You Know Who Else Liked George Bailey?

Shorter John Wharton, The American Supergenius
It Was ‘A Wonderful Life’

    • Contrary to what liberals think, Mr. Potter is the real hero, and George Bailey the true villain, of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
  • It’s been a standing joke for ages to claim that some free-market Randroid was so clueless that he or she would watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and cheer for Mr. Potter while hissing at George Bailey. It would be the equivalent, say, of someone hoping that Scrooge would tell the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to sod off or that Spielberg would leave E.T. to die alone in a ditch in Southern California or that Dorothy would be stranded in Oz for the rest of her life as the Wizard’s concubine.

    But, of course, this, or so everyone thought, was all just cute and snarky hyperbole. No one, not even the High Priestess Ayn Rand herself, could possibly actually watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and come away not sobbing like a child but instead thinking that George Bailey was a social parasite spouting vile commie propaganda against the heroic Mr. Potter, the job creator who knew what was really best for the people of Bedford Falls.

    Well, meet John Wharton, if that really is his name:

    There is probably no more iconic piece of cinematic Americana than Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. Even today, families enjoy the folksy warmth of small-town America at Christmas as seen in the golly-gee world of the Bailey family, living their all-American lives in Bedford Falls, NY. And indeed, Americans should watch this timeless classic often but, I suggest, more to remind themselves of just how our modern-day financial problems were born and what cavalier habits bred them.

    Uh oh. You can see this coming from miles away: because banks were forced by PBS-watching liberals infatuated with the Capra film to act like George Bailey and give home loans to shiftless, lie-about Negroes instead of acting like Mr. Potter and throwing them homeless onto the streets where they belong, the entire U.S. economy collapsed. Thanks, again, to Hollywood, of course.

    Most viewers see George Bailey as naive but likeable, a bit like themselves. But American Genius Wharton naturally sees the sinister truth.

    His idea of a date is to take his future wife, Mary (played in the film by the virginal Donna Reed), to an abandoned house she adores.  He persuades Mary to help him vandalize it by explaining that “with deserted houses, you make a wish and then try to bust a window.”  …  Such is our story’s hero.

    While we are on shady characters in film, let me point out that Dorothy Gale was a juvenile delinquent who ran away from home with her vicious dog only to wind up murdering a wealthy landowner in order to deprive her of her rightful inheritance of her dead sister’s estate.

    When George’s father dies, the board of the Bailey Building and Loan Association (BBLA), a co-op owned by its members, meets to consider the institution’s future. … Potter argues convincingly that the BBLA should be closed because George’s father was an incompetent administrator, citing a loan given to Ernie the taxi driver after it was declined at Potter’s bank. The bank’s wisdom in rejecting Ernie is shown clearly when, in fact, he is soon unable to make payments on the mortgage he holds with the BBLA and attempts to return his home’s deed.

    Ernie the taxi driver should have “moved back in with the missus’ folks” as he wanted to do until he could retrain to afford the nice home he wanted for his family. Ernie intrinsically knew that he was in over his head; George likely helped him drown.

    And while we are in the business of rewriting classic movies and consigning Ernie to the bottom of the pond to fulfill a right-wing ideological bias, let’s not forget Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird who, by defending that no-count Negro, wound up embarrassing Scout to death, causing her to lose all her friends and, ultimately, hang herself from the back porch ceiling fan.

    Obviously, old man Potter’s business sense was exactly right when he told the BBLA board: “High ideals without common sense can ruin a town” — or a nation — as easy credit creates “a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. All because starry-eyed dreamers like Bailey put impossible ideas into their heads.”

    Our current mortgage meltdown crisis shows us that, indeed, 70 years of Bailey-style undisciplined credit growth has brought us to tears as we had ignored common lending standards and let crony capitalism favor personal connections over objective analysis. A bit more cold-hearted caution in the ’40s might have helped us avoid the civil unrest and plummeting living standards we almost certainly will experience as Potter’s reality bites and the FOGs [Friends of George Bailey] adjust to a new world of painful limits, correcting for decades of living an unearned high life.

    It’s apparent I must have fallen asleep when I watched “It’s A Wondeful Life.” Did I miss the part where George invents the credit default swap and resold all his bank loans as derivative instruments?

     

    Comments: 366

     
     
     

    Buying a home is THEFT!

     
     

    Borrowing money from a bank is THEFT!!

     
     

    I’m sure this actually was done by some glibertarian enemy of the people at some stage, but I’m glad it’s been done again. I did an analysis of Mark Levin pretending Scrooge was a hero in the last 2SUNS Magazine, now I’ve got material for my next Christmas issue. This is the most in advance of a deadline I’ve ever been.

     
     

    Of course, in 1946, it was possible to solve all of the problems by simply dropping an atomic bomb on the town.

    I, for one, would applaud this alternate ending.

     
     

    Did I miss the part where George invents the credit default swap and resold all his bank loans as derivative instruments?

    Dood, there’s an entire epilogue you missed! It ran after the credits, like they did with Napoleon Dynamite. The highlight was George Bailey snorting coke off a stripper’s ass. Then the angel loses his wings and is carried off to hell by demons.

     
     

    So this is like saying Glenda the Good Witch was the true villain in “Wizard of Oz,” right?

     
     

    I wonder if the world would be a better place if MItt Romney had never existed… of course, Clarence is no Moroni.

     
     

    Pryme said,
    January 27, 2012 at 22:27 · Edit

    So this is like saying Glenda the Good Witch was the true villain in “Wizard of Oz,” right?

    If it weren’t for her, the Witch of the West would still be alive, and her guards and the flying monkeys would still have jobs rather than being on unemployment and welfare.

     
     

    If it weren’t for her, the Witch of the West would still be alive, and her guards and the flying monkeys would still have jobs rather than being on unemployment and welfare.

    Well, she did steal those shoes and REDISTRIBUTED them to welfare queen Dorothy.

     
     

    causing her to loose all her friends

    Wish my sister had loose friends back in high school.

    I do love how it always comes back to some variation of “the housing crisis was caused by the evil government forcing those poor virtuous banks to loan to minorities”. Never mind the piles of money they made along the way selling and re-selling those loans etc, etc.

     
     

    I’m pretty sure Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was pretty socialist, too, what with all that talk about the little guy and greed and loving your neighbor and stuff.

     
     

    Never mind that the vast majority of the bad loans had nothing to do with the government making anyone do anything, kg.

    P.S. As well all know, dentistry is theft!
    ~

     
     

    Also, when did politicians start using movies as a template for creating policy? Because I’m still waiting on my damn Hoverboard!*

    *(BTTF version or Transformers: The Movie version; either will do)

     
     

    Shorter John Wharton, The American Supergenius

    He actually went there? Juses, they’ve gone right through the barrel bottom into bizarroworld.

     
     

    Never mind that the vast majority of the bad loans had nothing to do with the government making anyone do anything, kg.

    That’s probably the coolest thing about arguments between Mitt and Newt. They’re about mythical scandals.

     
     

    The highlight was George Bailey snorting coke off a stripper’s ass.

    HBO remake, here we come!

     
     

    Also, when did politicians start using movies as a template for creating policy? – Pryme

    Around the time we elected an actor to be president. Although conservatives may wish to blame John Fitzgerald “Camelot” Kennedy for the shift — and they’d be more correct than they usually are.

     
     

    Awesome. I hope they embrace this wholeheartedly and make a new glibertarian movie version too. I’m sure it’ll do almost as well at the box office as Atlas Shrugged did.

     
     

    I’m sure it’ll do almost as well at the box office as Atlas Shrugged did.

    IOW, half as well as An American Carol, then.
    .

     
     

    So the problem with our financial system is that we let the likes of George Bailey run the place?

    Silly me and my lack of economics knowledge. I always thought that the problem with our financial system is that we’ve lost sight of what the financial system is actually supposed to do for society and for our economy (as explained by George Bailey in his “your money is in his house” speech): when the financial system functions to ensure that excess money gets invested back into the economy (for people to purchase homes, grow their businesses, etc) that is the essence of what capitalism is all about — people have places to live and jobs in which to work while those “saving” money for later earn interest and the people who make it all possible, like George Bailey, get to live a nice upper-middle class lifestyle by doing so.

    The problem is not that we let George Bailey control the financial system but that we let Potter control it and he shot himself in the foot (and destroyed our economy in the process) by trying to get and stay rich off of financial services rather than letting the banking process do its job of providing capital for growing the economy. What Potter and his ilk do is almost literally shooting the goose that lays the golden eggs because they want to have goose for supper.

    Of course, leave it to some righty-tighty to live in a mirror world where the cause of our economic decline is a model of economic soundness and where a paragon of how capitalism is supposed to work is considered the cause of our economic woes. I swear if Adam Smith were to come back from the dead, he’d declare today’s so-called “free market capitalists” to be a bunch of tory mercantilists. To which Samuel Johnson would declare “these nutjobs are not tories — remember Edmund Burke was a wig”. To which Edmund Burke would declare “don’t blame me”.

     
     

    Wikipedia tells me Donna Reed had two biological children, so unless there’s a few extra Messiahs running around that I didn’t know about, she was hardly “virginal”.

     
     

    I love also how conservatives/reactionaries blame laws to limit redlining for our current crisis. More than a few people who have suffered in this crisis are actually victims of more subtle forms of redlining: they may very well have been able to afford a regular loan, but were “guided” toward a subprime loan which they couldn’t afford.

    And conservatives/reactionaries would love to pretend that redlining wasn’t a problem that needed to be addressed. Even when my wife purchased the co-op apartment we now all live in, she was steered away from certain buildings by realtors who knew that not all co-op boards would accept African-American shareholders and not all banks would lend money to African-Americans to purchase homes in certain buildings. And this was in the 1990s!

     
     

    The bank’s wisdom in rejecting Ernie is shown clearly when, in fact, he is soon unable to make payments on the mortgage he holds with the BBLA and attempts to return his home’s deed.
    Nice-guy George, however, in a move typical of the kind of lax administration Potter abhors, casually tells Ernie to “forget the principal” and “just pay the interest” while riding in his buddy’s cab.

    I’m sorry, this is purest fantasy, isn’t it? I don’t remember ever seeing this in the film, and a Google search for “its a wonderful life ernie ‘forget the principal’” turns up nothing other than Wharton’s article.

    Or is the fact that he made it up out of whole cloth central to his point?

     
     

    Donna Reed had two biological children

    How many mechanical ones?

     
     

    How many mechanical ones?

    I think as opposed to acquired children, like Calista has.
    .

     
     

    The bank’s wisdom in rejecting Ernie is shown clearly when, in fact, he is soon unable to make payments on the mortgage he holds with the BBLA and attempts to return his home’s deed.
    Nice-guy George, however, in a move typical of the kind of lax administration Potter abhors, casually tells Ernie to “forget the principal” and “just pay the interest” while riding in his buddy’s cab.

    Yeah, I’ve seen that movie more times than I can count and that is just plain not in there.

     
    Pupienus, playing a whinger
     

    Never mind that the vast majority of the bad loans had nothing to do with the government making anyone do anything

    LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LALALALA

     
     

    Jim, the funny/sad/pathetic thing is “forget the principal” is exactly how the Mr. Potters have been and continued to be “Bailey’d” out.

