Still importing cd’s, and I opened the next box and no sooner got started when this happened:
Nevertheless, I persisted:
At this point it’s a battle of wills, and we all know who is going to win that. Hint- it’s not the asshole who gets out of bed at 5 am every morning to feed Steve.
Doug!
I like Marshall Crenshaw too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Doug!: All the best people do.
ArchTeryx
Cats are completely irresistibly drawn to boxes. The amateur ethologist in me says it’s the instinct to den; when surrounded by walls, it makes for easier defense, so they can kick back and relax. Instinctively, they know if anything comes at them it will have to be from the front, which is full of pointy things, rather then the vulnerable back or sides.
I’ve noticed my ginger tabby derp cat quit running to boxes in my room when he got so trusting he didn’t think he needed a defensible position any more. At that point, he just gravitated to the softest blankets in the room. ^.^
JPL
lol Quickly googles Marshall Crenshaw..
RedDirtGirl
Reposted from below:
New York City area Balloon Juicers: in observance of my birthday week I’m throwing myself a surprise party!
It’s at Sunny’s Bar in Redhook (link below). The weekly bluegrass jam starts at 9pm and it’s beautiful space. So…
You are invited to my
Surprise*
Potluck**
52nd Birthday
Party
this Saturday,
the 24th
at sunnysredhook.com.
* I’ll be there for the weekly bluegrass jam that starts at 9pm. If you are in the tri-state area/general vicinity, please come by!
** bring a SMALL, shareable treat.
Now don’t spoil the surprise by RSVPing!
Shana
@JPL: You are in for hours of joy. Listening to Marshall Crenshaw for the first time, what a lovely start to a weekend.
Doug!
@JPL:
It’s not all brill but there’s some high points.
JPL
@RedDirtGirl: Happy Birthday!
Kathleen
My brother the cat owner posted this article about a firm which hires cats
to help workers deal with stress:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/reduce-work-stress-firm-hires-office-cats/#.WS2OIaNJ4nM.facebook
This was my brother’s Facebook comment:
Kathleen
@RedDirtGirl: Happy Birthday!
MomSense
I ❤️ Steve.
I’m taking a mental health night and avoiding the political mess. If anyone wants to see something truly lovely, episode 4 of World of Dance has a beautiful performance by a modern dance couple Keone and Mari. Hard to describe them except to say that they tell a story through dance and radiate beauty and sweetness. I think these dance competitions tend to be too focused on tricks for my taste, but these two are artists.
It’s near the end of the episode if you want to skip to it but the rest of the show is fun to watch, too.
schrodingers_cat
Be glad that he is just not the doing the Shiva tandava (dance of cosmic destruction) that bosscat would have unleashed.
germy
@Doug!: He’s one of my favorite wastes of time.
Morzer
A word of advice to optimists about he future: don’t think that you can get rid of Trump and just go back to normal:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2017/06/james_mcgill_buchanan_s_terrifying_vision_of_society_is_the_intellectual.html
MomSense
@RedDirtGirl:
Happy birthday notorious RDG!
Adam L Silverman
@RedDirtGirl: Front paged! You’re welcome.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
He has quite the muscular form.
Mike J
Marshall Crenshaw is excellent.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer:
Who the fuck thinks that?
d58826
@ArchTeryx:
Hmmm that may not be progress. At least you weren’t going to try and share the box.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike J: We have Marshall High School and Crenshaw High School here in LA, not sure they do anything together.
Jeffro
@Morzer:Re: when Randians try to keep people of color and young people from voting
Chilling.
Also just a note that the Koch-funded centers and what not at Mason are pretty openly detested by the entire rest of Mason.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Democratic party seems to be skipping merrily down that path. They have no credible platform beyond not being Trump and no shred of a plan that might win back the Senate any time soon.
You’d think they’d learned something from their parade of losses, but apparently not.
