As the Washington Post helpfully points out, it can no longer be considered “too early” for 2016 presidential candidates to announce themselves. Then-freshman Senator Obama launched an exploratory committee in January 2007, and announced his candidacy in February. Hillary Clinton announced her 2008 campaign in January 2007, “intentionally timed ahead of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address”. John McCain started his exploratory committee in November 2006, and held off his announcement till April 2007. Mitt Romney launched his first run in January 2007, formally announced in February, and never really stopped campaigning before reviving his “explorations” in April 2011.
He’s got at least one fervent supporter here, but it looks like Gov. O’Malley will stay on the sidelines with Bernie Sanders until Spring, per the Washington Post:
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s steady march toward a White House bid has turned into a wait-and-see grind, in which he will try to stay relevant in the national political conversation and await an opening to challenge presumed front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
Once he leaves office in January, his associates say, O’Malley may give a handful of policy speeches on national issues. He might make some appearances around the country, and he might look to compile his writings into a book or series of books that reflect his accomplishments as governor and as mayor of Baltimore.
It’s an uncertain and modest to-do list at a time when O’Malley is barely registering in national polls despite years of working to position himself in early nominating states.
Instead of putting pressure on Clinton with a January announcement of his candidacy, those close to him say, O’Malley and his supporters now think their best shot is to sit back and see how Clinton is received. By spring, his advisers say, the appetite for a fresher, more progressive alternative in the Democratic primaries will only have grown….
Yeaaah, that ‘Ralph Nader totally thinks O’Malley should run!’ easter egg is the political version of a flaming paper bag on the doorstep, isn’t it?
… Aides say that O’Malley has not made a final decision about whether he’s running and will not publicly discuss the timing of a potential bid. But short of a major embarrassment, his backers say, it’s hard to see how the exposure that comes with a White House run could hurt his prospects for future opportunities, whether as a vice-presidential nominee, Cabinet member, television commentator — or presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.
At 51, O’Malley is 16 years younger than Clinton and half a generation removed from other talked-about Democrats, including Vice President Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Virginia senator James Webb…
O’Malley cut his teeth in politics as a young aide to Gary Hart during the 1984 presidential election, in which he was dispatched to Iowa. Several of O’Malley’s biggest boosters are friends from that campaign, in which Hart, a senator from Colorado, came out of nowhere to become a serious threat to Walter Mondale, the former vice president, for the Democratic nomination. (Hart started the 1988 cycle as the Democratic front-runner but was derailed by a sex scandal.)…
And that’s one of the major counter-arguments to O’Malley running in 2016; before he got derailed by his own big mouth, Hart banged up Walter Mondale, who then did not win the presidency in 1984. It’s commonly assumed, after the fact, that no Democrat could’ve run against Ronald Reagan that year and won — especially not one who’d served as Jimmy Carter’s VP — but there were professional Democrats who didn’t exactly thank Hart for all his hard work in the primaries, either. Right now it doesn’t look like the Repubs have a second Reagan waiting in the wings, but in 1983 the “washed-up B-movie actor, former governor of the Nutball State” was not exactly perceived as a globe-bestriding colossus. Teddy Kennedy never got another shot at the Oval Office after he failed to derail Carter, and Hart has been more or less politically invisible since 1984. So O’Malley needs to remember a line from that tv series set in his own Baltimore stomping grounds: “You come at the king queen, you best not miss.”
BGinCHI
Cole/Tapper in ’16.
Man, that has a nice ring to it.
Kay (not the front-pager)
I like O’Malley. I do. Even though I can never seem to remember his name. But he would have a lot better chance of playing a role in the larger political arena if he had done a little more to help his lieutenant governor get elected governor. Anthony Brown ran a lameass campaign and lost to a lameass tea party Republican in the dark blue state of Maryland fercrisesake! And I don’t remember getting any emails from O’Malley asking me to support his successor, although I got email from just about every other state in the Union asking me to support someone or the other.
Maryland is my home state, and I tried to volunteer for the Brown campaign, but thy made it just about impossible to hook up with them. I ended up giving my time to Delaney for Congress instead. But of the two, I reluctantly would say I would rather have had Brown win. I’m dreading the coming Republican administration of my state.
eta: I don’t know how you can expect to be a president or vice-president if you can’t even get a Democrat elected as your successor.
