"No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secret the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!" - Erik
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« November 2017 | Main | January 2018 » December 28, 2017Chumley III Putting some new songs up just in time to say i "released" an "album" in 2017. By fnord12 | December 28, 2017, 7:34 PM | Music| Link An Important Lesson In the middle of Hulk #422 (Oct 94), there was an insert which had kids going around to football players asking what made for the best football cards. The kids were really concerned about collectability, and the players would tell them that what really mattered was getting cards that you liked. This goes on for several pages until the kids get to Steve Young, who disabuses them of all that hippy dippy stuff. Keep your cards in plastic slabs, kids, or they aren't worth shit. By fnord12 | December 28, 2017, 7:11 PM | Comics| Link
Merry Christmas By min | December 20, 2017, 3:09 PM | My stupid life| Link Loud Fish Sex By min | December 20, 2017, 1:52 PM | Science| Link Everybody's Mad at Donna Brazile Thomas Frank on the mainstream libs (when can we take back the word "liberal" from these guys?) are pissed about Brazile's book confirming the primary process was rigged for Clinton. Which is to say that the fury swirling around Donna Brazile is somehow symptomatic of our times. Since she had a front-row seat to everything that happened last year, her analysis and recollections of that volcanic election are valuable by definition. But what she has to tell us doesn't fit easily into the simple moral framework that now guides all our thinkings on politics. For example. Donna Brazile wanted Hillary Clinton to be president and worked hard to achieve that result, but she also thinks Clinton and her team blundered repeatedly. This feels like common sense to me, but in the Republic of the Righteous it is a brain-stopping contradiction; it may not be uttered. The former DNC chair's memoir of election defeat has it all: Russian hackers, campaign drama and a reigniting of bitter internal feuds Brazile regards Donald Trump as an obvious scoundrel, yet she can also understand how he appealed to ordinary Americans in the deindustrialized states. Again, not a startling insight, really - but try saying it in the pages of any American prestige publication. The reaction to her book, Brazile said when I phoned her this month, is as though she "had broken the holy grail of politics". By min | December 20, 2017, 11:35 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Speaking of Marvel... ...i haven't been keeping up, but i recently caught wind of "Marvel Legacy" and had a paranoid fear that they were reverting back to their old continuity and i'd have to decide what i was going to do about that. But a quick investigation instead shows that the Avengers are all cavemen now, so i guess i'm good. By fnord12 | December 18, 2017, 8:48 PM | Comics| Link Back up the drain A 2005 Urban Legends by Brian Cronin (from CBR's semi-defunct website so i'm reposting the whole thing): STATUS: False Whenever a new creator comes out of seemingly nowhere, people are bound to be curious about them, especially when, in the case of writer Akira Yoshida, the new writer gets such "plum" assignment as the X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover and the 10th Anniversary of the Age of Apocalypse. Inquiring minds begin to come up with their OWN theories as to why such a new writer that noone knows much about got the assignment - he was NOT a new writer, but rather an older writer, using a pseudonym, perhaps to sound more exotic. When I heard this one, I thought it would be easy enough to check out. However, when I found out that some of the editors that he had worked with had never spoken with Akira, I will admit, the absurd suddenly did not seem SO absurd. Luckily, the other day, editor Mike Marts was able to allay any suspicions. Says Marts, Well, there's ONE conspiracy theory down the drains!!! Now: Marvel's New Editor-in-Chief Admits Writing Under Japanese Pseudonym 'Akira Yoshida'. It seems the often-despised Bleeding Cool has been on this for a while. Noticed by the Atlantic, and not in a good way: Marvel Comics has had a rough few years, full of dropping sales, public controversies, and departures by high-profile creators. After the exit of the previous editor Axel Alonso, Cebulski's stewardship was supposed to be a fresh start, an opportunity to regain audiences' trust. Instead, the company is having to deal with the fact that its new editor in chief was part of a larger pattern of white men posing as Asian for personal gain. Marvel's apparently muted response has prompted frustration from some comics creators, critics, and readers--many of whom recognize how Cebulski was enabled by an industry that has long relied on pulp Asian stereotypes and struggled with hiring people of color. I have a vague idea that i like C.B. Cebulski (from his Loners series, maybe?), so this is extra weird to me. By fnord12 | December 18, 2017, 8:24 PM | Comics| Link