Jeffro
Btw Sally Yates just dropped one hell of an op-ed on Jeff Sessions head…
Making America Scared Again Won’t Make Us Safer
I know what you’re thinking…I’m thinking it too…
Jeffro
More from Yates:
Morzer
@Jeffro:
Cue Trump screeching that she was an Obama loyalist and he cunningly deployed the travel ban to smoke her out etc etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: If you say so.
Frank Wilhoit
@Morzer: …and this is why THE tactic is to goad or trick them into saying what they mean.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: @Omnes Omnibus: As I’ve said in more briefings, operational planning teams, working groups, war games, and meetings than I can count, a society never get to reset back to normal before whatever happened happened. Rather a new normal will eventually emerge. Usually this is in the context of talking about Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan or the Palestinians.
Even when we emerge from what is going on now we will not be returning to how things were on the morning of election day 2016. Rather we will move to a new normal. Whatever that normal will be.
Jeffro
And while we’re at it, a long-time Foreign Service staffer notes why he’s leaving after 27 years:
Why I Resigned From the U.S. Foreign Service
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
We are going to need some kind of truth and reconciliation process if and when we get ourselves through this mess.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
What color is the sky in your country? Because if I recall correctly from the recent UK vote, you are not an American and don’t live in the US.
Jeffro
@Morzer: I’m ok with Trumpov screeching…that’s basically all he does.
I’m glad to see her putting such an appealing, fact-based, compassionate message out there. It’s brave. She could have stayed under the radar, she could even go ‘consult’…but she’s chosen to be one of the public faces of an important fight.
MomSense
@Jeffro:
She’s on my personal shortlist for POTUS.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: No argument from me.
Jeffro
@MomSense:
Agreed. I have been advocating for this ever since the election night shock wore off (especially after pounding the table all last summer and fall about Trumpov & Co’s Russia connections). Unfortunately, I think there will be the ‘truth’ without the ‘reconciliation’…but then again, that’s mostly on the heads of the guilty, and their enablers & supporters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: Also, from the Dowager Countess: Don’t be defeatist. It’s very middle class.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense: That generally means that you don’t prosecute folk, you OK with that? I’m not sure that I am.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
@Jeffro:
Thirded.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
You only agree not to prosecute them if they make a full and detailed confession. If you find out later that they withheld information or lied about anything, they are still subject to prosecution. At least, that’s how it worked in South Africa.
Shana
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When they play each other the bands should do dueling Marshall Crenshaw songs.
MomSense
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
No Im not ok with it and yet I cannot see a peaceful way forward ( assuming our democracy endures ). I also think that it will be an incredibly painful process if it is a truly honest process.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: @Mnemosyne: @MomSense: she’s a republican. Did you guys mean to post this at red state?
Major Major Major Major
@RedDirtGirl: happy birthday!!!! Not going, 2500 miles away.
It’s pride weekend here but I don’t really do pride stuff lately… Symphony tonight, peeking my head in at a couple parties, then video games and drawing. This week took FOREVER. Looking forward to the sleep.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Huh? I was agreeing with the concept of a truth and reconciliation committee.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I fink ‘e meant to tag Jeffro.
Major Major Major Major
I’ve also decided that when I’m on the fence about a commenter I decide they’re a troll if they don’t comment on pet threads.
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: is it okay to agree with a Republican when they note actual facts, note that a policy is wasteful and cruel and counterproductive, and that the current AG is completely wrong in what he’s trying to do to our country?
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
Work with me here, Mr ATL. I’m thinking a unity ticket (again assuming we survive this constitutional crisis) and she at least respects the constitution. I think we are heading toward violence if we don’t figure out what comes after this that the sane-ish 67% can accept.
Mrs. Whatsit
@Steve in the ATL: Sally Yates? I could have sworn I heard on NPR that she’s a Democrat.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in the ATL:
If was agreeing to the Truth and Reconciliation idea.
Also, you know who else was a Republican until about 2000? Elizabeth freakin’ Warren, darling of the far left.
RedDirtGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Holy Toledo!
schrodingers_cat
@Mrs. Whatsit: AFAIK she is a Republican.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro:
Agree, yes. Support for president, no.
