Tom T. Hall sure writes a lot of songs about musicians.
This one really needs an uptempo rock cover.
This one really needs an uptempo rock cover.
• Stephen F. Hayes of Bill Kristol's Get Your War On thinks the Iran Letter was a masterstroke:
A final point: The Cotton letter has already achieved its goal. We are, finally, engaged in a serious national debate about the threat from Iran. That is something the Obama administration has avoided for six years. No more."We have engaged a serious debate" is press-agent for "people think we're idiots." Also, Hayes hauls out the customary oh-yeah-what-about-traitor-Dems-and-the-Russians examples, apparently just because he can't help himself, as these examples certainly don't help his cause:
Of course, the past behavior of Democrats doesn’t justify the Republican letter on Iran.[Vaporlock vaporlock quick give me the index cards...]
The letter needs no justification.[Dammit, shoulda pulled the fire alarm instead!]
...Unlike, say, John Kerry or Ted Kennedy, and unlike David Bonior and Nancy Pelosi, these senators gave no succor to dictators and despots.Of course not -- when we blow up this Middle Eastern country, somebody good will take over! Isn't that how it always works?
• In a grand act of slur reclamation, Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke of National Review pimps his "Conservatarian Manifesto," in which the sort of thing we use the word to make fun of -- i.e., bullshit libertarianism -- is claimed as the Future. In Kang and Kodos terms, it's "Miniature American flags for some, abortions for nobody." As with anything associated with the Future these days, there's a Kids & Tech angle:
The first thing is that young people are just used to customizing their lives. They are used to Facebook. They are used to their cell phones. They are used to building their own computers. Yet they are routinely asked to vote for the DMV. They haven’t rebelled against that, but there will come a point where that sort of homogenization starts to irk them.Surely der kinder will rise up against Net Neutrality -- that's just an FCC "power grab"! -- and prepare to go overseas and fight ISIS, cognizant that "in 1945, the British, overnight, handed the baton to the United States," etc. I can see this going over big with the MySpace generation.
these senators gave no succor to dictators and despots
ReplyDeleteIt was more what you call handjobbor.
"The Cotton letter has already achieved its goal. We are, finally, engaged in a serious national debate about the threat from Iran. That is something the Obama administration has avoided for six years."
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing the administration hasn't been engaging in public and widely reported multilateral talks with Iran over its nuclear program since 2009, because if that had been happening it would take a remarkably stupid person to write those sentences.
...Unlike, say, John Kerry or Ted Kennedy, and unlike David Bonior and Nancy Pelosi, these senators gave no succor to dictators and despots.
ReplyDeleteI guess this is one of those things where you just throw this out there as an accusation and then let nature take its course. Evidence and example? Pffft! (Oh, and pleeeeeze!!!! pay no attention to that Republican president selling missiles to the mullahs, and pretty please ignore that Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand, and don't you dare bring up St. Ronnie supplying Stingers to the Taliban.)
I was going to make a comment, but I when I clicked the link, I was greeted with a caricature of Kristol urging me to meet their editor. As a result, all I can think about is why that man still has a job.
ReplyDeleteThey're counting on remarkably stupid people to read and believe those sentences.
ReplyDeleteHis "job" should be defending himself before The Hague. But, alas, he is considered a "very serious person" who renders "valuable advice and sought-after opinions."
ReplyDeletei thought his job was catching pies
ReplyDeleteThere is some Brietbart cut&paste thing going around that claims that Teddy talked to the Russians about something something. I unpacked the story. This is their scoop.
ReplyDeleteIn 2009 Forbes published an article that stated that in 1991 a reporter for the London Times "found" a memo "presumably" composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov addressed to Yuri Andropov stating that Sen. Edward Kennedy’s friend, John Tunney was asked to convey a message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Solid evidence, that.
+1 i lol'd
ReplyDeleteOh, well you think that's bad... I heard that Tiffany's little brother Jett overheard Brittany saying that her boyfriend Tad made out with Stephanie. Stephanie is such a whore.
ReplyDeleteYou can find scans of the original Sunday Times article here. It's not exactly a slam dunk.
ReplyDeleteA final point: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has already achieved its goal. We are, finally, engaged in a serious national debate about the threat from nefarious Jews. That is something liberals had avoided for over a hundred years. No more.
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer it if the Republican senators ignited "a serious debate" the way the Buddhist monks did in Vietnam, but it's self immolation any fucking way you look at it, so, yay.
ReplyDeleteOr a Fox viewer, & WSJ reader.
