The Boston Globe, which looked at Holy Mother Church and said they’ve got two millennia on us and we still think we can take ’em, has used its institutional voice to call for leveling the status quo and people are losing their damn minds: Why? As media becomes more about activism, myopia takes over. Mrs. Clinton made this about gun control from Sunday on, and as a result, those without microphones and bylines are going to pound the gun narrative into the ground regardless of whether the Orlando terrorist used an AR-15 or not. The perception has already become reality. You … Continue reading And Then Sometimes Nothing Keeps You Down But You
While a lot of us, myself included, were mostly focused (with good reason) on other things, this bit of news kind of flew under the radar Last Thursday, Greenland’s capital hit 75°F, which was hotter than New York City. This was the highest temperature ever recorded there in June — in a country covered with enough ice to raise sea levels more than 20 feet. … NASA reports that some parts of Greenland were 36°F (20°C) warmer than “normal” — and remember … the new “normal” is the 2001–2010 average, which means it already includes a century of human-caused warming. … Continue reading I Hear Greenland’s Even Better In The Off Season — Fewer Tourists
The first time I heard John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra my jaw dropped. Birds Of Fire was my introduction to the fast, elegant playing of McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Jerry Goodman, Jan Hammer, and Rick Laird. We won’t see or … Continue reading Album Cover Art Wednesday: Birds Of Fire
They’re heroes: Tribune Publishing has made a lot of news lately with its ongoing battle with Gannett and a corporate rebranding. But the network of journalists that exists aside from that drama mobilized on Sunday. The Los Angeles Times, the Sentinel’s corporate cousin on the West Coast, shared the HTML code for the victim remembrance page it created after the San Bernardino shooting. The Baltimore Sun shared what it learned from starting a pop-up newsletterto cover the Freddie Gray story, and the Sentinel has started its own. Tribune’s Washington bureau sent along sources from the Justice Department. The South Florida … Continue reading These Aren’t Content Curators and Monetizers, Ferro
Jennifer Rubin, errbody: Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), an obscure congressman outside his swing district, has no need to go on national TV. His reelection efforts are best helped by local TV and radio and even more prosaic campaign materials (direct mail) and retail politicking. He nevertheless went on CNN and predictably got grilled about Trump. Just as predictably, he messed up. He insisted, “You can easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist with his policies and his rhetoric.” Actually, you cannot easily argue the matter, which is why he backed down quickly. He then called … Continue reading Just Be Dishonest Weaselly Creeps, Republicans!
Oh, the high dudgeon! In social media posts Monday, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump announced that his campaign is revoking press credentials to The Washington Post. “Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record-setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post,” Trump wrote in a Facebook post. [snip] The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Trump’s decision in a release Monday, retorting that “a candidate for the highest elected office in the land doesn’t get to choose what goes in a newspaper.” Missing from this story: What those credentials … Continue reading Yet Again, a Republican Problem Gets Spun as a Trump Problem
In case you were wondering (and even if you weren’t), my absence last week was due to my house being partially under water after the historic Dallas floods of May 23rd-24th. Let’s just say that a house full of 90db apiece blowers (7 of them) and loss of access to my PC for a week wasn’t conducive to doing posts (or much of anything else) , and my anxiety / borderline hysteria about spending our retirement savings on “like it never happened” to try and prevent black mold – and repairs – and recarpeting 3/4 of the house – didn’t help much.
OK – so what do we have this week?
Sarah Palin On Trump VP Shortlist? Townhall.com ^ | May 15, 2016 | Christine Rousselle
Ben Carson–who the Washington Post called the both best and worst campaign surrogate of all time–revealed that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, among many others, is on Donald Trump’s shortlist for potential running mates.
[…]He had just explained to the reporter riding along that he wanted no role in a Trump administration when news arrived of a new poll naming him as the best liked of a list of potential running mates. “Who else was on the list?” he asked quietly, maintaining his usual inscrutable calm. The most favorably regarded contenders after himself, he was told, were John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and Chris Christie. “Those are all people on our list,” he said. “Well, not you,” Candy reminded him sharply.