Off to a good start After Doug Jones' win last week, there were a lot of calls to "thank" black voters - especially women - for "saving" the election. A lot of it seemed sanctimonious to me when it wasn't coupled with calls to address issues of importance to those voters, but the general sentiment is correct. Jones owes his victory in large part to black voters. So it's pretty alarming that in his first post-election interview he's focused on telling people how willing he is to vote with Republicans. I'm sure that's exactly what the people who voted for him were hoping for. Jones also won in a large part thanks to the fact that he was running against a man with serious sexual misconduct issues, but he's now saying he's ready to dismiss the sexual harassment charges against Trump, saying we need to "move on" and focus on "real issues". Meanwhile, Ralph Northam won the governorship in Virginia in a large part thanks to people being angry over Republican refusal to accept the ACA's Medicaid expansion, but instead of claiming a mandate on that issue, Northam is backing away and is instead dribbling out some Neoliberal mush about cost control (despite the Federal government being responsible for the vast majority of the cost, even in later years) and work training programs. He's also blaming sick people for being sick (they need "skin in the game"). Outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) tried every year to push the legislature to accept millions in federal money to expand the health program to hundreds of thousands of low-income Virginians. Northam campaigned heavily on the promise of getting more Virginians access to health care. He said Friday that he remains committed to that pledge, but that he must be careful about obligating the state to escalating costs. Under the program, the federal government pays the lion's share in the early years but the state contribution gradually increases [not quite - the Fed contribution goes from 100% to 90% in 2020]. "Medicaid is growing in Virginia by 5 to 7 percent, in that ballpark, every year," he said. "So I look forward to . . . seeing how we can provide better service and at the same time cut costs" through "managed-care Medicaid," he said. A managed system would involve rewarding "healthy choices," he said. "I want people to have skin in the game. I want to incentivize people to really have good health." And although some people who need Medicaid cannot work -- children, some pregnant women, people with certain disabilities -- others can, he said. "I want to help them get back on the workforce [through] training," he said. Republicans can win elections by the thinnest of margins and claim sweeping mandates to re-write our entire society, but when Democrats win they immediately start compromising. By fnord12 | December 17, 2017, 1:01 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
By fnord12 | December 14, 2017, 12:19 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
The Henry Ford Square Dancing Conspiracy Do Si Do To Fight the Jews' Attempt To Bring Jazz To The Masses (wait, what?). By fnord12 | December 13, 2017, 4:23 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Recap 80 By min | December 13, 2017, 12:51 PM | D&D| Link
No, dummies. It balances it out. Link: In particular, these policymakers are suggesting that New Jersey might need to press "pause" on long-held efforts to make New Jersey's income tax fairer by asking the wealthiest residents to pay a little more so our state can build a brighter and stronger economic future. The reason: Fears about a "double whammy" if the Republicans' federal tax proposal raises taxes by eliminating state and local tax deductions used heavily by New Jerseyans. Those fears, however, are unfounded. In fact, the Republican tax proposals in D.C. all favor the wealthy -- even if these deductions disappear. I don't know why this is even in question. By fnord12 | December 12, 2017, 9:08 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Too Much Democracy Reacting to the modest reforms that the DNC Unity Commission made over the weekend (e.g. reducing - not eliminating - superdelegates), a pair of political scientists say, "Whoah, hold on there. Is the Democratic Party Becoming Too Democratic?". Here's their core argument: By the spring of 2016, democratic legitimacy was the overwhelming rationale of his campaign. In the general election, roughly one Sanders supporter in 10 ended up voting for Donald Trump, and many young voters defected for third-party candidates, possibly costing Mrs. Clinton the election in several key states. Never mind that less Bernie voters voted for Trump than Clinton voters voted for Obama. Imagine thinking that those voters would have been more likely to vote for Clinton if they weren't given a voice at all. Don't appeal to voters, just tell them to get in line. Just to spell it out a little better: the article acknowledges that the primary process isn't very democratic. It then says that the problem is that candidates might complain that the process isn't democratic, which will influence voters. And so the authors' proposed solution isn't to make the process more democratic, it's to eliminate the pretense of being democratic all together. Smokey Back Rooms 2020! By fnord12 | December 11, 2017, 12:26 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
For Those Chilly Nights While You're Out on Your Scooter This just made my day. It even comes with reflective bands so other drivers don't mistake you for a discarded mattress on the road and run over you. By min | December 8, 2017, 6:10 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link
Obama's smart grid didn't kill coal & nuclear I know facts and logic and words have no meaning anymore and i've basically stopped bothering trying to rebut right wing stuff, but this is still worth a read. By fnord12 | December 6, 2017, 9:53 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
The failure of incrementalism By fnord12 | December 2, 2017, 11:30 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link |
