Here is an aerial view of what happens in the Cole household if you leave your bedtime glass of milk unattended:
I guess it is somewhat my fault because I a) left it alone and b) couldn’t find a coaster even though there are two right there.
And since it was Lily I caught, and I am the most uneven parent ever, all I did was say “Awwwww Lily” and took a pic, even though I know if I had caught Rosie or Tunch I would have yelled “GODDAMNIT” and scared the hell out of both of them.
*** Update ***
Oh, and fuck you. Yes, I do happen to like a glass of skim milk or almond milk before bed. Judgmental pricks. Eat hot death.
donovong
But, it begs the question – did you finish it?
srv
I’ve never said this before on the interons as a positive thing, but seriously, why don’t you move to your mom’s basement?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hope that almond milk has some laxative property. You sound cranky.
Todd
Just wanted to point out the total awesomeness of Glenn Greenwald in his total embrace of Gluteus Maximus Matthew Hale.
When his client was sued civilly by the victims of his white supremacists, he had this to say:
Further, Greenwald said, “I find that the people behind these lawsuits are truly so odious and repugnant, that creates its own motivation for me.”
Shall I repeat his words again?
Further, Greenwald said, “I find that the people behind these lawsuits are truly so odious and repugnant, that creates its own motivation for me.”
This from the guy who unethically recorded witnesses.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002101211#post55
scav
Can I have my glass of hot death with a sprinkling of nutmeg? I hear that has soporific tendencies.
Comrade Jake
Breaking news: Cole is actually a sixty-year old grandmother.
Redshirt
One of the most in focus Cole photos yet. You can really make out the texture of the spilled milk.
Bravo!
Chris
Skim milk is a drink of choice for me at any hour of the day. I’ve never understood people who grow out of it.
srv
@Redshirt: Like what is that? Was John using a Superdrive as a coaster?
Comrade Jake
@srv: that’s where all the BJ metadata is stored.
Violet
Aww…Lily! She was just thirsty. Sweet puppy.
trollhattan
When did salted dicks become hot death?
Just curious.
Comrade Mary
@trollhattan:
Ask Theon.
Redshirt
@srv: Huge stack of white Post-Its?
Daisy Jo
Hope there was no scotch in it ;)
Redshirt
@Chris: Cuz BLAH BLAH GAIA MOTHER EARTH WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK MILK!!!
You ever run into that form of crazy person? The anti-dairy hippy?
Narcissus
“I couldn’t find a coaster.”
“What’s that right next to your glass?”
“Oh that’s just a coaster.”
Violet
@Chris: Milk. Bleh. Had to drink so much of it as a kid, I will not drink it now. It’s fine in tea or coffee and on cereal. But drink a glass of it? No way.
Skim milk is full of milk sugar, as all milk is, but doesn’t have the fat to slow down the blood sugar spike. I can’t do skim milk. I can feel the blood sugar spike right away.
eemom
You stomped again.
And over a glass of milk spilled by a doggie.
Iffin you were to ask me, I’d say it’s a typical, dick-swinging, “because I fucking CAN, beeytch” act of neo-patriarchal post-feminist dominance by a clueless male “boss” figure with authoritarian issues over a Vagina-American.
YMMV.
BGinCHI
Pic looks like a shape ID cartoon on Sesame Street, but one of those cautionary ones where the Giant Yellow Blog Host can’t tell the difference.
Suffern ACE
@Redshirt: milk is for babies. Unless it has a little licor 43 and cinnamon sugar in it.
lockout
Milk is tasty, and nutritious.
NickT
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/06/nsa-story-falling-apart-under-scrutiny-key-facts-turning-out-to-be-inaccurate/
lojasmo
Fuck that shit. Whole milk or cream.
Jesus Christ, dude. Meat, fatty milk, vegetables, walking.
Fuck all that other shit.
BGinCHI
@eemom: At least he’s not crying over spilt milk.
Baby steps.
Amir Khalid
Never thought I’d see this: John Cole crying (okay, griping) over spilt milk.
BGinCHI
@lockout: You have Stockholm Syndrome. Or WV syndrome.
Shirt
So, John, How long have you had that Hiatal Hernia?
Suffern ACE
Ok. If warm milk is relaxing (and I assume cole is drinking it at night for that) why wouldn’t a hunk of cheese before bed do the same thing?
StringOnAStick
Hey John, try the coconut milk that you’ll find in the same little boxes as the almond milk (SO Delicious brand). I drink the non-sweetened version; all the milk yumminess with none of the phlegminess or tongue coating. Coconut milk drink doesn’t give you a blood sugar spike either – no lactose and coconut contains medium-chain tryglycerides rather than just some form of quickly metabolized sugar (as long as you go unsweetened). I love the stuff.
srv
@Comrade Jake: We need a Danger Close drone strike.
Is West Virginia a country or what?
max
@Comrade Jake: Breaking news: Cole is actually a sixty-year old grandmother.
Tsk. He’s a 60-year-old *aunt* on account of being an elderly spinster named Marge.
Yes, I do happen to like a glass of skim milk or almond milk before bed.
Did you make sure to add the essential oils? Don’t want your feng shui to get out of whack.
On the NYT, right at this moment: Brooks: The Solitary Leaker
David Brooks explains
it allthe NSA and that Snowden guy to you. Hrmmm… Nope! Don’t need the brain bleed!And then: 26 minutes ago – Debate on Secret Data Looks Unlikely, Partly Due to Secrecy
‘We should have a debate about this stuff we aren’t telling about. We go first: we’re not going to tell you. But everything is OK!’
