Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Reeeealy?
(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
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Cue the world’s tiniest violin. Dave Weigel, at Slate:
The Most Powerless Republicans: They’re Not Who You Think!
Monday morning, former New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg—a Republican who was briefly and abortively Barack Obama’s choice to run the Commerce Department—published a column that excoriated his party. It was massively popular, as columns excoriating one’s own tribe tend to be, especially when the topic is debt limit Mexican standoffs. “The rigid stance will also cause massive collateral damage to all Republicans,” wrote Gregg. “Even those who may not support it will be harmed by the label of incompetence that will stick to the whole party as a consequence. The idea is being put forward by people who do not really care what the impact is of a default or a near-default. These are folks who have never governed and are not inclined to do so.”Online, where the column was shared 1,000 times on Facebook, Gregg was not identified as anything but a former senator. He’s moved on, though — he runs the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Gregg’s panic looks even starker when put next to the letter written by former Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican who now runs the Business Roundtable…
Pity the Republican who quits politics to become a business lobbyist. He can ask his former colleagues to do what’s in the business association’s interest, but he’s got less oomph than any random staffer at Heritage Action or a blogger at Red State… [I]f you’re a Republican elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2012, you’ve figured out that you can win the support of a business interest that generally distrusts Democrats and go about ignoring their high-profile cries for regulation or a sequestration fix.
My emphases, of course. Weigel is paid to be sympathetic to these “conservatives”, but of course we do not labor under the same burden. If the Robber Baron branch of the GOP comes to open warfare with the Talivangelical “purists”, I will be on the sidelines rooting for injuries.
*************
With that cheering thought in mind, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Chickens or goats? Which should I buy to get through the collapse?
Aah, a cartoon from The Shepherd of Hermas.
Judd Gregg can go fuck himself. He’s a fucking tool who quit the Senate to make some coin and is now upset that his former colleagues may cost him a lot more than pennies.
Also, too, Ted Cruz is a fucking shitbag. I think my hate is accentuated because I was a Penn grad, and apparently we weren’t good enough to be his study buddies at Harvard Law.
PF37 +6 (just popped a Harpoon Pumpkin Ale)
THat’s a real hobbyhorse of mine, one of the many underdiscussed stories in the formation of the solid Republican wall against Obama, all ignored in the name of bothsidesism, and the fact that Obama doesn’t know how to reach out, which makes me want to kick Tom Brokaw in the stomach while wearing my ski boots until he hacks up his bourbon rotted liver. Metaphorically, of course.
To fucking late Stevie boy. You opened that shitstorm of a pandora’s box and now you can eat it!
Schmidt Says He Helped Turn GOP Into a ‘Freak Show’
The poor CEOs should have been paying more attention to the folks who were hiring their congressmen. But instead, they gave them bonuses.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hated that whole episode, too, because that asshole John Lynch committed to appointing a Republican placeholder for his seat. Fuck that – no GOP governor would ever return the favor to us like that.
@lamh36: He can go cry into that oversized paycheck that MSNBC is undeservedly paying him.
Let’s be proactive: Shiv’s for all the players.
Haven’t been keeping up w/ BJ this evening so apologies if this has already been covered:
Popular Science has had enough of ignorant trolls so they’re shutting down their comments.
Apparently Teddy negotiated with Harry Reid in advance of his ‘filibuster’.
Goddamn, grifters gotta grift, even from the floor of the Senate.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yep. And if I recall, the oh so earnest Mr. Gregg was less than gracious when turning down the invitation which he had probably privately accepted.
It seems he preferred the company of those he now decries. So sad. Pathetic even.
Who exactly is Jughead talking to? A shutdown is easily avoided by putting a vote to the full congress. Let’s see, one person can do that. Ah, yes, Boner.
So how are extremists causing the problem again?
Reince Priebus wrote an article for Red State today; from the comments, I think it would be safe to say he was not well received.
@PsiFighter37: I formed a few study groups, and you as a Penn guy might have been from the best college if you joined. It was a gosh darn student group. I could care less if you came from middle east western nowhere university if you wanted to study, come on in.
