- I’m not sure what exactly this means for a potential stadium deal in SJ, but I’m pretty sure that if it happened in Oakland, ML would be trumpeting it as a massive FAIL (De Mause doesn’t quite go there … but almost)
- How sausage prices are made
- Interesting discussion of tv rights and their implications for franchise movement
- Most of this is patently unamusing and borderline offensive, but “Outer Outer Sunset” is funny, fully offensive … and wrong
- Is Fantasy Land the gated community where Beane lives?
Permanent residents of a unicorn ranch in fantasy land 84
84 thoughts on “Permanent residents of a unicorn ranch in fantasy land”
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Return of the GIFs.
You’ve gotta at least keep this option on the table:
BTW, hasn’t this been tried before?
It has to mean the actions themselves, since the research programs (computer simulations, lab experiments, etc) are a necessary part of developing “an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities”.
The ban passes:
1. I am greatly looking forward to the day when Lew Wolff is no longer the public face of the A’s ownership group. I expect that day to come before Opening Day 2011.
Wednesday’s Just Desserts challenge was perhaps the most ridiculous, useless challenge on one of these shows that I can remember.
The chocolate dresses? I like how they lay down the parameters of the challenge–needs to be an edible dress–then bitch at the two who don’t use baking skills…excuse me, wtf?! Seriously, let’s say you’re really, really good at making pies and cakes and cookies and desserts of all kinds–is it expected that you’ll know how to make a fucking dress out of baking goods? WTF? And seriously, could those people in this show be any cattier? You know it’s bad when you’r essentially rooting for the “villain” from Texas to crush all the rest of them. Except that one black girl–she seems nice.
Just watched this ep last night. And yes, that was a breathtakingly stupid challenge.
Though the nickname “Morganza” is nice. That guy has a lot of (Project Runway’s) Gretchen in him.
I know, but rooting for him anyhow.
Exactly. Poor hippie dippie Eric, who seems to actually make things that taste delicious, didn’t have a prayer. He looked like he just wanted to burst into tears.
And while Morgan does seem like a sexist pig, Heather isn’t exactly winning me over to her side with her nasty personality. Morgan’s dress did look good, I’ll admit.
I want all three member of Team Diva placed inside the same burlap sack, have said bag beaten mercilessly with pool cues, followed by ceremoniously dipping said sack into alternating bins of goat shit and glitter, THEN removing them from said bags, and making them interact with charm and grace with really intelligent people making fun of them to their face while pretending not to.
And filming the whole thing with Pop-Up Video/Blind Date snarkiness added to the screen, so the home audience can join in at laughing at them, AND forcing them to watch others watching this and filming their reaction to others laughing at their misfortunes.
Only on Bravo!
I would say that about all the owners of Bay Area sports franchises..
This makes me uncomfortable. First, Jaczko’s former relationship with the Nevada senator is sketchy. Second, can a Congressionally-legislated study by stopped due to “budget constraints” when those constraints are (partially) due to a proposed budget? Third, the DOE withdrew its license application for Yucca Mountain in June and Jaczko is now trying to kill the review, which is sounds suspiciously coordinated. Both the DOE and the NRC are staffed with administration officials, so it seems to me that this is part of a larger administration drive to kill Yucca Mountain despite Congressional legislation saying that it has to be studied.
Moreover:
Look, even if they don’t want to use Yucca Mountain, why not release the review saying that the site is safe? Because that wouldn’t allow them to use the ZOMG SAFETY angle. I’m sure there’s some other bullshit reason they can conjure. Otherwise, Yucca Mtn proponents/Obama opponents will easily paint this as “Powerful Senator NIMBY’s away nuclear power with help from Obama; don’t care about energy independence.”
Anyway, I’m not putting an opinion out there on Yucca Mountain; I don’t know nearly enough. But the whole affair seems pretty fishy to me. If they want to kill Yucca Mtn but the NRC is bound by law to study it, it seems to be that they need to legislate the study away.
Here is the LA Times on Reid and Angle debating Yucca mountain.
Hey nevermoor and Poppy, watch out, here we come:
Now I wish the GIFs would go away.
Yeah, sorry, though I was aiming for deliberate obnoxiousness, that was too seizure inducing. I’ve replaced the gif with the nice quiet image above.
Crabtree > DHB
No doubt. Drafting GHB was perhaps the lowest point in pathtetic Raider draft and roster decisions in the last 10 years (and that’s saying something).
The response we were looking for is: DHB’s 40 > Crabtree’s 40.
Don’t worry, dranking heavily eases the pain.
Here’s the real truf: both the Niners and the Raiders suck. Oh, and batgirl, so do the Broncos. Or was it the Vikings you liked? No matter-they both suck.
(and, in an effort to provide full disclosure, so do the Bengals)
Who crapped in your wheaties?
I think this is just more evidence that LB actually is Tom Cable.
Off-tackle! Off-tackle! Off-tackle! Punt!
Damn it, why isn’t this working?