    And it’s bipartisan…Obama and his team have taken us further down the same trail that G.W. Bush and company blazed. (Not to mention, Bill Clinton, G.H.W. Bush, and Ronnie 666 Reagan before that.)

    This is nothing more than a slap fight to distract people from noticing that they have no choice.
    ~

     
     

    Speaking of wikipedia and Donna Reed, it tells me that Donna Reed was apparently some kind of dirty hippy peacenik type. Alas, I don’t think either James Stewart or Frank Capra shared her politics.

     
     

    If you read any Taibbi, he says they were slobbering all over themselves at the prospect of lending that money.

     
     

    Didn’t J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI look at this thing when it originally came out and similarly proclaim it Communist Propaganda?

     
     

    How many mechanical ones?

    She also had two adopted children, but Wikipedia wasn’t clear on whether or not they were robots.

     
     

    What the I don’t even –

    I know I did not miss these two things. Potter obviously, clearly, knowingly, and such and so on, stole the envelope! It was not an error – he looked around shiftily, even! The paragon of Wharton’s youth was a THIEF! Actually, not a complete shock.

    Thing the second. POTTER GOT AWAY WITH IT. The money never turned up again, he got no comeuppance, not even a dirty look at the end from Bailey. TVTropes wept.

    Dear John Wharton, supergenius,

    ESADIAF

    With love, me

     
     

    Borrowing money from a bank is THEFT!!

    It’s worse than that, even. One of Bailey’s dastardly deeds is that he loaned his bank his own personal money (honeymoon fund) to stave off the run.

    In other words:

    Lending your neighbours your own damn money is THEFT!

     
     

    She also had two adopted children, but Wikipedia wasn’t clear on whether or not they were robots.

    Wasn’t there a documentary about that? “Small Wonder”, I believe?

    Screaming nightmares and stuff….

     
     

    Undoubtedly, Bailey would have been a big fan of the ill-fated, “nothing down, ‘no-doc’ loan” program

    Actually, if one were to, oh, I don’t know, READ THE FUCKING SCRIPT, George says, “Well, I handled that, Mr. Potter. You have all the papers there. His salary, insurance. I can personally vouch for his character.” Oh noes, verified ability to pay even if he DIES! Yeah, fuck you, you dishonest motherfucker.

    When Violet leaves for the bright lights of New York, one of George’s farewell gifts to her is a phony letter of recommendation which causes even the jaded Violet to blurt, “But that’s lying, George!” Worse than this fraud, he gives the departing floozy a cash gift, telling her, “It’s a loan, Violet! I’m in the loan business.”

    Again, I invite the perusal of the script. The words “But that’s lying, George!” do not appear. Also: PERSONAL loan, asshole. He takes the money from his pocket, not the safe.

    Ernie the taxi driver should have “moved back in with the missus’ folks” as he wanted to do until he could retrain to afford the nice home he wanted for his family.

    Jesus Christ, do you even know what quotation marks mean? Fuck it, you don’t even know how to spell champagne.

     
     

    Where can I get a robot baby and do they poop? AFAF.

     
     

    Its spelled Champaign. Fighting Illini, I believe.

     
     

    CHRISTMAS GIFTS IS THEFT

    Oh, and Jimmy Stewart? Motherfucking WWII Air Force war hero. Tailgunner on a Flying Fortress, I believe (although I’m too lazy to look it up right now). So don’t tell me that he hated his country.

     
     

    Nice-guy George, however, in a move typical of the kind of lax administration Potter abhors, casually tells Ernie to “forget the principal” and “just pay the interest” while riding in his buddy’s cab.

    The word “principal” only appears in the script in the stage directions.

     
     

    I know I did not miss these two things. Potter obviously, clearly, knowingly, and such and so on, stole the envelope!

    Also he closed the bank for an entire week during the panic. He personally would buy shares for 50% of their value but would not let other people get to their own money if in was under his control. I suppose it was legal in a way stealing the deposit wasn’t, but it was certainly unethical and made him the number one driver of the panic locally.

     
     

    Its spelled Champaign

    That’s certainly how he spelled it… “the Champaign bill is on the table.” He also ordered the muscles because he doesn’t like how they prepare the stake.

     
     

    He also ordered the muscles because he doesn’t like how they prepare the stake.

    Well, you can be all snarky and “smart” and whatever, but they never serve it with enough vampire blood on it. So…whatever, tigris.

     
     

    Its spelled Champaign. Fighting Illini, I believe.

    Yep. That’s where I went to college.

     
     

    He also ordered the muscles because he doesn’t like how they prepare the stake.
    Vegetarians might prefer the stick of salary.

     
     

    Major Kong be illining.

     
     

    watch out for the carats, though!

     
     

    Whoah. Who turned out the lights?

     
     

    Picture whirled pees.

    For real…Mini__B’s room.

     
     

    my gob is thoroughly smacked by this one…and i didn’t think it was possible after reading the likes of jeannie d’angelis and robin of berkley…

     
    St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
     

    I’ve never thought that was snark by the way. Everything the right-wing does and says is evidence that they read A Christmas Carol (well, watch), and must surely be confused and angered by the fact that at the beginning of the film, this paragon of right-wing sensibility is somehow considered wrong and worth brainwashing into a filthy degenerate hippie by ghosts.

    Ghosts who likely serve the devil, from their perspective.

     
     

    For real…Mini__B’s room.

    or diaper…

     
     

    Much nicer in Firefox.

     
     

    okay, so it’s NOT me? wha happened?

     
     

    May I just take a moment to say, “I can’t read this new format.” Or possibly, “I can’t read this fucking page of gray shit because I am not a fucking Doppler Radar Receiver.”

    Light gray blockquotes, medium gray comments, dark gray background – am I the only one who feels like a cave newt? And while I’m at it, the cute white lines every *two* comments and the equal line spacing between the Nym, date, and comment, are also confusing to the eye.

    Seriously dudes, this is most annoying. And no edit yet.

     
     

    Mmmmm. Heroin kicked in. Screen is a nice shade of black print on black screen. I am the Armadillo…

     
     

    i freaked a bit because i accidently hit ‘compatibility mode’ on my tool bar when i was refreshing…and it refreshed to this…what are the chances? i thought i broked my computerz again…

    and no…not a fan of the new set up…

     
     

    Wow, it really does look crazy in not-Firefox.

     
     

    In not-Firefox? Hell, it looks pretty crazy in Firefox too.

     
     

    Looks crazy to me IN FireFox. I blame George Bailey.

     
     

    Who you callin’ crazy?

     
     

    but the biggest question is is the time fixed?

     
     

    Safari fine. NOt at home socant check opera. OBS?

     
     

    Whoa! Safari is now sickly.

     
     

    Opera’s showing the page all gray on gray (11.52 on WinXP). Wha hoppen?

     
     

    Hey! I need to put my nym in on teh nu fone.

     
     

    Safari was all ooky for a minute but it’s ok now.

     
     

    Someone dicked up the style sheet.
    .

     
     

    Looks the same to me as it always has. I’m using Firefox.

     
     

    Looks the same to me as it always has. I’m using Firefox.

    You haz style sheet cached. Just you wait.
    .

     
     

    Ah, there we are. Firefox must have been using a cached stylesheet.

    Yucky to read.

     
     

    But yeah, it hurts so bad, I’m headin’ over to Eschaton. 😉
    .

     
     

    You haz style sheet cached. Just you wait.

    Ah, now it’s grey on grey.

     
     

    Whoa! Safari is now sickly.

    i was going to say…i tried safari too and it is def sickly…oh my, i feel just like i do when they change facebook…sigh…

     
     

    You fucked up tintin! It’s supposed to be “gay,” not “gray.”

     
     

    I really don’t like the movie – too treacle for me. But this is just nuts. So I feel compelled to present a palette cleanser of a totally unrelated kind. Saturday Night at the Duck’s Nuts. I don’t know Attila – I have a second degree of separation from him.

     
     

    “High ideals without common sense can ruin a town” — or a nation — as easy credit creates “a discontented, sociopathic investor class instead of a thrifty working class. All because starry-eyed dreamers like Bailey Ayn Rand put impossible ideas into their heads.”

    Doesn’t that scan better?

     
     

    I’m scared. Somebody hold me. Preferably Alison Brie.

     
     

    You fucked up tintin! It’s supposed to be “gay,” not “gray.”

    now i know why he was all jocular and such in the comments section: he was trying to distract us while he stole the old format!

    *shakes fist*

     
     

    Doesn’t that scan better?

    well it would if it wasn’t on this ooey grey background…

     
     

    goddammit, kong! now i have ‘blue on blue’ stuck in my head!!!

     
     

    I never saw this movie. But I did watch The Grapes of Wrath recently and I have to give it two mehs up.

    The Henry Fonda sure was a handsome sunuvabitch.

     
     

    Another Attilla rant by an Attila friend

     
     

    IE9 SHUT THE FUCK UP DON’T EVEN SAY IT doesn’t like it either

     
     

    Okay, I’m a bit tipsy but here is Thatcher fucked the kids”

     
     

    On the other hand we must applaud our owners finally embracing the Confederate grey.

     
    Fenwick the Ruthless, Destroyer of Threads
     

    Has something catastrophic happened to Sadlyville? Must have, because I can’t read the screen due to some dark, dense gray fog that has descended. I mean DARK gray, way too dark to provide enough text-contrast for my bifocaled, 62-year-old eyes. Eye-strain, what is it?

    No sense trying to ketchup the thread when I can’t read it. When Sadly, No! is readable again, I’ll return from exile.

    In the meantime, I wish you all success in your endeavors and happiness in your lives.

    yer friend, Fenwick

    Fenwick

     
     

    Don’t know how the CSS file got trashed. I’ll send a note to our overlords and see if it can be fixed.

     
     

    Don’t know how the CSS file got trashed. I’ll send a note to our overlords and see if it can be fixed.

    oh, good dog…i hope that wasn’t me…

     
     

    Another Fenwick nymfail. (This time however, Gray Fog of Death is the Destroyer of Threads. I’m just an innocent bystander.)

     
     

    I’m scared. Somebody hold me. Preferably Alison Brie.

    I’d sure like to get my phallus in Alison.

    The Henry Fonda sure was a handsome sunuvabitch.

    He was great in Once Upon a Time in the West. Come to think of it, John Wharton would probably consider him to be the hero of the movie.

     
     

    He was great in Once Upon a Time in the West.

    YES. Holy shit was he terrific.

     
     

    Yeah–I remember my mom soaking her chair when she thought about Newman and Redford together in that crummy movie they were in.

    I rate for Paul Newman too. We’re SISTERS!

     
     

    OMG, it’s grey. Does this mean I shouldn’t link to pictures of Josh Lucas?

     
     

    Yeah–I remember my mom soaking her chair when she thought about Newman and Redford together in that crummy movie they were in.

    There were a couple.

