Super Bowl Weekend Thread of Openness

by Ugh

Yes I'm rooting for the Patriots. For some reason I like to see records pushed as high as they can go.  Thus, Brady wining a 6th ring in his 8th Super Bowl appeals to me.  As does Federer continuing to win grand slams (do we really have to wait until Wimbledon to see him again though? Feh!).  Will be interesting to see if Lebron ends up as the NBA's all time leaders in points scored.  

I burnt myself out on reading and have discovered that Netflix has all 11 seasons of Cheers available. Watched the first 4 episodes of season 1 - it was a good show right from the start. Still need to watch Stranger Things 2.  Any recommendations for series/programming on Netflix either original or from elsewhere? 

It would be quite something if P!nk sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl from her knees.  

Happy Open Thread and Groundhog Day!

Comments

[JanieM]

For some reason I like to see records pushed as high as they can go.

Me too.

It would be quite something if P!nk sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl from her knees.

The incidence of terminal apoplexy in this country would go sky high. And with all the right people, too!

[cleek]

Any recommendations for series/programming on Netflix either original or from elsewhere?

we've recently been through: The Good Place, Master Of None, Black Mirror, Alias Grace, American Vandal, Lady Dynamite, Great British Baking Show.

[ral]

We just started watching Broadchurch, it's good. All of Person of Interest is available, I like it but YMMV.

[Countme-a-Demon]

The latest Black Mirror has couple of harrowing episodes. No self-driving vehicles, but the technology is inexorable in its unintended consequences.

Not a big fan of "Stranger Things". Kind of reminds me of The Walking Dead, by which I mean the human characters, even in their dreadful circumstances, have their quotidian moments of soap operaish interactions, but you can feel the script writers getting antsy after too much of that and saying "OK, cue the zombies and the face chewing!"

Watched a zombie flick last night that brings some new angles to the genre.

"The Girl With All The Gifts"

Glenn Close gets eaten like a bunny.

[CharlesWT]

One of Netflix's irritating aspects is that, unlike other streaming services, you can't peruse its content without an active account. :(

[wj]

I expect to give the Super Bowl a miss. I used to be something of a football fan -- to the point that my wife would refer to herself during the fall as a "football widow." But I decided that, given the growing evidence that the sport generates significant brain damage among players, I just couldn't in good conscience keep watching.

Yes, I know that one less TV viewer won't make a noticeable difference in the sport's finances. Which is all that would cut down on the number of kids playing and damaging their brains for life. But sometimes you just gotta make a gesture, even recognizing its futility,.

[Ugh]

Count - loved the book of The Girl with all The Gifts. Been meaning to watch the movie, although maybe after the book's sequel comes out in paperback (The Boy on the Bridge), which it may have by now.

[Nigel]

Misaeng is the best Korean drama I've seen on Netflix. Some think it was slow (which seems only reasonable to mention); I found it riveting.

[cleek]

i read the book, and was a bit wary of the movie for "The Girl with all The Gifts". but it was better than i expected it to be.

[cleek]

I expect to give the Super Bowl a miss.

i would, but our neighborhood has a SB party every year, and it's literally the only time i'll see most of the people on my block.

[CharlesWT]

My recommendations for Korean dramas are Healer (DramaFever, Viki), Descendants of The Sun (DramaFever, Viki), The K2 (Viki), and W (Viki).

These dramas are more action, less talk so you don't spend so much time pausing the video to read the captions.

[Tony P.]

Any bets on whether there will be a Korean mini-series in the 2030s, dramatizing US Civil War 2?

It will probably start with the Manhattan Massacre, in which Secret Service agents shot and killed a half-dozen of the demonstrators protesting the firing of Bob Mueller in front of Trump Tower. Highlights will include the FBI versus Secret Service gunfight on the Mall, the autopsy of He, Trump's bloated body after Melania poisons his cheeseburger, and the treason trials of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Sean Hannity -- Devin Nunes having already been granted asylum in Russia.

Whether either Korea still has video production facilities in the 2030s is open to question, of course.

