Sunday, October 14, 2018

Wow Beto Raised Lots Of Money

Ever since the internet small donor phenomenon became a thing, the very important people keep getting very mad that stupid people are giving 20 bucks to the very WRONG UNWINNABLE RACES as opposed to giving millions to safe seat incumbents which is just business as usual.


I am being pithy but I hope you get the point.

It's Cold Now

So much for "at least here in the Mid-Atlantic we have a great Fall!"

Sunday Morning

Saturday, October 13, 2018

A Terrible Breach In Protocol

Stay civil, people.

Saturday, Saturday

Enjoy

Freedom

I grew up in the suburbs. That period between about 12 and 16 when you can't drive is hell. I wish I had a nice subway.

Saturday Morning

Fall has arrived. Nice.

Friday, October 12, 2018

People Have Died And I'm Not Happy

The best country.

Say The Magic Words, Fat Gandalf

I am old so Friday night means early bed.

Happy Hour Thread

Friday get happy.

Depends

Oh Simon, you went for the obvious joke.

To America

Men and Babies

Given the context of the impending effective overturning of Roe and the creepy online misogynists obsessed with women's "fertility" and babymaking powers that are everywhere these days... I have a question. Do you really know men who a) want children b) want children in the sense of wanting to honestly handle 50%+ of the childrearing duties c) could possibly handle being a single parent if circumstances required?


a) is easy of course. I would like progeny, take care of it my woman! b) is I think much more rare even in an aspirational sense and c) hahahahaha.

But life is complicated and weird and tragic and if you really want children, c) is always going to be a possible outcome of your 18 year commitment.

Spread The Benjamins Around

Some highly ethical PR firm in DC is currently concocting the comeback strategy for Mohammad bin Salman, which will culminate in a weepy Tom Friedman column about how his good friend temporarily lost his way, but has shown proper remorse to Tom Friedman and all is good now.

We Feel A Bit Bad About The Gulags, But The Cons Left Us With Little Choice

The reasonable "overreach" argument is something like "oh wow George Bush wanted to privatize Social Security and the backlash to that brought voters to the polls and elected a bunch of Democrats."

The conservative version - which is taken very seriously - is more like "oh wow the liberals disrespected us on Twitter so we really had no choice but to start putting babies in cages. Their fault, really, the baby cages."

Good Guys, Bad Guys

There are reasons - probably usually gross but maybe occasionally not - that we have to be jolly old pals with some bad countries. Even gross reasons are reasons. But the degree to which the press - and no, not just the opinion pages - falls in line with official government policy about Whoever Is Good And Bad Today - is always pretty fascinating. One would think the press (and I mean the elite press like the Times and the especially the NoVa mouthpiece the Post) could at least explain these things to us. The State Department might not be able to come out and say "sure, he's a bastard, but he's our bastard" but journalists can. Instead we tend to get a good dictator/bad dictator split coverage. The good ones are our good pals, the bad ones do truly horrible and despicable human rights violations just like the good ones.

Morning Thread

It's Friday.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Tucker's White Power Hour

I admit I got one wrong with Tucker Carlson. For some reason (not that it really a mattered) I thought he mostly played a jerk on TV but he wasn't that much of a jerk. Sure he was a conservative asshole - I'm not pretending he was Good - but not, you know, Nazi level bad. Better than your typical conservative asshole even before they all embraced Nazis, even.

Who knows or cares what's in his heart but wow he's bad.

Thursday Evening

Tomorrow is...

Vote

I'm lucky. My polling place is about 200 feet away and I don't think I've ever had to wait more than 5 minutes to vote. It's easy. I doubt anyone in Philly is more than a quarter mile from their polling place, if that. We have lots of them! The stories you hear every election cycle about people lined up for an hour or more to vote are insane. There is zero reason for it to be that way. Zero good reason anyway. You can just add more polling places, more machines, whatever (I'm not going to get into the absurdity of our voting systems). I think when I lived in California I voted in someone's garage. This is not a problem without solutions, and the solutions cost negligble amounts of money.

Afternoon Thread

Fuck the Celebrities, They Don't Vote For Us Anyway

One thing about being old but also extremely online is that I'm always fascinated by things that I manage to miss. The internet is piped directly into my head yet somehow I managed to miss a meme! It's oddly satisfying. It isn't that I take pride in being a clueless oldster, it's that I rarely miss any of this nonsense so when I do it's a relief.

Along those lines, I can identify one Taylor Swift song. This is not bragging. It's fascinating to me! But she's popular and the
Nazis thought she was one of them and now they are mad and conservatives feel the need to condemn her. This is funny.