     
     

    “A bit more cold-hearted caution in the ’40s might have helped us avoid the civil unrest and plummeting living standards we almost certainly will experience”

    Similarly, 100 years from now when Iraq is a beacon of peeance and freeance we will all have George W. Bush to thank, and he will take his place in the pantheon of great world leaders.

     
     

    There were a couple.

    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

    I tried to watch it recently and was less than impressed. I don’t much like Westerns, though. I did like Pale Rider, however. Seeing Moriarty get beat down like the little bitch he is was kinda cool. Plus when Clint Eastwood threw that bucket of water on the guy and totally missed the match–that was SO AWESOME.

     
     

    I tried to watch it recently and was less than impressed.

    Hmm…I had this idea that it was a Very 70’s Movie but it was close: 1969. I don’t think being for or against Westerns matters much for that one. It was kind of odd in its style.

     
     

    Safari fine. NOt at home socant check opera. OBS?

    Yeah, it’s fucked up in Opera also and too.

    On an unrelated but good note, version 11.61 of Opera seems to have fixed a bunch of the issues that 11.60 had.

     
     

    So what’s up with the new fucked up color scheme?

    I have to do a bit too much work to make out the italicized tex, and the other is pretty difficult to read as well.
    .

     
     

    Don’t know how the CSS file got trashed. I’ll send a note to our overlords and see if it can be fixed.

    That ‘splains things…Thanks tintin.
    .

     
     

    See upthread, if you can.

     
     

    So what’s up with the new fucked up color scheme?

    I blame the grey on the greys.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    On an unrelated but good note, version 11.61 of Opera seems to have fixed a bunch of the issues that 11.60 had.

    Good to know, thanks! It asked me again today and I said no. Mebbee I’ll let it upgrade next time.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    Was discussing favorite movies with my gaybros (at my favorite gaybro site) earlier today – several rated for Sundance kid. Redford AND Newman? Dayum!

     
     

    THIS is my favorite paul newman…i wanted to use it as our publicity photo for our fundraising “Classic Hollywood Glamour” event last year…probably if i would have had the gay man i have on our committee now, i could have prevailed…

     
     

    Everything is gray. Is there something wrong with my screen?

     
     

    I blame the grey on the greys.

    oh, i was thinking of something more dreadful like this grey…

     
     

    I was preparing some snark about “A Christmas Carol,” but then I saw in the comments:

    Please consider a critical look at A Christmas Carol. It’s not quite as ripe a target, but it has some wonderful inconsistencies.

    You really can’t. Make. This. Shit. Up.

     
     

    Do we really think Scrooge was shamed by the death of Tiny Tim? NO WAY. I certainly wouldn’t be.

     
     

    Do we really think Scrooge was shamed by the death of Tiny Tim?

    Today’s GOP would not only not be ashamed – they would cheer.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    Crispy roast duck with a cherry balsamic sauce. Braised celery and leeks. wild rice pilaf. Willamette Pinot Noir.

     
     

    Sadly, No! : Blue Turning Grey

     
     

    You know, the Gospels are ripe for this kind of re-imagining. After all, Jesus was a soppy bleeding heart socialist who healed the sick and fed the poor for free while Judas was more sensible, not wanting to waste money on crap like foot perfumery. And who worked with the religious establishment instead of always attacking religious leaders? Also selling out Big J for 30 pieces of silver was the kind of forward-thinking risk-taking that marks job creators.

     
     

    Two weeks ago I went so barking mad that I gave two cops trying to restrain me a workout and was committed. I was, however, not this crazy.

    How can a person think like this?

    How can the top 1% stand to have their dicks sucked this hard for that long?

    What are the chances that this guy is anywhere on the radar of the super-rich he’s defending?

    Zip.

    Nada.

    Zilch.

    This guy is on his knees, sucking madly at an imaginary dick praying for the money shot.

    Is tres pathetique.

     
     

    i made a chicken pot pie…

     
     

    Glad to see you back wiley

     
     

    This guy is on his knees, sucking madly at an imaginary dick praying for the money shot.

    Yes, it’s faith, and only faith. Mitt and Newt would happily fire him, but Newt would have a bolder lie about it.

     
     

    Glad to see you, too, major kong.

     
     

    S,N! has a new color scheme today. This movie comes out today. Coincedence? Methinks that Tintin is raking in the big advertising dough.

     
     

    Oops, I think I can hear bbkf ahemming across the intertubes.

     
     

    Do we really think Scrooge was shamed by the death of Tiny Tim?

    Today’s GOP would not only not be ashamed – they would cheer.

    Michelle Malkin would be checking the kitchen countertops.

     
     

    Yeah, glad to know I’m not the only S,N!er who’s seeing a lot of gray. What gives?

     
     

    Mr Kong I was all set to go to U of I in 1990 but it didn’t quite work out. I went to visit a friend a year later and realized that I would have died for sure if I had gone to school there. Lightweight in the liquor dept. Worked out in the end though because it would have been so much wasted money and when I did get my degree I was coherent.

     
     

    I get it now. It’s not me. But I have to tell you that I went into the bathroom, looked at my eyes in the mirror real close, then cleaned my glasses with alcohol.

     
     

    hey major, have you ever been to chagrin falls?

     
     

    Rose are red
    Sadly, No!’s gray
    I’m beating my head
    Hard on the tay
    Ble.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    Glad to see u be ok, wiley. We wuz mighty worried.

     
     

    hey wiley…how come no commenting at your blog? i would make super nice ones…

     
     

    Rose are red
    Sadly, No!’s gray
    I’m beating my head
    Hard on the tay
    Ble.

    That was terri
    Ble.

     
     

    That was terri
    Ble.

    Good news! Mini__B’s stopped puking.

    Other news! His mother has started.

     
     

    So she read your poem?

     
     

    FUUUUUUUUUUCK. it’s grey again.

     
     

    So she read your poem?

    No, she puked on the subway coming home. She’s now a true NYer.

     
     

    bbkf, I like lots of pot in my chicken pot pie.

     
     

    Oh geez. Poor Mrs._B. I can’t even joke about that. Listen, I need the _B Clan up and running so I feel ok poking gentle fun at them.

     
     

    bbkf, I like lots of pot in my chicken pot pie.

    my son told me today that he and the housemates are making special baked goods and other things this weekend including tootsie rolls…and butter…he called me to ask questions about cheesecloth…

     
     

    No, she puked on the subway coming home. She’s now a true NYer.

    eck…so far we have been spared the wretched retching…we may be the only ones in the county who have…

    *knocks wood*

    also, i know i don’t have to tell you this, but be very good to mrs. _b…and i’m glad mini has made a recovery…

     
     

    What the hell did you guys do to the page? Gray on gray text? Is this some sort of protest against SOPA or something?

     
     

    Gray would be the color
    If I had a heart
    C’mon and tell me,
    You’ll make this all go away

     
     

    Most random yet true comment:

    After watching Easy A, I have decided that I am madly in love with Emma Stone.

    That is all. Carry on.

     
     

    I could hide the text I’m readin’
    I could see the drear I’m thinkin’
    If only I had some gray

     
     

    This reminds me of some artsy-fartsy webpage I ran across some time ago, I dunno, poetry or something, I guess, anyway, the text was white-on-white, and could only be read by highlighting with the mouse. All I ended up wanting to do was locate the author, the web designer, everyone who was responsible for that concept, and line them up for a stooge-slap.

     
     

    Is this blog readable? Sadly, no. Consider changing your colour scheme.

     
     

    Relax, every silver lining has a Touch of Grey

     
     

    Great, on top of the grey thing, Sadly, No! also won’t let me post pictures of Alison Brie.

    You’ve won this round, website, but I’ll have my revenge!

     
     

    Mama, take this badge off of me
    I don’t need it anymore.
    It’s gettin’ dark, too dark to see
    I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.
    ~

     
     

    Who borked it???

    I am watching Portlandia. I love Aimee Mann. I can’t believe they haven’t made fun of the vegan strip club yet.

     
     

    HELPING ONE ANOTHER IS THEFT!

     
     

    I see a beige blog
    And I want it painted gray
    No colors anymore
    I want them far away
    I see the news go by
    Dressed in its logo’ed clothes
    I have to read hentai
    Until my darkness goes

     
     

    Grey Sadly Grey
    Grey across my big flat screen
    Grey Sadly Grey
    Makes me utter oaths obscene

     
     

    Taking things that don’t belong to you is THEFT!

     
     

    A woman’s sovereignty is THEFT!

     
     

    “my son told me today that he and the housemates are making special baked goods and other things this weekend including tootsie rolls…and butter…he called me to ask questions about cheesecloth…”–bbkf

    Young beekeepers work up a powerful appetite.

     
     

    Heh heh heh. Heehee!

    Hahahahahaha!

    Randy Duke Cunningham just endorsed Gingrich … by mail … from his prison cell. By Jingo, doing 100 months in stir for bribery won’t keep Randy down!

    “I have 80% of inmates that would vote for you. … When you are President, I could help you with prison & justice reform if wanted.”

    My freude is so schaden that it’s overclocking like a bitch in heat over here.

     
     

    N__B said,

    January 28, 2012 at 5:36

    EPIC LAMPOON IS EPIC!

     
     

    Trippy existential battleship grey thread, REPRAZENT.

    PROTIP: Try using Control-A /Command-A to make text less vague.

     
     

    Wiley, I’m glad you’re back and hope all the best for you.

     
     

    Randy “Duke” Cunningham: “I have 80% of inmates that would vote for you”

    I would not have guessed the black and latino prisoners would vote for Newt. Cunningham must be doing a fine job preaching the Gingrich Gospel in there.

     
     

    GAHHH! It’s STILL broken!

     
     

    hey major, have you ever been to chagrin falls?

    I haven’t. I don’t get up around Cleveland all that often. I’ll have to check it out next time I’m up that way.

     
     

    Randy Duke Cunningham just endorsed Gingrich

    Looks like Newt has the convicted-felon-F4-driver demographic cinched up.

     
     

    OH FOR FUCK’S GREEN SAKE.
    .

     
     

    1:03 AM EST and I’m seeing the usual black text in alternating green(ish) and grey free floating boxes. All seems to be well. Glad I missed all the commotion. Firefox 9.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.7.2.

     
     

    Oh fer fcusk*&&$*$&&$*W#(&)R) s sake.

    FYWP.

    I clicked refresh to see my comment and voila.
    Now I haz hurt peepers too.

     
     

    Oooo, neat, now there be numbers!

     
     

    On an unrelated but good note, version 11.61 of Opera seems to have fixed a bunch of the issues that 11.60 had.

    There’s still one really odious bug, though, unless it’s just a TVTropes thing– if you search within a big full of text, clicking on the highlighted text down past the beginning just bounces the cursor to the beginning of the text again. So basically you can’t edit worth a shit.

     
     

    I’m on the work computer with IE7 and the S,N! layout has been same as usual all evening.

     
     

    Oooh, gravitars? Or is Teh Mgmt just fuckin’ with us?

     
     

    The layout should be better now. It’s certainly different at least….

     
     

    If it isn’t, it’s the Germans’ fault.

     
     

    Damn you, Ajax comments!