Helen
CNN is all over the lost plane. Gonna turn on the BBC.
Mike in NC
Lived for a few years in Maryland and liked it a lot. One time at Christmas we signed up for one of those Murder Mystery Dinner Theater things on a train running out of Cumberland. Had a great time but I was really hungover the next day and had to drive to Fort McHenry in Baltimore early on Saturday morning for reserve duty, in a freaking snowstorm. Oh to be young and stupid again.
Gin & Tonic
Christie/Cuomo ’16. Because assholishness can be bipartisan.
Think about that for a minute. The legislatures of *both* NY and NJ pass a bill *unanimously*, and Cuomo waits until two hours before the Saturday midnight deadline to veto it.
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
I live in Baltimore. O’Malley is a hustler. He talked big about crime as mayor, but left the city as bad as he got it. He has had a few good things done as governor (no more death penalty, for one). But i think he wants to slid into Mikulski’s Senate seat, if she’s done with it.
Hal
Romney started running in 2004 when he began a campaign to completely disavow everything he did during his term as Governor that would not be seen as stalwartly conservative, and he is apparently still running.
Tommy
@Kay (not the front-pager):
I often say here I lived in DC dor 15+ years. That is totally true. But I was dirt poor when I lived in the area and Maryland was the cheaper place to live. First placed I lived. Silver Spring. I came to love the state. I mean you got crabs. I actually like Baltimore. With all that said I do not know who O’Malley is until recently.
srv
Number of US Presidents from Maryland: 0
I don’t see a trend there.
glocksman
Since this is an open thread, I’ll share my horror story about my internet service.
A few weeks ago, the wireless and wired connections would quit at random intervals.
Thinking that it was my 10+ year old RCA DCM315 modem, I hauled out the one the cable company gave me at signup, but never used.
After switching modems, the wired seemed to work fine but for the life of me I couldn’t get the Linksys E1000 to connect wirelessly.
I had a spare WRT54GL in the closet, so I hauled it out and everything worked.
Anyway, I played around with the old E1000 and found out that it kept resetting the wireless passphrase to the admin password!
It worked flawlessly for a few years, so my guess is that the NVRAM became corrupted.
I might reflash it to see if that fixes it, but if the memory is truly corrupted that won’t do any good.
I’m also wondering if the old DCM315 is fine and it was the router causing the issues.
Marc
Yeah, Mondale lost to Reagan entirely because he faced Gary Hart in the primaries. In fact, I heard that Mondale lost every single state except Minnesota and DC because the Hart campaign had the assistance of some fresh-faced kid named O’Malley! That’s one of the major counter-arguments to holding a contested primary instead of just giving the nom to Hillary Clinton, along with a bouquet of flowers and a tiara.
Weak.
Mike in NC
@Hal: Both Mitt Rmoney and Jeb Bush are rich bored assholes with bags of family money that they think entitle them to stake out a claim to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim: He may be a huckster, and he may be a better fit in Mikulski’s seat in the Senate, but I really like the smackdown he gave to McDonnell in a joint appearance at Politico in 2012. (Watch the small video down the page on the left margin.)
We need more Democrats who can deliver a message like that.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
Wish Hickenlooper would run.
rikyrah
@Gin & Tonic:
What a clown.
lamh36
Open thread, ok, I’m finally watching This is The End with Rogen, Franco, et al.
I freely admit, I laughed the whole damn time. Good Lord, I must have been a stupid frat boy in my past life, cause the whole scene with Danny McBride and James Franco over the porn magazine, had me LMBAO.
I actually watched the whole thing…smh.
rikyrah
I want O’Malley to run. Get in there and run a serious campaign.
Tree With Water
I don’t know much about O’Malley, but I am impressed by his Hart connection.
And that line about not missing the queen/king? Is that a reference to Hillary? Even if it is, I still don’t get it.
rikyrah
@Mike in NC:
True that.
rikyrah
@Tree With Water:
It’s from The Wire.