--TP

[wj]

Biggest laugher in the Nunes memo: the line at the top referring to him as "The Honorable Denis Nunes".**

** Yes, I know that is technically the title for a member of the House of Representatives. But in this case? Laughable.

[russell]

a buddy of mine is putting off getting a haircut until next week because he has no interest in the superbowl and doesn't want to get caught out in all of the sportsing barbershop small talk. he knows enough to say, for example, "yeah, f'ing gronk!", but he just doesn't feel like that's enough to get him through a 20 minute haircut.

he also hates the super bowl because he's a foreman/manager at a fish wholesaler in Boston and all the guys in his crew "get the flu" the day after.

my wife and i went out to dinner in NOLA one super bowl sunday night. it was the four of us, and about ten wait staff. it was, like, a waiter per plate. fantastic.

we used to go to good friend's fo the superbowl now and then, the family are all amazing cooks and bob the dad made a great martini. bob's gone now, along with good friends and super bowl regulars sis and spike, so that semi-tradition has fallen by the wayside.

those are all my super bowl stories.

my wife and i do the netflix and chill thing a lot lately. it's cold and dark, work's a brutal grind lately, we're old and unambitious.

we liked parenthood, longmire, and the good place. my wife liked orange is the new black and anna grace, i like peaky blinders.

[JanieM]

It will probably start with the Manhattan Massacre, in which Secret Service agents shot and killed a half-dozen of the demonstrators protesting the firing of Bob Mueller in front of Trump Tower.

This evokes all too vividly the memory of Kent State (where someone close to me taught for many years). It's depressing as hell.

[JanieM]

Less depressing -- my one Super Bowl story -- my family and I went to Disney World once on Super Bowl Sunday. It wasn't planned that way, it just happened that we were in Orlando for other reasons and took the opportunity.

Least waiting in line I've ever seen there!

*****

I live in Brady country. Don't get me started.

[dr ngo]

We'll stay home, eat leftover minestrone (I made a huge batch, and it was really good), have the SBowl on unless it gets one-sided (switching to something else at halftime), and root in a half-assed manner for the Eagles, etc. (She's from Philly, and I'm tired of Belicheck and Brady, but neither of us cares that much.) Just another day here at Squirrelhaven.

There's a very old joke about a man who constantly played one note on the violin, over and over, day after day. His long-suffering wife eventually said: "Dear, I've noticed that when other people play the violin, they move their fingers around and sometimes play different strings, so they get different notes." "Ah," he replied. "They're looking for the place. I've found it."

That's my wife and I. We've found it.

I'll refrain from Netflix recommendations because we don't have it and I don't know what it has to offer. I'm currently watching (having recorded) Mosaic, Waco, and - with some hesitation - The Alienist. If asked for a series everyone should watch my wife would probably start with "The Americans," which was much better than it ought to have been.

[Nigel]

Don't bother with Altered Carbon.
The books had some interesting ideas, fifteen years ago. The adaptation goes nowhere with them, which is a shame.

[Ugh]

My boys, 8 and 6, love the Superbowl because it's the one time each year they get to eat as many tortilla chips as they can. They've been asking when it is since September.

Wife used to make a point of going to the gym the afternoon of the Superbowl - not a soul there.

he also hates the super bowl because he's a foreman/manager at a fish wholesaler in Boston and all the guys in his crew "get the flu" the day after.

One of the better ideas I've heard over the past couple years is to move the Superbowl to Saturday night. Would probably boost TV ratings and worker productivity on Monday, win-win!

[hairshirthedonist]

I already know I’m taking Monday off. Go Birds!

[Nigel]

If you have Amazon, then the (awfully titled) The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel is both very good, and very funny indeed.
Rachel Brosnahan is a revelation, and Tony Shalhoub a delight.

[CharlesWT]

Also on Amazon, I recommend Bosch and Humans.

[Countme-a-Demon]

Became a binge watcher of The Americans not long ago after ignoring it for five years.

Just finished the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel too. Yes, Shalhoub was great.

What got me about it was the script was written in the wise cracking, show-bizzy, hard boiled cadences of the era in which it takes place, but with extravagant cursing thrown in.

If we went back and remade all of the movies, TV shows, and plays from that era and let the characters talk the way they really did, except around the kids, the Donald O'Conner "Make em Laugh" dance scene in "Singing In the Rain" would have been titled "Make The F*ckers Laugh".

The pillow talk in "Pillow Talk" would have outed Rock Hudson and we would find out Doris Day had her own secrets.

I hope no one plans to do that.

[russell]

This evokes all too vividly the memory of Kent State

My wife was there. You will pry her (D) registration from her cold, dead hands.

we would find out Doris Day had her own secrets.

"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." - Oscar Levant

Also, maybe I will check out Amazon.

That's my wife and I. We've found it.

Amen.

[CharlesWT]

Stadiums: Built with subsidies to billionaires from taxpayers for millionaires to play in.

"When the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles meet Sunday for the Super Bowl, they'll play inside the newly completed U.S. Bank Stadium near downtown Minneapolis. The $1.1 billion stadium was built with almost $500 million from state and local taxpayers, with the city paying an additional $7.5 million each year for operations and maintenance."
The Super Bowl, Brought To You By Taxpayers: The National Football League is propped up by a wide range of public subsidies.