@Tommy: I probably would have declined. It may have been slightly misanthropic, but I only studied by myself because I felt like studying in a group was an ‘out’ to relying on others to get you to the right answers. It’s a bit of a dick thing, but in academics, I am a survivalist – I am proud to say that, outside of the work that I had to do in a group, I did it all by myself – and I never asked for help, never went to TA hours, never spoke to the professors, and never shared work with anyone, even by closest friends.
Ironically, the best groupwork I ever did was in my final semester in college – got an A even though my buddy and I did most of the work in the computer lab drinking Old English 40s in a brown bag and absolutely terrorizing our other groupmate. If I may be shallow, she was (probably is?) quite a looker. I had started dating my now-fiancee 2 months earlier, but if I hadn’t? Yeah, I probably would have tried to make a move.
Sign I’m too drunk?
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: @efgoldman: One amusing thing about all this is remembering a few months I read an article saying that historic mediocrity The Boner saw himself as being one of history’s great speakers, getting rooms– maybe even a building!– named after him like O’Neill, Longworth, Rayburn and Cannon
@The Dangerman: Wow, they really are eating their own at this point. Reince had a total boilerplate editorial (“I stand with Ted Cruz”, “It’s the Dems who want a shutdown”, etc), and the commenters just ripped him a new one for not being anti-Obamacare enough. The hatred they have for their own senators rivals that of their hatred for Democrats (and in some cases, they say they’re as bad or worse)
Far, far beyond exhausted, into the territory of fatigue I call being tattersnapped.
Need a 3 week vacation after my 10 day trip.
@PsiFighter37: This is what I think of when I think of Cruz.
I was homecoming king in college, at a pretty large state school. President of my frat. Many other things. In grad school I was President of the grad school association and a member that was on a teacher board.
Do I think I was the smartest person? Nope.
I was just often the only person that raised my hand and said I will try to do that.
What I think about those in Senate or the House. They are not the smartest person in their district, just the folks that raise their hands.
As for you not liking a study group, I never really had one as I guess Cruz is talking about. It was more that we forced each other to study. In our student union we had this huge area. Totally open. Huge windows. Comfy couches. We’d force each other to always study there. As a group we might arrive, but we often broke into groups and went our own ways.
ok, I’m going to bed now. I’m way tired. Didn’t watch Person of Interest tonight. I’ll catch up on the weekend.
I did watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D on ABC. I liked it. I enjoyed the execution, I liked the references to the Marvel universe and the movies so far. It’s def gonna be on my watchlist on Tuesday. It’s opposite NCIS, so I’ma have to DVR NCIS I think. Anyway, I think the usual suspects will hate it, but I think it def has potential. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have twitter when shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly first premiered. I suspect it would get the same reaction as Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. You love it or you hate it. I will say though, it’s enough just to have Mulan herself, Ming Na and the great Ron Glass on my television set again.
Also, I watched The Blacklist on NBC OnDemand, and any show that ends with an awesome rock cover of 99 Problems is gonna be on my “gotta watch list”. I’ve got theories. So the husband is either a spy or a dupe. Ya girl E Keen is either Red’s daughter or maybe her “career criminal” father did something for him or is on Red’s “Blacklist” or he’s truly just obsessed with her ala Lector and Clarice.At the end though, I really have no idea where the hell this plot is gonna go. I’m def intrigued!
Also to, I love James Spader, though I miss the hair…lol
Anyway, good night BJ
“If the Robber Baron branch of the GOP comes to open warfare with the Talivangelical “purists”, I will be on the sidelines rooting for injuries.”
I wouldn’t, I’d sell weapons to both sides.
@kuvasz: unfortunately, as soon as the Talibangelicals dispatch every conservative to the left of Rush, they dispatch everyone to the left of Olympia Snowe. And you were the fool who armed them.
@Tommy: I’d like to think I’m different – I wouldn’t tell you off based on whatever school you went to beforehand. For me, it’s a personal preference that if I need to learn something, I much prefer to learn it on my own, without external assistance.
But I wouldn’t be a showboating asshole about it. It seems like Calgary Teddy got off on showing off his pedigree.