Go to YouTube and put that line in the search engine….the appropriate video will pop up.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Tommy: I grew up in Silver Spring! Well, Silver Spring was our mailing address. Our actual house was about a block outside the beltway and across the street from PG County. But yeah, I know whereof you speak. After High School I lived in several states across the country, but we ended up back here in Md. about 30 years ago to raise our sons.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Yeah, I got real excited about him during that period too. He seemed to be really quick on his feet and able to explain progressive ideas in a way that could appeal to ‘regular folks.’ And he gave a pretty good speech at the 2012 convention; too bad he was following Deval Patrick, who made even Obama look like a speechmaker at the local Toastmasters Club that night.
O’Malley has done some really good things in Md. We were fairly early adopters of marriage equality, we ended the death penalty (we’ve been working toward that since 3 governors ago), and we have medical marijuana (if Dems are smart they won’t put recreational marijuana on the ballot till 2018 so we don’t have the same dismal turnout we had in 2014).
I’m just still pissed about Anthony Brown losing the governor’s race this year. He ran such a poor race that he might have lost even O’Malley’s help, but I just feel he should have tried a little harder.
rikyrah
@Tree With Water:
Plus Team Clinton is vindictive. They are still frosty at Barack Obama coming out of nowhere and winning it all.
rikyrah
@Kay (not the front-pager):
Kay,
Brown lost a race that he should have won easily because he ran a shitty campaign and failed the basics- in an off year election, you inspire the base to get out. Don’t even want to get into it…still pissed about it
Major Major Major Major
I worked for the obama campaign in Denver in 2008. After the huge rally in city park, me and the rest of the field ops went to Wynkoop for lunch. Governor Hickenlooper was bartending. He recognized us and gave us free Obamanator Doppelbocks.
I asked him if he was a member of the Turtle Club (“are you a turtle?”). “You bet your sweet ass I am!” He hollered.
lol
Governor Carcetti needs to step it up a notch if he wants to take on Clinton.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@rikyrah: He didn’t just fail the basics of inspiring his base, he didn’t even bother use the members of the base who were emailing him, trying to sign up online to volunteer, or just trying to freaking find a campaign office! By which I mean me! I did poll duty at several precincts for early voting and on election day. Every state- and local-level (Democratic) politician I talked to that day said they were confident about most Democrats’ chances, but there was “one Democrat I’m worried about in this election.” And everybody knew we were talking about Brown.
Oops. Sorry to pull off that scab. I know I still have some real soreness there…
NotMax
Much more historically accurate.
danielx
@Mike in NC:
Nay, not so, at least in the case of Jeb!. It’s true that the Marquis du Mittens is a rich asshole with a shitload of money of his own who thinks it may as well be him as anybody else, regardless of his merit (or lack of it). House Bush on the other hand believes it has a hereditary right to the White House, barring occasional unfortunate interregnum periods. Which is kind of a frightening thought, given the number of Bush and Bush-related spawn with ambitions there are out there. Which is another reason to send Jeb’s campaign right down the tubes as well; three Bushes in the Oval Office is one too many. Even if Jeb is supposed to be “the smart one”, being “smart” by comparison with 43 doesn’t require a whole lot of intellectual heavy lifting. I suspect in the end what will doom Jeb Bush is his relative sanity, at least by comparison with the majority of potential Republican candidates. He’s already committed heresy by noting that Ronald Reagan couldn’t get through the Republican primaries these days, which observation hardly constitutes a sharp insight – but sullying the name of the greatest Republican president evar by using it to point out that Republican primary voters are crazier than a shithouse mouse, well, that’s just…totally…unacceptable. Like farting in front of the Queen of England, it is One Of The Things That Are Not Done By Real Republicans.
On the other hand 2016 is a long way away and if there is any legal political organization anywhere that exceeds the Bushes in willingness to use balls-to-the-wall ruthless political tactics for the win, I don’t know of it. I hear Karl Rove’s available. And, to make it even better, Jeb could select…wait for it…Lynne Cheney as his running mate! Bush/Cheney 2016 does have a ring to it, don’t it now?
Just like old times.
OT: glanced at the local newpaper’s website this evening and three of the first five articles listed were about different local shootings, two of them fatal. I know it’s not all that unusual in a metro area of this size, but still a little jarring.