[CharlesWT]

"Guests at this year's Super Bowl game in Minneapolis can expect cops, checkpoints, and security theater everywhere, in no small part thanks to the myth that the Super Bowl is a mass sex-trafficking event."
Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Myth Gives Good Cover for Federal Security Theater: Minneapolis is being transformed into a police state.

[bobbyp]

Stadiums: Built with subsidies to billionaires from taxpayers for millionaires to play in.

Yep. On this one we can agree.

[wj]

Governments paying for stadiums, like governments offering cash or other "incentives" for businesses to set up there, are bad. Now if they are just building general use infrastructure, that might be another story. But company-specific stuff should be right out.

[CharlesWT]

But company-specific stuff should be right out.

Desperate Mayors Compete for Amazon HQ2: Local politicians clash as they try to lure Amazon's new headquarters to their towns. (YouTube)

[JanieM]

For GftNC in case you've never seen this one.

[Ugh]

The federal gov't really should step in somehow and stop this orgy of state tax giveaways to corporations/businesses that don't need it. Maybe take away highway funding or something.

[CharlesWT]

A help would be to disallow the use of municipal bonds to fund stadiums, etc.

[Girl from the North Country]

Oh Janie, I so loved that. I always wait for:

And the sons of Pulman porters

and the sons of engineers

ride their fathers' magic carpet

made of steel

The song moves me in a very strange and deep way, and I don't know if I can explain this, but there is an idea of America, a sort of spiritual essence of it, to do with Huckleberry Finn, and the City of New Orleans, and the Mississippi delta shining like a National guitar, and blue highways, from the redwood forests to the Gulf stream waters, that persists and binds certain people to it, all round the world, in defiance of current reality and historical reality. It's a kind of idealised, platonic image of something that certainly no longer exists, and maybe never existed, but exerts the strongest, strangest pull nonetheless. I think it explains some of the bitter disappointment that people sometimes feel when brought face to face with the reality.

Forgive me if I'm rambling incomprehensibly, I'm in that kind of mood.

[JanieM]

Oh beautiful for spacious skies....

GftNC -- music will do that to you.

I can certainly related to that kind of mood. It's a grief, but also a spur, that that shining place never did really exist. Although for me it's the land itself that somehow holds the dream, even when we abuse that as much as we abuse everything else

Your ramble reminds me of how I felt as a young adult during the Vietnam era. I looked back on my own "good old days" -- the time maybe ten years previously, when I was in my early teens -- as "the hopeful years," which had later turned dark (as I saw it; being still too young, naive, innocent, whatever, to internalize all the darkness that had gone before).

And -- that whole sense of hopefulness from those earlier years had been shaped by music, as though we could sing our way to a better world. How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky... (Never mind a woman.)

As a goofy-ass fourteen-year-old, I sat in some class or other with a boy I had once had a massive crush on, and we wrote dozens of verses to "I'm getting married in the morning" -- only it was "We're sitting in tomorrow morning..." We took it too lightly, being young, sheltered, white, northern, privileged (even as working class kids). JFK was dead, but so far that seemed to be a one-off tragedy. Then came 1968.

[Ugh]

A help would be to disallow the use of municipal bonds to fund stadiums, etc.

There was a provision do to that in one of the tax reform bills but it was not in the final legislation.

[Girl from the North Country]

Thanks Janie, for taking my ramblings seriously enough to actually engage with them! But since I'm in so deep already, I should also say that it's not just generated by music, this feeling, but by a number of art forms which somehow depict not a shining place, but somehow an immense, beautiful, place with a kind of innocence about it (I think), and you're right it's an awful lot to do with the land (and the towns - oh the names!). Obviously this is a ridiculously romanticised vision, and clearly in sharing this nutty theory I'm not hoping to be thought deep or interesting - my only aim at this stage is somehow not to look like a complete idiot.

[Girl from the North Country]

This is excellent news! This would be meaningful resistance indeed - the anti-science atmosphere growing in American public life has been particularly terrifying for the future. Next stop the schools!

[CharlesWT]

This is excellent news!

Don't assume, just because they're scientists, they will agree with your point of view. Some of the most heated arguments on things like climate change are among scientists.

[Girl from the North Country]

I'm not assuming anything of the kind, CharlesWT. What I am assuming is that they'll be interested in evidence, and follow where it takes them. Furthermore, I don't believe that there's much fundamental disagreement about climate change among the overwhelming majority of scientists. YMMV - certainly that of most rightwing Rpublicans does.

