Hippiehaus, “Galaxy” (2002)
This is kind of pretty. I really used to go for some of those Hotel Costes anthologies. What sounded good to folks this week?
Archives for March 2012
It’s Friday, So You Know What That Means
Keith Olbermann has been fired in an acrimonious fashion, with both sides livid and displaying seething contempt for each other. Again.
It’s Friday, So You Know What That MeansPost + Comments (87)
Even Flow
And the Arizona GOP is now taking panty-snifffing to an entirely new level, demanding that “the gestational age of the fetus should be ‘calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.'” So in order to get an abortion, you now have to provide a bunch of old perverts a calendar with your menstrual cycle highlighted.
These people are sick and evil. We’re seriously one or two bills away before women will be required to go to the well of the Arizona Senate and tell these old white perverts their favorite sexual position and how old they were when they lost their virginity.
Anna Brown: 29-year-old Black Woman Dies in Jail After Being Dragged By Police Out of Hospital
This makes me hate people.
Anna Brown had visited several hospitals complaining of pain in her legs. When she was ignored at St. Mary’s Hospital, she refused to leaved, screaming and yelling that she was in pain. The hospital had her arrested. The police dragged her out of the hospital and into a squad car. At the Richmond Heights Police Department, she cried that she couldn’t stand up or get out of the car, so the officers dragged her out of the car, into a jail cell, and left her there.
Fifteen minutes later she was dead from a pulmonary embolism:
Open Thread: The Enemies of My Enemies
Via Washington Monthly‘s Ed Kilgore, a Facebook app for the aggressively aggrieved:
(CNN) — To the dismay of some, Facebook has no “Dislike” button. But a new application for the social network may prove to be the next-best thing.
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The app, EnemyGraph, encourages Facebook users to list people or places or things they dislike, then share them with like-minded haters as a way of bonding. (“You think Crocs are hideous? I think Crocs are hideous! Let’s be buds!”)
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“Most social networks attempt to connect people based on affinities: you like a certain band or film or sports team, I like them, therefore we should be friends,” writes EnemyGraph co-creator Dean Terry in a blog post. “But people are also connected and motivated by things they dislike. Alliances are created, conversations are generated, friendships are stressed, stretched, and/or enhanced.”…
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Users of the app appear to largely be left-of-center politically. Near the top of the enemies’ list are GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Fox News, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. President Barack Obama is the sole Democrat on the list…
Yeah, or else the Talibangelicals, fReichtards & Banana Republicans just haven’t gotten the blast fax from Rush and the AFP yet. As a non-Facebook-user, I really really hope this app takes off big time. Given enough fellow haterz to play with, we might never see Veritas or its fellow trolls around here again.
Whip Me, Beat Me, Call Me Trash, Kick Me With High Heels
Most of the time I try to avoid the worst of the worst in our media, but sometimes I am in the mood for a little psychic pain. When those urges arise, my go to columnists are Charles Lane at the WaPo and Bobo at the NYT. Many of you will think I should probably go to Halperin, but he’s just so stupid it doesn’t cause me the physical pain that Lane and Bobo do. As far as I am concerned, no one can deliver the kick to the gut that Charles Lane can pack in one of his Both Sides Do It masterpieces. Here’s one of my recent favorites, which I have bookmarked so that whenever I start to feel good about myself or the country, I can read it and be brought back to earth:
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of war.
The Democratic National Committee accuses the GOP of a “Republican War on Women,” to go along with its “war on working families” (according to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee) and “Paul Ryan’s war on seniors” (Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky).
Various Republicans accuse President Obama of waging “war on religious freedom” or even, in the words of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, “a war on religion.” According to the Republican National Committee, the president is also waging “war on energy,” the sequel, apparently, to what the House Republican Leadership has called “Democrats’ war on American jobs.”
***Amid the fog of blog posts,Twitter, Facebook, talk radio and the rest, only hyperbole has a chance to break through. Even so, many, if not most, people tune out the parties’ “war” propaganda. The shriller it gets, the less seriously they take it. For any given individual, this is a mentally healthy response.
Multiplied across the entire electorate, however, the effect may be more corrosive. To the extent that sensible citizens tune out politics, they abandon the field to people who are receptive to constant cries of war, war, war — people who are prepared to think of their opponents as enemies.
When you think of someone as an enemy, it’s harder to contemplate trusting, respecting or cooperating with him or her. Indeed, those behaviors start to look like treason, instead of what they really are: the minimum requirements of democratic life.
On his Web site, Frank Luntz, the erstwhile GOP propagandist whose credits include rebranding the estate tax as the “death tax,” tells potential clients about “transforming mere words into an effective arsenal for the war of perception we all wage each and every day.”
According to Luntz, “We all submit to the power of language, whether we know it or not.”
My fear is that he’s right. All the more reason to stop the wars.
Tell me, after reading that, are you conflicted as to whether you should grab the scotch and slowly drink yourself to death, or just grab a handgun and end it quickly. No one, in my estimation, can bring it like Chuck. He’s the worst of the worst. He’s the Michael Jordan of false equivalence.
At any rate, what columnists have the same impact on you?
Whip Me, Beat Me, Call Me Trash, Kick Me With High HeelsPost + Comments (76)
Someone Is Off Message
He’s absolutely right, but this is kind of astonishing coming from a Republican:
That’s Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell (R) advocating for single payer.