SixStringFanatic
Uh oh. Looks like Don Lemon’s black hole just swallowed another plane.
Also, “Don Lemon’s Black Hole” would be a GREAT band name.
Hal
@Mike in NC: One other thing about Jeb that I suspect is that he might feel the need to unsully the Bush name in Presidential politics, and so part of his inspiration for running is to be a successful Bush President. I thought that was part of what Shrub was trying to do also; make up for what he saw as missed opportunities on his father’s part, hence the Iraq war, which was at least in part Bush finally taking down Saddam Hussein. Something his father failed to do. I don’t think the country can take another round of this family trying to prove once and for all that they are indeed great Presidents. Twice is more than enough.
Tommy
Well that is a tall task.
BubbaDave
@danielx:
FTFY.
Tommy
@BubbaDave: I so often mention here my parent are Republicans. But sane. They might be behind Jeb. Could happen. But I will keep pulling them to the left. It is a slow process but I keep pulling them. Got to my mother first. She runs elections in her district. I was like your party is trying to make it harder to vote. Don’t you call me after every election, in tears, asking me why people don’t vote. I want to make it easier to vote. Mom is like I agree. Just one of the small places I peck away at her.
mclaren
Giemm a fuckin’ break. Mondale could never have won in 1984 no matter what the other Democrats running in the primaries did or didn’t do.
The American people had by 1984 fallen in love with the smiling senile sociopath who assured them that everything was hunky-dory and oil shortages were not real and all America needed to do was build more nuclear missiles and in the evnet of a nuclear war, wearing light-colored clothing (an actual quote) and everything would be fine.
Ronald Reagan was the asshole who takes a grieving family out ofter they’ve lost their father and breadwinner and uses their credit card to get ’em all drunk and happy. The family loves it while it’s happening. Then, when the morning comes and the bills start piling up, it ain’t so fun. But by that time the smiling moocher has vanished, ne’er to be seen again.
But a charming sociopath like Reagan only comes along once every three or four generations. It’s really really hard to get people to love you when you’re destroying their lives by slashing their Pell grants and cutting welfare and crushing unions in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Reagan managed it, but not one con artist in a million could ever equal that performance.
I know you guys have a compulsive need to blame the victim, but this is ridiculous. Stop it. Just stop. Get back to reality, people. Let’s not blame progressive Democrats running in the primaries for the evil charisma that was Ronald “the cruel man with the constant smile” Reagan.
Major Major Major Major
@danielx: one of the things that *is* not done
OzarkHillbilly
@mclaren:
Teeheehee, heheheheheh…. HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHOHOHOHOHHAHAHAHOHO…..
Sorry. Couldn’t help it. Me thinks dear sir, that you way over estimate the American voter.
Dream On
So O’Malley needs to remember a line from that tv series set in his own Baltimore stomping grounds: “You come at the queen, you best not miss.”
Wait wait. TV? Wasn’t that a line from Shakespeare? Shakespeare of… Baltimore?
Keith G
@SixStringFanatic:
I bet “Don Lemon’s Black Hole” has already been extensively used.
Jus say’in.
Rain and cold (for Houston). Me likey.
raven
(CNN) — The search is on for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people that lost contact with Indonesian air traffic control Sunday.
Before communication was lost, AirAsia Flight QZ 8501 asked to deviate from its planned flight route — from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore — because of weather conditions, AirAsia said in a statement.
geg6
WTF? You have got to be kidding with the idea that O’Malley has some kind of rap sheet for working for Gary Hart against Mondale. Hopefully you are because that would somehow mean that I’m suspect, too, because I supported Hart when that campaign began. I had nothing against Mondale except I didn’t think he’d give Reagan a race and I thought Hart had a better chance to give him fits in the debates. I still think that.
Mike J
@geg6:
NYT Magazine had a long story on Hart a few months ago. Why go with O’Malley? Maybe Hart will come back. Nobody gives a shit about Monkey Business.
Snarkworth
It puzzles me that someone can have such promise as a potential candidate, yet be so breathtakingly invisible. I had to Google O’Malley to find out what he looks like. Has he ever been on a political talk show or written a splashy op-ed or gotten himself in the (non-Maryland) news in any way?
geg6
@Mike J:
True, but he’s too old IMHO. We need new blood, even if it’s just setting the stage for 2020 or 2024.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: It’s the Java Triangle. If it were me and I were living in that part of the world, I would stay far away from planes right now.