@PsiFighter37:
Nope. Just that you ordered but the menu is still around.
@lamh36:
I loved SHIELD, and it’s likely going to draw me in for regular viewing a lot more than NCIS which, despite watching the reruns forever on USA, I can simply never get myself interested enough to watch on CBS proper. It didn’t hurt that the writing kept me waffling between laughing hysterically and edge-of-my-seat anxiousness. I could see Marvel Cinematic Universe neophytes not getting too hooked for lack of understand what the fuck is going on, though. I’m not the best person to judge just how accessible the show is, nerd and all.
@PsiFighter37: The profiles I’ve read of him, well he just seems to be a dick. I assume if you and I were in a class and I asked you for help, you might not want to share your notes or study with me, but you wouldn’t’t be a dick about it.
My MA is in communications. Where I graduated in my class didn’t matter. I get with a law degree that might be different so there is a ton more competition. At least when I was in grad school we all felt we were in it together and tried to help each other.
@Yatsuno: I guess that’s one way of putting it, but you hit a certain point in your life where the menu doesn’t have the same allure that it used to.
If I can be explicit about it, there’s only one person at this point in my life who will put up with me puking outside the apartment, puking inside the apartment, falling asleep on the rim of the bathtub and putting my head on the toilet seat, and magically destroying the shower curtain and bar overnight…among other qualities that my fiancee has.
ETA: This is an accurate description of last Thursday night when I had 3 double shots of vodka and a tequila shot on an empty stomach and got into a drunken shouting/drinking match with my boss’ boss.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
” [Boehner expected}… getting rooms– maybe even a building!– named after him like O’Neill, Longworth, Rayburn and Cannon ”
Johnny Bones may be special enough, stand out enough, among Speakers to get a little something named after him someplace. There are a lot of Johns that could have their names filled out. I remember there is a cute little antique jail room someplace in the Capitol.
Any official Congressional caddyshacks, or wine racks looking for a name?
Honestly, I think we made better decisions collectively when we ate off of lead glazed plates, breathed lead filled air, and drank water from lead pipes. The next six weeks are going to prove Kevin Drum wrong.
@The Dangerman: From there:
Does the FSM love us enough to make that happen?
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: To me, though I do know a little bit about Marvel, it seemed to only require seeing The Avengers.
@Tommy: Nah, I’d lend you notes – I did that previously – but I’d probably give you a copy of them first, and I wouldn’t go out of my way to make myself available / explain unless you asked.
Steve Schmidt might have played a role but the GOP was already heading down this road prior to him being a strategist. It started in the 70’s after Nixon’s resignation with the rise of the conservative right, conservative groups/ think tanks, and the creation of the Moral Majority. They started purging the Rockefeller republicans and Centrists out of the party, and Reagan let the evangelical right join the party.
@Keith P:
If you tell your voters that the ACA is going to allow an illegitimate Manchurian candidate non-American president to have their families killed, and they elect you to stop it, and you tell them several times that you’ve already overturned it, but that turns out to not be true, and the law is a week from taking effect… they might understandably feel you are not doing your job right.
Surely that’s the Gingrich Suite
@me: Keeping snotty little Reince and his wannabe talk radio host persona as the RNC chair was clear evidence the “rebranding” wasn’t going to be real thing.
I’d like to see Reid and the Senate amend the bill not only to strip the de-funding of the ACA, but to make it an up or down vote on the debt limit with no time limits, and send that back to the House.
Good!
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of assholes, Gregg. You fuckers unleashed this plague of morons on the rest of us. Have you missed that for the last five years they’ve been openly sabotaging the country’s economy? Fuck you, the Tea Party, and your business buddies that have such a sad right now, Senator.
My final post of the night.
FLOTUS Michelle Obama surprises dancers at Dance Theatre of Harlem
I love the reactions from the lil girls.
Also too: President Obama meets NYC Mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio @deBlasioNYC
@Yatsuno: Also, looking at who she is dating now – she’s batting below her potential.
@billgerat: Dude, we don’t want to make Orange Julius piss himself and shit himself simultaneously…we must do things one at a time for the simple man from Bumblefuck, Ohio who spends too much money giving himself skin cancer.