[JanieM]

More on this:

Ugh: For some reason I like to see records pushed as high as they can go.

Me: Me too.

I like to see things done really well, all the more now that I've long grown out of thinking I might do things really well myself someday. (Not that I ever thought that about sports in the first place.)

Some of my younger generation acquaintances don't like it when I suggest that geniuses are born as much as they’re made; apparently you’re not supposed to say that these days. But I don’t think you get to be Michael Jordan or Larry Bird or Tom Brady by work alone. Nor, I would be the first to admit, do you get to be who they became through inborn talents alone. (Though I believe that the capacity for focus and hard work may itself be partly inborn…so it’s a tangled question.)

Consider Secretariat’s body mechanics and heart, or Michael Phelps’s physique.

Then consider Brady and Belichick, aka the luck of circumstances.

Would Tom Brady even have been in the running as (as they keep blathering in the Boston press) the “GOAT” if he hadn’t had the good luck to be paired with Belichick? Somehow I feel like it matters more in football than it does in basketball, the only sport to which I’ve paid more than cursory attention. Any real football fans out there care to venture an opinion?

[Marty]

Belichick creates the opportunity for Brady, he is more impressive. Brady delivers. I don't believe in GOAT but Brady has had the greatest CAREER of any qb ever. That's due to all three of them Kraft, Belichick and Brady.

[JanieM]

I like that distinction, between the career and the person.

[wj]

GFtNC, that definitely is good news! I dream of the day when we see dozens of STEM types who are running and winning as Republicans. But . . . baby steps.

[Ugh]

Eagles win 21-20 because Gostkowski misses an extra point.

[sapient]

Open thread, right?

GftNC was, at some point, taking issue with my equating Republicans with Nazis. Uncivil, of course.

But then the Nazis came to my town. And all manner of "the big lie" is going on every day. And now a Nazi is running in the GOP. (GftNC's parents had an important fight in their lives, but a different fight from my parents' WWII fight.)

We can't be civil to Nazis. Never. Not before the War. Not during the War. And only after the war if they were only somehow victims or children.

I'm attentively watching the drama Babylon Berlin on Netflix. We really have to be dramatically working for all of that to not to happen here. Because it's serious and real. And happening.

Republicans are Nazis now. Early, but true to form.

[wj]

Republicans are Nazis now. Early, but true to form.

It's worth remembering which is the set and which is the subset. You can perhaps make a case that (all) Nazis are Republicans now. But the converse definitely does not follow.

[bobbyp]

What's with the Tide ads?

[Priest]

I think it's Matt Yglesias' idea to shift Presidents Day to the first Monday in February. Would still be between Washington and Lincoln's birthdays. Obviously a lot of folks don't get all the Federal holidays off, but it would reduce the calling in sick.

[russell]

You can perhaps make a case that (all) Nazis are Republicans now

Really, that should be enough to give any sane person pause.

[JanieM]

Would still be between Washington and Lincoln's birthdays.

Huh? Lincoln's is 2/12, Washington's is 2/22, the first Monday cannot possibly fall between them.

Plus, we already have T-day, Christmas, New Year's Day, and Martin Luther King Day one on top of the other in the previous couple of months. I would rather not see another holiday moved even closer to that set.

[JanieM]

It would give us half the ten Federal holidays in about 20% of the year. Yuck.

[sapient]

You can perhaps make a case that (all) Nazis are Republicans now. But the converse definitely does not follow.

You might want to consider whether your loyalty is worth it now, wj. Devin Nunes is a California Na.. (oops) I mean, Republican.

wj, I know you're not a Nazi. You and I agree on so many things. But time to disavow the R label.

[liberal japonicus]

wj still labels as a Republican, ugh likes the Pats, Russell plays drums, I pick my nose on occasion. We all have our flaws. The thing that worries me about wj having the R label is that at some point, they are going to take him out and string him up for failure to toe the line. He'll be missed...

[Snarki, child of Loki]

To "Traditional Republicans", in the Teddy Roosevelt mold, I say "BULLY!".

The recent ones can be saturation bombed with the rest of the Nazis.

[sapient]

He'll be missed...

Most def.

[sapient]

The recent ones can be saturation bombed with the rest of the Nazis.

Yeah. And folks like wj need to make that easier by stepping away.

Love ya' wj.

[wj]

At the rate things are going, they may well go beyond slinging RINO labels around. If so, it will not end well . . . for them. (Unlike those chickenhawks, I at least have a clue how to fight. And I fight dirty. 😁)

I continue to hope that things can be turned around. I admit, that looks increasingly unlikely. But until I see something that looks like a viable second party (i.e. not just some individual's ego vehicle), trying looks like the best shot the country has.