Mrs. Whatsit
OK, not NPR, but maybe this is what I heard?
GA Dems want Sally Yates to run for Governor
Sab
Why would you put a box out, intending to pack it, without an alternative box for the cat. More importantly, why don’t you already have a box for the cat sitting out awaiting his supreme feline ness.
My spouse has had a lamp pushed onto his head at 5 am by a hungry cat. Not a starving cat, just a bored cat wanting fed.
Mrs. Whatsit
@Mrs. Whatsit:
Screwed up the URL. I’m just pasting it here:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/sally-yates-governors-race-georgia-235134
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Didn’t Obama appoint her as US Attorney for the N.D. GA? And didn’t he bring her into the DoJ? Would he do that with GOPer? You are closer to the action than I am.
Sab
@RedDirtGirl: I’d love to be there but I am in Ohio so I can’t make it. Plus I am incredibly boring so count yourself lucky I am staying home.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: he appointed many republicans. Why, i don’t know. Though she at least has a reputation for sterling integrity. And has demonstrated that far more than Mr. Comey.
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: That’s all I was doing, supporting her taking a stand like this.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro: ok, I withdraw my objection!
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: Just on a side note: it’s interesting to see how the ‘sterling integrity’ of folks up and down the chain has been serving as a last line of defense for the Republic…and how opposed to integrity Trumpov, Ryan, McConnell, & Co. have been.
It’s almost like one party has principles, and the other party has ‘a’ principle: the opposite of whatever that first party wants.
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: Not a prob, we were all kind of weighing in at once there. =)
debbie
@JPL:
You’ll love Cynical Girl. Because of course.
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
Sterling integrity sounds like a big step up to me. Have to give her props for refusing to defend the travel ban and her op-ed tells me that she has a strong sense of fairness and recognizes the human cost of mass incarceration.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: His whole first album is brilliant.
Steve in the ATL
@MomSense: indeed. She’s a career prosecutor, so law and order stuff is big to her. We don’t know where she stands on anything else, such as social and economic issues.
MomSense
@Steve in the ATL:
How about Kamala at the top of the ticket?
Steeplejack
He’s crepuscular!
Sab
@Morzer: Suddenly you are here a lot. New to all of us. Secretive about where you come from (lots of us are secretive about our identities but none of are secretive about our regional locations).Americans are very regional. If you won’t identify with a region, or explain why you can’t, then we will justifiably view you as foreign and probably hostile.. All of us know that if you are secretive about your regional location you will be branded a troll. Probably Russian.
Steve in the ATL
@MomSense: I’d sure vote for her, but would prefer not to have a prosecutor/prosecutor ticket. If LAO and Bella Q were here, they would agree!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Career prosecutors make me nervous.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Absolutely, but life stands still whenever I hear those first jingly notes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: He was here long before you were. He was gone for a while and now is back. That is not a viable attack.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Why did you need the word “but”?
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: much easier to attack the substance of his stupid comments
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s late. I left out “on the radio.” I’ve never heard any other cuts from that CD on the radio.
ETA: Why do my fingers keep trying to type “album”?
Quinerly
@Steve in the ATL:
Quick Google/Wiki indicate that Yates is a Dem. Her husband (Conner Yates) is a Dem who ran unsuccessfully for Congress a few years back.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Cool. Listening to Cynical Girl right now as I type. My favorite song on a wonderful album.
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: @Omnes Omnibus: His IP address returns from a legit provider. Not in Russia.
rikyrah
It’s Steve’s house…he lets you stay there cause you feed him, Cole :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: That is where my memory of his comments puts him. He’s been out of the country for years and I think that affects his analysis.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I adjusted the comment. It felt a bit too much like doxxing. That said, all politics are local!
MomSense
@Quinerly:
So does this mean I don’t have to go to red state?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I disagree with him on this. OTOH, he is a long time commenter. He predates Sab. Calling him a new trollish person is wrong.
khead
I’m feeling old now.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think he’s a troll. Just was trying to clarify he wasn’t from Russia (not that there is anything wrong with being from Russia). Or a bot. Or a bot from Russia. Or a Russian bot.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
Obots were better bots. I miss those bots.
