Pres Obama and Easter Bunny place hand over heart for singing of the National Anthem at WH Easter Egg Roll. pic.twitter.com/y2WmjM5F44
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) April 21, 2014
Only at the Easter Egg Roll can you hear the US Marine Band version of "Rubber Duckie."
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) April 21, 2014
Via NYMag, which has many, many more adorable pics, and also the best possible comment:
And that, agents, is how we punish you… so stop it with the hookers and booze.
***********
Apart from enjoying the usual Spring rituals, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
rikyrah
Western lawmakers gather in Utah to talk federal land takeover
‘It’s time’ Lawmakers from 9 states gather in Utah, discuss ways to take control of federal lands.
By Kristen Moulton The Salt Lake Tribune
Last Updated Apr 20 2014 12:21 pm
It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday.
More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.
“It’s simply time,” said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. “The urgency is now.”
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57836973-90/utah-lands-lawmakers-federal.html.csp
need to arrest all of them.
BGinCHI
That’s David Gregory in the rabbit suit, right?
Alternative therapies can be so effective.
rikyrah
Tale of Two Deltas: Poverty and Affluence Side By Side in Mississippi Town
.The Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, Miss., is mostly black and poor. Across town, life differs for the mostly white, more affluent residents.
Ellen Wilson smokes a menthol cigarette while cooking French fries in the Baptist Town section of Greenwood, Miss. For the past four years, photojournalist Matt Eich has been documenting life in Baptist Town, a largely black and impoverished neighborhood. He was drawn to the area because of the deep socioeconomic divide between blacks and whites.
While blacks make up the majority of Greenwood residents, they are much more likely to be poor than white residents, who make up less than a third of the population. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 49 percent of blacks and 8 percent of whites in Greenwood lived below the poverty line in 2010. “While we like to pretend that segregation is behind us, the numbers reflect a different reality in the economically-challenged neighborhood of Baptist Town,” Eich said.
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/tale-two-deltas-poverty-affluence-side-side-mississippi-town-n84451
Botsplainer
Genuinely enjoying a style change along with weight loss. Have taken to wearing bow ties, which I like a lot (now that I rediscovered my neck).
Found a site that had a decent video on tying the things, took an hour and a half on a slow Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago, and picked up a skill for a look I love – flat front pants, a vest and houndstooth blazer.
Davis X. Machina
@rikyrah: 49% v. 8%. Wow. Actual townships. In Mississippi.
jl
@BGinCHI: I read the rabbit was 7 feet tall, so could be Gregory.
Headline of the link is ‘Easter Bunny Lurking Behind Obama Can’t Help But Look Creepy’. I think Knoller is creepier than the rabbit. How tall is Knoller? Did the rabbit bellow?
Michael Bersin
Cue the right wingnut outrage over hand over heart placement in three, two, one….
Barack Obama and “The Star Spangled Banner” (October 24, 2007)
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: It is devilishly difficult to tie one of those damn things UNLESS you think of it as the same basic knot you use to tie your shoes. (I don’t wear bow ties, BTW, but I did learn how so I could show a dude who did like them how to tie a real bow tie and lose the phony hook model.)
WereBear
Please to know Tucker Carlson has not ruined bowties for everyone.
They have raffish charm on the right fellow. And geek cred.
schrodinger's cat
The only person I know who wears a bow tie IRL is a pompous old Republican ass.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: I saw the National Theater’s Encore presentation of Frankenstein this weekend with Cumberbatch as the Creature. I liked it a lot. Which version did you see?
Ash Can
I like the idea that one Twitter-er at the link had — it would have been awesome if it had turned out to be Joe Biden in the bunny costume.
kindness
Oh how cruel can you get? It’s 2:15 Monday afternoon here on the Left Coast and I have another couple hours to continue at work and you eastcoasters are having some sort of Monday Evening Open Thread like it is a holiday.
SatanicPanic
@rikyrah: I don’t think the states would actually want the expense of maintaining all those lands.
Ferdzy
@SatanicPanic: Maintain it? Who the hell thinks they would maintain it? Mines, mills, and mayhem; that’s the plan.
aimai
I laughed so hard at the picture of the President with one Ginormous Bunny Eye looming behind him and the word SOON printed below.
Calouste
@rikyrah:
Republicans^ should only be referred to as lawmakers in a strictly ironical sense. And 50 from 9 states? Yes, it’s easy to find a few kooks here or there.
^ I’d be surprised if the number of Democrats attending that little conference hit double digits. In binary.
Ash Can
And since when do people put their hands over their hearts for the national anthem? That’s for the Pledge of Allegiance. Simply standing up, with male civilians removing their hats, is for the anthem.
SatanicPanic
@Ferdzy: I think they’re overestimating how much economic value you can get out of those lands, but maybe shootin guns and driving ATVs is enough to justify maintaining roads and fences, etc.
jl
@Calouste: And they didn’t invite anyone from poor little California?
I didn’t see Alaska either. But then, Uncle Sugar pours so much money into Alaska, their kooks know enough to keep it strictly for laughs with bogus independence movements.
Mike in NC
Anticipate wingnut outrage over Obama bowing to the Easter Bunny!
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
There’s, like, a bazillion how-to videos on the Yew Tube. (Even one with Bill Nye!) And they make it look rather easy. I presume your story is from the dark ages before the Yew Tube. But I’m about as likely to start wearing a bow tie as you are. I don’t even wear my neckties anymore, and bow ties are ridiculously expensive in KL.
Citizen_X
@rikyrah: Trust us!