     
     

    hey wiley…how come no commenting at your blog? i would make super nice ones…

    My adorable 24/7 tech guy– clouds— is working on making “a social network in a box” (buddypress) that I’ll call “the dream of a common language”. It is by invitation only and youse guyses are t-totally invited and ya’lls can submit friends’ names for invites.

    I’ll have no truck with the random shits. It’s my house and I haven’t finished building it yet, but “my life in order” is not open to comments and will not be. I’ve just started putting up a decade worth of material and am making more now.

     
     

    Hey, new Sadly! I likes it.

     
     

    BUT no navigation arrows.
    Demanding Smut is demanding.
    Also I demand that Wiley and Mikey meet up some time to swap straitjacket stories.

     
     

    Now that it’s fixed, it looks quite nice actually!

     
     

    I also see I messed up my comment about Opera 11.6x’s bug: the phrase should be “a big <TEXTAREA> full of text”. Derp.

     
     

    Old Salt Smut still searches for the North West passage. “Where are my navigation arrows?” he says.

     
     

    To be fair, Oz is way more interesting than Kansas. Even leaving aside the color vs b+w thing. There’s no indication that Auntie Em and Uncle Whatever were anything other than the most boring farm people stereotypes you can imagine.

     
     

    I’m glad the Dark Fog is gone. Thanks to whoever fixed it. I like the new design.

    (1) Color scheme. I like monochromatics; this mix is elegant, imo.

    (2) Elimination of extraneous material below the ‘Leave a Repy’ box. Much cleaner. (I don’t what the ‘Tags’ thing does or how to use it.)

    It appears that Sadlyville is mostly populated by silhouettes of faceless pawns (no doubt getting our sweet, sweet Soros money). I don’t know how to make one of those visual box thinga-ma-jigs next to the names. Prolly too complex for a Luddite anyway.

     
     

    And I suppose Potter’s pocketing the deposit mislaid by Uncle Billy was just good the good capitalist’s business sense for taking something that doesn’t belong to him because, well, it’s better if he has it than its rightful owner, amiright? Christ, what criminal minds right wingers nurture, no?

     
     

    On Firefox, I’m seeing the site back in the old delicate shades of pink and blue.

     
     

    never sure what will cause me to drop out of lurkance vile to comment, but wiley back in comments seems to have done it this time. Gla to see you back.

     
     

    I’m glad, too.

    also:

    Northwest Passage

    VBSR?

     
     

    I see piranhas, everywhere.

    Good acid.
    .

     
     

    I haven’t. I don’t get up around Cleveland all that often. I’ll have to check it out next time I’m up that way.

    i heard about it on the ray-die-o the other day…chagrin is one of my favorite and imo an underused word…

     
     

    wiley said,

    January 28, 2012 at 9:34

    aha…good answer…i look forward to buddypress thingy…and again, i’m glad you are back among us…

     
     

    Yay1 It’s fixed!

     
     

    I’m glad the Dark Fog is gone. Thanks to whoever fixed it. I like the new design.

    wth? now what am i missing? sadly is back to it’s blue and white for me…

     
     

    Christ, what criminal minds right wingers nurture, no?

    yestiddy i was left completely speechless by the complete jackholiness of wharton’s misguided re-imagining of iawl…but after sleeping on it this is what it all boils down to…

    yeah, potter fucking stole the deposit and let poor uncle billy take the heat for it…and we can’t forget his shady bidness protocols and ethics…

    BUT THAT’S OKAY IN WINGNUTTIA…i swear to bob, the next republicanconservativewingnut that tells me that they are the party of all that is good and holy i will fucking junkpunch them so hard! even if i have to reach through the teevee screen…

    more and more wingnuttia causes me to scratch my head and ponder the age old question: W.T.F?

     
     

    His grandchildren are not the only people Sandusky would like to be in contact with.

    heh…i bet not…

    DON’T DO IT CENTRE COUNTY COURT!!! eww…keep him away from children…it strikes me as really creepy…i get that he misses his grandkids in what i hope is a totes not pedo way, but wouldn’t you like, maybe NOT have ‘supervised contact’ with them until you were cleared of the charges? i mean, it seems like it would be awfully awkward…doubly so for the kids…but then again, it appears that sandusky has always put his own needs first…

     
     

    yeah, potter fucking stole the deposit and let poor uncle billy take the heat for it…and we can’t forget his shady bidness protocols and ethics…

    A brutha gots ta get his dividenz. NoI’msayin?

     
     

    I think he gets NO contact with minors whatsoever. Fuck him. He doesn’t get to whine about missing his little grandkids. Let’s hope he dies soon. Paterno down, two more scumbags left.

     
     

    dame across this over at the comics curmudgeon…and i can’t help but wonder…WWJWS?

    also found on that page in a mary worth panel, a character (whose missing daughter mw has restored to him) saying: “we have an individual and collective responsibility to help each other!”

    Letters to the Editor
    Mike Fink: Bring back Rex Morgan
    Mike Fink: Bring back Rex Morgan Comments 4 | Recommend 0
    January 16, 2012 8:30 am
    The “funnies” figure hugely in our daily lives. For philosophy, history and nostalgia. Sadly, they have shrunk, and pretty soon somebody will have to teach kids how to enjoy them, like fine wine or sonnets and haikus.

    I read Rex Morgan when the strip was in its formative phase, and the youthful physician visited a tea-drinking dowager named “Melissa” and ignored the charms of his yearning nurse “June Gale.” My wife and I miss the strip since its recent disappearance from the regrettably diminished comic section of The Journal.

    The reason? Is it just too realistic, and therefore, in fact responsible, for current tastes, editorial or popular? I mean, the anecdotes do raise genuine issues of health and human behavior. True, there is a sort of camp or funky almost unintentional hilarity about its style and content, but on the other hand there is also a timeliness and even truthfulness about the adventures and misadventures of its characters.

    One of the many, many purposes and uses of the familiar pages and persons is cultural continuity. We recall before June and Rex were married. June breast-fed her daughter, and she is growing up to be a fine and caring and courteous young lady. I think I read that there was some objection to the concern for abusive high school adolescent boys, but they are held to account and the good doctor instructs us in healthy common sense and awareness of the pitfalls intrinsic to abused freedoms and circumstances.

    Please, put Rex Morgan back for us, so we can enjoy our coffee and our toast before facing the work world..

    Mike Fink
    Providence

     
     

    Fuck him

    I think that happens after he’s incarcerated.

     
     

    Let’s hope he dies soon. Paterno down, two more scumbags left.

    you know, i think we could team up and be the best vigilantes ever! i would love to have been a social worker, but know that i do not have the proper filtering functions…i would want to take every kid home with me…and shoot their parents…i’m pretty sure vigilantism is frowned upon in the social services…

     
     

    i’m pretty sure vigilantism is frowned upon in the social services…

    And yet Batman and Leslie Tompkins get along so well.

     
     

    I think that happens after he’s incarcerated.

    let’s hope it happens often…without lube…

     
     

    i’m pretty sure vigilantism is frowned upon in the social services…

    It’s only vigilantism if they can prove it was you. That’s what the masks and capes are for.

     
     

    Does this mask and cape make me look fat?

     
    The Tragically Flip
     

    digitusmedius said,

    And I suppose Potter’s pocketing the deposit mislaid by Uncle Billy was just good the good capitalist’s business sense for taking something that doesn’t belong to him because, well, it’s better if he has it than its rightful owner, amiright? Christ, what criminal minds right wingers nurture, no?

    Wingnuts might claim that Potter didn’t *steal* that money, Uncle Billy did accidentally hand it to him along with that newspaper. However when Bailey comes to Potter for help with the missing money, Potter phones the authorities and duly swears a false statement about the missing money while knowing full well how it went missing. One thing to keep found money but another to willfully conceal it and lie under oath about it when notified whose money it was you found.

    I seem to remember perjury under oath was once history’s greatest crime to wingnuts circa 1999.

     
    The Tragically Flip
     

    Here’s the real hero: It’s a Wonderful Lie

     
    The Tragically Flip
     

    I also eagerly await the wingnut screed explaining that the Joads and other tenant farmers of Oklahoma caused the dust bowl and the real heroes of Grapes of Wrath are the fruit orchards and police.

     
     

    Yay! We prayed the gray away!

    Fenwick: I left another musical item for you in the previous thread.

     
     

    Damn. You mean I’ve been patterning Welcome Back to Pottersville for subversive reasons and championing the wrong guy all these years? You live and learn!

    Btw, today’s my 7th anniversary as a blogger, or what I call “The 7 Year Bitch.” There’s also a link to my first blog post from January 28th, 2005.

     
     

    Wingnuts might claim that Potter didn’t *steal* that money, Uncle Billy did accidentally hand it to him along with that newspaper.

    That’s still theft.

     
     

    Also I demand that Wiley and Mikey meet up some time to swap straitjacket stories.

    Is a story of drugs so powerful that I don’t remember clouds coming to see me the first time, though I remember every single moment of my breakdown. Clouds said I gave him a subscription card to “Ranger Rick” and said, “You be the raccoon.” That’s how dangerous I was.

    I’ve requested the documentation of those drugs and now see that I’ll have to request that again, along with all other documentation of my two weeks in lock-down. Those are some sand-bagging, off-shelf drug prescribing bastards and I fought those drugs every step of the way. You would think, by the way that psychiatrist talked, that they could hold anyone for 180 days for refusing to accept their diagnosis and the most advertized drugs they use. It is not so. Danger to self or others is alles.

     
     

    How do the dance parlors, sleazy bars, etc. of Pottersville correspond with conservative family values?

     
    The Tragically Flip
     

    Some fresh mangoes amid the midden heap:

    You watched a different movie than me! I seem to remember the well-connected Mr. Potter’s secretary interupting him with “Excuse me Mr. Potter but the Governor’s on the line”. “Tell him he’ll have to wait”. The wheels of power! Potter got rich by backing governemt spending, George put his faith in the individual! It seems to me that Potter was a crony-capitalist greasing the wheels of government for his ‘investment’ schemes while George Bailey took the Adam Smith approach to banking; know your customers, visit their establishments, access the risks and don’t depend on government policy for your ‘success’. A hand-shake used to mean something. George based the savings and loan on mutual trust not inevitable (too-big-to-fail) intervention by ‘elected’ officials. George still answered to his shareholders, not a cartel.

    Mr. Potter, the government insider, crony-capitalist, sought to eliminate his competition, first through coercion – offering George a ‘position’ that would last only as long as it took to dump the BBBL and then through through theft. Potter stole the BBBL $8,000 deposit and called the State Bank examiner to throw George in jail. Potter broke the law! In Pottersville, Nick’s bar didn’t have to please its’ customers. His liquor license was protected by Mr. Potter and his political connections. He made sure Nick had the only one in town and the Governor got his guaranteed re-election. A money-machine. Mr. Potter worked the system. Pottersville is what socialism looks like. That’s the movie I saw.

    and another:

    As a natural born Republican, I have never before read anything that made me want to become a Democrat so much as this article.

     
     

    Huh, the style sheet reverted.

     
    The Tragically Flip
     

    That’s still theft.