Peale
@Morzer: yep. If they could, they’d set up something like Orban has going for him in Hungary, where as long as everyone won’t gel to get him out, he only needs 33% of the vote to have a super majority. He’ll be there for Another 30 years. The number 2 party is actually neo-Nazi, as in “give us the names of threatening Jews and round up the Roma”, so it’s not like there’s a whole lot of wiggle room for other parties to squabble. They can’t squabble. They need to cease to exist and form a single party. Good luck with that.
The good news is that at least we don’t have more parties than we already have. The bad news is the setbacks will be huge.
Peale
@MomSense: some of us are still here after 8 years. I actually started coming here because it was the last safe obot space I could find in 2009.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, I didn’t meant to imply that Morzer is a Russian troll or anything like that — if I gave that impression, I apologize.
But during the UK election returns, s/he said multiple things about living in the UK and how people outside the UK didn’t understand the intricacies of their politics, so it seemed a bit rich to me for that same person to be criticizing the Democrats as though s/he had some special understanding.
Many Brits have made the mistake of thinking they understand America and Americans better than Americans do, and they’re almost always wrong. Yes, Andrew Sullivan, Nick Broomfield, and Piers Morgan, I am looking at you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: I’m still here!
and Morzer’s been around for ever
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Omnes is right, he’s not a troll. He’s been here a long time and I believe he’s in The Land of the Morning Calm.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: He’s in Korea.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: He is being a dipshit, IMO. Calling him a troll is flat out wrong. And having people who showed up in the last year calling a long time commeter a troll is not something I like.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree. He was pretty strongly for BS in the primaries and seems to still think Dems are DOING IT ALL WRONG.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@Omnes Omnibus:
And thats why I didn’t call him a troll, just someone outside the US who didn’t know what he was talking about. But I do apologize if I wasn’t sufficiently clear with my first comment that that’s what I meant.
PJ
@MomSense: I honestly feel that actual trials under the rule of law where people are judged for their actions and punished accordingly is going to be much more salutary than a truth and reconciliation committee. That would be well and good for generational crimes, like slavery, Jim Crow, and the extermination and theft of rights and property from Native Americans, but I feel it is a little blunted for specific crimes. Since Iran/Contra, the Republicans have gotten away with nary a slap on the wrist for their many violations of the Constitution, treaties, and the law of the land, and until they pay the price set forth in the law, they will continue doing it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I am not going to fight with you about him.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: He’s not been out of the US all that long maybe 3 years or so. His wife is Korean, I don’t think he is. I mean who’d think a non-Korean would marry a Korean, eh?
ETA: I just spent a hour of my life I’ll never get back, tried to go downtown and take pics of the Wilshire Grand tower’s light show. Who knew it’d be impossible to find parking on a Friday night?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
There’s nothing to fight about. I didn’t think I called him a troll, but some people seem to have gotten that impression from what I said, so now I feel bad.
Jeffro
Can we get back to talking about what this ‘truth and reconciliation committee’ would look like and what it would take to make it happen? I’m trying to write a futile op-ed here…
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: Wonderful. Do you understand what a T&R thing is?
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Dude, that’s what the Gold Line is for. Park at Del Mar and it’s only $2 with your TAP card.
Peale
@?BillinGlendaleCA: obviously your days of clubbing are behind you.
The Golux
The thing that kills me about Marshall Crenshaw is that, when you’re in the middle of listening to one of his songs that has already had two outrageously excellent hooks, he tops it with a third, even more outrageously excellent hook.
If you’ve ever had any ambition to write popular music, it’s almost perverse.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: I have been here for about ten years. Never noticed him/her before.Not saying you are wrong about morzer. But you are very wrong about me. Jerk.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Universal City is closer and $3 and Red Line, next time. Lesson learned. It’s a bit of a hassle to lug a camera bag and a tripod on the subway.
