Poll_Blind
Poll_Blind's JournalHow envious Russia and China must be, for America found more people to FREE!
Oh the places we'll go! There is good to be done!
There are battles to fight. There are wars to be won!
And our magical touch to make governments fall
will make us the winningest country of all.
Fame! We'll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole world watching while we win on TV!
PB
(with apologies to Dr. Seuss, citizens of Syria and probably the rest of the world, too)
VIDEO: Insane view from inside a tornado in a specially-designed "Tornado Intercept Vehicle"
Some people like to go for drives in the country and some people like to go for drives in tornado country. And then into the tornados, because.
So you can't do it in just any old car of course. No, you need something pretty amazing to drive into a tornado and survive and that's just what stormchasers Brandon Ivey and Sean Casey built. They call it the TIV 2. Here's a snippet from Mythbusters where Adam and Jamie geek out over the features of the TIV 2:
On that episode of Mythbusters they tested the TIV 2 out and it passed their simulated tornado, which was accomplished by putting it behind the roaring engines of a jumbo jet.
But how does it handle itself in a real tornado? Like a boss, that's how. Uploaded to YouTube yesterday:
Hat-tip to The Atlantic.
PB
The problem with the President's hollow rhetoric is each time he backtracks, he...
...puzzles many, irritates some, and entirely alienates a few of his base.
Not an atypical political maneuver. This is politics. You play that card when you have to because it's most definitely not a "Get Out of Jail FREE" card. It has consequences on the base although, from my example, it usually isn't the end of the world. However, the frequency with which the President plays this card lessens his credibility and the credibility of the Democratic party, overall.
With 2014 coming up I have yet to see a Democratic politician who is still openly embracing the actual policies of the President and some commentary that Democratic House members are going to have to distance themselves from the President's policies in order to get the best turnout.
So I just think, not only is the President not frequently moving a left-wing agenda forward, he's not helping get those votes out for (especially) Democratic House reps, where we need that control the most.
His "Give the cold shoulder to Democrats while courting Republicans in hopes of winning them over" maneuver has failed, failed, failed. The man is locked in an untenable position, trying the same losing ideas over and over and fucking over again. The Barack Obama of 2008 before the election had vision. And during the campaign in 2012, for instance, on Afghanistan, the President has a similar "resurgance" of vision.
He led himself into lame-duck-hood since about 2010 and somehow just decided that he was going to keep doing the same things which weren't working and expecting a different result. His most ardent supporters are frequently reduced to simply trying to pass off the office of the President as being essentially helpless, a daisy head of good intentions blown to the wind. Which, I suppose, would have been convincing had America not suffered through the effective (for the Republicans) Bush years and how high that effectiveness was, even with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate.
Again, the need to downplay the importance of the Presidency is the single biggest indicator that the President, although genuinely beset by an awful legislative impedance by Republicans (and even sometimes Democrats), has also failed on a deeper level.
PB
LOL. Okay, I chuckled for a second and then I fell silent and nodded solemly.
Because you pegged where we're at. Such a fucking insecure country.
Such a fucking insecure country.
I'd love to read a book about why we're so fucking insecure and touchy about our own patriotism and have to shellack ourselves with flag pins and shit like that. There's just a whiff of the closeted gay male persecuting others for their homosexuality.
As interesting (and disturbing) as the phenomena is in the context of sexuality, you have to fucking wonder what dark motherfucking shit is behind the "patriotic" version of the same behavior.
Ooh, that's really disturbing, actually. I wonder if anyone has written anything on that topic. (?)
PB
Doesn't irritate me but drives the baby rose hair tarantulas I incubate on my scalp crazy.
They're like fire ants when I'm watching HD streaming video. Doctor said it was either a lifetime of Prell and bad dandruff or 18 months of what he called "nature's cure".
Yes, occasionally a pinkie will drop onto my shoulder at an inappropriate moment but they scurry right back up there.
PB
Unladylike/ungentlemanly, for me anyway, are less about gender and more...
...about ethical aspects of a person. I grew up in New Orleans and while it's true that some people may construe "ladylike" or "gentlemanly" with heavy gender inflection, in practice it was used (where I lived, anyway) to denote a person's comportment, quality of speech, behavior in regards to ethical matters and so on.
The particular place where I grew up had scads and scads of poor people and there was a lot of classism and racism. However a wealthy white man or woman could still be described as "ungentlemanly" or "unladylike" and even the poorest black person could still be described as "gentlemanly" or "ladylike", depending on their actual behavior.
It was a sort of class-related modifier and it was used to at least partially negate a person's economic class status (wealthy or not) to indicate what kind of person they actually were.
When I moved to Oregon I found there really wasn't much in the way of a distinction which was used to modify class like this. In many ways there is more of a rigid stratification up here based on economic class than there was down in New Orleans. Which is really too bad because the concept of a wealthy person being, by default, honorable, is not necessarily true. The only time I would hear any of those words would be girls or ladies sarcastically ribbing each other after, say, a belch, and laughing and accusing their friend of being "unladylike" before belching themselves.
And that's fine. And that's probably how most people, especially in North, view those words.
But the way it was used where I was born, there was a great deal more subtlety to the meaning of those words.
PB
Hypnotic. A reminder that the day we carelessly live today will be soon looked upon with...
...wonder and nostalgia by eyes not formed yet, pondered by minds yet to twinkle into existence. Oh, and how future hands will caress the vidscreen in a yearning to be in the treasured, simpler, mundanity of our now.
"What would it have been like to meet these people?" they will say of us.
PB
Medium Troy's "Run" - Mellow anti-fascist beats from Eugene, Oregon
Yo I say, Run Run Run
Here come the Po Po
And they like to carry guns.
They went and took Left Moon's Arm
They like to cause harm.
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
Well, as a child he was a mean one
And now he's got a badge and gun
You know I think he's gonna hurt someone
I think he does it just for fun
Well, as a child he was a mean one
And now he's got a badge and gun
I think he's gonna kill someone
I think he does it just for fun
Yo I say, Run Run Run
Here come the Po Po
And they like to carry guns.
They went and took Left Moon's Arm
They like to cause harm.
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I say Run Run Run
Here comes the Boss Man's angry hoodlums.
Who can't think for themselves cause they're dumb.
We took the bullies and gave them all guns
The World's Biggest Gangs Run on Government Funds
Yo I say, Run Run Run
Here come the Po Po
And they like to carry guns.
They went and took Left Moon's Arm
They like to cause harm.
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
I want to see your Fascist State disarm
PB
Have you ever seen this brief presentation by Tom Scott: "Flashmob gone wrong"?
This is so worth the few minutes of your time it takes that it's not even funny. You and everyone else. Because in that talk is the kernel of the power of the internet that we saw on display in this "crowdsleuthing". And while the results are less fatal than the situation described in the video above, they are both situations where awful, awful things can happen...in a flash.
PB
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