I’ll miss the 2nd half because I have a date to be frisked by the Secret Service in San Jose… :(
sounds hawt!
Nina was there apparently, too, huh?
You have fun?
Wheeeee!
Security was kind of shockingly lax at the media entrance. “Put your gear over there for the dogs to sniff it, and then step away.” Okay. Put. Step. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Apparently they didn’t care about purses (I didn’t have one, but my classmate did). They also didn’t pat anyone, or have us walk through a metal detector. So… I could have brought just about anything into the arena with me, or sold my press pass to someone who was looking for mayhem. Once inside, my camera was restricted to the media corral, but I wasn’t… not really, anyway. I did have to be escorted when I wanted to go find a drinking fountain, but I could have gone into the restroom to meet someone from the crowd and give her some mayhem-creation device that I had brought in on my unsearched person…
You, um, you have a devious mind. I hope Mr. Poppy keeps good watch of you.
4: I like “Temporary” and “Euro Napa”
“Temporary” should have been at the top … the Antarctic land mass ain’t going nowhere.
Continental drift, baby – Antarctica is coming to Vegas!
I don’t really understand what is going on here. Are the fees totally unavoidable, or are they trickily assessed without clear advertising? Whatever the case, I think the following analogy is almost certainly wrong:
If I were in a famine-ravaged country, I’d welcome any merchant selling food.
3. That is definitely a huge issue. I don’t foresee Las Vegas being a serious contender to land the A’s or any other MLB team for quite some time, but to the extent it’s on the list, Las Vegas lies within the A’s existing television territory so that issue would not be an obstacle to a move there.
If marijuana is being viewed as simply a tax cash cow, wouldn’t it make more sense to go the ABC route and have government-run pot stops?
Nah.
Those are just stupid all the way around, especially since I bet there’s a ton of room for MJ innovation if it ever actually becomes legal.
I guess i just don’t understand the “let’s make it legal and tax it” crowd. Perhaps legalizing marijuana serves a greater social good, and that’s one reason to support it, and there could be some nice tax revenue coming out of it, too. But the above article makes it sound like the revenue is the primary motivation, which seems silly.
I buy that. I think the revenue argument is designed to give supporters something else to talk about besides how much they like pot, and one that will appeal to a different audience than the injustice/arrests argument.
The revenue argument distracts from the reality that this will be a foot in the door for big companies to make millions producing ganja. The reality is that pot is already legal for those who need it and small farmers contribute, informally, a great deal to the local economies in CA and to the state through myriad taxes paid.
All the efforts to legalize pot, going back to medicinal MJ back in the early ’90s, has really been about how a bunch of people just like pot. However, the people who write these propositions don’t have the integrity to simply stand up and say “I like pot. I want you to legalize my preferred drug of use.”
I don’t care if someone wants to smoke pot. I care that ever since I first heard of the attempts to legalize it CA, the people around me who were advocating the new standard were also joking about how they already had a doctor willing to provide them with a prescription to take care of a non-existent medical condition. Tp this day I’m still pissed that people I knew were using cancer patients as a smoke screen to justify their own desires.
I also want to know how you field test for “too stoned” like the police can test for alcohol. Is there a breath test (or something similar) for pot? I’d rather not leave it up to the whims of whichever law enforcement official happens to pull you over.
Right – it stays in your system for up to 30 days. Does that mean you are still high?
I haven’t read the proposition verbatum, but I’m guessing it leaves many important questions unanswered.
There’s nothing wrong with touting marijuana’s benefits for cancer patients as an argument for ending prohibition. It is good for lots of ailments and it’s a benign drug. There is no good reason for it to be illegal. But this 19 might have the same effect on Mendocino and Humboldt counties that deforestation had on logging and the depletion of salmon fisheries on commercial fishing in that part of the world. Whether we like it or not CA is reliant on pot production. We may as well let it be mom and pop operations.
Feh, wake me up if she does it in 2013.
Speaking as a 5/5, the best thing about such birth dates is that they’re the same in American and European formats.
but were you born in 1905?
Fortunately they both agree that the year should come last.
Not me, actually. I am always writing “2010 Oct 15” because it makes far more sense to start big and whittle down. (In that way, the European format makes more sense than the American format; at least it goes in order.) This helps immensely with labeling; you can easily order by date when your samples or files are named YYYY MM DD.
Of course – and I do the same.
The convenience for me is in form-filling (customs & immigration primarily) when jet-lagged.
You should stop leaving this wonderful country then. Traitor.
Yeah, real Americans don’t get jet lag.
I’m certainly no American.
I’ve heard your accent.
YOU’RE JAMES BOND!
Of course not, you were born on cinco de mayo.
And yet I’m still not Mexican enough.
Major blogic fail:
UC health insurance costs will increase 50 – 100% for the coming year.
My current plan jumps from $280 to $550 per month.
M’s hire Eric Wedge as manager.
Can we predict that they’ll win the division yet?
#6org (in the AL West)
This is spectacular:
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The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.