@PsiFighter37:
The only think Ted Cruz is smart about it taking care of Ted Cruz. He wasn’t excluding people from his study group because he’s a snob – he was excluding them because he knew the top ivy guys were the networkers, the ones he’d be calling on later to land a job, to get elected and he was hitting the high-probability targets.
This whole exercise isn’t about defunding Obamacare or fiscal responsibility or advancing the GOP. It’s about making him the sweetheart of the teatards, to get on the sunday shows, to be seen as an inevitable 2016 candidate. Fuck everyone who isn’t on board, even Republican Senators.
@PsiFighter37: Interesting and why I love interaction like this, cause you are maybe the exact opposite.
I am not sure I’d ever gave somebody my notes from a class. Not asking your age, but when I went to college there were no laptops or smart phones. We took notes, well on paper. IMHO if you didn’t have notes from a class you were lazy. You were just not trying.
But on the other hand I’d be open to help and you wouldn’t have to track me down.
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: @Belafon: Yep. I think as long as you’ve seen Avengers and the last Iron Man film you’d probably catch most of the related lines.
But you’d have to be more than a passing fan to know that the chick basically half quoted Spiderman’s anthem to ole dude…lol
“with great power comes….” well she didn’t say the rest, since I believe that franchise is owned by Fox right?
A typically silly view of the situation.
One of those two groups responds rationally to incentives, and can be negotiated with. The other does not and cannot. And yet you have no preference.
@Tommy: Based on the couple of meetups I’ve had with real-life Balloon Juicers, I think I’m definitely in the younger demographic (I am 27 and graduated a little more than 5 years ago). That said, I never brought a computer with me to class after freshman year – I always got distracted from what was going on in class. I did a lot of note-taking in my Five-Star notebooks since high school, and it’s with great reluctance (and with prompting from my mother, who is trying to make me get rid of all my childhood schoolwork that I had fastidiously hung onto) that I’ve given them up.
Nothing beats writing down what you need to know or remember than putting pen/pencil to paper. Fuck typing that shit up; you won’t retain any of it because you’ll be too busy surfing Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever the fuck kids do these days.
@Suffern ACE:
The solution you fail to see is that by then there will be so few left that they won’t be a threat.
@billgerat: Have it fix the sequester too. That could be hilarious to watch them contort over that.
@PsiFighter37: Hell, there are a few levels on which the NYD drives me absolutely meschugnah. But there are definite positives. You have quite a few of those positives, and I feel confident in saying that since we’ve shared the same air. And pitcher of beer.
BTW it’s not called tekillya for nothing.
@PsiFighter37: Interesting. Not sure why, but thought you older. I am 44. Huge, huge computer nerd. Built my first computer with my dad in 1982. Had a computer since then, which I guess means longer then you have been alive :). I have every computer you can imagine in front of me. Desktop, laptop, smart phone, gaming systems, tablet.
I still use a mechanical pencil and either a legal pad or graph paper to do most of my job (I design web sites for a living).
BTW: I have all my notebooks from college. Never went back to look at them, but why throw them away if you have the space to keep them. I also, outside of basic to-do list, throw anything I write down away. A small file cabinet is cheap, store the stuff. Could be a business idea or client stuff, I just don’t throw it away. Never know when you might need it. Lately I’ve moved to taking pics of each page and saving it, cause well storage space is dirt cheap.
Digby has a transcript of part of an interview with Dick and Lynne Cheney that Wolf Blitzer did some time back. I saw this quote and thought it sounded famliar:
That’s the interview when she asked Blitzer, in regard to the War on Terrorism, “Do you want us to win?” Yeah buddy, what’s old is new.
@Tommy: This may have been been foresight on my part, but from when I was in elementary school since I moved back to NY (basically, from 3rd grade onward) – I had insisted on my parents keeping every single piece of schoolwork I had brought back home.
Last summer, I went back home to the storage unit my mom rented, relived almost 20 years’ worth of memories, and I threw almost all of it out. You have to move on, and even if I have kids, no one is going to be impressed I could identify the vas Deferens in 8th grade.
