Go Falcons.

I am watching the Super Bowl right now. The ads so far have been unremarkable. The game so far hasn’t — the Falcons are winning, and anything that ruins Tom Brady’s perfect little world can’t be all bad, can it?

Man, defensive linemen look like big fat guys, even in the championship game. I know everyone on a team has their own job to do, but I’d hate to have one of those behemoths fall on me.

I should watch football more often if I want to have opinions about it, so I’ll shut up now.

Another Atlanta touchdown! This could be pretty good. But I’m basically here for Lady Gaga.

Did you know Detroit has a gay sports bar? It does. I’ve never been there, but I should. Winter bucket-list item, maybe.

This was a weekend for winter bucket lists. Got to Belle Isle for a Wendy walk and to look at the ice, because it looks like the chances of a polar vortex long enough for serious ice are fading, so no ice walk this year. Instead, we watched it float by:

This may sound a little disjointed today, and it is. I have a million things to do early in the week, and I can’t think of much else. So, have a link? Post it. I’ll be back later.

Posted at 7:55 pm in Same ol' same ol' |
 

83 responses to “Go Falcons.”

  1. David C. said on February 5, 2017 at 8:11 pm

    The Massholes are having a pretty tough time of it. Lots of time left, though.

    78 chars

  2. Heather said on February 5, 2017 at 8:37 pm

    To respond to Joe from the previous post, if you’re saying we should shut up, I don’t think you understand how democracy works.

    127 chars

  3. Joe K said on February 5, 2017 at 9:26 pm

    Nope not saying shut up,protest all you want it’s your right, not your right in my opinion to bust stuff up but you want to walk around waving your little sign, knock yourself out. Thought miss ga,ga, was just fine, don’t really like her music but she had a lot of energy and I didn’t see anything controversial so good for her.
    Pilot Joe

    339 chars

  4. Sherri said on February 5, 2017 at 10:19 pm

    If half the things in this NYTimes story are true, WASF.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/politics/trump-white-house-aides-strategy.html?ref=politics&_r=0

    166 chars

  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5, 2017 at 11:04 pm

    Man, this is just a brutal 2020 GOP presidential primary race . . . Kasich, Rubio, the incumbent, all throwing (Twitter) elbows even during the Roman-Numeraled-Festival-of-National-Unity.

    This campaign already feels like it’s been going on since . . . you know.

    I have to give Ford the overall win on ads. Used a common human experience as the hook, mixed humor and pathos fairly smoothly, widened the brand in directions they wanted it extended. A few other narrow successes, and 84 Lumber’s getting more national discussion than they’ve had since ever, though we’ll see if it helps move product. Lots to like in general, little to go “ewwww” to, and Lady Gaga was impressive from Intel beginning to mic drop end. Just have to work at being happy that Behemoth rolled over Leviathan, but it was quite a show on the football end, atypically.

    My Buffalo Cauliflower Wings were a hit!

    891 chars

  6. Sherri said on February 5, 2017 at 11:09 pm

    I don’t even remember the Ford ad, so I can’t give them the edge. I liked the Audi ad.

    86 chars

  7. Jakash said on February 6, 2017 at 1:06 am

    Our favorite, by far, was the talking yearbook photo ad. Had to look it up to be reminded that it was for Honda, though, so I don’t know how effective it was…

    I liked the Audi ad, too. Yes, some of the other messages and imagery were better than the usual round-up of sexist beer and godaddy crap, and I appreciate that, but I didn’t really find many of the ads very funny or entertaining, which is what I was looking for.

    Hated the outcome of the game, but it was certainly a classic.

    500 chars

  8. Suzanne said on February 6, 2017 at 6:08 am

    Headed to bed at the OT. I have a loooong day today & at that point, was pretty sure the Pats would pull it out. And I really don’t care about football anyway. The ads are not good anymore and it’s just grown men giving each other concussions.