    Agreed, but it’s a sort of nuanced type of theft which leaves sophists a bit of wiggle room. Swearing a false statement to the local prosecutor is clear cut illegal.

     
     

    Wiley, delurking to say Good to see you.Do what seems necessary to you to stay well and whole. Good Luck from a fellow ex-inmate.

     
     

    PS. Just to add to the SN Time/space confusion, all the comments show up in real SAfrican time for me.

     
     

    How do the dance parlors, sleazy bars, etc. of Pottersville correspond with conservative family values?

    Sounds like my kind of place.

     
     

    Thanks all youse guyses for making me welcome after the crazy. Most people shy away from such things.

    I’m having problems with wordpress and clouds is sleeping like a baby. Why my linkies no work! Am getting can’t-find-server messages. Rats and double rats!

     
     

    wiley–Yiiiikes.I’m glad you’re doing better, though.

    My little brother was prescribed a cocktail of shit from about age 9 to age 12 for various reasons, mostly school-related anxiety. (He’s obviously a high-functioning autistic, though he wasn’t diagnosed at the time. School can be really overwhelming and scary for people with brains like his). His drugs were so poorly mis-managed that he eventually had a psychotic break. My parents put him into an institution for about a month, where my mother was told that his anxiety was her fault because she smothered him.

    I’m not anti-psychiatry, but I don’t trust psychiatrists (I expect, AT BEST, to be treated like a fucking idiot every time I walk into a new psychiatrist’s office), and I don’t trust the culture of care that most of them treat patients in. There are plenty of good people who work in mental health, but there are plenty of terrible people, too, and the nature of psychiatry and the culture of medicine allow those people a *lot* of power. I’d like to think it’s changing, but I don’t know. I think there needs to be a big shift in social attitudes toward mental illness before we’re going to see much of a change.

    Shorter me: Psychiatrists are often paternalistic fucks, but you already knew this. I think requesting your records is a very, very good idea, and I hope you keep after them about it. I’m sorry it’s necessary in the first place.

     
     

    After reading some of that, I think Wharton would have found a way to explain how misunderstood Darth Vader was and how Vader was the real hero.

    All from the first Star Wars movie, not the sequels.

    At least one comment (KuroShinzo) had me giggling.

     
     

    Wiley, some of the links I hovered over have the http: in there twice. Remove one and they should be good to go.

     
     

    He’s obviously a high-functioning autistic, though he wasn’t diagnosed at the time. School can be really overwhelming and scary for people with brains like his.

    Boooooy howdy.

    My brother also is a high-functioning autistic, although such a diagnosis didn’t exist in the early 1960s. He also is gay. Put a gay kid with absolutely no sense of social skills or boundaries in a 1960s high school, and what do you get?

    You get a kid who writes love letters to the football team’s quarterback. And gets beaten up for it. Repeatedly. And you get a school that doesn’t do shit, except pressure our parents to yank him out of school, which they finally did at age 16.

    Whenever I see some wingnut asshole yammer about a return to pre-Vietnam “values,” I want to say, “Oh, you mean the values that almost got my brother killed?”

     
     

    Reverting the stylesheet.

     
     

    Thanks, Tigris. Cloudtech just woke up and he sez he can fix this problem en masse. Maybe he can figure out why it happened. I spent a lot of time copying the links to short stories and commentary on my website onto a page called wait for it—-

    .
    .
    .
    .
    .

    short stories and commentary and none of the links worked. Why it do that? I no want to do that no more. I had to copy the list and store it in order to not show the page full of dead links.

    Still, is fun to have a domain and one day I will have finished migrating to linux and will kick word press’s ass.

     
     

    I miss the grey.

    **DUCKS**

     
     

    My guess is some programmer decided people wouldn’t put in the http as part of the link and that he’d add it. So helpful! Except he didn’t test to see if they did already have it in there before he added it so when somebody puts in the whole thing it adds it on anyway. Oops! And just like that sloppy programming and half-assed error testing has made someone’s day a little worse.

     
     

    In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists! Hello, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints. That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that “gay” and “lesbian” don’t exist in the Star Wars universe. Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t. On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments–a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!

    How many times do I have to tell you conservatives? YOU’RE NOT FUNNY. So quit trying to be.

     
     

    But…that’s unfair. Lots of conservatives are plenty funny, just not intentionally.

    But I do love his reasoning…some people wrote some stuff on the internet, therefore gay couples=wrong. Hey, I know, let’s let the commenters at youtube determine who our next president should be. After all, a lot people write stupid shit at youtube and most of it is something along lines of “Shut-up you faggot.” So…Tony Perkins would probably approve of them as a voting block.

     
     

    I think The Rebellion is best represented by folks supporting centuries of oppression.

     
     

    In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!

    Hmmmm, fabulous must a Jedi be. – Yoda

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    Irony is dead. Irony has been squashed flatter than aancake under a steam roller then run through a cuisnart and burnt to a char.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/28/archbishop-york-legalise-gay-marriage

    The archbishop of a church founded to overturn centuries of tradition to modernize marriage laws says they shouldn’t overturn centuries of tradition to modernize marriage laws.

     
     

    But I do love his reasoning…some people wrote some stuff on the internet, therefore gay couples=wrong.

    Oh dear, I hope he never Googles Tony Perkins asshole… “About 970,000 results (0.38 seconds)”

     
     

    According to his logic I just disproved Christianity!

     
     

    Does this creep everyone out as much as it does me?

    That poor kid.

     
     

    Does this creep everyone out as much as it does me?

    My advice to young Konjit –

    Run!!!!! Save yourself! Get out while you still can!

     
     

    I was thinking the same thing. She doesn’t sound so much like a kid as a toy.

    Nancy French has no idea how much she reveals herself in that self-aggrandizing piece. Im pretty appalled. I hope that child is ready to live her life as a symbol of White beneficence.

     
     

    Apparently Indianapolis starts going insane a full week before the Superbowl.

    The Captain and I went out to find a place to eat dinner and every place had at least a 45 minute wait. We were so desperate we tried the food court at the mall, but even that was full to capacity. We ended up back at the hotel bar.

    The downtown Hyatt is full of families with small children, not sure why, so just getting on the elevator has been a challenge.

     
     

    Odd. Now S,N looks like it did before the Gray Fog of Death descended. No trace remaining of the monochrome design with the pawn people silhouettes. Was it all just a dream? Am I going insane?

     
     

    While on the subject of mental health….

    Psychiatrists are often paternalistic fucks

    Gee, I’ve worked with three psychiatrists over the last fifteen year or so. All three were wonderful, caring people.

    Perhaps I’ve just been lucky?

     
     

    Baltimore is unanimous about the Superbowl. Fuck Robert Irsay adn the Stolen Colts with a rusty andiron.

    Trivia: The first Superbowl was played when I was in HS (and followed football with the same devotion that I now have for baseball). God, I feel ancient sometimes….

     
     

    I’m lazy today. Not gonna ketchup the thread this time.

     
     

    Yeah, Fenwick, my first SuperBowl was the Green Bay Packers. I thought everybody loved them because my four year old self did. Now I love them for different reasons, though I haven’t followed football since I was twelve.

     
     

    And just like that sloppy programming and half-assed error testing has made someone’s day a little worse.

    hey, that sounds like my old job description!

     
     

    Fenwick, consider the possibility that, in a patriarchal society, (some) shrinks may treat women in a way that makes them paternalistic fucks. There, there, dear, don’t worry your little head, Papa fix.This may not work on you big ole tough guys and may also annoy the hell out of mature, intelligent women.
    And, yes, you have been lucky to find three good ones in a row. May your luck never run out. Hugs.

     
     

    I’m on the 12th-floor and I can hear people yelling down on the street.

    I figure by the time next Sunday rolls around they’ll be burning down the city.

     
     

    I figure by the time next Sunday rolls around they’ll be burning down the city.

    I’m going there at the end of February. Hopefully there will be some food in the ruins.

     
     

    Perhaps I’ve just been lucky?

    I have to wonder if you’re extraordinarily lucky or male. I dunno. But my batting average is college interns, state provided psychiatrists, the V.A., and lock-down at a public hospital. Lock-down was definitely filled with women and a few gentle men.

    I’ve had about two really good ones who had completed their educations and had full license to practice. One of them is Dr. Charles Kuttner who I am going to call soon (he got disgruntled with the V.A. and left in about 2006) and will thank on my website. I hope to get a few private sessions with him to discuss my bad history with psychiatry and psychoactive medications (I do believe the 20 minute med-check is why he left. He is trained in psychoanalysis which can and has been very useful to me.) and my new life as a nuclear activist.

    Dr. Kuttner was a pioneer in the recognition of PTSD and he understands that my trauma with nuclear forces is much bigger than my parents. It’s hard to overstress how important and vital that is to my mental health to have just one person I respect and admire acknowledge that my experience in missile warning trumps all other pain. That’s what my breakdown was about— every psychotic minute of it was about human evolution/extinction.

    And I got two, including beautiful Shane at the V.A. psyche ward (I voluntarily turned myself in February 2003) who said the magic words, “We can’t help you.” It was absolutely glorious to hear a mental health professional say that they were in over their heads with the specter of human extinction. Ah. Truth. I like.

     
     

    After having read Amity Schlaes’ wonderful book “The Forgotten Man”, a history of the Great Depression and one of the best in-depth analyses of the birth of the Progressive Movement I’ve ever read, I was able to see this film in a whole new light. It truly is amazing at how progressivism has become ingrained in the entire warp and woof of our society at every level, and it is alarming once you start recognizing that it is bearing the fruit of the seeds that were planted 100 years ago.

    Ya know, the country was doing fine economically until Reaganite “supply side economics” was visited upon it 40 years ago.

     
     

    I’m going there at the end of February. Hopefully there will be some food in the ruins.

    The rats will be sleek and well-fed after the big to-do.

    It’s hard to overstress how important and vital that is to my mental health to have just one person I respect and admire acknowledge that my experience in missile warning trumps all other pain. That’s what my breakdown was about— every psychotic minute of it was about human evolution/extinction.

    Talk about the burden of bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders! Hopefully, empathetic professionals will help you deal with this.

     
     

    my experience in missile warning trumps all other pain

    I think I can empathize.

     
     

    Ya know, the country was doing fine economically until Reaganite “supply side economics” was visited upon it 40 years ago.

    Supply-side perfectly accomplished its goal of redistribution of wealth upwards.

     
     

    Major – Anyone you know?

    Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.

     
     

    The monkey is a liar! Don’t believe him!

     
     

    The monkey lied, the rabbit done died.
    .

     
     

    To be fair, though, it was one sexxay monkay.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    As I recall, patient zero was a flight attendant, not a pilot.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    And it had nothing to do with monkey sex. Does anyone remember all the confusion because the “gay plague” was targeting Haitians? Really, in the very early days the reports were all saying the victims were “homosexual men, inavenous drug users and Haitians.” Took them sooooo fucking long to ralize that the Haitiams just lied about not having buttseks.

    What this has to do with fuck-all I have no idea.

     
     

    I knew you could major kong. Funny how many people have worked in nuclear forces, and how many of them I have run into.