[sapient]

But until I see something that looks like a viable second party (i.e. not just some individual's ego vehicle), trying looks like the best shot the country has.

Good luck to you, with all sincerety.

[sapient]

This is where it starts, and it's here. Must read the whole thing, not just the first part.

[Marty]

We are all Eagles tonight

[bobbyp]

A well played game by both sides...being out on the far left coast, I had no great rooting interest, but watching the Death Star crash was OK.

[wj]

Meanwhile,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/think-california-politics-is-on-the-far-left-fringe-just-wait-for-the-next-elections/2018/02/04/80e679c2-05e5-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html

The California Republican Party has gone so far right that it probably won't matter. But the real risk is the Democrats elsewhere will ignore that detail, and assume that going left is a winning strategy everywhere. Thus blowing their chances in a lot of places that were actually winable.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"We are all Eagles tonight"

The locals call them "The Iggles". They talk funny.

[wj]

Still, sometimes there are glimmers that keep hope alive. This from the previous link:

Assembly member Chad Mayes, who was ousted as Republican leader last year after he supported a Democratic environmental initiative, has started a moderate GOP movement called “New Way California.” The group is running ads on the Internet celebrating immigration and diversity, and confusing a GOP caucus that has yet to determine how much to associate itself with Trump.

“We are in a death spiral,” said Mayes, an evangelical Christian who represents a mixed urban-rural district east of Los Angeles. “If you look at the way voter registration trends are going, we are, as Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a speech 10 years ago, dying at the box office. And that is still the truth. The question is: What do we do about it?”

Will he accomplish something? No idea. But that's what hope is all about, isn't it?

[cleek]

Eagles win 21-20 because Gostkowski misses an extra point.

not too far off

[Pro Bono]

Don't assume, just because they're scientists, they will agree with your point of view. Some of the most heated arguments on things like climate change are among scientists.

The point is not that everyone should agree with me (well, they should, but one can expect only so much). It's that when they disagree they should have arguments based on fact and reason, so that debate and sensible compromise are possible.

"I think short-term climate sensitivity is somewhat lower than 3 degrees per CO2 doubling because..." or "I prefer a carbon tax to cap-and-trade because..." are things we can discuss. "Anthropogenic Global Warming is a hoax because freedom" is not.

[bobbyp]

But that's what hope is all about, isn't it?

What's that saying? Hope is not a plan? When you pull the lever for a GOP candidate, you evidence your support for an institution that is the handmaiden of big business (has been since the Civil War), opposes unions, opposes the New Deal state, is deeply committed to US imperial dominance (cf. Wm McKinley), and believes human cause climate change is essentially a hoax. Mix in a little (mor more) racism as all those southern Dems fled their party to join the so-called "reasonable Republicans", and what do you have?

Not what you want, I would wager.

[wj]

When you pull the lever for a GOP candidate, you evidence your support for an institution that is the handmaiden of big business (has been since the Civil War), opposes unions, opposes the New Deal state, is deeply committed to US imperial dominance (cf. Wm McKinley), and believes human cause climate change is essentially a hoax.

Depends on the candidate.

For example, I think I've mentioned that my state Assemblywoman is a Republican. Yet she doesn't oppose unions per se (although she, like I, has some reservations about the behavior of some public sector unions). She holds views on climate change, and the environment in general, that I suspect you would have no problem endorsing yourself. I had no problem voting for her, and expect to do so again this year.

Certainly it's been a while since I voted for a Republican candidate for Congress. Partly because, as noted, the Republican Party has gone so far off the deep end that we tend to end up with 2 Democrats in the general election. But at the moment, I'd have to be pretty convinced that a GOP candidate would stand up to the scum currently setting the Republican agenda in Congress. Which would probably mean some kind of track record in the state legislature by way of demonstration.

Of course, the time I mostly pull the lever for a Republican is in the primaries. Where I am trying to help move the needle back towards the kind of sanity that I remember from the past. Because of the way our primaries work here, I could vote for a Democrat. But I think that would just leave the field, uncontested, to the nut cases.

[russell]

I've lived in MA for almost exactly 35 years. During that time, the governor has been (D) about half the time, and (R) about half the time. (R)'s have a slight edge, maybe one or two years.

There is a small but real (R) presence in both the MA House and Senate.

The people's republic still stands.

I understand the reluctance to pull the lever for even qualified folks at the national level, because voting there at this point is pretty much solid party line, at least on the most important issues.