Not even gonna bother.
max
[‘Hear no evil, see no evil, hit the revolving door and go work for a bank.’]
Chris
@Redshirt:
No, I haven’t. The fucking fuck? I’ve run into people who prefer one type of milk over another (fuck soy milk, IMHO), people who think it’s fattening, people who think it’s really weird that a man my age would walk into a Starbucks and order a big cup of cold milk… but anti-dairy hippies, that’s a new one.
@Violet:
I’m like that with classical music. All my parents ever listened to, so I got way too much of it as a kid and will only listen to it in small doses now. So I suppose I get it.
Betty Cracker
Aaannd we’re in inning #12 of the Rays-Red Sox game.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@lojasmo:
Nah. Whipping cream is the way to go, heavy whipping cream. None of that weenie-ass “light cream” shit. If you’re going to drink milk, drink it like you mean it, damn it.
? Martin
@Suffern ACE: My grandparents religiously had ice cream before bed. Every night, without fail.
Loved my grandparents.
Jonathan
John Cole is my favorite here at this blog. It’s his blog, and he seems to have nothing but contempt for the regulars… In a weird way, I appreciate that.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: You know, if Cole had that cheesecake of yours on his night stand he could have just anchored his milk in it and bingo, no tragedy.
Jonathan
@StringOnAStick: yes. Coconut milk is under-appreciated. No need for the sweetened stuff, as you say.
Violet
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.):
I recently found some cream from a local dairy that is not UHT and doesn’t have carageenan in it. It’s just amazing. Like a whole different substance than regular supermarket cream.
Jonathan
@BGinCHI: That was a damn fine looking cheesecake.
BGinCHI
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): Sweetened condensed milk. Milnot.
That plus espresso plus ice. Blend.
Add vodka if it’s night time.
BGinCHI
@Jonathan: I can’t stop thinking about it.
Redshirt
@Chris: Yeah. Apparently, dairy is to blame for all modern ailments – increasing autism? Too much dairy. Depressed? Too much dairy. School shootings? Dairy.
You’ll note in nature no other mammal drinks milk past early youth. To do so goes against the spirit of Gaia, and is blasphemy.
Redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Are you one of the approximate 1,335 Tampa (DEVIL) Rays fans?
? Martin
@Redshirt: Why do you hate boobs?
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ve been reading a little about the Martin-Zimmerman case that’s gearing up, and after a whole year, Zimmerman’s lawyer is saying he isn’t ready yet and he needs more time.
This whole case just angers me and saddens me beyond belief. I see that picture of Martin they always show in any story about the case and I think, “Who knows what that guy might have done of he’d had the chance?” Who knows? Maybe he’d have become a musician, maybe a writer, maybe an artist, and, who knows, maybe he might have been great. Maybe he might have gone on to be a doctor and healed people who needed help. Maybe a lawyer representing people hurt by big, powerful interests. We don’t know what we’ve lost as a society each time some kid gets cut down needlessly (and almost always by guns! Freedoooooom!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!one!!!!!1!!1!!!!eleven!!!!).
And who knows, maybe he might not have done any of that. The odds are that he would not have gone on to cure cancer. He might have gone on to lead a fairly mundane life, doing nothing more noteworthy than selling insurance for a living. But whatever he might have gone on to do, he had a right to grow up and try to fulfill his dreams, whatever they might have been, but some dumb thug came along and stole his life from him.
He never got to meet somebody and fall in love and raise children. He never got to go abroad and see other countries. He never got to go to college and learn about history or philosophy poetry or trigonometry or whatever he would have wanted to learn about. Shit, maybe all he wanted to do was go to some trade school and learn how to work on cars or dishwashers or something. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Not that it matters any now, as Zimmerman helpfully saved Martin the trouble of choosing which path he most would ahve liked to go down in life.
He never got to do any of that because some frustrated would-be tough guy got a hard on playing at being a cop and shot him dead. Every time anybody brings up Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman, we should mull that over a little. Every time some shitbag tells us how guns make us safer, we ought to give a little thought to all the children shot to death by guns, and the lives they never got to lead and the dreams they never got to follow, and how we all lose, too, when some child gets cheated out of living up to his potential or her potential.
srv
After a few beers and a glass of wine, I guess I need some milk (Strauss Farms fucking 100% whole fucking organic milk). At the bar, the guy next to me was arguing with his bud that Boston was a False Flag operation…
I can’t stop thinking of that Airplane scene where he smashes a paper 1/2 gallon of milk on the bar and threatens their jugulars with it…
I’m going to end up in jail some day.
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker: Top of the 13th…
BGinCHI
@srv: If you’re going to the joint, at least take a Koch brother down so you have some street cred. It worked for me with Zeppo Koch (the lesser-known Koch brother).
Betty Cracker
@BGinCHIa>: True. That cheesecake could have supported an entire cow.
13th inning now. I’m so bored with this game, yet I’ve invested too much now not to see it through. Le sigh.
srv
Also, too, that near double play by the third baseman to first AND back (Texans vs Cleveland?) was amazing.
John Cole
@Comrade Jake: Actually, my name is Jane Coale.
Amir Khalid
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.):
I hear you, man. But I’ve been the reading the comments under the Yahoo! News stories, and I’m having a hard time believing the hatred that people can direct at a 17-year old boy who was wrongfully shot dead.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): I keep going back to the idea that this guy who lived in a gated community was on his way to the grocery to pick up some milk, and he felt the need to bring his gun.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@Redshirt:
And it’s odd, isn’t it, how many societies have gone thousands of years drinking milk, eating cheese and cooking with butter and cream–some use dairy far more than Americans do–but all of that stuff is only now getting worse. If it really were too much dairy, then all Mongolians and northern Europeans–among other groups, but I can’t think of any other big dairy-eating cultures offhand–should be autistic by now.