Come on, Freepers – this is your Forever Crush – your wet dream made flesh.
Remember how you cheered when you saw this?
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Dontcha want some MORE?
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To: Maceman
I hope not.
2 posted on 5/16/2016, 1:23:32 PM by Ray76 (Judge Roy Moore for Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States)
To: Maceman
NO!
3 posted on 5/16/2016, 1:24:30 PM by fortheDeclaration (Pr 14:34 Righteousness exalteth a nation:but sin is a reproach to any people)
To: Ray76
I hope not.
Same here. I stopped taking Sarah Palin seriously when it became clear that she was more interested in being a celebrity and showcasing her family on reality TV than she was in policy. Add to that her fingernails on a chalkboard voice that makes Hillary’s shrill shrieking sound almost lyrical by comparison, and we’re left with a walking punchline rather than a VP pick.
Stonewall demo breaking into march up 7th ave pic.twitter.com/5CuhQ248wN — Mary Emily O’Hara (@MaryEmilyOHara) June 12, 2016 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Most of what I could say about the shooting at a club in Orlando has been said by now. I spent the weekend working a literary festival and arrived home exhausted and sunburnt and pissed off from reading Twitter, and of course Trump is garbage and Elizabeth Warren should hold all elected offices forever, but what I keep thinking about is politics. Of course I do, because I’m just that gross and gauche, right? Politics is SO BAD right now, as opposed … Continue reading Got Your Back: On Politics in America
This, for example, is called cowardice, or laziness, or both: Among the most eloquent chroniclers of this transformation of our political discourse have been the establishment political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. Each has been studying politics and offering pungent quotes to journalists for over 40 years, most often apportioning praise and blame to each party in relatively equal measure. But by April 2012, they had grown so frustrated with Republican recalcitrance that they jointly wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post titled “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem.” In it, they described a party that … Continue reading Calling Things What They Are
It’s been a rather wild and wicked week in New Orleans. Make that Wicked. I became the last American to see that hit musical and enjoyed it; yea verily. I never thought I’d root for the wicked witch but I did. The music was excellent and the instrumental flourishes reminded me of Duke period Genesis; not a bad thing at all.
In other NOLA news, the city wants to tax anything that looms over sidewalks including stoops and galleries. That’s a fancy word for balconies and many of the ones in the Quarter have been there and untaxed since the early 19th Century. It’s another money grab by City Hall and strikes me as a stoopid idea. The term “grandfather clause” should apply to this situation since the offending objects have been there even longer than the Landrieus. The Mayor should turn his attention to the air bnbs that his administration has allowed to pop up like toadstools after a summer rain. The whole topic makes me feel like the Stoop Crone on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt…
Now that I’ve made an obscure pop culture reference for the first time (I lie like Trump) it’s time to move on to this week’s theme song. Ewan MacColl wrote Dirty Old Town in 1949. It’s about MacColl’s hometown Salford, Greater Manchester in the UK but has been recorded by a wide variety of artists, especially the Irish. We begin with MacColl’s version followed by the Pogues:
There’s *another* fine song of the same title by David Bryne. Bryne’s Dirty Old Town was written and recorded for his 1989 Rei Momo album:
Let’s shake the dirt off and move to the break. But first a word on dirt from Robert Penn Warren:
“Dirt’s a funny thing,’ the Boss said. ‘Come to think of it, there ain’t a thing but dirt on this green God’s globe except what’s under water, and that’s dirt too. It’s dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain’t a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?”
Willie Stark in All The King’s Men was inspired by Huey Long. Warren wrote the novel when he was on the faculty at LSU and it remains one of the best books ever written about the Gret Stet of Louisiana. Let’s turn over another shovelful of dirt and go to the break.