Drum’s CA Propositions roundup
My only definite YES is 25. 19, probably, sure, I guess.
That reminds me… I need to read the pack of lies that is CA Proposition packet.
My permanent absentee ballot is still sitting on my desk, unopened. Probably won’t get to that until Monday.
yeah, I need help still. think for me, FKers!
Yes/Don’t remember/Yes/No/No/Yes/Yes/No/No
I’m a tax and spend liberal. And 25 should get 99% of the vote.
No vote(s) for me – I just pay taxes.
Perhaps you should throw your tea in the Bay.
I know MB can beat this:
Yeah, I was working on a response to that. Not done yet.
Boy, the original post by Thoreau is … dumb. And the commenters’ ideas are even worse.
Drum’s is quite good.
This one is pretty good
Nice
I want to disagree with this more than I do.
Boy, I dunno. Yes, I’ve been riding the Obama-needs-to-use-his-bully-pulpit hobbyhorse, too, but this fellow seems to be saying it’s Obama’s fault that Republicans are illiterate, uncurious morons. He’s also engaging in the inverse of nutpicking: stating his biases against crazies and extremists, he’s attuned to (relative) moderates and nice people; he concludes that the entire crowd is mostly nice people.
I liked the piece mostly as it seems to show how the Republicans might be willing to tolerate extremist insanity among themselves and wield it as a negotiating tactic. The Democrats have never been able to do this.
Come on now. Did the John Birch Society thrive because JFK articulated his worldview too complexly? Remember when Obama got 70 million votes because people were happy a politician was talking to them like they were grown-ups?
The twin themes of the tea party movement and Barack Obama’s messaging difficulties are good fodder for bloggers and essayists in search of narratives, but they are both really really really overwrought. The midterms are going the way they’re going because the economy sucks and first term midterms are always hard on the president’s party. The rest is noise. This just isn’t the sea change it seems, and all that spirited incoherence (sorry, I know the polite term is “honest hardworking Americans”) the GOP is so cleverly leveraging right now is going to bite them in the ass when they try to run a national campaign in 2012.
Dems have a 75 seat majority in the House and a 19 seat advantage in the Senate. Those are pretty big numbers, and they were destined to diminish – by a lot – even if Obama had spent the last year “talking dumb” and following all of Duncan Black’s mortgage policy advice to a T.
***
In the context of examining media strategy (i.e. why conservatives are better at it), this article articulates some basic differences between liberals and conservatives which I think are important to bear in mind when assessing the extent to which Barack Obama’s way of speaking is to blame for the rise of the tea party.
Many liberal activists/bloggers attribute their discontent to a) gratuitous disrespect (“professional left” jeers and so forth), b) Obama mimicing his predecessor in various respects (state secrets, etc.), c) insufficiently progressive legislation, and d) insufficiently combative rhetoric. If the president took the NSA to task and told Republicans and Goldman Sachs to go fuck themselves more frequently, said activists/bloggers would more actively and enthusiastically support the administration’s agenda. But he hasn’t, thus the angst. George W. Bush on the other hand tended assiduously to his base, keeping them happy; he was an epic disaster, but he did right by the people who got him there. So the story goes.
But it’s only superficially true. The political behavior of the conservative base diverges from that of the liberal base not because of particular failures of messaging or policy, but because the temperament and demographic composition of the two sides are different.
Conservatives’ affinity for Manichean constructs facilitates a seige mentality, which is an useful template for political unity. They are permanently positioned in opposition to some hovering threat, even when they are in power. Whether the enemy is sexual deviance or insurgents abroad or immigrants not learning English quickly enough, mobilizing against threats is an effective way to smooth over rivalries, disagreements, disappointments, etc. Get on the same page or else [this terrible thing will happen]. The smaller the minority and the crummier the economy, the more effective it is.
For liberals, the context is more complicated. Liberals say “we should build it this way instead of that way”, whereas conservatives say “we must keep these threats at bay.” With the former, diffusion of approach and opinion is inevitable (if maddening).
You can’t spell trenchant without an m-k. Wait…anyway, I like this a lot.
The maddening part I’ve never been able to understand is how the R’s can (mostly) successfully maintain the siege state as the permanent condition. Or at least a quadrennial one. It takes a pretty strong dogmatic faith to keep believing the sky is falling when the
criminals and homos never seem to break down our doors and defile ussky just never quite does fall.I completely agree with this, and think it is fantastic
I think this needs to be caveated/completed with the fairly consistent historical demographic issue wherein self-identified “conservatives” outnumber “liberals” something like 3:2. And that then tempered with the similarly consistent theme where actual policy preferences run just about the reverse.
In short, there’s a whole lot of people who have some serious cognitive dissonance going on — it’s the polity equivalent of being deeply in the closet and being loudly homophobic.
True.
Speaking of threats, one thing I find endearing about these honest hardworking Americans is that they think the Council on Foreign Relations is “progressive”.
present company, of course, excluded.
He’s British, though–does he count?
I wasn’t saying they (all) are.