Suffern ACE
@Redshirt: for cows, it’s really impractical after a certain age to drink milk directly from an udder. I wonder, though, if cows had opposable thumbs, wouldn’t they give milk a try.
srv
@BGinCHI: I was dragged off the stage at the last Yanni & Tesh concert in the 80’s, I was gobsmacked by some redhead who asked for a light and then I couldn’t light the fuze.
I still have that suicide vest.
BGinCHI
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): Elephant in the American room? Exercise.
So many people just don’t burn calories by walking or working out or, well, laboring. And if my experience working construction and farm jobs for years is any indication, a lot of people burn calories but eat the most shitty processed food because they are easy to get.
Sad state of affairs. There was a time you had to make what you ate out of simple raw materials. Now that’s not the case.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@srv:
Yanni and Tesh? All you lacked was Zamfir and his magical panflute (pan flute? pan-flute? Pan flute?). I will live forever more in envy of you. Curse you!
In other news, summer colds somehow truly do seem worse. I don’t know if they do, but it always seems like I feel worse with a summer cold than I do dealing with one in cold weather…
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: It’s hideous, isn’t it? I try not to read the comments sections of stories in our local papers. When I do, it makes me want to move. But creeps like that are everywhere.
BGinCHI
@srv: You’ll be fine then. Smear some goat’s blood on your torso. It worked for the Stones.
Redshirt
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): I bet consumption rates are way up since refrigeration.
Isn’t it weird to think of the milkman? How cool – a dude used to bring you dairy products. And fresh! Now you’ve got to schleppe to the Scumbys for a grubby plastic jug.
? Martin
@Amir Khalid:
Live in the US for a while, and you’ll appreciate just how common and pervasive the hatred for African Americans continues to be.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Betty. You live in Florida. Creeps like that are not everywhere.
They are the top of the food chain of creeps in your state.
OK, maybe South Carolina politically, but not in terms of insanity.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@BGinCHI:
This is one of the reasons I’m so desperate to move back to Honduras. I lived in a little town, out in the country. There was an open market that was a block square. All the fruit and vegetables for sale had come into town that morning or the day before from the outlying farms or gardens. The meat was all from around there, too. We never bought meat, since it was messy and a hassle to cook, so when we wanted meat, we’d go out for it; it was still the local meat, though, and it tasted nothing like what we get here. Tela is on the Caribbean, too, so all the fish came in fresh, too, from the Garífuna fisherman in the nearby Garífuna villages. Even the bread came from the town bakery, or “bread factory”. And I don’t drink coffee, but everybody I know there who does says the Honduran grown coffee is about as good as coffee can be.
YellowJournalism
Once you knew it was Lily, you were okay with drinking the milk anyway, weren’t you…admit it…
MikeJ
Top of the 14th
BGinCHI
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): If not for death squads it sounds dreamy.
Seriously, though, the big paradox in the US is that in the big cities you have so many choices for fresh food it’s amazing, but in smaller towns and cities it’s not there. But maybe that’s changing with farmer’s markets and so on getting involved. It’s depressing that poor folks turn to the worst fucking food they can get their hands on. Vicious cycle. It’s especially insidious that McDonalds and all that shit is so cheap now. It was a treat when I was a kid and I’m glad we couldn’t afford it….
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ: Gyad. This is interminable! I want the Rays to win, but I’m glad Luke Scott didn’t get a hit. Can’t stand that mutton-chopped buffoon.
Redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Wow ! You really are a Rays fan! So rare. What’s it like being part of such a small community? Also, what’s your opinion of the even rarer Marlins fan?
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker: Didja hear the stat that the Os had a 2.5 hour rain delay and their game is over, while we await this one?
MikeJ
Time for the Red Sox to declare and hope we can end the game within the three day limit.
Loneoak
I’m pretty lactose intolerant, so it doesn’t much make a difference to me. But skim milk is a bad idea, its just lactose without the good fat. It’s an industrial product that maximizes profit by removing the fat for other food. If you’re going to drink milk drink it as close to the cow as plausible.
Miz Conception
I know everyone is probably sick of Greenwald by now but this has to be the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.
Click the linky for details
Betty Cracker
@Redshirt: The Rays have fans; they just have a hard time converting that to asses in seats because of the crappy Trope in St Pete. They’d do better with a retractable dome on the Tampa side of the bay.
@MikeJ: Jeesh!
Betty Cracker
Looks like I’m gonna regret sticking with this game…
lockout
Potatoes are pretty fucking cheap BGinCHI. The Irish used to eat them and they all kept slim, from the pictures I have seen from the era. Also spinach is economical. You can get a bag for like a buck, get lots of vitamins, and maintain a healthy digestive tract. Today I ate a McDonalds hamburger, and it didn’t make me fat. It was actually yummy.
Everything in balance, and keep away from the First Lady.
trollhattan
Premise: Something amiss with the “Cole” photo.
Evidence: In focus.
Conclusion: Faux Cole!
—NSA
Betty Cracker
Well, crape. That game sucked!
MikeJ
Sheesh. About time. Now I can go back to watching Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night.
Betty Cracker
CRAP, I meant! GOOD NIGHT JUICE
Bill E Pilgrim
Anyone conflicted at all about this leaker thing should read David Brooks’ column today. The sheer repulsiveness of his authoritarian rant should tip you firmly into the other camp.