I still have my high school computer assignments saved, as I’ve dutifully transferred it from HDD to HDD each time I’ve built a new computer. It’s the only reason I still have that shitty essay from 9th grade where I said I’d vote for Gore reluctantly, because both parties were corrupt. I was such a goddamn concern troll back then. I’d like to consider myself a computer nerd – I’ve built every desktop I’ve had since junior year of high school (10 years ago) from scratch, although my computer programming peak was in 8th grade. Call it being precocious and not falling the right career calling early on.
@Frankensteinbeck: Very true. The GOP flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami – I mean, tea leaves. They road the wave too long and are about to crash into a reef. They let the genie out of the bottle and can’t but it back in.
There are a million metaphors for what is happening to the GOP now that the Tea Party folks are tearing it apart. I’m loving it, but I am still skeptical as to whether or not the implosion (3rd party) will actually happen…seems like they always pull it together for election time, but I think President Hillary Clinton would do the trick. They’ve got to hate her more than Obama; a woman AND a Clinton!
@burnspbesq:
I’ll take my chances with the poor schlubs who’ve been sold the tea party vision over the corporatists and money guys every day. It’s a lot easier to change peoples’ minds than it is to change a corporate Moloch that’s got infinite resources and means you nothing but harm. The “Talivangelists” are just scared and riled up. The Robber Barons want you in chains.
@PsiFighter37:
Speaking for the older demographic: http://normpotter.files.wordpr.....rthday.jpg
And in Boston the next mayor will be either a white Irish guy or a white Irish guy.
How the heck we let a white Italian guy break up that streak for 20 years I have no idea.
@PsiFighter37: Foresight is a hard thing.
I do HTML/CSS/PHP programming for a living. But I wouldn’t call that really programming. I wish when in like 1983 I was typing in code, from a magazine, to get a monochrome ball to go across a screen, I would have realized “hey, maybe learning how to program would be a good idea. You might make some money doing that.”
I learned what I do now in my late 30s.
Watching agents of shield and designing a leave behind for my interview. Maybe I should have delayed to Monday, but I kinda want to get things over with fast.
Is anyone reading Dr. Sleep? So far I’m not too impressed. Very weak villains. They’re despicable enough but I have little doubt that the good guys can whip ’em handily. Not good in this type of story.
@Tommy: You can always learn other programming languages.
@Belafon: I have thought about it. Ruby On Rails is one thing I’d like to dive into. As I said I do HTML/CSS/PHP, which is pretty basic stuff I think. It blows my mind how logical it all is.
@PsiFighter37: Judd Gregg needed to hanged by the balls to prove what a scumbag liar he was. Fucking maggot…
Dave Weigel is kind of strange. Like he’s carrying the message of someone other than himself. Dave is the ‘Teabag them before they teabag you’ guy. He also has acne.
@Tommy: I’ve had people tell me Ruby on Rails is a great environment to work in. I do .Net (C#) myself; ASP.Net WebForms at the moment, although I love doing WPF. WebForms has its own challenges and can be frustrating, but I like the abstraction it gives for web apps. Request/response can be difficult to work around when state is involved, so I like my framework to do it…just have to learn its limitations.
I’m firmly in the Microsoft camp when it comes to development, so I resist other devs trying to move stuff over to something else (and I absolutely hate JavaScript – at least how it gets abused as a substitution rather than a complimentary language).
Eating a bowl of cereal with milk that says it expires on the 26th but definitely tastes like it expired nearly a week ago.
I don’t care, Papa’s drunk and literally has nothing else in the house to eat.
I’m going to leave you with one of my favorite jams, just in case you’re in a room by yourself and feeling like doing a little fist-pumping.
Peace out, bitches. Tomorrow is another day. Fall is my favorite season.
@Pogonip:
I wasn’t, but I probably will now. I used to never read King, but then I gave in and tried one and liked ém even though I wanted to just call it stupid.
Currently on the nexus: Zealot (Aslan), Bleeding Edge (Pynchon), The Victory Lab (Issenberg), Sleepless in Hollywood (Obst).
Ruby on Rails (The on Rails bit is symbolic mapping through tiers) is good for prototyping, but bad news if you want to scale.
