SeekAndFindWell, Ted just lost my support: the NSA surveillance is a clear,
blatant violation of the 4th, 5th, and very-arguably 6th amendments —
this is, of course, not taking into acount that the system could easily be used to blackmail and is just begging to be abused in Ex Post Facto law. (If the 4th, 5th, and 6th don’t protect you, why should the Ex Post Facto law prohibition?)5
posted on Monday, June 17, 2013 3:08:18 PM
by OneWingedShark
(Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
To: SeekAndFindThe gov spies on us and not the terrorists and we aren’t supposed to have an opinion, Ted?
To: SeekAndFindA Cruz statement from The Blaze last week:
“If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of
personal records about law-abiding citizens, and if it is the case that
there are minimal restrictions on accessing or reviewing those records,
then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by
bringing it to light.”What happened?
To: laplata“What happened?”
The Obama Administration showed Ted Cruz what they got on him. That’s what.
To: SeekAndFindI wonder what they got on Cruz.
To: SeekAndFindI had a dream.
Off in the distance and approaching rapidly was a bus. Despite the distance I could clearly read a logo on the front of the bus.
The logo reads FREEREPUBLIC.COM
Standing beside the road I see Sarah Palin, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
They are discussing the latest NSA revelations. They are waiting for the
bus, clearly with some apprehension. Sarah is heard to say “Who will be
next … So many”.The bus draws closer, bearing down on our favorite three.
In a flash our favorite three becomes our favorite two. Sarah and
Rand breath a sigh of relief. As the bus passes we catch our last
glimpse of Ted, neatly positioned under the speeding bus16
posted on Monday, June 17, 2013 3:31:46 PM
by InterceptPoint
(If I had a tag line this is where you would find it)
Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Cruz To Nowhere edition”
Because it’s been a while, and because he keeps looking around behind the camera like somebody’s waving a stuffed animal or something: A. Continue reading Happy Kerry Video: Pride Month
TP Street or TJ Hooker: you decide. I thought that the fools who run the Picayune had abandoned their idiotic and confusing plan to publish a tabloid called TP Street. I was wrong.Here’s the latest as reported by Kevin Allman over at the Gambit blog: The Times-Picayune will launch its new tabloid print edition, TP Street, next Monday, according to a memo this evening from NOLA Media Group Vice President of Content Jim Amoss. After going to thrice-weekly publication last fall as part of its move to a “digital newsroom” (and later adding a Monday sports tabloid during New Orleans … Continue reading Taking it to the TP Street