TR
@Mike J:
Hart would turn 80 shortly after the 2016 election. Not gonna happen.
JPL
@Mike J: Most people don’t remember Hart and if they do, they don’t remember his policies.
MattF
@Kay (not the front-pager): Me too. As a Marylander, I’m very unhappy about Brown’s loss, and I lay a chunk of the responsibility for that with O’Malley. Where was he, when Brown was under water? Running for President?
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Roger that.
MattF
@raven: Yeah, I saw that. The Indian Ocean is a big place.
JPL
Christmas Day we streamed Boyhood. The simple plot captured me but I thought it was a tad long.
Did anyone else see it?
NotMax
@Raven
All settled back in the homestead?
Cervantes
If that non sequitur is one of the major counter-arguments, I’d love to see one of the minor ones.
Amir Khalid
@raven:
This has not been a good year for Malaysian airlines.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Are you getting the storms that the news is saying are all over the area?
lol
@Mike J:
I remember some chatter about him for Kerry’s VP. Probably wasn’t anything real or serious but it was interesting.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
A bit of a rainy spell here on the west coast of the Peninsula. But no floods to speak of. The east coast always gets the worst of the monsoon/flood season at this time of year.
OzarkHillbilly
Great piece on one of my favs, Robert Mitchum:
Mitchum introduced himself, tried to look cheerful and ready for work. Boyd glumly told him to go over to makeup, which was housed in a little cabin across the road. When he entered the makeup cabin, Earl Mosher, a friendly prop guy, smiled slightly and gave him a cowboy suit. Chaps, shirt, bandanna, boots and finally, a cowboy hat.
“This seems a little sticky,” young Mitchum said.
“No problem,” Mosher said. “See, the guy you’re replacing, well, he was doing a stunt today, and he was pulled off his wagon, and the reins were lashed around his wrists, and, well, the wagon kept going back and forth over him, the horses went nuts, you know, when he fell, so what we got here is a little of his head blood in the hat. We’ll take care of that fine, though.”
Mosher took out a pen knife and scraped the blood off the hatband. “There,” he said, smiling at the young actor, “that ought to fit just right now.”
“That’s how I broke into movies,” Mitchum says now, as he belts down another tequila. “I got a dead guy’s hat. And I’ve been selling horseshit ever since.”
Amir Khalid
In case anyone has been waiting with bated breath, 2015 is the year that Mein Kampf falls into the public domain. The state of Bavaria, which for the past 70 years has laid claim to the copyright, will no longer be able to stop neo-Nazis from legally disseminating copies of the book. But that might not matter much; bootleg editions have of course long been available on the intertubes and elsewhere.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Time flies.
mainmata
@SixStringFanatic: It is yet another Malaysian owned company, Asia Airlines though this time operated by their Indonesian affiliate. Flight coming from Surabaya, East Java to SQ. Looks like it disappeared after requesting a change in route because of bad weather, common this time of year because of monsoon rains. Almost all the passengers are Indonesian.
Booger
@srv: Where N=about, what, 40? Trends can be hard to see.
Omar/Stringer 2016. For the Good of the People.
Amir Khalid
@mainmata:
“Yet” another? MH370 and MH17 belonged to Malaysia Airlines, the national carrier. QZ8501, as you note, belongs to the Indonesian affiliate of AirAsia, which is Tony Fernandes’ outfit.
raven
@NotMax: Oh yea, did my normal Sunday visit with my Hawaiian buddy and now on to whatever “tasks” the girl has.
Violet
@raven: Garden tasks this time of year?
raven
@Violet: If I have learned anything from her it’s that there is always something to do in the garden/yard. That being said, it’s pouring an supposed to keep it up most of the day so it’s will be stowing stuff from the trip and settling in for the NFL.
I’ve mentioned that the construction on the sewer has started. I know it’s a a big job but it really hit home when they dropped off the “dog house manholes” and pipes. It’s exciting to see this progress and it helps us understand that this was no small undertaking and we’re lucky they are going to do it.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
@lamh36: I like to read!