@bago: Tell that to Basecamp.
@different-church-lady: When I lived in Boston we had a mayor named Kevin White, but a lot of people needed to call him Kevin Black for some reason.
With that cheering thought in mind, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Popping up some popcorn.
Besides the popcorn, watching NCIS
@kuvasz: Our side will have spent so much time earing popcorn that we’ll be too gassy and in need of dental floss to put up much resistance.
Going to Montreal and Quebec City in a few weeks. Besides that poutine I’ve heard so much about, what should I plan to bring back to the border guards who’ll be working without pay?
@Suffern ACE: Get some beer from St. Ambroise in Montreal. There’s also a rowdy bar called Le Lab that does some phenomenal cocktails, as well as make a mean in-house beef jerky. You can also get said jerky in their version of whiskey on the rocks.
@Suffern ACE: I was surprised at the great peanuts you can get in Canada. They seem to like the extra crispy, which I love but hard to find here. Toss ’em a few bags of peanuts. Laff riots will ensue. I promise
@Tommy: Rails is kind of the flavor of the moment, though not quite hip anymore, and much nicer than PHP. It’s also a massive resource pig, but used in production quite a bit, mature now. Python/Django is also much much nicer than PHP, mature, production ready. The kids like node.js these days a lot too, but I’m not sure how much production is done in it.
Anything but PHP, if you can avoid it.
Aww come on, how do you get more elegant code than this:
$name = $_POST[“user”];
$pwd = $_POST[“pwd”];
$query = “SELECT name,pwd FROM users WHERE name = ‘$name’ AND pwd = ‘$pwd'”;
@👾 Martin: Nah. Ted Cruz wasn’t thinking about networking. He has the same streak Mitt Romney does: he thinks he’s the anointed one, superior to everyone else. You can tell that Cruz has always been a creepy little shit, and has aggravated everyone he’s ever spent time around, and every time he started to feel bad or vulnerable about it his Dad would say that his time would come when he could make the world see how very special he was. It oozes from him like grease. Which also oozes from him, according to my friend who was his freshman roommate at Princeton.
@PsiFighter37:
Dude. You live in NYC. You could get a fecking porterhouse delivered at 2 AM. Indulge.
How about a fun thing. Watching Obermann tonight. He mentioned Pistol Pete. This is me outside of the Maravich Assembly center with my mom and dad when I was like four.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w.....060690274/
That is the Maravich Assembly Center. On the campus of LSU.
For those that don’t know and I hope to help folks won’t forget, Pete Maravich, is the best man that ever played college basketball. He averaged more than 44 points a game before there was a three point line.
Well just watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y5KAaercTI
Bear with me, that above link is maybe the best thing you can do this week.
Near the end of the video Pat Riley says he was “showtime” before there was “showtime.” If you like basketball and don’t know who Pete is this will blow your mind.
Just watched Le Grand Illusion. God damn.
@Omnes Omnibus: And Rules of the Game just starting.
@MikeJ: Oui.
@FlipYrWhig:Yup. Heard the exact same thing from an acquaintance who went to Princeton with him. He was a miserable creep in college and he’s a miserable creep in office. I’ve no doubt he was a miserable creep in kindergarten – in utero, even.
@Tommy:
Pete was The MAN. Decades ahead of his time. Basketball genius, I loved him as a kid.
been listening off and on to the Senate floor debate thing this evening, in what C-SPAN is calling the “longest Senate speeches since 1900” whatever that means. Mike Lee is such a Fox News sycophant in his ramblings on the floor that I think he should be the considered the GOP frontrunner for the Presidential nomination. Ted Cruz is a close second for mentioning rednecks, duct tape, Dodge Ram, a woodpecker, chicken pot pie, and baiting a hook in a single paragraph as to why Obamacare needs to be defunded.
@PsiFighter37: I am 33 and finished graduate school in architecture in 2010. I always took notes by hand because writing is a multisensory activity in a way that typing is not, and writing something out really puts it in multiple kinds of memory. I’m studying for my licensing exams right now, and I copy out some of the things I have to memorize by hand for this reason.