At the local and state level I don't think the party label matters quite so much.

[bobbyp]

Depends on the candidate.

Insofar as your "sane" person would caucus with the GOP, absolutely not. Caucusing with the opposition is not unheard of...cf. WA ST Senate before the last election.

At the local and state level I don't think the party label matters quite so much.

Don't know much about local MASS politics, Russell, but we are recently getting beyond divided state government here where the GOP and a couple of Dem renegades held the State Senate and gummed everything up. In this state, the differences are stark.

[Nigel]

Talking of AGW, Arctic permafrost soils apparently contain as much mercury as the rest of the world combined...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL075571/full

Nothing to worry about, of course.

[russell]

we are recently getting beyond divided state government here

I can only speak for my own experience. At the local level, every place is different.

Folks should vote as they see fit. Good luck!

Nothing to worry about, of course.

We had, sort-of, the opportunity to be pro-active about all of this stuff. We declined. By "we" here, I basically mean the human race, but most especially the privileged first-world folks who enjoy the benefits of cheap energy and the comforts and conveniences it brings.

Now, stuff is just going to happen, and we're going to have to deal with it as it comes up.

We debate about advanced topics in paleo-dendrology and plasma physics, like we have any freaking idea what we're talking about, but the physical world doesn't give a crap about our opinions.

I hope it works out. It will, one way or another, it's all just physics, but "working out" in physical terms just means finding equilibrium.

Humans are not great at the "consider the long-term" thing.

[wj]

Well, for most people, "long term" isn't even as long as their (remaining) lifetime. Witness the (lack of) retirement planning done, even by people who really do have incomes which would allow them to. Instead, "long term" seems to be on the order of 5-10 years max.

25 years apparently is just longer than they can wrap their heads around. I wonder if that stems from prior times, when people couldn't reasonably expect to live all that long anyway. No need to think about anything beyond your remaining life expectancy.

[Girl from the North Country]

GftNC's parents had an important fight in their lives, but a different fight from my parents' WWII fight.

You can have more than one kind of fight in your lives, and my parents did. My father's entire, large extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins (bar two) were wiped out in Europe. My mother watched South African neighbours across the road throw a celebration party when Paris fell. The Nazis and white South African supporters of apartheid are exactly kith and kin; I can recognise a Nazi when I see one, and I see (like you) the way things are tending in America. But I am afraid I still believe that calling things by their true names is important, and not all (or maybe even most) Republicans are Nazis. As wj says, all American Nazis might be Republicans, but not all Republicans are Nazis. People who vote R might be paving the way for Nazis, they might be blindly sleepwalking into a Nazi-type situation, but most of them are not Nazis. When we stop telling the truth, we open the door to lies, big and small.

[bobbyp]

Nothing to worry about, of course.

Lots of methane trapped there as well.

Easy squeezy.

[wj]

And then there is the opportunity, as the permafrost melts, for it to burn. Thus getting more carbon into the atmosphere. Wheeeee!!!

[Tony P.]

He, Trump is more like il Duce than like der Fuehrer. This may have some relevance to the Republicans-as-Nazis meme.

--TP

[russell]

25 years apparently is just longer than they can wrap their heads around.

I think there have been, at various times and places in human history, cultures and traditions that had, at a basic level, a concern for not messing the place up. For leaving it, at least, no worse than how they found it, for following generations.

I don't have the history and sociology chops to unpack the whys and whens of that, it's just a shame we don't seem to be able to muster it up at the moment.

Regarding Americans in particular, I think we tend toward being (a) naive because we haven't been around that long, or (b) spoiled because for most of our history we've had new turf to take and use. Or both.

We don't, IMO, have a lot of depth.

Enthusiasm, yes. Energy, yes. Imagination, yes. Experience with limits or constraints, not so much. Recognizing and gracefully accepting any position other than pre-eminence in the world, in any sphere or domain, hardly at all.

We are not a mature people. We are not seasoned. Either in historical terms, or in terms of national character.

It works against us, sometimes.

My opinion, obviously.

[russell]

Apropos of nothing in particular other than what has become our daily political weather, I'll offer my opinion that, if Trump goes down, it will be because he simply cannot STFU.

If he ever had a claim to innocence in the fog of dire clownish weirdness and cupidity woven by his entourage, he's probably pissed it away at this point.

Just by blabbing away and spouting inane boasts and threats like the two-bit schoolyard bully that he is.

Ethos anthropos daimon - Heraclitus

[Snarki, child of Loki]

re: the long term view: WRS.