Just kidding, people should obviously not form opinions just in reaction to David Brooks. On the other hand there are probably worse things to base positions on than the horror of realizing that the person most epitomizing the one argument is David Freaking Brooks. Anyway read it, his Nixonian freak flag is flying high today.
dance around in your bones
I lived in Friesland (northern Holland) for a while, and we used to get milk from the farmer down the road. I’d take a pail with me and get it straight from the cow. We boiled it on the stove to be safe and man, was it the best ever milk.
I also remember getting milk delivered in glass bottles with an inch or two of pure cream on the top – fantastic in coffee.
When I was a kid our family drank so much milk we had a milk machine supplied by the dairy – big 5 gallon boxes of milk in a refrigerated machine – it had a thing like a soda dispenser you pushed up to fill your glass. I’d drink right out of the thing like a little calf. Those are all my milk stories and I’m still alive.
The golden retriever at our household pulled the same maneuver yesterday, slurping out of a kid’s milk cup left on the toy box. He’s a people food vacuum – can’t leave anything unattended for more than a minute or two or he’s hoovering the whole schlemiel. He even pulls loquats off the neighbor’s tree that hangs over the back fence and leaves the three seed pods on the back porch after he’s masticated the fruit. That is all.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@BGinCHI:
I don’t know of any death squads; there were death squads on all three sides of Honduras: Nicaragua, El Salvador y Guatemala. There might have been shady paramilitary goons fucking around the Nicaraguan border in the 1980’s, and there are cases of vigilantism, and sometimes rich landowners or businesses will hire some thug to kill a labor advocate or environmental activist or somebody fighting for more and better treatment for indiginous people or for land reform. But it isn’t anything like what went on in the three neighboring countries from the 60’s right through (in Guatemala’s case) into the 1990’s.
I did know a guy who was a Garífuna guy, a really nice guy who had a son who went to school in the school where I worked for two years. He was one of the moneychanging guys who sat around on a corner on the main street, swapping lempiras for dollars. I always went to him to get lempiras, since he was a nice guy and had a kid in the school.
What I didn’t know until later was that he was one of the leading Garífuna people who were trying to keep the Garífuna on their land. For hundreds of years, up until about 1900, landowners near the coast kept shoving the Garífunas off their land, edging them nearer and nearer to the beach. By 1900, pretty much all the Garífuna were on the beach; there was nowhere else left for them to go. By this time, the landowners stopped hassling them, since you can’t farm on beachland, and it was worthless. So the Garífuna began fishing for a living, and they got good at it. They would also grow little household gardens, but they couldn’t farm.
Things were great until maybe the late 1980’s, which was when investors began looking at all that beachland, just sitting there, going to waste with all the Garífuna nobodies inconsiderately living there. So the investors, big landowners and other rich Hondurans, began to try to shove the Garífuna off the beaches, too. The guy I knew was one of the leaders who were organizing and agitating and advocating to get the Big Wheels to leave them alone.
Well, andyway, the year after I left, he was having lunch in the town with his son, and some thug walked in and shot him. He lived on for a few days, but then died. His six or seven year old son saw some asshole shoot his father. This really upset me. This might have been the one thing that more than any other opened my eyes about how the world really works for most people.
The only other assassination I knew about first or secondhand was my first year there. A Teleña woman was an environmental advocate trying to keep palm oil plantations out of one of the national parks west of town, Punta Sal National Park. I had a friend who was in the Peae Corps, and she worked with Jeanette Kawas as she fought the palm oil people. So one day, as she (Kawas) sat in her kitchen, some guy shot her dead through (I believe) the window.
They’d hoped that that would cow everybody into giving up, but instead, the whole town rose up and had a huge parade in her honor. Every school in town marched in it; I marched with my 4th grade class. The fire department marched, local businesspeople marched, pretty much everybody in town who could march did. And it became big news. I learned later that it made the national news back in the U.S. And the plan backfired. The park is still there; the plantations (for now, at least, thought I’d guess the people behind the plantations haven’t yet given up) are not in the park. The Peace Corps wanted to pull my friend out, but she wouldn’t go; she stayed another year, all the way through her posting there.
As an aside, the family that owns and runs the school I work with down there now knew Kawas well. The mother, who runs the school, was a god friend of hers. The school she started a few years after I left is called the Blanca Jeanette Kawas Bilingual School.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@BGinCHI:
As another (I hope) reasonably interesting aside, it’s much easier to get fresh food in small towns in Honduras than it is in the big cities. The farms are just nearer, and there are more of them in proportion to the town. In San Pedro Sula, it’s much more antiseptic and generic. Big chain groceries like the ones we have here. I don’t know what it’s like in Tegucigalpa, but I’d guess it’s more like San Pedro than it is like the small towns. Kind of ass-backwards from how it is here.
Gary
John I only know you through this blog. You share the most mundane but intimate details of your life with the world that nobody should care about yet I find it amusing and ingratiating. I could care less that your dog drank your milk, we all have our own stories to tell about our companions. However, I always smile because it’s such a human experience that you are sharing. Peace to you my unmet friend.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@Bill E Pilgrim: that’s awful. Man, I used to be about all of those crack babies from the ghetto growing up and ruining everything for the power elite. But now, Brooks has convinced me that the youth are ruining everything for everybody. The young folks are just too powerful and need to be stopped.
Suzanne
I was forced to drink milk as a kid and now I refuse. Just….hell no. My family bought into the whole idea that you couldn’t possibly get calcium from ANY OTHER SOURCE and that if I didn’t drink 32 ounces a day, I would snap like a twig. I still hate the shit, and the only times in my adult life that I’ve drunk it were when I was knocked up.