I just made a coffeecake for Mr. Suzanne’s work potluck tomorrow.
I am in a funk at work and want to rage-quit.
@Omnes Omnibus: Amazing movie.
@Radio One: Just tuned back in. Look I like Hobby Lobby as a store. But Cruz is telling me now they can’t offer birth control to a women. I don’t own a company, but if I did I don’t think what each employee does with their health care is my business. Cruz is talking about rights, rights, but it seems only his rights matter.
@billgerat: That would remain just a wish. The dems lack the balls to confront the thugs.
@Suzanne:
Get a GSA gig first. Then send an epic fuck you e-mail.
Damn! The three special forces soldiers of the IASF killed on earlier this week were Aussies. End of 2014 is too f”cking late.
@Yatsuno: I would love to work for the GSA.
I want that fact checked. That he worked in DC and it was too cold in DC in the summer and hot in the winter at the Supreme Court. Want that fact checked. 99% sure Lee is making that up.
@Omnes Omnibus: Love that movie. I saw it for the first time when TCM aired it earlier this year.
@lamh36:
Best part is that she’s a total badass!
I’m already loving this show, even though it feels extra shiny for the Whedonverse.
@Debbie(aussie): I get the feeling Abbot just lurves him some war goings on. Maybe he’ll invade East Timor again, but this time for no reason. Cuz, y’know, wartime PM and all.
Man, I know yachting is the sport of the 1%, but the America’s Cup has been fantastic. US was docked 2 points for a rules violation during the preliminaries and so had to win 11 races compared to New Zealand who only had to win 9. US lost 6 of the first 7 races, won 2, lost the next 2 to find themselves down 3-8 in a best of 9 series and had to then win each of the remaining 6 races. They’ve won 5 and are now tied 8-8 with the final race tomorrow. Along the way, 3 races were called near completion – one for two little wind, one for too much, one for going over the time limit. New Zealand was winning all 3 when they were called.
In the last race, the US just trounced NZ, coming from 200m back to 1000m (over half a mile) ahead in one leg. Just an amazing comeback so far.
@Tommy:
That is exactly what he is saying, yes.
EDIT – And he doesn’t even know. They can only imagine their own rights. That their rights might curtail someone else’s rights – that’s an alien world conservatives cannot grasp.
@👾 Martin: A friend of mine who went to college married a Kiwi and lives down there now. She’s being a touch obnoxious about the goings on in the America’s Cup. I doubt it will inspire a divorce, but there might not be too much nookie going on down there. She loves her some All Blacks though, so all might be just fine once this athletic contest is over.
@handy: Little Bobby Tables, we call him.
@jl: Hmmm. I don’t know if the unpaid border patrol will be amused at working for peanuts, but who knows? I’m only trying to help.
@Frankensteinbeck: No. They fought for those rights. And they fought for centuries to make certain that other people didn’t have them. And then the liberals went and gave those rights to people who they had been fighting. They know full well what curtailing rights means.
I am being cursed by the ridiculously hot chilies my friend gave me. They are from India- really small but wow. I cooked with them tonight and now I’m wide awake chugging milk.
@PsiFighter37: naw, just sign you’re a douche.
@Frankensteinbeck: It blows my mind. I personally HATE guns. Never owned one. Won’t ever own one. But I often come to the defense of folks that like guns. It is easy for me to promote something I don’t like and/or do myself. Just wish those on the far right would get this.
@MomSense: I grow six types of peppers. The hottest Habaneros. I taught myself to canned this year to deal with all of them. Your comment almost makes me want to try one of them …. well no not really :).
@MomSense: I know those. I don’t understand the point of them – it’s just pain in vegetable form.
I am watching C-SPAN. Mike Lee talking about a person that grew too much wheat and got hit by the feds (decades, and decades ago).
He says something, that much if it was used for seed. Using part of a crop one year to grow another crop.
Funny, that isn’t legal these days if you use seed from Monsanto. And that is the seed place. Love to have this guy in a room with me for an hour or so.
@Tommy: The dinner party where I tried them was attended by a friend of mine that could eat habaneros almost without reaction. They made him cry in pain. They nearly made me puke.