Frankensteinbeck
@Snarkworth:
Normal for Democrats. Republican candidates are highly visible because A) the national media is Republican, but mostly B) the Republican candidacy has turned into a grift-off. Between CU and the GOP selecting ever more strongly for ego in its politicians, the Republican race is flooded with showboating dumbasses. They can’t tie their own shoes, but they can loudly declare they’re the next Reagan and get a ticket on the gravy train.
@mclaren:
For once, I kinda agree. Reagan was charming, and he had the message America was desperate for: ‘Racism is over, and whatever you do to blacks is their fault.’ These days less of America is white and less of the whites are racists, and that message is producing a vicious half-and-half polarization, not a landslide.
EDIT – Hell, they think Reagan was the Greatest President Ever because they remember him selling that message. They’re convinced nothing has changed and they just need another Reagan to bring the whole country together under the flag of racism and Christianity.
Violet
@raven: As a gardener myself I know there is always something to do! It’s raining here too today so no outdoor work for me. I have to go to the supermarket–that’s bad enough! Might go to the gym. I’ll see how my energy is. Still not fully back from the flu.
Glad the sewer work is moving along. Impressive to see the giant equipment they use for that. How long is it expected to take?
Violet
@Frankensteinbeck: Hey! I was hoping to catch you. I bought your “Don’t tell my parents I’m a Supervillain” book for a tween niece for Christmas. She devoured it in less than a day and has declared it her favorite book EVER! She’s dying to read the next one. I told her it looks like it’s supposed to come out in January but I couldn’t tell if that was only the e-book or also the paperback. She prefers “real books.”
Wanted to make sure you knew it was a huge hit (and thanks for making me so popular!) and also see if you could give me an update on publishing to pass along to her.
raven
@Violet: They think the actual sewer line work will take around a month if they don’t hot rock. They are going 18ft deep so it will be tough either way. They then will have to repave the street and that is weather dependent as well. We are hoping the addition work can start soon after.
Hope you fell better.
LAC
@Kay (not the front-pager): we live in the silver spring area and always have to explain the odd way it is cut up with Wheaton, Kensington, etc.. We moved my elderly parents here and they have a Wheaton address even though they are just a couple of blocks away from us.
I am with you on O’malley and I hope he does run.
Violet
@raven: Wow, 18 feet! I guess anything could happen. I hope it goes smoothly and your addition work can get started soon. You’ve really had a lot of obstacles for this project. I hope it’s smooth sailing from here on out.
Thanks for the good wishes. Getting the flu at the holidays is terrible! So much to do and you end up pushing yourself. PlusI had a pre-scheduled medical procedure requiring anesthesia as well toward the end of my flu episode. I don’t do well with anesthesia and it knocked me out for several days. Being low on energy from the flu didn’t help. I did recover in time to push through and do all the baking and cooking for Christmas, but boy did it take its toll. I’m taking it easy but also recognize that for me, lying around can make everything worse. A light gym workout might aid my recovery. I’ll see how I’m feeling. Fortunately I slept well last night for the first time in about a week.
LAC
@rikyrah: I am with you on Brown. Shitty campaign and he hands it over to a republican. I still can’t acknowledge that race. Countdown to inauguration… Ugh
Frankensteinbeck
@Violet:
The update on publishing: The editing, which was a grueling and miserable two-month process that stopped me from doing all other writing, is over. Like you said, the book is available for pre-order. In my experience, paper copies usually come out a week or two after the e-books. Might theoretically be at-the-same-time on this one, because it’s one of my publisher’s hottest properties.
I hope she likes it. Maintaining a consistent theme and tone between books is not my specialty. I tried.
hilts
@SixStringFanatic: @Helen:
FUCK CNN and their goddamn fucking missing plane fetish.
Violet
@Frankensteinbeck: Thanks! I’ll look into pre-order. It’s not always easy to buy gifts for kids and thanks for making me such a hit this year! She really, really loved it. Really did say it was her favorite book ever!
Frankensteinbeck
@Violet:
Awww! I love hearing that people enjoy my books. I wish I could recommend the others to her, but they’re all wildly different in tone. That was the light, fluffy, actually-for-kids one. I mean, light and fluffy for me. If it didn’t contain a debate on the uselessness of labels to depict morality, why write it?