However, I will admit to a disgusting, all-consuming love of Diet Coke. I know it’s disgusting, and I haven’t had any in over a year. But oh Lord, I love that shit.
Redshirt
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound: Soylent Green is Beliebers!
Chris
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Yeah, because God knows the people running our government, businesses, churches and other centers of power haven’t given us several metric shit tons of reasons to distrust them. If people are cynical of these institutions, it’s because the powers that be have been letting them go to shit for ages.
The government is not entitled to our trust, nor are any other centers of power in our society. Trust is something earned. This “the REAL problem in our society is that people don’t BELIEVE hard enough!” sack of horseshit that our Very Serious Pundits indulge in is… well, a sack of horseshit. And deserves to be called out as such.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Loneoak: It’s also pretty much pure sugar.
Once I started looking into all the ways that sugar was basically coming in under the radar (bread, etc, the whole “healthy whole grain” trend for the last 50 years) and started avoiding it instead of fat, which we at the same time decided was evil somehow, losing and keeping off weight became much easier.
Nonfat milk in the hopes that it will lose, rather than gain you weight, is almost a perfect example of this guy’s arguments about how we get it wrong.
Suzanne
I had a Siberian Husky as a kid that LOVED to drink milk. My grandfather would give her a bowl of milk daily because she wouldn’t eat dog kibble—she ate a can of baked beans every day instead. He also let her have that non-dairy vanilla soft serve from Dairy Queen by the pint. Unsurprisingly, the dog got massive kidney stones that required surgery after pissing blood on the floor. Once we brought a second dog into the household, she started eating in competition and actually ate normal things.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Chris: The fact that he actually points to “suspicion of authority” as an unmitigated evil of our time pretty much sums up the entire rant.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@Chris: clearly the solution is to exclude as many high school drop outs from as many positions involving state secrets as possible and keep as much wealth away from them as we possibly can.
NotMax
Applause, applause.
The stuff was disgusting to drink and vile to swallow then, and that has not changed a whit.
Not a soda person. Water (from the tap), unsweetened iced tea, black coffee with no sugar the non-alcoholic drinks of choice in this abode. Occasional treat is a glass of Ruby Red grapefruit juice or Clamato with a dash of worcestershire or Schweppes tonic with a splash of lime.
LT
@John Cole: John, you’re going to be very disappointed to learn that I got thrown off the Twitter machine!
Not sure if this is a good or REALLY good thing yet.
Suzanne
@NotMax: I drank some of my own breast milk a couple of times. It tasted very meta.
rda909
@Redshirt: Well, not sure where I fall in your crazy spectrum, but I’d say my household is anti-dairy.
The irony is that I grew up on a dairy farm. I grew up sorting cattle for sale barn transport, feeding them, medicating them with syringes, castrating them myself, and so on. I started thinking differently after moving to a big city to go to college, and I learned more about history and science, and believe, in a limited way, that we are what we eat. The cow is one of the dumbest animals in the ecosystem. This is not in dispute. Most of my relatives, whom I hardly see anymore, are very overweight despite years of manual labor to this day, and are teabaggers now, and they proudly eat and drink tons of dairy products, which most of it is hormone-filled (can’t get them to go the “organic” route since that’s crazy hippy talk).
So we’re not absolutists about it, but we keep dairy away from ourselves and our kids quite a bit. That’s not to say we won’t have a conventional pizza here and there and even some cereal with cow’s milk while traveling or visiting family. But the majority of time our kids are having almond or soy milk if they feel they really want milk. All our kids breastfed into the 2-3 range too, so we’re a little unusual in that we made a choice to follow what Mother Nature told us was correct, not societal pressures. With four kids mostly grown, not one has a health problem, and all have either perfect or near perfect attendance records at school, and we could be the only family I know that hasn’t had an ear infection in the family. Who knows if having limited dairy has any impact on that, but we’re happy to keep doing what we’ve been doing.
I would never had brought any of this up in regard to Cole’s surprisingly in-focus photo (we’ll start working on exposure next!) if you hadn’t been so dismissive of people like us who have decided to avoid cow’s milk, and you are one of my favorite commenters here, so I was compelled to offer a different viewpoint. Namaste.
jill
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.):
what you just said. those are the words that should stun us all into making the powers that be do something. you just made me cry- I’ve been having similar thoughts all this time, but you said it, and I’m saving it.
thank you
FlipYrWhig
Is Cory B00ker really going to win by a mile in that primary? Any chance Rush Holt has a shot?
Yatsuno
@Bill E Pilgrim: I read that. I hate myself for it. Jeebus what a wanker.
LT
I fucking love updates like that. Crack my cracking head up.
LT
@Suzanne: “I drank some of my own breast milk a couple of times. It tasted very meta.”
I love you so much it hurts.
? Martin
@Bill E Pilgrim: That’s not what he’s saying:
It’s a rant against libertarianism. That doesn’t make it necessarily pro-authoritarian. There is a middle ground between the two – usually one that Democrats now occupy.
And fuck you for making me defend Brooks in any way. Now I need a shower.
LT
@? Martin: Epic Brooks rant here: https://twitter.com/umairh
Yatsuno
@Bill E Pilgrim: I have lost more weight on 1% milk than I ever did on nonfat. I think the nutrition angle is definitely a factor there.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@jill:
Sorry. Never meant to make anybody cry.
Suzanne
@Yatsuno: I’ve lost 11 pounds so far on Weight Watchers, by just not eating all the cannolis I want.
