Looks like we’re gonna need a bigger bed:
That bed was A.) made and B.) is queen size. I don’t think he mussed it all by himself, as that looks like Thurston’s handiwork because three pillows are on the damned floor.
by John Cole| 22 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging
Looks like we’re gonna need a bigger bed:
That bed was A.) made and B.) is queen size. I don’t think he mussed it all by himself, as that looks like Thurston’s handiwork because three pillows are on the damned floor.
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Not Normal
Honored 2 take oath from Justice Clarence Thomas. Ive long admired & deeply respect his judicial philosophy & historic Supreme Court service
— Mike Pence (@mike_pence) January 16, 2017
MLK day tweet. https://t.co/hrnHB9HjRu
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 16, 2017
When it comes to the President-Asterisk’s administration, we’ll never be sure! The Washington Post‘s art critic reports “The controversy behind the painting that will hang at Trump’s inaugural luncheon”:
… Since Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, an American painting has served as a backdrop during the inaugural luncheon, at which members of Congress play host to the newly installed president. When Donald Trump is made the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20, George Caleb Bingham’s “The Verdict of the People” will be the chosen painting, hanging on a partition wall behind the ceremonial head table in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.
The painting was finished in 1855 by an artist best known for his Mississippi River scenes, which burnished the rough-and-tumble and often violent West into a benign and mythological place, ready for investment, development and full participation in American political life.
“The Verdict of the People,” which shows a large crowd celebrating or mourning election results in a Missouri town, is part of a series of three large canvasses created in the 1850s, each taking up the theme of democratic self- governance… Despite the title, “The Verdict of the People,” and the seeming jubilation of many of the figures in the picture, Bingham was representing a despairing moment in the life of his state, and American politics.
“Bingham is a Whig Painter, using these images to depict a Democratic victory,” says Adam Arenson, associate professor of history at Manhattan College in New York, and an expert on Missouri history. As a Whig, Bingham was anti-slavery while the Democratic Party, at the time, was either proslavery, or complicit in status-quo acceptance of it. “The Verdict of the People” was painted just as Congress passed the disastrous Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which put a future of slavery in Kansas to a popular vote. Thugs from Missouri got in the fray, crossing the border to attack abolitionist settlers. One of the state’s senators, David Atchison, called on his supporters “to kill every Goddamned abolitionist” if necessary to secure Kansas as a slave state.
“Bingham is painting out of a great fear that popular sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska act will lead to an irreparable divide in the country,” says Arenson. “It represents a moment when democracy was unable to handle the conflict of the country.”…
And so Bingham’s painting is an almost ideal emblem for a president who came to power on a promise to “Make America Great Again.” Blunt seems to read this painting as a reassuring sign that American electoral politics have always been messy and fractious. But he chose an image that in fact depicts a (likely) proslavery candidate triumphing in the name of an America that denies not only full suffrage, but basic human and constitutional freedoms to its African American population.
The painting’s use at the inauguration also highlights a problem that opponents of the new president will face again and again: Is there method in what appears to be simply blundering cultural ignorance? Is there design in casual remarks and off-the-cuff observations that seem to be deliberately provocative? …
Before his 2009 inauguration, Obama spent MLK Day visiting with wounded troops and volunteering at a DC homeless shelter. Where is Trump? pic.twitter.com/ucF6yUh3II
— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 16, 2017
Trump's version of reaching out to the community is sitting in his tower and making the community come to him.https://t.co/V6fSuqaQ14
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 16, 2017
Open Thread: Arrogantly Clueless, or Deliberately Evil?Post + Comments (74)
by Adam L Silverman| 90 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
CAPT (ret) Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, has died.