ReplyDeleteThere is no way there was enough shit baked into that pie.
ReplyDeleteEven Fox and the WSJ have steered clear of applauding Senator Snopes' foray into international diplomacy.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Bill Kristol wrote the damn letter. Everything was spelled correctly, but more to the point, it was an idea too bad to have originated with anyone else.
ReplyDeleteDoubleplusgood.
ReplyDelete...the sort of thing we use the word to make fun of -- i.e., bullshit libertarianism -- is claimed as the Future.
ReplyDeleteIronic that a Manifesto About The Future would employ that "Kids today, amirite?" style that I believe was first carved in cuneiform into one of Ashurbanipal's clay tablets.
On another note, when is this "Computers, amirite?" shit going to calm down? These assholes have been using the self-conscious jokes and bad puns since at least the mid-90's - you're telling me that twenty years wasn't enough to get it out of their systems?
Virtually every fucking U.S. Senator ever in the 20th & 21st century has given plenty of succor (Suck on THIS, Step-hen!!) to any & every possible dictator and despot.
ReplyDeletethere will come a point where that sort of homogenization starts to irk them
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get them started about pasteurization.
The first thing is that young white people are just used to customizing their lives. These young whitesThey are used to Facebook. These young whitesThey are used to their cell phones. These young whitesThey are used to building their own computers. Yet These young whitesThey are routinely asked to vote for the DMV. These young whitesThey haven’t rebelled against that, but there will come a point where that sort of homogenization starts to irk These young whitesthem.
ReplyDelete"Yet they are routinely asked to vote for the DMV."
ReplyDeleteVote for the DMV? Huh? Did his circuits get fried mid-sentence?
And since when did anyone vote for the DMV? Really, the DMV isn't that big of a deal these days - I only have to show up every 4 years to get a new photo made for my driver's license. Everything else I have do with them - really, just tag renewal - I do online. Also too: maybe the kids aren't incensed about the DMV because a lot of them these days don't drive.
ReplyDeleteyou got there a few seconds before me, bud. Really, using the DMV as his example just goes further to cast him as an old codge screaming at teh yoots to get offa his lawn.
ReplyDeleteAsk the kids their opinion of the following:
ReplyDelete1) The DMV.
2) Comcast.
Enjoy the results!
This is absurd. Every credit card offer I get allows me to "customize" the card from a few different design choices. The minute some forward-looking DMV offers such an option the kidz will fall right in line.
ReplyDeleteAlso the kidz aren't buying cars (or tee vee sets) any more are they?
Yep. But the Rethugs get extra discredit for their habit of being the first ones to yelp "Treason!" every time.
ReplyDeleteSo I signed the #47Traitors petition, even though I know the Logan Act probably can't be applied here (or anywhere).
~
he actually makes a somewhat valid observation, but rather than query how market values are compatible with civic ones, or why they should be part of the same conversation at all, he goes straight to the singularity-we-will-march-on-a-road-of-bones talk, or what the federalist calls "optimistic." this is not thinking, this is consultant-hack-talk in book form (or kindle).
ReplyDeleteI personally would also have been satisfied with a brick or cinder block pie.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure they teach you to spell correctly at Harvard, and lots of bad people with worse ideas have come from there.
ReplyDeleteNo biggie at all. Here in the automobile capital of the world the renewal photo session can be booked on-line too, resulting in around a 10-min. wait,
ReplyDeleteVote for the DMV?
ReplyDeleteRun, DMV!
it was an idea too bad to have originated with anyone else.Jenn, Jenn, Jenn ... You're even from Arkansas. Of course Tom Cotton could come up with something this bad. So it's down to the spelling, as you say, and the fact that it wasn't scrawled in a mixture of feces and the blood of undocumented immigrant children.
ReplyDeleteIn Michigan the DMV* lets me choose from like sixty different license plate designs ranging from landscapes to colleges logos to military affiliation - and I can order them as vanity plates that say "HTLVR69" or "BOUNCY1."
ReplyDeleteAnd I can do it all online.
It doesn't get much more customized than that.
* here we call it the Secretary of State
I'm pretty sure they teach you to spell correctly at HarvardIn the words and deeds of the immortal Samuel Johnson, "I refute it thus:" [Kicks Matthew Yglesias' head]
ReplyDeleteI signed it too, just to see if it can't be pushed to a half million or more.
ReplyDeleteI know of course they won't be sanctioned in any way, but that's probably a good thing - it deprives them of an opportunity to climb up on the cross of victimhood. Meanwhile, something like 90% of the public thinks they acted like complete jackasses.