Book two goes off into space and doesn’t share big roles for most of book one’s supporting characters, but book three will be back on Earth and about those supporting characters. Bull’s daughter will be important in book three, and Marcia gets powers, goes nuts, and becomes a lot more interesting a person. I’m not sure about better.
Hopefully kids will enjoy the girl-in-enchanted-land book I’m writing now. Who knows?
NotMax
@raven
Those pipes bring back memories of the summer camp I worked at for many years.
The state came in and demanded major changes to the system which had been in place and working for over 50 years and mandated we install a large tile field at a spot of their choosing. Totally non-negotiable.
That spot was on a downward slope, less than 50 feet from the lakefront in one direction and about 100 feet from the main kitchen in another..
Many, many truckloads of stone and hundreds of hours of our laying pipe later, it was approved as meeting the state’s ‘modern’ requirements. And from that day forward (as the water table was so high there) was a permanently mushy spot that trickled runoff into the lake whenever it rained, something the system it replaced (further uphill and set deep in the woods) had never done.
Upshot was we ended up digging down to install a shut-off valve to the new tile field and a shunt and pump to the still extant original system, which we used when camp was in session.
Bobby Thomson
Pathetic if true. This is like the passive aggressive “nice guy” approach to dating.
People should support me because I’m a true progressive.
Oh, there goes that Clinton. But everybody knows she’s not a true progressive. They’ll turn around and come to me if I just stay principled.
I can’t believe they’re going to the winter dance with Clinton. But if I bide my time, they’ll see what a jerk she is.
OMG I can’t believe her car is still outside the house.
That’s just like Democrats. They always claim they want a true progressive but when one is available they always go for the neocon. Next time I’ll try negging them.
Marc McKenzie
@mclaren: Shockingly, for once I’m in agreement with Mclaren on this.
Bobby Thomson
@OzarkHillbilly: Agreed.
raven
@NotMax: swell
raven
This should make the CNN haters happy:
Bobby Thomson
@Gin & Tonic: Cuomo is by far the worst Democrat running for president in 2016. It’s not even a contest.
Kay
I think Democrats will do better if there’s a primary (no matter how lopsided). I also think worrying about a primary siphoning off support for the front-runner is a defensive crouch. I hope this isn’t the Clinton team’s plan, “clearing the field” of people she should absolutely trounce because it looks cowardly and over-cautious to me.
They over-managed her last campaign. She hires too many managers and that’s always a problem in liberal/Democratic efforts- no one wants to be the subordinate. We have a lot of big egos and everyone thinks they are brilliant. They can’t manage their way to the Presidency. They need to loosen up the death grip a little. Let it go. It will be fine, or it won’t, but controlling every aspect isn’t going to work anyway.
Tree With Water
@hilts: It’s those damn black holes that keep swallowing airplanes that you should be angry with, not CNN.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Violet:
I would recommend a light yoga workout if you want to keep moving but not do anything too strenuous, especially if you had a cough or any chest congestion with the flu. Lingering congestion can easily turn into bronchitis if you overdo the aerobic part of your workout. There are a lot of free yoga videos online if you don’t have access to a class at your gym or don’t feel like going out. Feel better!
Sharon
@Tommy: Martin is actually a decent guy. I’ve met him a number of times in non political venues, i.e., a dive bar in Baltimore, he was celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife, and they really are “just folks.” His ambition for higher offices has been a plus for Maryland. We’ve gotten a more progressive income tax, the Maryland version of the Dream Act, marriage equality, a more aggressive clean up of the bay, more funding for k-12 education, and a higher ed tuition freeze.
I lived in Baltimore when he was the mayor and he did a decent job getting the city agencies to be more responsive to inquiries. While I didn’t like the methods used by the police to bring down the murder rate, he didn’t leave the city a smoldering wreck at the end of his tenure.For a guy who fronts a bar band, he’s not that much of a natural on TV, but democrats could do a lot worse.
Misterpuff
@SixStringFanatic:
There is no Don Lemon Black Hole.
It’s all black.
billb
All our leaders are real old, We got no one but MoM, support him!