LT
An example of the kind of mature investigation going on by some of our premiere indy journos:
https://twitter.com/thegarance/status/344278924659933186
? Martin
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
Oh, and a pre-fuck you for making me continue to do this…
But a pretty universal part of college application evaluation is to look for the same kind of commitment over time that Brooks is espousing. If a kid can’t stick to something for more than a year, odds are he’s not going to be able to stick through college. This isn’t really in question. There’s a lot of data to back it up. Now, that doesn’t mean you just toss them on the trash heap, but instead you give them another test – do 2 years at a JC. Can they stick through that? Yeah, okay then. Can they stick through the BA/BS? Yeah, we give a bit more opportunity, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with handing that out to the HS graduate if the HS graduate has already shown that track records – lots of them have. But it doesn’t look like Snowden was one of them.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look for the same kind of determination and persistence before you hand someone a security clearance. And normally, that’s part of the background check. I should know, I’ve been through about a hundred of them. Brooks isn’t making this argument. I’m not entirely sure what argument he’s making here other than his usual pathetic soccer mom kind of pigeonholing, but a lot of others are rightfully arguing that we’re insufficiently rigorous with the security clearances. And much of that is because we collect so fucking much in state secret volume, that you need an army of people read into these programs. It’s ultimately going to be self-defeating. I think after Manning and Showden, it’s reasonable to argue that we’ve probably crossed that line.
But I agree with Brooks overall conclusion – the expansion of libertarianism, whether it’s GGs version or Glenn Becks version, isn’t a good thing. We have no choice but to trust institutions. And we have a mechanism to provide for that trust – it’s democracy and elections and government by the citizenry. Sure, we’ve fucked that up a fair bit with dynasties, and corrosive money and special interests, but I don’t see how anyone on the left can defend jumping on the ‘government is evil’ bandwagon.
That’s an apt description for a social safety net. Are we to reject that now as well?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Skim milk? Oh, right, chalkboard backwash. What I want to know is who do they get to milk the almonds and who came up with the bright idea of milking nuts in the first place.
That and who wants to drink milk squeezed from nuts? ;)
Kind of cold in here, time to toss a log on the fire:
I guess all he wanted to do was learn to take off.
Bill E Pilgrim
@? Martin: Cursing others for “making you” admit that you agree with David Brooks (including agreeing with his “overall conclusion” as you write elsewhere) is one of the more absurd things I’ve ever read here, and that’s saying something. Yeah, it’s our fault, that’s the ticket.
Bullshit. Brooks has written before unabashedly boosting authoritarianism, astonishingly open about doing so, and “liberals” our our progressive society are named targets of his concern often.
If you want to defend David Brooks just do so. The gymnastics trying to blame your views on someone else forcing them on you is patently ridiculous.
LAC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: that was my thought. He and mistermix each need an epic bowel movement.
? Martin
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I never argued otherwise. And I agree with you on that. But in this piece he isn’t. And if we’re all supposed to go full metal libertarian now on the basis of a Brooks column, I don’t think you’re going to find many followers.
lockout
Martin says:
“We have no choice but to trust institutions. And we have a mechanism to provide for that trust – it’s democracy and elections and government by the citizenry.”
Martin gets paid a $20,000/year metal health stipend by the institution of the State of California which he brags about, above and beyond his salary which keeps him busy each and every day not commenting on blogs.
LT
Oo da funny: http://obamaischeckingyouremail.tumblr.com
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@? Martin: the focus on the leaker and his educational history and high salary is nonsense. You may want to have a discussion of security clearances, I may want to know how exactly Booz goes about hiring people, but that is not a social concern. I can understand wanting to know if what the leaker claims is true. But Brooks is writing a long lists of failings that Snowden either symbolizes (the fraying of the country!) or demonstrates (he let down his colleagues at Booz).
Is the concern with the Snowden matter that the government might be retrieving data that some citizens think it should not have, or is the concern that someone like Snowden might be considered a hero. Brooks seems very adamant that Snowden not be considered a hero. Why care about that?
Chris
@? Martin:
No it’s not. Suspicion of authority, distrust of hierarchies, devotion to transparency, belief that personal choice should reign supreme, there’s nothing specifically libertarian about that. There are quite a few contexts where liberals would believe the same thing.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Earlier this evening I got a new follower on Twitter, some sort of “Charles Manson concept band”. Well, they followed me until I blocked them. Their name came from a couple the Manson clan murdered. WTF is it with some people?
rda909
@LT: I see very few white males in that photo collection. OMG, Greenwald with all this threats of “just you wait!” is finally going to release the “Michelle Obama Whitey Tapes (TM)”!!! The other Liberal/Libertarian hero Larry Johnson failed to deliver it despite his constant threats to do so, and now Glenn Greenwald is finally going to take down America’s first black president. Way to go, you “liberals warriors!” 2014 here we come!
Yatsuno
@Suzanne: I have zero impulse control around cannoli. Like none. That’s why I limit my exposure as much as possible.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Yatsuno:
Take the cannoli and leave the gun.
hamletta
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Actually, horchata is delicious. And that’s from a person who goes through a quart of Greek yogurt every week.
It has this really rich flavor, like a vanilla milkshake, but it’s still refreshing on a hot day, unlike most dairy products, IMHO. And you don’t get that phlegm-producing thing when you drink it.
But don’t ever buy the concentrate they sell at Mexican groceries. That shit is vile. You gotta make it yourself.
? Martin
@Chris:
Nowhere do liberals believe that personal choice should reign supreme. Not on abortion. Not on marriage. Liberals would not advocate for an abortion of a viable, healthy fetus. Liberals would not advocate for eliminating age limits on marriage.