IIRC, there's a Buddhist temple in Japan (near Kyoto?) on a very steep hillside, that makes use of huge timbers of a particular variety of tree for support. They replace one every generation? century?, and have the replacements growing so that they'll be "in the pipeline" when needed.
The trees need over 50 years to grow to the correct size.

In the USA, that temple would have been converted to condos long ago, gotten run down and burned in an insurance scam, then sold to a billionaire, about three times over by now.

[CharlesWT]

Oak Beams, New College Oxford: The beams of the New College, Oxford dining hall come with an amazing story.

David Cameron's tale of Oxford college's trees is a myth, says academic: 'I was hoping we had done with this chestnut,' says archivist of PM's claim that trees were planted 500 years in advance

Oxford’s Oak Beams, and Other Tales of Humans and Trees in Long-Term Partnership

[Countme-a-Demon]

Just accidentally deleted, although maybe the NSA intervened, nevertheless, everyone should be relieved, a stem winder of a rant on the Nazi Republicans and the subject of global warming.

Shorter version:

In the first place, since 1932, every improvement in American society and governance pushed through by liberals has been labeled "Communist" "Socialist", "un- and/or anti-American" and traitorous by the conservative/fascist movement, now in its full ascendancy in America. Every public figure not in lockstep with the fascist right wing line and plenty not so public have been labeled, harassed, persecuted, prosecuted, and shot .... Truman, their very own Eisenhower, all things Kennedy (despite their scion Joe's alignment with Joe McCarthy), Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Carter, McGovern, Clintons, Obama ... as anathema and the OTHER to all things American, so yes, now it's time for 80 years going forward from this point that the Nazi Jew-burning, rancidly racist ... with the help of right wing racist Southern Democrats ... Putin loving, election-stealing, Russian-duped entire edifice of the conservative republican party movement to be labeled and run from the public square with savagery.

Don't like it? Fuck you, Nazi snowflakes. And fuck your brownshirted children.

Global warming. The majority of climate change scientists, now gagged and prevented from doing anything, their data now bookburned and disappeared, don't have to be right. If they are 100% wrong we're out some money, and the world continues, this despite the flaming commie liberals in the US military now very quietly shoring up military installations around the world against the ravages of manmade global warming.

On the other side, those who claim the science to be a complete hoax and a liberal big-gummint commie plot to control and change the hallowed American way of life, must be 100% right in the long run. Even to be partly, and let's face it, deliberately, malignly mistaken in their ravings about the hoaxiness of the science and the need to ameliorate the consequences will be a catastrophe for all and the rest of the world will have its vengeance.

Because, if conservatives are only partly wrong in their ravings,, at some point in the future, the rest of us, the rest of the world will gather in front of Lamar Smith's and James Imhofe's and Rush Limbaugh's and mp's Mar-a-Lago lairs with military weaponry and machetes and burn you and yours to the ground, just to heat up the atmosphere to the point where all conservatives cook.

Conservatives have made Pascal's Wager on this subject. If they are wrong, they are wrong eternally.

Like Rod Dreher's frothings, I'd day "read the whole thing", but I deleted it.

[Countme-a-Demon]

Jesus Fucking Christ!

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=XIV&insttype=Stock

Something just broke. I've never seen anything like that in a financial "instrument".

And now this:

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/372388-trump-accuses-dems-of-treasonous-behavior

Just so.

Bring it on, pigfucking subhuman conservatives.

You call me a traitor, you'd better fucking arrest me, before I find you.

[Countme-a-Demon]

American conservatism, the corrupt, heaving rotting corpse. Burn it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-u-consumer-protection-official-061310501.html

[Nigel]

Something just broke. I've never seen anything like that in a financial "instrument".

I'm pretty sure it's Janet Yellen's fault for abandoning her post like that...

[Nigel]

we don't, IMO, have a lot of depth...

It's not unknown...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

[russell]

Long Now comes out of the same crowd that used to publish Whole Earth, then CoEvolution Quarterly.

That was basically my favorite magazine and general source of information, ever. I subscribed for years, until Brand et al drove it into the ground.

To make up for not refunding the remaining value of my subscription, they gave me a subscription to Utne Reader.

Feh.

Those guys have some great ideas, but outside of techno-hippie and eco-anarchist circles I'm not sure they're making too many inroads into the zeitgeist.

I always kind of liked Amory Lovins better, he's much less Cali-NewAgey-woo-woo and more pragmatic. IMO.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

The AGW deniers are missing out on a huge opportunity to buy up that prime oceanfront real estate.

But perhaps, precious snowflakes that they are, they just couldn't take being called part of a "coastal elite".