I've got a vanity plate, but it's not one of the stupid ones like "2HOT".
ReplyDeleteYoung people Drive This Way Drive This Way Drive this Way.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, when is this "Computers, amirite?" shit going to calm down?Never mind that; when is this "DMV, amirite?" shit going to calm down? Because God knows, no one has ever had to wait in line or face other service frustrations in the private sector. Hey, schmibertarians, since you apparently love sucking telecom corporation dick right now: How about we put cable companies in charge of the DMV, given how famous they are for their flexibility, price competitiveness, and customer service? That'll fix things.
ReplyDeleteHey, you know what else you find in pasteurs?
ReplyDeleteDamnit, I even stuck a Post-it® note to my monitor, reminding me to read the whole thread before commenting. It's apparently on the floor somewhere.
ReplyDeleteMagic mushrooms!
ReplyDeleteI stand by my assertion that a political move as disastrous as this one has to be in some way connected with Bill Kristol.
ReplyDeleteHOTENUF?
ReplyDelete... Okay, that reads like some obscure Egyptian monarch.
The best one I've seen was back in the eighties- WASTED.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many times they got pulled, and if that's how they felt about what they spent on the plate.
One of The Onion's great sidebar headlines:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theonion.com/articles/drbong-pulled-over-again,24910/
Hah! Mine is "ANARKIE." And I have been questioned by cops as to whether it refers to being an Arkie or....I always just say "yes."
ReplyDeleteyoung people are just used to customizing their lives. They are used to
ReplyDeleteFacebook. They are used to their cell phones. They are used to building
their own computers.
Just after they build their own cars.
This is not 1975, and there are no hobbyists buying Altair 8080 kitsets. Kids today have probably never written their own self-modifying machine code.
OT: Can I guess from my empty in-box that there are no takers for a Northeast meet-up?
ReplyDeleteWas 6ULDV8 already taken?
ReplyDeleteI really always wanted 2BRNOT2B, but it's one character too long.
ReplyDelete"The Cotton letter has already achieved its goal. We are, finally, engaged in a serious national debate..."
ReplyDeleteWas that its goal? That Open Letter to the Guys Who Run Iran? This is a variant on the what-does-it-say trope the more desperate wingnuts haul out when even *they* can't deny they've royally ucked-fay up-ay. "Okay, I thought those photos from the Hubble proved conclusively that Harry Reid was a homosexual cannibal from Alpha Centauri. They don't, apparently--but what does it say about him that I thought such a thing was possible?"
I was going to say "you have to admire their persistence" but you don't. You don't have to admire anything about them.
2B∨¬2B
ReplyDeleteI think excerpts from Cotton's Harvard essays suggest that he was indeed the author of that "I hate to tell ya but guess WHAT, mullahs!" bit of pseudo-informative sneering.
ReplyDeleteStill fantasizing about 10SNE1 out here in CA.
ReplyDelete...good, though!
ReplyDelete(Too obscure?)
Self-modifying machine code? They've never written their own names.
ReplyDeleteThe kidz can't afford cars. Between the economy and the continuing conservative intransigence on mass transit, we've all learned the Virtue of Walking.
ReplyDeleteWhich isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I still fucking want high-speed rail.
About every tenth car where I live has vanity plates, most of them powerfully stupid ones. I used to have a list of them in my head, but the only one that stands out right now is "M1911A1" - for the man who wants everyone to know that not only does he have a gun, he has a favorite gun.
ReplyDeleteAs a hobby, I teach kids how to build their own bikes. The number of people--adult and child alike--to whom it never occurred that bolting components together in the right way resulted in a completed product is staggering.
ReplyDeleteBest one ever was on a serious off-road vehicle near my old apartment. L1H5 MO. I was walking past and dropped my keys; bending to pick them up, I noticed that when the truck was inverted (as off-road vehicles can sometimes be), the plate read OW SH17.
ReplyDeleteDharmaque?
ReplyDeleteI was once stopped behind NVW SSV.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it was a million to one shot that he got it by the DMV.
MSTRB8R
ReplyDeleteCause I am, you know.
A fishing guide, I mean.
Not at all, Mrs. Presskey.
ReplyDelete2BR02B where 0 = naught.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably why I have to keep ordering them off my lawn.
ReplyDeleteHe probably means assembling components bought off Newegg and Amazon to build a uniquely customized desktop computer just like everyone else following the component lists published regularly at Ars Technica.
