I may be the last to have seen this charming time-consumer, but on the off chance not, enjoy:
Archives for July 2013
Planning a Trip? Don’t Call WikiLeaks
Whether you think Mr. Snowden is a hero, traitor, self-aggrandizing ass, tool of a self-aggrandizing ass or whatever, it appears we can strike “competent travel agent chooser” from his list of attributes. Or maybe it’s Julian Assange’s fault Snowden has been camped out in the Moscow airport for more than a week. Even if he ultimately ends up in Rivendell, Snowden probably won’t look back fondly on this layover.
Happy Canada Day / Bonne Fête du Canada
O Canada: We love you for your exceptional beer, hockey prowess and William Shatner. America thanks you for being such a stylish hat.*
*Stolen from someone, somewhere.
Happy Canada Day / Bonne Fête du CanadaPost + Comments (162)
Forever Young
I didn’t know Johnathan Martin moved from Politico to the NYT, but I also don’t know who Justin Bieber is dating, or when Lady Gaga’s new album is coming out. But to hear the Republicans tell it through their JMart mouthpiece, they are hip to the kids nowadays:
At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” referring to Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is 70.
And Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, seizing on the Fleetwood Mac song that became a Clinton family anthem, quipped to an audience in Washington, “If you want to keep thinking about tomorrow, maybe it’s time to put somebody new in.”
The 2016 election may be far off, but one theme is becoming clear: Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls, in ways subtle and overt, are eager to focus a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton’s age. The former secretary of state will be 69 by the next presidential election, a generation removed from most of the possible Republican candidates.
JMart does mention that Ronaldus Magnus was 69 when he was elected.. But because War Hero John McCain is still alive and a little sensitive about his age, JMart did him the courtesy of ignoring the uncomfortable fact that he was 72 on election day in 2008. He extended the same delicate treatment to Mitch McConnell, who is a mere 71 years young himself.
Update: Tom L already covered this from a bit of a different angle.
Amazing
As usual, I don’t know a lot about Egypt, but I thought this picture was pretty amazing (video here) as was this picture tweeted by a CNN reporter.
Photo: The anti-Morsi demonstrations are THE biggest I've ever seen in #Egypt. #30June pic.twitter.com/BTA0N18RVq
— benwedeman (@bencnn) June 30, 2013
Monday Morning Open Thread: Not Everything Is Horrible
Margaret Hartmann, at NYMag:
Same-sex couples are seeing the benefits of the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling even faster than anticipated (much to the chagrin of conservatives). On Friday, as same-sex marriages resumed in California, Julian Marsh, an American, and his husband Traian Popov, a Bulgarian immigrant, got the news that they are the first gay couple to have their marriage-based green card petition approved. The New York Times reports that the visa agency had said it would hold off on approving applications until this week, but apparently immigration officers got excited and decided to jump the gun….
Soon many other couples will receive the same happy news. For the last two years officials at U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services have been keeping a list of same-sex couples whose green card petitions were denied, in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling. The decisions in those cases will be reversed, with no need for a new application, and other pending applications from gay couples will be handled exactly the same as those from opposite-sex couples.
What’s on the agenda for the start of the week?
Monday Morning Open Thread: Not <em>Everything</em> Is HorriblePost + Comments (156)
Ohh, No.
Nineteen firefighters were killed battling a fast-moving wildfire menacing a small town in central Arizona, the United States Wildland Fire Aviation Service said on Sunday.
The firefighters died fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire, near the small town of Yarnell about 80 miles northwest of Phoenix, the service said in a Facebook post.
Those guys are pros, so the wind had to have just shifted on them inexplicably or something. Christ.
And so Monday starts with horrible news to begin what will most likely be another shitty fucking week with a lot of death and pain and suffering, more bullshit, and, in light of the most recent SCOTUS decisions, more racism and gay-bashing, all while an incompetent neo-confederate house continually shits the bed and blocks anything remotely positive from happening in Congress.
America, Fuck Yeah! Happy Monday, bitches.