[Countme-a-Demon]

Some friends and I were arrested, but let off with a tongue-lashing, in my small college town for constructing and releasing candle-powered hot air balloons, plans for which were featured in the Whole Earth catalog.

This, somewhere at the beginning of the last third of the last century, when America was young and its entrepreneurial spirit for fun and no profit was flourishing.

We used huge clear plastic bags and cardboard fashioned into braces to hold the lit candles. As with Elon Musk's space ventures, it took us several week's of launches in the backyard of the house we lived in to perfect the technology.

The prevailing winds kept pushing the balloons into a big tree in the neighbor's yard, this was at night, where they would burn without lighting the tree on fire, thank goodness.

So we shifted the launch pad a bit and soon we were sending these beautiful, ghostly, glowing jellyfish-like flying machines nightly up and out over the small mid-western town, in fact, right in the direction of the police department and the Court House, as it turns out.

They flew a good mile or so as we ran down the streets keeping track of them, like any conscientious NASA ground crew.

So one night we were about to launch, and a police strike force of basically the entire County's constabulary emerged from ... EVERYWHERE, the yards around us, rooftops, the shrubbery, I think one cop came out of the ground, and took us into custody as we were launching the largest craft yet.

They staked us out.

Off to jail. Held for half a day, given a hearing, and we heard one hell of a angry DA, the Fire Department Chief, and a glaring Judge rake us over the coals, but it being a college town in 1971, we were sent home under our own recognizance.

I guess they figured this paled in comparison to the fraternity jocks piling all the furniture in their house on the quad and torching it afire.

I still have a sepia-toned postcard my best friend at the time, now dead .. he eventually became a very well known acoustic guitar luthier ... took of one of the launches. The five or six of us look like the hippie version of the Iwo Jima World War II monument in D.C., in a scrum hoisting our beauteous fire-hazards aloft into the breeze.

[wj]

I'm pretty sure it's Janet Yellen's fault for abandoning her post like that...

Except that (amazingly enough) her successor is actually someone very similar to her in outlook, etc.

My guess would be that it's just karma. Trump claimed that the stock market being up was something he should get credit for. So now it's crashing . . . and he owns it. (Yeah, President's don't really control the economy. But since he claimed it....)

[Countme-a-Demon]

Two conservatives:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/boycott-the-gop/550907/

But can the mindless be mindless?

[Countme-a-Demon]

Zombies don't change their mindless minds.

They get cut to pieces, so they stop.

[russell]

From the Count's link:

That’s because Trump has won the heart of the Republican base.

That's your problem, right there.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

The stock market being the conjunction of "greed" and "fear", I don't think that any high official can talk the market UP, but they sure as hell can trigger a temporary crash.

A short-seller that has advance warning of Trump's twit emissions could make a pile of money, but it seems unlikely that *anyone* (including Trump) has advance warning.

[bobbyp]

The AGW deniers are missing out on a huge opportunity to buy up that prime oceanfront real estate.

Would that be a sunk cost or a wasting asset?

[Countme-a-Demon]

You can be sure that weeks or months from now mp Cabinet members and political appointees will be revealed as major profiteers on the short side of this collapse because America is now pure evil Corruption Inc.

You telling me the Goldman Sachs crowd in this administration didn't get a heads up from their former colleagues.

I spose next you'll be telling me that vermin Tillerson doesn't refer to Exxon as his country and Russia as his Country's client state.

But, yeah, Hillary had that little $100,000 commodities account.

Something financial is up. We don't yet know what.

Every stock market collapse in American history, for the past 120 years, has occurred under republican vermin auspucies.

Why is that, fuckers? Hanh?

[Countme-a-Demon]

Billionaire needy cocksucker demands gummint clean up the goose shit.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/billionaire-fed-up-with-goose-poop-says-he-wont-pay-his-property-taxes-2018-02-05?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts

Fuck you, Nazi.

I'd like to shit on his lawn.

[Countme-a-Demon]

Billionaire needy pigfucker demands Democrats give him the clap or they will be arrested as traitors.

Conservative deconstructs and self-destructs:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/

The norms are gone. The rule of law is gone.

Eat it, America, you losers.

[russell]

i like the guy who won't pay his taxes because of goose poop,

either you want government to leave you alone, or you want government to potty train every canada goose that crosses your property line.

pick one.

[wj]

Come on, Russell, this is really simple. He (they, actually) want government to do things for them. They do not want government to expect anything from them.

In short, something for nothing -- just dressed up with a bow labeled (inaccurately) "libertarian", or (even more inaccurately) "conservative".