But don’t rely on my parsing of Brooks on this one:
Now, I don’t like the attribution on this of a set of properties to a class of people based on their age or whatever, but Brooks is pretty clear he’s talking about straight up ideological libertarians. And I think it’s perfectly valid for even David Brooks to be critical of that group.
Underlying this support for Snowden is three things:
1) A faith without evidence that everything he’s claimed is correct – mainly because people want their distrust (even if it was fomented by Bush) to be validated
2) An assumption that what Snowden uncovered is illegal, which even if his claims are accurate is far from certain
3) A willingness to give any individual who finds something unpleasant (even if not illegal) the authority to break laws to reveal it
Manning have a trove of defenders from the left, mostly apparently because of 1) above. But Manning didn’t uncover any wrongdoing. All he did was violate the privacy of tens of thousands of service members and undermine our diplomatic efforts by leaking internal conversations. There’s nothing virtuous in what he did, but he still has his supporters because he stuck it to the government, or let information be free, or some juvenile Ayn Randian bullshit. But mostly a pile of people decided that Manning should have the moral authority to determine what the government should keep private, rather than the people we elected. And that’s just fucking bullshit.
I work for the government. There’s a mountain of information that I am required to keep secret by federal law. If I decide I don’t agree with that, should I release that information? I have students who are undocumented. According to the State of California (AB 540 – California DREAM Act) they’re allowed to attend college here. But maybe I’m a teatard and decide that no, I’ll release their names, because they’re ILLEGAL ALIENS. I’ll break that law, because I’m right and the feds are wrong – or at least the State of California is wrong. Will you defend me? Should people back me as the righteous defender of America? A lot of people would. The whole Tea Party for one. But I’m just being transparent you see. I’m revealing the government’s secrets. I’m protecting those taxpayers that didn’t get to attend because an illegal got their seat – I’m protecting their rights as citizens. Should I be given the authority to make that decision?
Fordpowers
Judgemental pricks. Eat hot death.
Odie Hugh Manatee
At one of the places I read online, the resident libertarians are in a rage about the government being directly plugged into the servers of companies like Microsoft. At the same time, many of these libertarians are drooling in anticipation of getting their hands on the Xbox One. Someone pointed out that the Kinect and microphone built into The One might allow the NSA direct access into their homes via Microsoft.
They have been ignored so far.
@hamletta:
My wife loves it, I avoid it. :)
eemom
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
/do I have to do everything around here?
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@? Martin: as far as I can tell, no citizens were harmed by Snowden’s leak. This is not the same as Manning’s leak. The information that the government is collecting has not been made available for public viewing. Nor is there a sense that some ongoing investigation is being hindered. There are valid data security concerns. There should be. We haven’t been hit with knowledge of widespread abuse of the information as of Now. You know, stories of government employees selling the information, or using it for personal gain. If the NSA must, just simply must have this information, and gathering it is legal, it is fair for us to ask what they intend to do with it, and that it be kept secure, and what their contractors like Booz do to keep it secure. But leaking the PowerPoint is not exactly the same thing as releasing everyone’s tax returns or phone records as part of the release.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
Here’s an interesting question (at least to me); If the Guardian and Post have said that most (I’ve seen said 90%) of what they were given was not suitable for publication due to national security reasons, what was the purpose of this guy releasing it if it’s so sensitive that the press won’t touch it?
I’m sure that GG isn’t happy with their decision that it wasn’t news that was ‘fit to print’.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@eemom:
:)
Odie Hugh Manatee
Anybody want to help profile GG for the Guardian? It seems that poor Glenn has had a busy week and the Guardian wants “his community to weigh in” with their thoughts on him.
Boy do I have a few… :)
? Martin
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
Too early to tell on that. From Gellman:
Perhaps there’s information in there that would harm people. Snowden insisted on the full deck being published. We’ll see if GG goes through with it.
Booz’s statement on the matter was fairly telling. They were very quick to point out how long Snowden had been working for them. From the interview with Poitras:
Snowden wasn’t working for Booz in January. He didn’t start there until March. He appears to have gone to GG and Gellman in February. I think it’s reasonable to assume he had the information that’s now being shared when he approached those three.
That’s not for us to say – particularly in light of what Gellman says. He has a vested interest in seeing them published – that’s his job, after all, but he recognizes that something in the deck is not appropriate for disclosure (and yet it’s already been disclosed, at least to him and GG and a few others, and we don’t know the ultimate cost of that).
So its really only for Congress and/or the courts to say regarding how damaging that PP deck is. There’s legitimate whistleblower channels in this country. They exist within the intel agencies themselves. They even work. If he didn’t trust them, he had other options – and he had ways of protecting himself through those options if he knows what he claims to know. You can leave dead man switches for encryption keys, torrent your encrypted data so it can’t be blocked from the public. There’s a host of ways to use public disclosure as a backup to a formal whistleblower action. He could have found a sympathetic member of Congress – Ron/Rand Paul, where oversight already belongs.
So why didn’t he try this? Ellsberg did. He tried to get several members of Congress to take up the cause, and they refused. Gravel finally did after the NYT started publishing. But Snowden gives no indication that he tried the legal whistleblower channels. If he did and was rebuffed, that should have been the first thing he said: “I tried to right this wrong through proper channels but was rebuffed”. Okay, that adds credibility. From what we can know so far, he ran straight to Poitras first, and then to Gellman and GG.
? Martin
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Obviously that wasn’t his intention. He told Gellman that he had to agree to publish the whole deck. Gellman refused. Not clear what GG told him, but GG has said they won’t publish at least some of the information. Assange volunteered up that he would have published the whole thing.