Now I’m debating on whether to go to Eagle Rock and get a Tommy Burger. Decisions, decisions.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Peale: I’m in my late 50’s, so yeah.
ETA: Today was the grand opening of the Wilshire Grand, it’s the tallest building west of Chicago. The exterior has leds on it and they light up the building.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Gold Line is faster from where you are — it takes the Red Line a good 90 minutes to get to Downtown. It only takes about 20 minutes on the Gold Line, if that, so it’s still faster even with a 15-20 minute drive to Pasadena.
Also, you now have to pay for parking at North Hollywood — $3 for 24 hours.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Odd. I knew Morzer, but not you – until recently, Do you want to fight about this? He has been here before. I am sorry that you have an issue with me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Red Line 90 minutes to downtown? Huh, more like 30 from Universal City. Also, if I took the Gold Line, I’d have to transfer to the Red Line at Union Station to get to where I want to go in downtown(probably 7th Street).
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: My understanding comes from reading articles about the South African process, where (please correct me if I’m wrong), amnesty was granted in exchange for testimony (i.e., punishment was not the goal of the process). Some/many people felt this did not adequately address the crimes committed under apartheid. From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa):
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sab may be a previous commenter under a new handle, but I don’t want to out anyone who doesn’t want to be outed (and who wasn’t banned, just changed their ‘nym).
M
@Mnemosyne: Fine. S/he can’t expect me to know that.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I remember looking at the Metro site and having it tell me it would take 90 minutes to get to where I wanted to be downtown (south of Union Station) if I took the Red Line, but only 20 minutes by car. Understandably, I took the car.
We’ve been taking the Red Line to the Pantages for our theater tickets and it’s freakin’ perfect for that. The Hollywood & Vine station is directly across the street from the theater.
Omnes Omnibus
@M: @Mnemosyne: Fine. S/he can’t expect me to know that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: That station’s also good to catch the Griffith Observatory shuttle, though I usually park at the Greek and catch it there. The Vine Station is also my favorite station, so cool looking. OTOH, Hollywood and Highland sucks.
Omnes Omnibus
@M: delete it.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Dagnabbit, Omnes, don’t make me think of you as reasonable and bipartisan!
Morzer
@Steve in the ATL:
Go for it.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman:
My concern is that the right wing have been planning their new normal – and winning in terms of implementing it – in ways that the Democrats have not. I don’t see anything like a realistic strategy from the Democrats. In too many cases, I see people who are fooling themselves into thinking that Trump is a special case, a one off, an orange swan, whatever term they may choose to employ,
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
I’ll put it this way: anyone who claims that they knew prior to 2016 that the Republicans would actively conspire with a hostile foreign power to steal the presidential election is lying. Yes, in retrospect, we can look at all of the clues and see what happened, but there’s no automatic Well, of course the Republicans were willing to turn us into a Russian client state! We knew it all along!
Everything else is the usual ALEC/Koch brothers/Mercer bullshit we’ve been fighting for years. But, yes, I think most Americans have been caught flat-footed by the revelations that Putin specifically meddled to put Trump in the Oval Office and defeat Hillary.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
True, but not relevant to the way in which the GOP have systematically gamed the political system within the US. They didn’t need any external help to do that – although they did get a generous assist from the fecklessness of the Democrats. Sure, Putin’s interference is a major warning, but it only mattered because the GOP have succeeded in tilting things their way to a point where a new system has effectively replaced the one we all thought we were working with.
ET
You may not have intended it to, but the cat trap worked like a charm.
JR in WV
@Mnemosyne:
You’re right in a way. Surprised that Republicans were helped by Russian dirty tricks, kind of. But I’m not shocked that Republicans would be grateful for Russian dirty tricks. and repay the Russians two-fold for their assistance. Because there is nothing Republicans won’t do to retain power in the government.
The Republicans are full of praise for small government, but that’s all bullshit. They want all-powerful government, with them in charge. Put opponents in prison? Love to.