ReplyDeletethere will come a point where that sort of homogenization starts to irk them.
ReplyDeleteIn fact it's been coming for the last 48 years, since LOGO and Turtle Graphics taught young people to pimp their processors customise their lives.
Handjobbor, gom jabbar; it's a mistake anyone could make.
ReplyDeleteI was at ECU in the eighties. Some of my housemates chipped in on a bag of psillocybin mushrooms that was dressed up as a commercial product, including a helpful leaflet with recommended dosages, suggesting a small one for a slightly energetic, enhanced awareness.
ReplyDeleteI still have this vivid image of one of them helplessly staring at 3x5 cards arranged in a "Mayan astronomer" pattern. He had a term paper due the following day.
I coulda told him that "enhanced awareness" would reconfigure all visual stimuli in blistering neon.
Btw, Nashville is a groovy little town.
ReplyDeleteCooke's argument makes no sense. Yeah I know, what else would you expect from a publication that employs Jonah Goldberg and is edited by K.J. Lopez? But this seems extra stupid. I mean, are the Democrats threatening to force everybody to use Weibo instead of Facebook? Are we going to be issued "Obamacomps" instead of being allowed to design our computers? What does any of that stuff have to do with which political party someone would vote for?
ReplyDeleteThis "Libertarian moment" just keeps more and more desperate.
But never before has there been such a wide range of toothpastes on the shelves at Walgreens! Market segmentation Customized lives! Future shock!
ReplyDeleteThe letter needs no justification.
ReplyDeleteWait, I thought the Iran letter was "lighthearted" and "cheeky" and worthy of a "sense of humor". Is the ONLY JOKING story no longer operative?
The piling up excuses are almost as funny as that twitter exchange where the Iranian foreign minister handed Sen. Snopes his ass. So far we've got McCain's "there was a snowstorm coming" and Paul's "I thought I was sending a message to Obama in that letter addressed to Iran" and the "it was a joke" from...I don't know, but it's out there. As well as "Obama made us do it." I'm surprised that none of them has blamed the gays yet.
ReplyDeletePaper OR plastic!
ReplyDeleteYoung people get to vote for the Department of Motor Vehicles? When did that start?
ReplyDeleteDildeaux.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many of the Potomac 47 would be pleased to have had their picture taken with Augusto Pinochet? And, wasn't it no less than John McCain who was photographed chumming it up with "rebels" that turned out to be, umm, trying to fuck us up?
ReplyDeleteWas it not Richard Nixon, as a Republican candidate, in league with Henry Kissinger, that sabotaged the Paris Peace talks by conspiring with the military dictatorship of South Vietnam.
Was it not the Republican candidate, the vaunted St. Ronnie Raygun, who conspired with the Iranians to hold the embassy hostages? (Well, this one is still debatable, but the evidence continues to mount in favor of it having taken place.)
And, what were the Contras but terrorists and drug smugglers? Reagan, as I recall, loved him some Contras. Lots of Republican supported them, despite the Boland Amendment. Didn't Jesse Helms pretty much go berserk on anyone that said "boo" about the Contras?
And, wasn't it Bush himself who conspired with Syria to have people tortured? Maher Arar ring any bells? And was it not Bush himself that shielded the Saudis from investigation before and after 9.11? Lots of Republicans thought that was A-Okay.
When it comes to associating with dictators, terrorists,high-class pimps and clowns in military uniforms, the Republicans win, hands down.
I read that several times. I'm still puzzled
ReplyDeletethe Iranian foreign minister handed Sen. Snopes his ass
ReplyDeleteIs that what they mean by "cheeky"?
I ride the new(ish) light rail to get to one of my jobs; I love it and wish it was there for everyone.
ReplyDeleteThere was also that dude in Kazahkstan or wherever who boiled people. Bush got tight with him, too.
ReplyDelete"If the gays weren't making ISIS throw them off buildings ..."
ReplyDeleteMy anecdote for the day: I've had to wait weeks to get an appointment for my knee troubles several times in the past, even with the nice fat insurance my husband's company provides. Our friend in socialized medicine hellhole Canuckistan was able to get in to see a top knee guy within 3 days of his injury, 2 of those being the weekend.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about death panels, but I know of a pretty effective knee death panel in my neighborhood. They do it by counting delay in treatment as your primary treatment option.
Ooh! An "old fashion".
ReplyDeleteHe went to Harvard? Jeez. What did they do, forget to lock a window?