     
     

    IIRC, Sam Kinison, the loudmouthed shithead some people thought was funny, had a big raving (what else) thing about fags and monkey-fucking.

     
     

    “The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints.”

    Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council may not know that this is pretty common in role-playing type video games now. Skyrim, for example, lets you gay marry if you like. You can marry an orc or an elf, for that matter. The Bible doesn’t specifically prohibit the latter, though.

     
     

    To be fair, though, it was one sexxay monkay.

    How could anyone refuse that purple ass?

     
     

    Hmmm. I thought that AIDS was spread so rapidly in Africa by the WHO reusing needles for vaccinations and the use of infected rhesus monkeys in African laboratories where cheap labor hauled the monkey corpses out with their bare hands.

    Who knew?

    Isn’t it fun to think sexual relations in which a woman can leave a man anytime she feels the urge is “promiscuous”. Doesn’t it make you feel smart to use a word like “promiscuous” and to call it that when you’re really saying “African nigger sluts?” and “butt-fucking niggers”. Oh, they’ll deny it, but their hatred drips off their tongues and they mean exactly what I said. Slavery was a blink ago in historic time and the South hasn’t yet gotten over it. It’s mighty tempting to just kick their collective ass again, innit?

    Most of us hear the dog whistles. They are perfectly audible and widely available in text now. It’s a shame they can’t hear themselves as others do, then they might have a c-l-u-e.

     
     

    it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.

    If you recall correctly? Guess what? You don’t. Most researchers think it probably came from butchering bush meat. There are other possible scenarios, the number which involve hot gay monkey sex being zero.

     
     

    Does anyone remember all the confusion because the “gay plague” was targeting Haitians?

    Yeah, I was the geeky grammar school kid reading Science.

    Took them sooooo fucking long to ralize that the Haitiams just lied about not having buttseks.

    It’s not just the GOPers!

     
    Pupienus, playing a whinger
     

    Ah, the Hyatt. I like their do not disturb door hangers.

    FYWP IT’S BEEN 20 MINUTES SINCE MY LAST POST FYFYFY

     
     

    Ah, the Hyatt. I like their do not disturb door hangers.

    Actually, that serves for both “do not disturb” and “please clean the room”.

     
     

    Does anyone remember all the confusion because the “gay plague” was targeting Haitians?

    I certainly remember the early days of the AIDS crisis. I was living in the SF Bay area at the time. One of my favorite co-workers contracted the disease and just…disappeared. He was too ashamed to admit it to (most of) the people he worked with and so he died without knowing how many of us cared about him. This still bothers me.

    Actually, that serves for both “do not disturb” and “please clean the room”.

    Also, “Dominique Strauss-Kahn is staying here.”

     
     

    “Dominique Strauss-Kahn is staying here.”

    Cave canem.

     
     

    There are other possible scenarios, the number which involve hot gay monkey sex being zero.

    Those things are mean. I don’t think I want to meet the guy who could have sex with one without getting ripped to shreds.

    Not to mention the poo flinging.

     
     

    Not to mention the poo flinging.

    There you have it. If there was a hot gay monkey sex scenario, it had to be a conservative what done it.

     
     

    it had to be a conservative what done it

    Do wetsuits come in monkey sizes?

     
     

    Do wetsuits come in monkey sizes?

    No, but I believe some monkeys come in wetsuit sizes.

     
     

    Although monkeys hate that that, ’cause wearing a wetsuit makes poo flinging bloody difficult.

     
     

    RE: AIDS – yes, patient zero was a Canadian flight attendant.

    But, there were cases of people who had visited Africa dying of mysterious AIDS-like illnesses all the way back into the 1950’s. There was one case of a British merchant marine who apparently transmitted the disease to his wife, who passed it on to their child in utero – they all died, just no one knew from what. The stories about AIDS being spread through polio vaccine have been pretty discredited. From the genetic analysis done on the virus, it seems to have jumped the species barrier about 75 – 100 years before “patient zero” was ever identified – meaning that it had been spreading in the human population in Africa for quite some time. That merchant marine was probably infected by a prostitute in Africa.

    As for the whole monkey-sex thing, that’s about what one would expect from a wingnut, to whom it’s probably never occured that monkeys are wild animals, who have teeth, and who can and do bite. It’s also possible that someone ate uncooked meat from an infected monkey. The one thing that’s certain is that AIDS didn’t get into the human population because of anyone fucking a monkey.

     
     

    Well, OT of hot monkey sex but related to poo-flinging one of my guilty pleasures of late has been reading the massive whine-fest that is Redstate, particularly the comment mangoes:

    who cannot see the connection between statism, nanny-statism, and the Left.

    Either someone recognizes that small government is good government, regardless of whoever is in charge, or someone is not, to my mind, fully conceiving of conservatism.

    This is where Santorum fails the sniff test.

    Mew

    Yes, santorum fails the sniff test.

    from here if you want cheap entertainment: http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/26/and-we-should-hate-newt-gingrich-for-this/

     
     

    RE: Haitians and AIDS – there were a lot of Haitian soldiers in Angola in the 1970s. They had sex with the locals who were already carrying HIV, and brought the virus back to Haiti with them.

     
     

    Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council

    You mean the liar Tony Perkins.

     
     

    OT of hot monkey sex

    You’ve lost me already.

     
     

    “Slavery was a blink ago in historic time and the South hasn’t yet gotten over it. ”

    They’ll never get over it either, certainly not in our lifetimes or even in our children’s lifetimes. And I’m not sure it was the slavery but the ass whipping itself. And what makes it really awful bitter is that the very people the war was fought over are walking around everywhere reminding them every single day that they got their asses kicked, really bad, and it’s still going on. So it’s like one prolonged kick in the ass that’s never going to stop.

     
     

    Bonobo chimps are supposed to be highly, indiscriminately sexual, but whenever I am at a zoo, they seem chaste. I have seen nature films in which the narrator claims they’ll have sex just because they’re bored, but as bored as they seem in zoos, the most they’ll hazard under surveillance is a bit of desultory masturbation.

    These nature films must be heavily edited, and the apes misrepresented. Given enough footage, you can catch them doing anything, except perhaps screwing humans.

     
     

    consider the possibility that, in a patriarchal society, (some) shrinks may treat women in a way that makes them paternalistic fucks. There, there, dear, don’t worry your little head,

    Suezboo: True … especially when seen against the whole [women’s] “hysteria” thing … a frequent, dismissive, one-size-fits-all ‘diagnosis’ for decades. Thanks for the hugs.

    *supportive bear hug for you, too.*

    Wiley: I have been very lucky indeed. I was first diagnosed [major depression] by a pyschiatrist in private practice. [I also worked with a woman psychologist associated with Sheppard-Pratt]

    The other two psychiatrists were from Johns Hopkins, through a community psychiatric program. The first of these was instrumental in persuading me to enter a Hopkins psychiatric unit when I fell into the Black Hole.

    My current psychiatrist is on the teaching faculty at Hopkins; his specialty is mood disorders, particularly depression.

    He iis a warm and caring person with a lively sense of humor. (I didn’t realize that he was gay until I read the Acknowledgments in his latest book [on bi-polar disorders]. As per standard form, the final thanks is to family; the Doc’s was to his partner.)

    ((The doc encouraged me to volunteer for a nationwide research study jointly conducted by a number of universities. One central purpose is to study patients <longitudinallly over time.))

    I have been very fortunate so far.

    Here’s a big supportive bear-hug for you also, Wiley

     
     

    They’ll never get over it either, certainly not in our lifetimes or even in our children’s lifetimes. And I’m not sure it was the slavery but the ass whipping itself.

    Especially since the shitbags keep celebrating their Treason in Defense of Slavery. Could you imagine the whining of these assholes if some northern city hosted a “March to the Sea” party?

     
     

    Could you imagine the whining of these assholes if some northern city hosted a “March to the Sea” party?

    So do we have the party on November 15th to commemorate the start of the March to the Sea, on Decemer 21st to commemorate the completion of the march or do we just party for five straight weeks? I vote for five weeks.

     
     

    My wife got the condescending female hysteria “diagnosis” from a male doctor as recently as c. 2000. Of course he phrased it differently than you’d get in 1900, but he was saying the same shit.

    Wiley’s missile warning system / human extinction trauma seems to fit the “complex PTSD” diagnosis better than the garden variety, if it’s in that spectrum, and of course I wouldn’t know. Long-term trauma (I hesitate to describe it as low-level as well) seems so badly misunderstood compared to the dramatic brute-force stuff. Mind-altering trauma doesn’t have to be of a kind that’s readily told through neat anecdotes, eh? And given how little the average person understands what such anecdotes really mean for the sufferer, how could they begin to grasp more subtle variants, as being equally hurtful and disruptive, for example.

     
     

    The archbishop of a church founded to overturn centuries of tradition to modernize marriage laws says they shouldn’t overturn centuries of tradition to modernize marriage laws.

    In a similar way, I always found the fate of Ed VIII somewhat ironic, historically speaking.

     
     

    Dr. Kuttner was a pioneer in the recognition of PTSD and he understands that my trauma with nuclear forces is much bigger than my parents. It’s hard to overstress how important and vital that is to my mental health to have just one person I respect and admire acknowledge that my experience in missile warning trumps all other pain. That’s what my breakdown was about— every psychotic minute of it was about human evolution/extinction.

    I had no idea, Wiley. Traumatic stress like nothing most people can never experience or even fully imagine. I am glad that your path intersected with Dr. K.

    Also, this gives me more confidence about moving to Albuquerque; my psychiatric treatment will be through the VA. [I’m ex-Army. Am I right in presuming you were ex-AF?] In NM, I will enter VA psychiatric treatment for the first time. I have a lot of confidence in, and admiration for, the Maryland VA system (which is where I now get the non-psychiatric part of my health care.]

    I have two stories that you might find of interest, Wiley. I’ll write them later in the thread. Now I need to chow down. I’m thinking salami sammiches.

     
     

    So do we have the party on November 15th to commemorate the start of the March to the Sea, on Decemer 21st to commemorate the completion of the march or do we just party for five straight weeks? I vote for five weeks.

    Yeah, let the butthurt drag on and on.

     
     

    After reading some of that, I think Wharton would have found a way to explain how misunderstood Darth Vader was and how Vader was the real hero.

    What are the rebels after all but a band of terrorists? The X-wing attack on the so-called “Death Star”, which is more accurately defined as a state of the art police station, clearly presages 9/11.

    And as for Vader, he is nothing more than a Dick Cheney figure, the only man in the Imperial government brave enough to make the hard choices necessary to deal with the existential threat posed by the rebels, whose leader, Ben Kenobi, a shadowy figure who lives in a cave in the desert, is obviously a Bin Laden analogue.

    Can I haz Corner job naow?

     
     

    What are the rebels after all but a band of terrorists?

    Religious fanatics, too.

     
     

    Can I haz Corner job naow?

    I dunno if that would be safe… Jonah would probably try to strangle you, leaving unsightly orange stains on your neck from his pudgy, Cheeto-hued digits. Of course, he’d probably pass out from the exertion of trying to do you in, but the mere proximity to a ragin’ Doughbob would probably be unsettling.