So it’s interesting that GG, Gellman, Guardian and WaPo are now the arbitors of what secrets we should know and what we shouldn’t. Is Suffern suggesting that GG is now withholding information that the public is entitled to? Is GG now complicit in whatever we would accuse the NSA of on this matter? Is an ex-pat US lawyer in Brazil, working for a UK publication the proper arbitor of US state secrets? He’s clearly loving having the NSA by the balls on this, and that doesn’t make me feel any better about his role as judge. Judges on power trips are bad all around.
That’s the problem with this. It descends into utter clusterfuckedness in no time at all, as it has. And what happens if none of this turns out to be illegal?
Odie Hugh Manatee
My point in asking was that the leaker claimed that he did this because we had the right to know about it. Yet what he chose to make us aware of is so sensitive that the press feels they would be wrong in telling us. The rest of my questions are similar to those you ask. GG may think he has the NSA/government by the balls can legally crush his without mercy. They have also had no problem legally going after people who made their jobs difficult. The government will recover from this, GG might not be so lucky. I imagine that there are some people who have some questions for him and one way or another, they are going to ask them.
As far as his being the judge, I think he is hiding behind the Guardian (press credentials) and will not self-publish. But with him, who really knows.
raven
Mikano likey morning after pill!!!!!
jake the snake
Cranky bloghost is cranky.
Cole, have you considered getting laid? Ray Bradbury says it is the medicine for melancholy.
Perhaps, we should call it Irritable Cole Syndrome.
Patricia Kayden
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): Great comment, but unfortunately, I’ve already steeled myself to a not guilty verdict. Seems to always happen in these types of cases.
Bruce S
@? Martin:
I have trouble believing that a PPT deck that could be copied off of a secure network computer could hold “real” national security secrets. If that’s the case, the NSA is incompetent, has it’s head up it’s ass or doesn’t understand the concept of “secret” in today’s environment. If you can get in and out of real secure rooms where real issues of national security are discussed and worked on even with an iPhone in hand, much less a flash drive or some such, there is something wrong with the system – or it’s a bogus system that exists as a matter of bureaucratic narcissism rather than national security.
Also, there is nothing about this “revelation” that we haven’t heard about before – aside from perhaps minor details like the supposed name of the program – because the issue has been debated publicly after prior (and inevitable) disclosures years ago in the context of FISA oversight. We all know that FISA is a rubber stamp – but none of this is new.
Who didn’t know the NSA has been doing very sweeping Big Data sorts for years? And even if it wasn’t as explicitly revealed as I am absolutely certain it has been years ago, one would have to be an idiot to assume it didn’t exist. Especially if you are one of those assholes who is a real threat to national security, plotting terrible things, if you aspire to even a modicum of “professionalism” the fact of Big Data tracking would be taken into account and compensated for. This would be Clandestine Operations 101. Which means that the real concern of the NSA need not be whether people know generic data is being mined and sorted, but how to get ahead of the game at the outer edges of communications technology. The generic program would be assumed – which is why I would also assume that most of the generic information is passed through and cast aside, because 99.999% of it is useless. Another guess from my perspective is that this program’s biggest impact is to force real terrorists who have any training or international connections into alternative communications patterns or attempts at creating codes, which patterns might themselves be a way of focusing one’s sights on potential suspects.
Also, while there is a very real danger of abuse of this Big Data network that we all know exists (hell,I feel abused by it every day while I roam the internet and see my recent searches come up as ads, Fuck You Google!) I’m not going to get terribly exercised about it’s existence when it’s adapted to attempt to track terrorists unless and until there is some revelation of actual abuse of the generic info by the government. It’s existence and likely access by agencies like the NSA is a well-known fact. It’s also a fact that if it is abused – J. Edgar Hoover gets routinely mentioned – there is no way that the abuse by some powerful individual could possibly be kept even as secret as Hoover’s supposedly “secret” files (that everyone at least in Washington knew about and were terrified of in the pre-Tweet-what’s-in-your-trousers era.) Also, I’m hearing about the issue of someone being targeted by a rogue employee who has broad access. Which is a real fear – but that can be done by rogue employees at Google or wherever as well – so it’s really a discrete issue that needs to be dealt with by strong laws and enforcement. Frankly, rampant identity theft is a much bigger problem for the average person in today’s world than “government snooping.” If these Big Data sorts could be adapted to catch those culprits, we’d all be better off.
Redshirt
@rda909: Sorry if I offended. As always, I was being hyperbolic for comedic affect. That’s why I’m here. That said, while I don’t believe avoiding all dairy is any kind of panacea, I also think excess dairy consumption is not healthy either. Moderation in all things, as the Buddha said.
That said, I’m a vegetarian, and lean heavily on dairy for my protein. But then, I, too, have (knock on wood) near perfect health. So I can’t complain.
muddy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: That was fun. I put down that if GG’s real aim is to get info out, then he should put it out, not offer these drips and drabs in order to draw the process out and get more ongoing press for GG.
? Martin
@Bruce S:
I think that’s the real scandal here. NSAs ability to protect its secrets is diminishing, and it’s mainly due to the size of the intel community. If you want to keep a secret tell as few people as possible. If you need an army with top secret clearance, you’re fucked. You’re too big. Your size has become counter-productive.
brantl
What’s with the blue milk?
Maude
@brantl:
It’s skim milk. It looks blue.
JustRuss
This certainly makes The Case of the Missing Mustard seem a lot less mysterious. To be fair to Cole, I don’t think any of us asked “Is it right in front of your damn face?”