ReplyDelete"building their own computers"
ReplyDeleteThis is old people speak for downloading the apps they want to their smarty 'phones.
My hypothesis is that they took one look at those eyes and thought, "this guy is gonna go psycho on us if we don't admit him."
ReplyDeleteIM1RU12?
ReplyDeleteOur cousins across the Atlantic are in the swing of things, as well. Maggie Thatcher lover her some Khmer Rouge:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.globalresearch.ca/how-thatcher-helped-pol-pot/5330873
Umm, that was Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Not a nice man, so I suspect that he and Bush got along famously.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this. I have been to the DMV once this century. I got a California license in 1999, then didn't have to go for a new photo until 2014. For that, I made an appointment at their website and knocked the whole thing out on a lunchbreak from work.
ReplyDeleteI remember as a child being dragged by my mother to a dingy, filthy, worn-out, boring DMV in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and spending a couple hours there. It's really interesting that Cook is literally so upset by Reagan's DMV that he literally cannot see how awesome the Obama's DMV is.
First of all, "these kids" + "Facebook"? Only us olds are on Facebook; the kidz have abandoned it in droves - too many parents on there.
ReplyDeleteThe only ones laughing their asses off is ISIS.
ReplyDeleteDid someone say ...
ReplyDeleteDamnit! I had read that over and over for, like, two minutes before I got it. Good one.
ReplyDeleteSo Aaron Schock's redone his office already?
ReplyDeleteAh, well, Tony Blair kept up traditions, too. Truth is, the British spy services came about not just to protect the monarchs, but to protect the empire (is it worth pondering, then, that MI5 and MI6 might be part of the reason why they're not an empire any longer?), and we learned pretty much all we know from them. Which is a major part of the reason why the CIA is as fucked up as it is, and is why it's an easy charge to make that the CIA is the FOB of our empire.
ReplyDeleteIf there's still anyone around a hundred years from now to write the history of our time, one of the lessons will be that we learned how to be fuckups from the British.
Used to building their own computers? Most kids these days wouldn't know how to open the case of a computer. As usual, National Review writers think being cool with the kids means acting like it's 1995.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the Greatest Speech Ever Delivered in the History of the United States Congress, by Leader of the Free World Benjamin Netanyahu, as watched by more people than the Kenyan traitor's SOTU? Wasn't THAT supposed start a 'serious national debate'?
ReplyDeleteHayes is lying of course. The letter was not intended to start a debate, but to close it down. Which it's done very successfully, as everyone's now furiously engaged in arcane arguments about protocol and the Logan Act and Pelosi's visit to Assad in 2007, forgetting completely that Republicans have publicly committed to war with Iran.
"... to get to one of my jobs;"
ReplyDeleteUniquely American!
The "new cement pie" was a Kliban invention.
ReplyDeleteOh, whoops, I haven't gone back to that thread yet.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a funny story about a visitor to a car plant who wondered how they got the finished cars up onto the assembly line (true story, best as I can figure).
ReplyDeleteIn a way, though, it's evidence that the policies of consumerism, planned obsolescence, deindustrialization and the disposable society have really won out. The way most people learn how to put things together is by taking them apart, and today, for the most part, people can't because they're not designed to be disassembled, and that doesn't even reach the point of understanding how to fix them once they're apart. It's a good part of what the Powell v. hippies manifesto was all about--corporations using PR power to overcome growing resistance to those policies. Everyone laughs now about hippies and VWs, but, truth be told, if you had one and a copy of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: VW Repair for the Compleat Idiot and a few tools, you could stay on the road for a long time, and with not much money.
That is frighteningly good. I think I've read about a thousand versions of that, snot spattered and tear stained even through the pixels, over at MRA sites.
ReplyDeleteMe neither. I mean, I missed it.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing he's related to Cotton Mather?
ReplyDeleteYou love it and you wish it was there for everyone? What are you? Some kinda commie?
ReplyDeleteMy students sometimes write their own self-modifying machine code.
ReplyDeleteWhat they never do is write their own self-modifying machine code on purpose. Not, at least, if they are hoping for a passing grade.
Hey! I know a relative (descendent, maybe?) of Cotton Mather, and Tom Cotton is no Mather. (John, however, is a mathermatician.)
ReplyDeleteHe looks old enough to serve, and make war at the DMZ instead of the DMV.
ReplyDelete"They are used to Facebook. They are used to their cell phones. They are used to building their own computers." I hate to break it to ya, Chuck, but everyfuckingbody is used to the Facebook, seeing as how 71% of all Internet users in the US do the Facebook.