I only saw him play live once in my life. It was 1997 and ESPN was showing a live shot of the Detroit Vipers, a now-defunct minor-league hockey team. Gordie Howe skated out during an overly dramatized set of introductions. He took the ice to play but one shift, so he could claim that he had played professional hockey in six decades. You couldn’t even call it a moment, as his ice time came to about 47 seconds, but it was something that hockey purists decried as a stunt, a farce and a smudge of tarnish on the legacy of … Continue reading Goodnight, Mr. Hockey
I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in eating cheese and seafood-both of which I love-at the same time. That’s got bupkis to do with this post as it involves my sister-in-law’s cat named Cheddar and a Muses Octopus. It’s apparently the only toy he plays with. Cats do the darndest things: Continue reading Friday Guest Catblogging: Octopus & Cheddar
A couple of suggestions, actually, beginning with the caption above. There are all sorts of ways a grown adult and ostensibly elected public official can act like a baby … but this has to rank right up there with as-despicable-and-downright-ugly-as-it-gets. In other words, perfectly in keeping with Tom Cotton, the junior — and apparently juvenile toddler — Senator from Arkansas. Charles Pierce: Some people are ideologues. Some people are charlatans. Some people are opportunists. And some people are simply raging, flaming holes of pure ass. As [New York Times writer Frank] Bruni’s column makes clear, at least in the case of … Continue reading A Modest…Suggestion
Social media is full of instant experts. I try not to get too annoyed with those who misuse history or don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to politics. You can tell that I spent way too much time on the Tweeter Tube last night but it has its rewards. Veteran reporter/pundit Walter Shapiro offered some astute commentary as we waited for Senator Sanders to speak: This is beginning to remind me of McGovern giving acceptance speech at 2:00 a.m. Call it the Leftwing Dawn Patrol. https://t.co/sq1zGVgUNL — Walter Shapiro (@MrWalterShapiro) June 8, 2016 … Continue reading Tweets Of The Day: Good Historical Analogy Edition
I don’t know what these people imagine the consequences are: “Republicans: Call him out. Make him back down on the Muslim ban. Make him back down on this racist statement he’s made about a man [the judge in a Trump University case] born in Indiana … Or else you lose the Senate, you lose the House, you lose the presidency, you will lose your standing as a national party. It’s that simple. … He’s going backwards. … He appears to be spontaneously combusting over a civil lawsuit.” Every Republican tomorrow can stand up and say Donald Trump is being awful, … Continue reading Or WHAT, Guys?
“Night work is not knight’s work,” Lady Dustin said. “And Lord Wyman is not the only man who lost kin at your Red Wedding, Frey. Do you imagine Whoresbane loves you any better? If you did not hold the Greatjon, he would pull out your entrails and make you eat them, as Lady Hornwood ate her fingers. Flints, Cerwyns, Tallharts, Slates … they all had men with the Young Wolf.”
“House Ryswell too,” said Roger Ryswell.
“Even Dustins out of Barrowton.” Lady Dustin parted her lips in a thin, feral smile. “The north remembers, Frey.”
They want to call him before Congress to explain how he does his job-type things! The committee in February asked the State Department to turn over documents and communications related to the “key determination” that the oil pipeline would have an impact on climate change and the decision to cite “U.S. climate leadership” in the denial of the project. In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), the chairwoman of the committee’s Interior subpanel, said they have yet to receive the documents and would “consider the use of the … Continue reading Republicans: We’ll Subpoena You, John Kerry!
Get those nice kids at Politico a Pulitzer, guys: It’s June 2016. Time to think about the 2020 election. I almost stopped reading right there. Would that I had: The 2016 GOP convention is still weeks away, but would-be contenders – from Ted Cruz to Tom Cotton — are already laying groundwork for the next Republican presidential primary. While some are lining up blue chip staff, scheduling trips to early primary states, and setting up political action committees, others are huddling with the party’s biggest financiers. TELL ME MORE ABOUT SHIT THAT IS 4 YEARS FROM NOW, PLEASE. I mean, … Continue reading Absolving Trump’s Enablers in Advance