ORLY? Then how does this make sense:
Y’know, you can do oil drilling, ranching, mining, forestry now on USFS and BLM land, it’s just that they try to manage it for multiple competing uses.
Ah, that’s the problem, isn’t it?
jl
@Amir Khalid: We need a BJ bow tie fundraiser for Amir Khalid! We can put on a musical, in a barn, or something. Or calendar with the bow tie beefcake of Balloon-Juice?
jl
@Citizen_X: Maybe the plan is to let the company private dicks and off-roaders and hunters out their and fight it out. Company cops are more likely to shoot. I’m sure that they’ve thought this through.
Or maybe egg the losers to blame the feds when they get shooed off the public lands?
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
I don’t know. Remember, for instance, that Pres. Clinton declared Grand Staircase-Escalante NM to head off attempts to mine coal on the Kaiparowits plateau. And apparently some people are able to make money grazing their cattle there, even when they don’t stiff BLM on their grazing fees.
WereBear
Me too! It was wonderful. But the vote (we voted as to which version we would watch) was so close they hope to bring the other one in.
My friend and I went out to dinner and talked about it for hours.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
I notice that he’s leaving out National Monuments declared by the President under the power of the Antiquities Act. I doubt this is just an oversight.
And they have the annoying habit of behaving as if it matters whether there is still anything left for future generations. We could make a lot more money in the short term if we could clear cut all the forests and strip mine anything without worrying about petty federal bureaucrats. Not to mention that they want to charge various kinds of land use fees that interfere with holy corporate profits.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: They might make money grazing, but who’s going to decide who gets to graze what? Unless they want to leave it to ranchers to battle it out (maybe they do), it’s going to cost them.
jl
@SatanicPanic: Maybe the NRA is behind it. The gun and ammo sales for range wars have been slow for past 100 years.
I remember taking a ranger tour of Devil’s Postpile National Monument. It was part of the original Yosemite National Park, but mining, grazing and logging interest raised hell until some of the edges of Yosemite were cut out of the park. The corporations said that they would never touch a rare world-wide geological wonder like the Devil’s Postpile. But after repeated plans, and at least one secret plot, to blow the thing up for material for various dams, levees for retaining pond walls, it was made into a monument.
Edit: not to mention the economic havoc wreaked by destroying the coast redwood shingle, picnic table and fence post industry.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
If I ever feel the need for a bow tie, I suppose I could always do this with an old necktie (I have a few of those). It might go well with work boots, cargo pants and a faded jean jacket.
jl
@Amir Khalid: That is insane. Is that guy on drugs, or what?
Amir Khalid
@jl:
On second thought, I think this gentleman offers a much better method.
Gin & Tonic
Here’s an interesting development for those following events in eastern Ukraine. Days after seizing control of Slaviansk/Sloviansk, the pro-Russian separatists of the Donetsk People’s Republic took control of the TV tower that broadcasts to the Donetsk/Kramatorsk/Sloviansk region and, yesterday, took off a Ukrainian channel and started broadcasting their own, heavily anti-Semitic channel. These are the same people who last week were accused of, and denied responsibility for, those leaflets telling Jews in Donetsk that they have to register. Here is the website of the “People’s Liberation Movement” or “National Liberation Movement” which now controls the town government in Slaviansk. For the non-Russian readers, it’s full of pretty much KKK-level screeds against the “Jew-oligarchs.”
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Yes, pre EweTube this was.
Ridnik Chrome
And that, agents, is how we punish you…
In Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris there was a uniformed gendarme standing guard at Jim Morrison’s grave. I’ve always wondered what the poor guy did to get stuck with that job…
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I suspect Bob in Portland will soon be coming by with a
recitation of pro-Russian talking pointscalm and logical refutation of your pro-fascist propaganda.Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I guess you’re really going out on a limb, there. My much bolder prediction is that it Pravda in Portland will take a while to get here with his refutation, since it’s taking a while to come up with one that passes the laugh test.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: Does propaganda survive ridicule? Within hours after the overnight shooting at a checkpoint in Slaviansk, in unexplained circumstances, the story from all Russian media was that one of the items found in a burned-out car abandoned by the alleged shooters was a business card of Dmytro Yarosh, the Pravyy Sektor’s (Right Sector) leader. Almost instantly, the Twitter hashtag #ВизиткаЯроша (“Yarosh’s card”) was trending in Russia and Ukraine, showing the card photoshopped into all sorts of images, like God handing it to Adam in the “Creation of Man” section of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. If you’re on Twitter you can copy/paste that hashtag to see what people came up with — most of it doesn’t need any language skills.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
The ridicule needs to be both funny and timely for that to work. Not fast enough and some part of the propaganda will stick in the backs of people’s minds no matter how hard you try. Not funny enough, and it will just get people talking about the topic without being able to push out the propaganda version.
Ecks
I’m really perturbed by that picture of the Bunny with hand on heart. Is it implying that the Easter Bunny is an American citizen? Should he have a visa to visit us in England or Canada or Australia?
Can England have the tooth fairy then? She gets to sing along to renditions of God Save The Queen, and reserve the right to not give money to Republican dissenters? That would be kind of awesome actually.
Roger Moore
@Ecks:
Maybe she is just being polite by obeying local custom.
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
This reminds me of my second-favourite NSFW Scottish joke.
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
This reminds me of my second-favourite NSFW Scottish joke.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ecks:
I read this weekend that Australia no longer celebrates the Easter Bunny, as the country is planning a massive cull of the rabbit population and they don’t want to upset the kiddies. So they are transitioning over to the “Easter Bilby.”