ReplyDeleteAs for 'used to building their own computers,' more parboiled bullshit; desktop computer ownership is sliding precipitously, and building your own has never been more than a niche for hobbyists and assorted nerds. Instead, the desktop PC market is being eaten by tablets and cell phones. You almost got that one right, Chuck. The youngs ARE used to their cellphones, but so is everybody else. As for voting for the DMV (?), the youts can use their cellphones and computers to access a wide range of services. It truly is an age of miracles to a man who needs a colonoscopy to take a driver's license photo.
You laugh. But if it hadn't been for the 1974 oil crisis, Seymour Papert would for sure have gotten Sheikh Zahdi Yamani (sp.?) to pay to provide a free, book-sized computer loaded with LOGO and/or smalltalk to every child in sub-Saharan Africa (and Nicholas Negroponte would have remained in well-deserved obscurity teaching computers to measure people for suits of clothes at the original Architecture Machine lab). I saw it!!!
ReplyDelete...Unlike, say, John Kerry or Ted Kennedy, and unlike David Bonior and
ReplyDeleteNancy Pelosi, these senators gave no succor to dictators and despots.
Um, aren't these the same people who have been trying to trade Barack Obama for Vladimir Putin (and a Pogrom To Be Named Later) for the last seven-plus years?
Since my mind has been forcefully reminded, just above, of old days at the AI Lab, I must say I always admired the fellow (in Connecticut, I think) who snaffled CDRCAR.
ReplyDeleteIn Virginia you can even get Gadsden flags! What a country!
ReplyDeleteso neocons channel mra, or vice versa?
ReplyDeleteThere you go again, remembering things that happened.
ReplyDeleteJob? I don't know if that's the right word for it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know. It's a curse.
ReplyDeleteThe last few times I had to visit my local DMV, I was amazed at how goddamned helpful and efficient they were. But there were some bla..ah people there, so there's that.
ReplyDeleteLibertarians at heart, we’re not particularly interested in what the state thinks of us, or our religious views, or lack thereof, or the way we behave.
ReplyDeleteWhen Charles CW Cooke says "Fuck you, I got mine," he takes his time saying it.
PT Barnum undercounted.
ReplyDeleteAt least not in any recognizable script.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine has been running a '68 Bug (w/ a somewhat newer engine) since the mid-'90s.
ReplyDeleteOh, I would reckon that Bill Kristol wrote the script and made Tom Cotton from a Build Your Own Senator (TM) kit. A real showman is he.
ReplyDeleteOne side of the same coin.
ReplyDeleteDamn legacies!
ReplyDeleteMore likely Cotton Hill.
ReplyDeleteI could have told them he was gonna go psycho either way.
ReplyDeleteHey, I saw Sleeper. I know the Power of the Bug.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that old pickup trucks with 200+ thousand miles on them are so expensive now for a reason.
ReplyDeleteThey are routinely asked to vote for the DMV, and to water the linen closet, and change the batteries in the yogurt.
ReplyDeleteHope you keep lots of sanitizer on-hand.
ReplyDeleteI bet that plate destroys passersby.
ReplyDeleteI get asked about it from time to time....
ReplyDeleteI've got a Mustang with 240+ thousand on it....wondering how much longer it will go without an engine rebuild, head gasket, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhen personalized plates were a new thing, 10SNE1 was one of the first to rate a mention in Herb Caen's column. I saw it several times in the late '70s on a Mercedes SL commuting between downtown SF and the Peninsula. (I'm 100% sure of the car, unless my brain has gone all Brian Williams on me....)
ReplyDeleteBut did you ever convince him it wasn't derogatory?
ReplyDeleteHell, I've written in no recognizable script since before These Kids were born. Or their parents.
ReplyDeleteHobor.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the fluoridation and vaccination.
ReplyDeleteI've never been asked to vote for the Department of Motor Vehicles. I didn't even know the DMV was running.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.coolpl8z.com/view-plate.php?id=1416
ReplyDeletefor a visual to help the chronically slow (like myself)
Email for those interested in a Northeast Alicurati Meet-up:
ReplyDeletebennforum at gmail dot com
"Yet they are routinely asked to vote for the DMV."
ReplyDeleteOh. hey, I get it! It's one 'a them there "metafore" thingies! And here we was thinkin' that Two Middle Initials couldn't write his way out of a paper bag...
"The Cotton letter has already achieved its goal. We are, finally, engaged in a serious national debate..."