     
     

    I haz an expected sad.

    Y’all pigeon-hole all us southern peoples. We iz safe to hate.
    .

     
     

    Jennifer, you are quite well-informed about AIDS. I vow to never engage in the rumor about the WHO— that rumor dominated my circles in the eighties. Of course the disease floated around for a few decades before it upset a significant number of white straight folks— that’s when the panic set in on the news programs.

    O.K. guys— I’m so over it. Stop hugging me NOW. Thnx.

    Yes, CRA— complex. Though I disagree with the common mantra in support groups that all ptsd is the same. I disagree muchly. I also disagree with the VA using the mantra on adults who committed atrocity that they use on children— “It’s not your fault.” There is no healing in that when what you feel is genuine, involuntary shame. Mine gets worse every time because some of the people running for Commander in Chief get worse every time. The 2008 election campaign was grueling for me. Just awful. Klaxon in head go ruwoooooooooo…

    Yes Fenwick, some VA hospitals are excellent and well-staffed (they appear to be working as health-care teams in a top-notch way in which the patient is very much a part of the team. Perhaps they must do this when most of their patients would rather cold-cock them than hear a condescending lecture. As a female vet I get very happy receptions because the presence of a female calms the men down and women don’t bitch about the pain as much as men do. Stay on top of the paperwork though.

     
     

    wow…the nancy french thing?

    i also vote for the five week march to the sea party…

    and rilly? a ‘hysteria’ diagnosis in the 21st effing century? whoa…i hope mrs. cra junkpunched him…

    also, too…wiley has good words of wisdom…you are your own best advocate for health care…mental or physical…hubbkf and i are finding this out YET again…for some reason, the neurologist thought his major complaint was back pain…even though we iterated and reiterated NO back pain, why the fuck are my legs twitching 24/7? still waiting to hear from him with this ‘new’ info…

    on the upside, the tangerine pistachio sticky buns were such a hit we are having them again tomorrow morning…and for dinner we are having a turkey meatloaf (made in the ‘perfect meatloaf pan’!!!) which is topped with bacon and i am going to attempt home made au gratins…and a berry/apple crisp for dessert…there is also much lifetime and lmn to watch…a fucking perfect day, i would say…

     
     

    “and rilly? a ‘hysteria’ diagnosis in the 21st effing century? whoa…i hope mrs. cra junkpunched him…”

    I am relaying her telling of that encounter, and unfortunately no, she just sorta froze: the type of encounter you’d play differently if you had a second chance. And it’s hard to realize right off, sometimes, that the person in front of you is being a total ass.

    I shouldn’t describe my wife’s conditions, dunno why I brought em up in the first place that being the case; but this doctor certainly dismissed them as female trouble. Cycles and moods on account of you’re female. He was an MD, though, not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I am afraid it’s not much of story at this level of detail. I know I can tell the difference between PMS and X, Y, or Z.

     
     

    Well now, if you’re gonna get all junk-punchy about it…
    .

     
     

    Wiley:

    (First story:) I had an unusual experience several days after I was released from the psychiatric unit.

    Because Johns Hopkins in a teaching hospital, the psychiatric unit is part of the residency program. One of the residents in the ward asked if I would be willing to serve as a teaching subject for the School of Psychiatry … as a ‘high-functioning’ person with depression.

    The intervew was conducted by conducted by a senior faculty member(*) and observed by perhaps forty medical students. The teaching purpose is to model effective interviewing … and then to provide the students with an opportunity to ask questions themselves.

    (*) I was interviewed by the retiring Head of the School, a charming and engaging man. I concentrated on him completely … to shut out any feeling of being ‘on display’.

    Some scene-and-setting: I sat outside in the hall, while the unit resident provided my case background. (As part of her presentation, she exhibited my highly-detailed map of an imaginary city.) Then she came back to the hall and invited me in.

    It was a room seating about 30-40 students–all of them wearing white coats–arranged in a U-shape. On the fourth side was a low lectrure stage, upon which there were two chairs. Everyone in the room stood when I entered and remained standing until I sat down. Same thing when I left. (It is a School etiquette of some sort; respect-for-patients thing.)

    The professor ‘interviewed’ me–it was really more like a conversation–for perhaps 30-40 minutes, then the students had an opportunity to ask me questions.

    So that is my first unusual story for Wiley. The other story concerns my military service … and missiles.

     
     

    Missles? Really? Hmmm. If you like you can send your story to wileywitch at hotmail dot com. If you don’t want to tell it right now, I totally understand. It took me about 24 years to write “The World Ending” and I can’t read it right now.

     
     

    With that said, it was after the Jesus Movement of the ’60s and ’70s, during the 1980’s that many non-denominational churches sprouted up all over America, some of them overseen by self-appointed pastors and leaders who were unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

    Uh. That’s the whole point of the Baptists. Whether or not they belong to a larger organization and vote on whether or not Jesus performed miracles, they do like to be accountable to no one but themselves.

     
     

    That’s the whole point of the Baptists. Whether or not they belong to a larger organization and vote on whether or not Jesus performed miracles, they do like to be accountable to no one but themselves.

    I think the SBC has been getting much more hierarchical since the conservatives pretty much took the place over. They’ll probably be electing a Pope in a few years are the rate they’re going.

     
     

    Wharton’s version would have been much shorter:

    Clarence: Do us all a favor and just kill yourself, moocher.

    *Bells ring*

    FIN

     
     

    Wiley: Here is my second story. It takes a while to set up.

    I served in the Army in the mid-1970’s … Cold War. I was an intelligence analyst working in the former Army Security Agency (now merged into INSCOM). ASA was a military arm of NSA; I was cleared for TSSI.

    My unit was directly subordinate to HQ US Army Europe; my particular expertise was Group of Soviet Forces Germany, the five Soviet armies garrisoned in East Germany. I was a senior analyst in the Primary Control and Analysis Center; I had a desk in the Watch Office and another in the PCAC.

    Okay, now we’re getting closer to the story. My duty station was at Gablingen. [In addition to Army personnel, the facility had compartmented areas for the Naval Security Group targeting diplomatic traffic, a UK liaison, and a West German liaison. (Gab eventually became a German facility after reunification.)] We used to joke that the huge ‘Flair-9’ antenna array was actually a giant bullseye; because of its strategic intel value, Gab was undoubtedly high on the Soviet’s target list for the theater.

    At that leads to the Missiles. During one Soviet exercise, we had a break on a SCUD firing drill. The ‘notional’ target was Gablingen. It was all there: the battery’s set up and missile erection [VPR] … the by-the-book drill through the whole firing procedure. Only the actual firing was simulated.

    So. That’s my story, Wiley. There was a nuclear-armed missile aimed at Gab … and I knew it in almost real-time. It was a strange, strange moment as the procedure worked closer to the Launch command.

    Perhaps in that moment I may have had a fleeting glimpse of the real trauma you are dealing with and working through. My heart goes out to you.

    I

     
     

    Major: I’ll wager you have flown a B-52 with nuclear weapons aboard, at one time or another during during your career ?

     
     

    Baltimore is unanimous about the Superbowl. Fuck Robert Irsay adn the Stolen Colts with a rusty andiron.

    As a life time resident of Indiana I agree with you, Fenwick, and have always felt bad for you and yours. Baltimore among other things was always one of the great football towns and should never have had her franchise stolen in the middle of the night to be transported to a third rate city in the midwest that was simply trying to purchase a veneer of cool.

    I was in highschool when that shit went down and as an NFL fan (much more so at the time) was adamantly vocal in my disgust of the situation.

    When Baltimore secured a new franchise (stole the Browns from another great and storied football town) I thought that the colts should have had the class to give the name back to Baltimore and come up with something that had something to do with Indiana/Indianapolis for a team name. At least Cleveland was smart enough to keep the “Browns”.

    Needless to say this is a perfect distillation of what happens when Corporations are given citizenship and money trumps reason and everything else.

    And Fuck the SuperFucking Bowl. And the commercials which are never clever or particularly funny.

    An aside: When the Clots made it to the only one they ever will during the Manning era, I had the choice of rooting for division rival Bears led by a shitty (by NFL standards QB who happened to attend my high school) Or the Clots. I didn’e give a fuck about the outcome but rooted for the latter because a lot of my younger friends were big fans, and their happiness would help blunt the hatefullness that is an Indiana February.

    And partly because everyone round here hates them with the heat of a thousand suns, and partly ’cause Brady is from the Big Ten, I’m rooting for the Pat’s next weekend.

    Aren’t they playing the NFL’s version of flag football, i.e. the Pro-Bowl today?
    .

     
     

    Major: I’ll wager you have flown a B-52 with nuclear weapons aboard, at one time or another during during your career ?

    I sat alert with live nukes. We’d have 12 cruise missiles on the wing pylons and 4 bombs (B83 or B28) in the bomb bay.

    The aircraft would be “cocked” on alert, basically as close to being ready to fly as you could make it. They would load explosive cartridges in the engines so we could start them instantly – made a ton of smoke.

    We’d spend a week living in the alert facility. If they sounded the klaxon we’d run out to the jets, start the engines and wait for a message. Just like you’ve seen in a hundred movies.

    We never actually flew with live nukes. We didn’t even taxi the aircraft with them.

    Practice bomb runs were scored electronically by a radar site or we could drop a “shape”, which looked like a real bomb without any explody stuff in it.

     
     

    I thought that the colts should have had the class to give the name back to Baltimore and come up with something that had something to do with Indiana/Indianapolis for a team name. At least Cleveland was smart enough to keep the “Browns”.

    Totes agree!

    (Minor correction: Modell could have taken away the ‘Browns’ name with the team … but he was decent enough to leave the name behind for the Cleveland fans to use again.)

     
     

    Trivia: When Rudolf Hess flew to Britain during WWII, he took off from Gablingen.

     
     

    Thanx, Major, for your patience with the Fenwick Question Machine.

     
     

    (Minor correction: Modell could have taken away the ‘Browns’ name with the team … but he was decent enough to leave the name behind for the Cleveland fans to use again.)

    I had forgotten that detail…Though I think “decent enough” is a shorter way of saying that he was attempting to reduce the likelihood of being stabbed in the neck in the bathroom of a high-end hotel bar.
    .

     
     

    My duty station was at Gablingen.

    As a Ham Radio operator, I am currently drooling over the antenna array pictured and what I could do if I was permitted to have my way…
    🙂
    .

     
     

    Thanx, Major, for your patience with the Fenwick Question Machine.

    Not a problem. Always happy to tell B-52 stories.

     
     

    Christian girls are sluts! They should be more Christian!

    Also: some hypocritical preachers are in it for the money, power, and prestige, and some preacher’s kids rebel! This has never happened before in all of history; I blame hippies.

     
     

    With that said, it was after the Jesus Movement of the ’60s and ’70s, during the 1980’s that many non-denominational churches sprouted up all over America, some of them overseen by self-appointed pastors and leaders who were unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

    My God! It’s like they’re Protestant or something!

     
     

    Don’t blame the rich

    “Instead of carping about who is rich, we would be trying to help people who are poor.”