We are saddened by the loss of retired NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. https://t.co/Q9OSdRewI5 pic.twitter.com/gPdFTnXF2C
— NASA (@NASA) January 16, 2017
Here is CAPT Cernan’s take on the Right Stuff:
Best fan mail I ever got: Gene Cernan, last man on the moon, on the meaning of the right stuff. Ad astra and Godspeed pic.twitter.com/o4q7ucmvYo
— Bret Stephens (@StephensWSJ) January 16, 2017
Update at 10:50 PM EDT
Thanks to commenter Another Scott, here’s the restored video of the Apollo 11 EVA:
CAPT (ret) Gene Cernan 1934-2017: Rest in PeacePost + Comments (90)
This post is in: Just Shut the Fuck Up
I killed a man on twitter just to watch him die:
I’m proud of that one. I am just sick of the fucking bullshit from these religious nutjobs. Especially since a shit ton of these fetus fetishists voted for Trump, just like Jesus would do.
by DougJ| 82 Comments
This post is in: Rare Sincerity
When I lived in Georgia, I had an older friend, a great guy, from nearby to Athens (Greenville) unlike my other co-workers. He will be played by Billy Bob Thornton in the me biopic. We talked about politics a lot because he was the only person I knew who was as mad as me about the 2000 election/selection. One time, I said to him, about all the bullshit Jeb played with voters lists in Florida, “this is just like Mississippi in 1960.” I’d never seen him be anything but jovial before but when I said that he said “you fucking Yankee idiot, you have no idea what it was like down here before Civil Rights. Civil Rights changed everything in the south.”
It’s tough to talk about such an important event without sounding glib, but I’ll give it a try. I think it’s true that most white people, especially up here in the north, don’t appreciate just how enormously important the Civil Rights movement was. I also don’t think most people appreciate how clever a tactician Martin Luther King Jr. was. It wasn’t obvious that non-violence was the right strategy then, I’m not one of those who thinks non-violence is always the answer (and I agree that it’s ridiculous to think victims of state oppression and violence have no right to fight back), but there’s no question that King’s strategy worked brilliantly.
All the great oratory and great music and so on associated with the Civil Rights movement shouldn’t obscure the incredible skill that King and his allies displayed in getting so much ground-breaking legislation passed in just a few years. It didn’t have to happen that way, and it should be remembered a triumph of the mind as much as (or maybe even more than) a triumph of the spirit.
This post is in: John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House"
The last major project was the construction of my custom desk. We stained it today, and are going to put a couple coats of polyurethane on it to make it impervious to coffee stains, and here it is:
I can’t decide if it needs another coat of stain or not. At any rate, this is going to be my main room (other than the bedroom and the kitchen), since I spend so much time in here, and I am really super excited. I put a couple 2 inch holes in the desk for cables, and have pvc piping underneath the desk, AND LOOK AT ALL THOSE FUCKING OUTLETS. Only computer dorks will totally appreciate this room, I guess, but I am soooo excited to get in there.
I am going to mount my older 42″ tv that is in my living room on the wall above on the bigger desk, daddy’s (my grandfather’s- that’s what mom calls him) antique desk against the wall for actual paper work, and my big lazyboy from the current living room will go in here so I can put adult furniture in the living room that fits the house and a new tv when I can afford to buy furniture, end tables, lamps, a desk, and an area rug. For now it will just be two old couches, but I won’t use the room much anyway so no big deal.
Tomorrow the inspector/appraiser comes and when he is gone, we are going to stain the main stairway, Comcast comes on Wednesday, and after they leave, we are going to put two coats of varnish down, and I plan to move in this weekend. Still waiting on one of you to needlepoint this (from the Money Pit) for me:
Also, in the front entryway, I am going to clean up and hang my great great-grandmother’s old mirror:
It needs some love and attention and I want to really have a good brace and support on the wall, so that will be down the road, too. At any rate, I gathered the crew together for a team picture:
And that’s a wrap. For now, because as people have been fond of telling me, you are never done. I’m going to go take a nap and lock my checkbook and atm card in the safe until December.
And That’s Pretty Much a Wrap on the House RenovationPost + Comments (105)
by Adam L Silverman| 59 Comments
This post is in: Silverman on Security, War
I give you the USMC Small War’s Manual. You want to fight a rebellion? Lead a revolution? Overthrow tyranny? Counter an insurgency? Get to reading!
I’m personally going to the gym…