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about Hayes's exercise in weaselspeak, it's a lot better that this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/11/1370102/-Unnamed-Republican-sources-now-trying-to-claim-Iran-letter-was-meant-as-a-cheeky-joke
"young people are just used to customizing their lives. They are used to Facebook. They are used to their cell phones. They are used to building their own computers."
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that Cookie has confused "building your own computer" with this:
http://www.amazon.com/Stickers-Decorative-Computer-Accesory-Electronics/dp/B00BMT82P8
Us old people just have to fuck up all their fun!
ReplyDelete"The Cotton letter has already achieved its goal... to show the country and the entire world that all repugs care about is destroying Obama and stopping abortions! If the planet is destroyed in the process, so be it!"
ReplyDeleteI'd ask you for links, but then again, no. I'll take your word for it. I wonder if Sheldon and Rupert are pals or enemies?
ReplyDeleteI noticed that when I bought my daughter a bike. Apparently the person who assembled it was puzzled by bolts and screws.
ReplyDeleteWow. My brother has a Datsun Z from way back in the olden days when everything was black & white. Except the Z is orange, formerly red.
ReplyDeleteI'd vote for them! Even underfunded and crowded they do a good job. Sure, let's put the DMV in charge of Universal Health Care. I'M NOT JOKING.
ReplyDeleteThis comment deserves an X-large Ice-cream cone with 3 scoops!
ReplyDeleteOne good letter deserves another.
ReplyDeleteThis one may get Stonekettle noticed...
For Cooke, anecdote is evidence. He probably met a teenager who built his own computer, therefore "Kids today all build there own computers." If he ever meets a kid who plays classical violin, he'll say "Classical music is the latest rage among the Yoots."
ReplyDeleteSurely one needs to be able to spell in order to qualify? Oh, who am I kidding.
ReplyDeleteAnd his wife Queen Hottitty...
ReplyDeleteLooks like "To Burn or not 2 burn". Oh, wait
ReplyDelete"PUKKA" for a white Rabbit (VW?)
ReplyDeleteMaybe people are wondering how the Hell these guys got elected... oh- Sheldon Aldeson... the Kocks....
ReplyDeleteThe way most people learn how to put things together is by taking
ReplyDeletethem apart
That's the way I do it.
they're
not designed to be disassembled
Never stopped me!
Utah Philips would approve
ReplyDeleteI remember hearing of one on the car of a urologist: CME2P.
ReplyDeleteA dildo mobile? [Crocodile Dundee voice] That's not a dildo mobile, *this* is a dildo mobile... (Way NSFW)
ReplyDeleteI'd ask how you found that, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.
ReplyDeleteDamn that Rule 34!
Too true, Doc. For far too many people, "righty-tighty, lefty-loosie" is virgin territory. I have cringed watching adult men straining mightily to remove a lug nut and making no progress because they're actually tightening the nut.
ReplyDeleteI figured that Senator Beauregard Claghorn was going to show up eventually.
ReplyDeleteI just googled 'dildo mobile", all blissfully unawares of Rule 34, like an idiot Truthfully, I thinking more along the lines of of an "art car", but you take what you get...
ReplyDeleteBecause nobody's ever gonna see it upside down short of a really bad wreck, some prig at the DMV would get all "Omygooness!" over it. Thanks, Jesus...
ReplyDeleteIf I got custom plates, they would be the most unreadable alphanumeric I could come up with. Maybe WHMHWMH, or something. The characters on most plates are narrow enough that W, M, and H can take that extra split second to parse. Not that I'd ever actually need that...
ReplyDeleteI just googled 'dildomobile", all blissfully unawares of Rule 34, like
ReplyDeletean idiot Truthfully, I was thinking more along the lines of of an "art
car", but you take what you get...
For far too many people, "righty-tighty, lefty-loosie" is virgin territory.More like, former virgin territory, amirite? I have cringed watching adult men straining mightilyIYKWIMA---they're actually tightening the nut....Okay, I give up.
ReplyDeleteHey!
ReplyDeleteThis is not 1975, and there are no hobbyists buying Altair 8080 kitsets.Humph. Today is even Pi Day, yet no love for the Raspberry?
ReplyDeleteI've often thought the same thing. As you zip past someone doing 90mph down the freeway you don't want a memorable plate like "LUV2FISH."
ReplyDeleteBetter something confusing with ones and zeros and and I's and O's mixed together. I wanna be the guy with the plate that reads "1II10OI." Try and remember THAT as you're dialing the state police.