    Jesus Christ. Don’t complain about rich people, they can save us! By turning helping the poor into a yet another profit center for themselves.

     
     

    i don’t know why, but jeannie d’angelis just intrigues me…from her doe eyed, giraffe necked bio picture, to her tortured attempts at inspriring prose and relevancy…she is just one big package of nut bar…

    and through it all, she has no idea that her outrage and judgements really go against one of jesus’ teachings…oh, well…no christian is perfect!

     
     

    More on Gablingen. Beer People should enjoy the the Thorbrau oddity at the end of the article….

    Thorbräu had a special beer made for the installation, believed to be the only one of its kind. The label even depicted the secret base and it’s trademark antenna.

     
     

    doe eyed, giraffe necked

    Right there: any giraffe that would blind a deer to steal its eyes cannot be trusted.

     
     

    From vacuumslayer’s “Angry about inequality? Don’t blame the rich” link:

    “It may not be easy for the social impact bond model to work consistently, but it offers one big benefit: Instead of carping about who is rich, we would be trying to help people who are poor.”

    If we agree to stop “carping,” can we tax them? No, because “progressive taxation […] fails to take into account aptitude and work effort.” –Really?

    (Also, because Americans, when polled, overwhelmingly say that economic growth is important, but only about half think reducing income inequality is important, we ought to disregard the latter. If the opposite we’re true, we’d get a lecture about growth; here, the will of the almighty people is argument enough, in spite of facts suggesting that income inequality is a drag, even before you consider the morality of it.)

    “Either way, nonprofit groups like foundations pay the initial money for a new program and also oversee it, with government approval. The government will reimburse them several years later, possibly with a bonus — but only if agreed-upon benchmarks show that the program is working.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html?_r=1

    “If it falls short, taxpayers owe nothing.” –Except that pesky total reimbursement, eh? No chance of losing: moral hazard starkly illustrated. The idea seems to be, now as ever, that jury-rigging market systems to reward and protect the rich is the only acceptable way to help the poor. If the social impact bonds are rigged right, investors will come, and nobody will mention that the same poor-helping could be done without skimmers.

     
     

    This sort of stuff has come up before. As then, I’d like to point out the scene about Ernie the cab driver. Especially the line, spoken by George, “Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars?” Nowadays, with inflation, people may think he’s talking about a sensible downpayment. But in 1946, this was the entire cost of a modest house. The choice in this scene was between trusting a working man to pay back a loan or forcing him to buy everything with ready cash.

    And any critic, like this Wharton dude, who says otherwise is an ass.

     
    Pupienus and I mean Maximus
     

    B

    Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council

    You mean the liar Tony Perkins.

    I called for a new rule some while back at an LGBT site that all mentions of that guy must follow this form: “Tony Perkins, of the SPLC identified hate group Family Research Council…”

     
     

    Who is Abel endorsing?

     
     

    newticles…

     
     

    philanderers of a feather and all that…

     
     

    The Author of the “Don’t blame the rich” article that VS linked (swear to god the Wapo should come with a spam alert, twice it succeeded in locking up my browser):

    James Q Wilson, a former professor at Harvard University and UCLA, is the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. He is the author of “American Politics, Then and Now” “The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families” and “The Moral Sense.”

    The title of the second book and his current post are the tells. This guy (surprise, surprise) is simply a bootlicking shill for the Plutocracy.
    .

     
     

    This guy (surprise, surprise) is simply a bootlicking shill for the Plutocracy.

    Oh he’s licking something alright.

     
     

    Don’t blame the rich

    Sheesh. I left spoor there (my nom d’merde at the WaPoop is, of necessity, MyLittleMechaPony).
    My spoor got a recommendation in like 25 the fuck seconds.

    Teh mind reels … can it be? Is WaPoop harbouring Bolshevik pagan nymphos?

    One can only but hope & see.

     
     

    Oh he’s licking something alright.

    And unfortunately he has probably come to enjoy the taste it leaves in his mouth.
    .

     
     

    Reeling the mind.

     
     

    So slow and sleepy, I will further pimp mah kitteh.

    No, I didn’t Blingee LarryElvis — in fact, I have a HOSTS entry that sends all Blingee to the bit bucket, as I’ve become quite the fan of rumproast’s non-Blingee content, lately.
    .

     
     

    Thorbräu had a special beer made for the installation, believed to be the only one of its kind. The label even depicted the secret base and its trademark antenna.

    I call your attention to the special wine made for NZ’s version of NSA.

     
     

    I know this is a bit late, but my favorite part of the Tony Perkins freak out, is it’s attempt to argue that Bioware has got its back before “the gay mafia” intimidated them.

    Bioware included a female character in the Star Wars Universe named Juhani back in 2003 for the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

    So, not only is his argument dumb, bigoted, and fact-challenged. It’s also about 9 years behind the curve.

     
     

    “progressive taxation […] fails to take into account aptitude and work effort.”

    Says someone who no doubt supports taxing capital gains at a rate far lower than that on earned income and wrote an article calling himself “an enemy of the estate tax.”

     
     

    FWIW, James Q Wilson is one of the authors of the broken windows theory.

     
     

    Which brings us back to George Bailey, inveterate ne’er-do-well.

     
     

    See though, the thing here is, even if you could prove that rich people are rich because of “aptitude and work effort”, which no one has, and which at best remains a dubious proposition what with the Paris Hiltons and Jonah Goldbergs out there parading around for the have-nots to see what “hard work” looks like, it wouldn’t matter.

    Progressive taxation is needed for basic economic health, full stop.

    Progressive taxation is one of the very few brakes we can apply to the tendency in any capitalistic economy for wealth to concentrate into fewer and fewer hands; as we have seen, it only takes a generation of increasingly non-progressive taxation for over-accumulation of wealth to become a heavy drag on the economy. What follows in its wake, if it is not addressed, is less wealth even for those who control all of it than they would realize in a healthy economy in which prosperity is widely shared.

    Expecting rich people to pay a fair share of taxation is akin to expecting parents to have their children inoculated against deadly diseases before they start attending school: it’s for their own good. If the bad consequences of their failure to go along and comply with what’s good for them also can result in bad consequences for innocent by-standers, then we have a right to impose it upon them as requirement. That’s the price of getting to play with the other kids, and if they are too selfish or immature to abide by those guidelines, they can take their toys and go home. Otherwise, pony up.

     
     

    Tintin, also, too: As I noted over at roy’s, I think the logo for ASW needs improvement, and you probably would be the best person for the job. That streetlight is pitiful. When I think of “the Corner”, and think even moreso whenever I’ve visited the site, the symbol that springs to mind is that of a kid sitting on a stool in a corner, with a pointy hat on his head. Which really DOES communicate the essence of ASW, unlike that stupid streetlight.

    The kid on the stool wearing the pointy hat is, of course, Jonah.

    For artistic license, if you want to put him on a toilet instead of the other type of stool, that would work too.

     
     

    Newer posts now exist.

     
    Privatize the Profits! Socialize the Costs!
     

    I hear the updated version features a scene where Mr. Potter’s bank gets a sixteen trillion dollar bailout from the US Fed.

    Then he and his fellow bailed-out bankers all have their chauffeurs drive them over to the bridge where George Bailey is standing, so they can all chant in unison,

    “Jump, you wealth-redistributing liberal, jump!”

    from the rear windows of their Rolls-Royces.

     
     

    Tony Perkins is one of the most breathtakingly blatant bullshit-shovellers I’ve ever seen. What an oleaginous little oxygen thief. Any time he appears as a talking head, I expect him to whip out some widget & start pimping the GODBOX 9000, available NOW for only $49.95!

    Church Of Jesus Christ, Regional Sales Rep For Amway.

     
     

    I still remember my high school science class where there was this true/false question on a quiz: AIDS started when a person had sex with a monkey (I think African Green Monkey, maybe). It was one of those things where the teacher reads it aloud and nearly everybody has a good laugh about it, except the one guy who come to think of it was probably brought up by wingnuts.

     
     

    And as for Vader, he is nothing more than a Dick Cheney figure, the only man in the Imperial government brave enough to make the hard choices necessary to deal with the existential threat posed by the rebels

    You left out that he’s more machine than man.

     
     

    […] – I honestly don’t know what’s stranger, that this was written at all, or that it was written in late January. […]

     
     

    Also on the most-wanted list:

    Rick Blaine — Adulterer, drunkard, murderer, runs crooked Moroccan casino

    Alice in Wonderland — Drug-taking runaway given to disrespecting elders and consorting with freaks.

    Winnie the Pooh — Obese petty thief of agricultural products
    .
    Peter Rabbit — Trespassing varmint.

    Robin Hood — Obvious.

    Three Musketeers — Lawless troublemakers abetting adultery, lechery, public brawls and drunkenness. Also French.

    Snow White — Convicted escaped prisoner living with seven dwarves.

    Belle — Rebellious intellectual feminist, into bestiality.

    Tarzan — Uneducated lout interfering with hunters’ rights.

    Don Quixote — Senile vandal.

    Jesus — Convicted leftist hippie interfering with commerce.

     
     

     
     

    Scrooge HAS been defended by at least one prominent Republican:

    Edwin Meese also explained carefully that Scrooge paid Cratchit a very reasonable wage, etc. but that isn’t in this particular youtube segment. But it was an unforgettable moment in “the cluelessness of the American ruling class.”

     
     

    Truth is that it reminds me a lot of the pro-Scrooge rants I’ve read on Lew Rockwell’s site. The idea that entrepreneurs can do no wrong and the only things that matter are money, the market and themselves (anything that doesn’t is frivolous and not worth considering). Thus missing the true point of stories like “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” are about.

     
     

    Small correction here to the story about Cleveland losing the Browns to Baltimore…the fact that Cleveland kept the “Browns” name and colors (as well as its history and team records) to bestow upon its new NFL expansion team has nothing to do with any “decency” on the part of Art Modell, or even “his attempting to reduce the likelihood of being stabbed in the neck in the bathroom of a high-end hotel bar.” Modell was prevented from turning the Cleveland Browns into the Baltimore Browns only by virtue of a large number of lawsuits. That he saw the wisdom of settling for an arrangement in which his moved team would become a “new franchise” of the NFL, and in which he would be required to leave everything having to do with the Browns back in Cleveland for a new team to arrive later, surely had more to do with those lawsuits than with any “decency” or even urge for self-preservation on his part.

    Of course, since then the joke’s been on us in Cleveland, because the Ravens have become Super Bowl winners, and the Browns have managed to retain not only the old team’s other legacies, but also the legacy of misery to which every sports team in our city is heir.

     
     

    Beejeez, let’s not forget Goldlocks: troublemaking upstart and disrespecter of private property (I shit you not—some BornAgain twitbag in the 1980s WAS trying to get this story banned from her kids’ class reading list.)

    Also, the idea of George Bailey the Commie and Potter the savior of the free market, while bizarre, is not new.

    Someone sent me this link a few years ago. After I got up off the floor (having fallen on my ass), I posted it to all my friends.

    Once again, I shit you not:

    http://www.wisebread.com/fbi-considered-its-a-wonderful-life-communist-propaganda

     
     

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