@👾 Martin: I LOVE them, but won’t eat them straight-up. I eat Jalapeno peppers raw or grilled with a little olive oil. The peppers I canned are a mix of Jalapeno, Cayenne, Banana, and Poblano. Used that mix a lot since I canned it. But I have a jar of nothing but Habanero. No need to use them now, but wonder what they taste like :).
@👾 Martin: The Thai consider spicy an essential flavouring in most foods, and yes there is a macho component involved as well. But a lot of really hot peppers also have great taste to them, such as the habañero. I think heat for its own sake is ridiculous, but if there is flavour involved as well, that makes a difference.
Of course I have a semi-asbestos tongue so…
@Tommy: @👾 Martin: @Tommy:
But these chilies are so tiny and adorable. Now I know why my friend only eats them green. I swear they are time release. They bring seeds back from India and gave me a few seedlings. I’m not sure what they are called but they are definitely hotter than habaneros.
@MomSense: I spent a lot of my life in Lousiana, so I like spicy food. Then worked in Nothern Virginia literally across from a Thai place and learned to love their food. Learning my way around peppers, but clearly there is a world of them out there are you need gloves to handle.
When I went to that Thai place they knew me, and that I’d like my eyes to water eating their food. I never said “make it as hot as you can” cause I am fearful what that might have been.
@MomSense: Are those the ghost peppers? They’re also called Bhut Jolokia. Wikipedia says they were the world’s hottest, until someone came up with the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers.
@Tommy: @Yatsuno:
I really want to learn to make Thai food because I think it is incredible when done well. I adore the curries with kiffir lime. I also love to make pho but it takes such a long time that I really have to plan ahead to have a day without any activities.
Tonight I made some Indian chickpeas in a sauce with yogurt sort of like a labadar and thought I would try the chilies. The gravy was so tasty and then pow the burning started. We were all shoveling rice and nan (sort of like a cross between a nan and a tortilla because I don’t have the right equipment).
@Origuy:
Heading to the google right now to check.
@MomSense: Hermes House are the books I bought that taught me to cook Thai food. At least by me they are always discounted, large format, full color, and in the entry way to Barnes and Noble. I have them from the same publisher on almost every cooking topic you can imagine.
I am looking at my favorite one this second and it is called “Wok & Stir-fry: Fabulous Fast Food With Asian Flavors.”
It rocks.
@Origuy:
They look like the ghost peppers and the seeds are the same color but these are smaller. Could it just be the shorter growing season here? The skin looks like the smooth variety. The name definitely fits because they haunt you long after you eat them!
@Tommy:
Great tip, thanks! I love finding great cookbooks and then playing with the recipes. And it is fun to figure out the techniques and the flavors and then adapt for local produce, seafood, etc,
@MomSense: The first few dozens pages in each book talks about how to cook the food. Now to clean the food you cook. Very neat stuff. A few pages just on a wok and how to use it in the one I mentioned above. In the one I have on bread, pages on just yeast.
@Tommy:
Sounds really good.
@MomSense: You have ghost peppers! Ay carumba. The hottest peppers on earth, but really flavorful esp in a fruit salsa or chutney. Ive been a spice craver since I ate a hot pepper when I was two… Thai, Mexican and Indian foods plus spicy Hunan and Singaporean are my favorite. Lucky you but be careful with the ghost peppers and wear gloves
@Captain Comrade:
No, he’s the guy who took the picture of that guy, thus giving us all the “teabagger” handle to throw at them.
And he’s not paid to be sympathetic to conservatives, either–he’s paid to follow them and write about them, which means he’s often the first one to notice and report new strains of craziness (like the teabaggers). It’s his beat.
Let’s leave shooting the messenger to the other side.
@ksmiami:
I think we are all still smouldering a bit today. The flavor is quite good so I will just use a lot less next time! I was going to make a yogurt dip for falafel with them but will use them still green for that.
the terrifying twos? My son tells me that eating hot food is addictive.
@MomSense: You are not supposed to eat them, they are there to flavor the oil, you discard them when you are eating, like you would bay leaves.