I got yer dildomobile right here:
ReplyDeleteOr you could always go for the classic, because what's more AMERICAN than a giant phallus on wheels parked in front of the proudly waving Stars-n-Stripes? FUCK YEAH!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-encouraging-cluelessness-of-hard-liners/comment-page-1/#comment-7329586
ReplyDeleteThe last two weeks have shown them to be clueless in what can be achieved and how to go about achieving it, and the fact that Kristol thinks they have been doing very well tells the rest of us how badly they have failed.
Not really. It bothered him because when he went in the service, other soldiers used it as a derogatory. I told him that I thought if you embraced it, you take away other peoples' power to define it. But he didn't stay upset about it & it wasn't an issue over the course of our friendship.
ReplyDeleteI gave my nephew one of those for his 14th birthday, and about 3 months later, he got caught hacking into the school district server with it....he claims he didn't mean to do it. I remain unconvinced.
ReplyDeleteThe odd thing is that Cooke is just barely thirty years old himself, and yet, like so many conservatives young and old, he writes and thinks like a grumpy ol' fart.
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder if the gestation period for conservatives is sixty-one years.
I once owned the world's worst Mustang. A '71 or something when I was in college. Windows were completely fucked up; the glue that held the glass in two thingamajigs gave way, and you could lift the glass right out of the doors. The carpet got wet so often that there were mushrooms growing on it at one point. Then there was the transmission. It leaked fluid so fast that whenever I parked the car I would put a tray underneath to catch it and pour it back in the next time I drove the car. And then the reverse stopped working. It's a pain in the ass, but you can actually do without reverse. You just have to be careful where you park.
ReplyDeleteHmm. How exactly does Cooke square that statement with the extraordinary amount of whining about the state going on amongst libertarians conservatives of all stripes? (There are no libertarians; there are simply selfish and more selfish conservatives. Libertarian is a distinction only of degree.)
ReplyDeleteI want one of those. I hear they come with some version of Mathematica... er, excuse me, the Wolfram Language.
ReplyDeleteBTDT. No reverse, no starter, no alternator (not all at the same time. Different vehicles in fact). I once drove from Dallas to Houston with no clutch...
ReplyDeleteGood lord, I always assumed that he was in an Old Folks Home and posted his scribbling in actual envelopes.
ReplyDeleteThis got some traction here as our Prime Minister tried to talk up his not-up-for-debate decision to send "non-combatants to Iraq. Apparently we're doing to save the gays.Which is rich coming from a guy who described a radio person as "wearing a big gay red shirt".
ReplyDeleteI guess the transmission was so bad that you couldn't go fast enough in it to fuck up the engine or the rear end--which were notable soft spots. That particular year, the 351 Cleveland-equipped ones ate camshafts, lifters and wallowed out valve stem guides, and the 9" rear that went into that year was much weaker than the previous near-bulletproof Ford nine-inchers. I mark that year as the beginning of the end for the Mustang (until its revival in the `90s with something approximating the original car).
ReplyDeleteI too assumed he was a grumpy old fart.
ReplyDeleteIt's amusing that he has to borrow from the life experiences of old farts to make his case. Dude's 30 years old; he's probably only ever made a couple of trips to the DMV. And as noted, the DMV ain't what it used to be.
ReplyDeleteIt's finally happened: conservatives have so strangled government that the direct points of contact have dribbled down to nothing. About the only place most of us ever interact with a federal employee face to face anymore is the post office, and a lot of folks don't even go there.
Mine's a '98. I got no complaints; it's been a great car. The original parts on it were good - the battery that came in it lasted 7 years, the A/C blew cold for 15 yrs/185K miles. I've done repairs over past few years - A/C, front ball joints, engine fan motor, alternator, starter - but stuff does eventually wear out so I'm not complaining.
ReplyDeleteKristol is the intellectual Joe Btfsplk of the right wing. You'd think the wingers would get the message whenever they see him coming. That they--and the Sunday talk shows--still give him any credence at all is one of the great mysteries of our time. Jaysus, this was the guy known as Dan Quayle's brain. That should have been enough to convince almost anyone that he had a unique gift for being wrong about everything.
ReplyDeleteHe's the best-respected fuckup in Washington.
a white Rabbit
ReplyDeleteShirley you mean "IML8IML8".
liquid one is pipetting
ReplyDeleteI had a friend who made a few extra bucks working on VWs in the early '80s. I don't know if he had the work you referenced, but he did pretty good for a side business, IIRC.
ReplyDelete