    247 chars

  9. Alan Stamm said on February 6, 2017 at 6:58 am

    Sure, most (all?) of us have seen The Clip from SNL, maybe more than once (don’t judge), so here’s a short chaser:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/opinion/why-melissa-mccarthy-had-to-play-sean-spicer.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

    “McCarthy isn’t funny as Mr. Spicer because she’s a woman, she’s funny as Mr. Spicer because she’s made a career of playing aggressive characters who are often angry for no reason.”

    601 chars

  10. Alan Stamm said on February 6, 2017 at 7:10 am

    . . . And then there’s the indispensable Frank Bruni, a Detroit Free Press war correspondent and film critic before joining The Times in ’95, who dices and slices you-know-who’s “masturbatory reveries.”

    “Trump’s copious tweeting is about self-aggrandizement and instant gratification.”

    http://nyti.ms/2kdgKTe

    314 chars

  11. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 6, 2017 at 7:55 am

    This is worth thirty seconds of your time: https://t.co/kfEbpy6mvW

    66 chars

  12. coozledad said on February 6, 2017 at 8:51 am

    https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-lesson-munich-post/

    Hitler historian Ron Rosenbaum:

    Until the morning after the election I had declined them. While Trump’s crusade had at times been malign, as had his vociferous supporters, he and they did not seem bent on genocide. He did not seem bent on anything but hideous, hurtful simplemindedness — a childishly vindictive buffoon trailing racist followers whose existence he had mainstreamed. When I say followers I’m thinking about the perpetrators of violence against women outlined by New York Magazine who punched women in the face and shouted racist slurs at them. Those supporters. These are the people Trump has dragged into the mainstream, and as my friend Michael Hirschorn pointed out, their hatefulness will no longer find the Obama Justice Department standing in their way.
    Bad enough, but genocide is almost by definition beyond comparison with “normal” politics and everyday thuggish behavior, and to compare Trump’s feckless racism and compulsive lying was inevitably to trivialize Hitler’s crime and the victims of genocide.
    ¤
    But after the election, things changed. Now Trump and his minions are in the driver’s seat, attempting to pose as respectable participants in American politics, when their views come out of a playbook written in German. Now is the time for a much closer inspection of the tactics and strategy that brought off this spectacular distortion of American values.
    What I want to suggest an actual comparison with Hitler that deserves thought. It’s what you might call the secret technique, a kind of rhetorical control that both Hitler and Trump used on their opponents, especially the media. And they’re not joking. If you’d received the threatening words and pictures I did during the campaign (one Tweet simply read “I gas Jews”), as did so many Jewish reporters and people of color, the sick bloodthirsty lust to terrify is unmistakably sincere. The playbook is Mein Kampf.

    Trump has the unanimous support of the Republican party. You can keep swallowing their dreck like it was the last jar of Hellman’s in Sisterbang, Ohio, but they’ll kill you anyway. The only way to fight headcrackers is to crack their heads.

    2262 chars

  13. Andrea said on February 6, 2017 at 10:10 am

    Putting this link out there — a way to change the dialogue? Hard to follow on Cooz’s recommendation to crack heads.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/the-simple-psychological-trick-to-political-persuasion/515181/?utm_source=fbb

    247 chars

  14. Julie Robinson said on February 6, 2017 at 10:46 am

    Didn’t watch but caught the highlight later–three members of the oriignal Hamilton cast singing America the Beautiful. And my pastor daughter just posted a very interesting article about Lady Gaga: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/02/05/the-gospel-according-to-lady-gaga/?utm_term=.75003343d834. Sarah said some of the phrases sounded like praise music to her, and it turns out, Gaga is a churchgoer. She’s that rare breed, a progressive, liberal Christian.

    484 chars

  15. Heather said on February 6, 2017 at 11:17 am

    Joe, I was at the Women’s March in Chicago and nobody was “busting stuff up.” News report said there was not one arrest in any of the marches all over the country. There was some violence at the march in Berkeley, but the overwhelming majority of protests have been peaceful. But it seems like nuance is not conservatives’ strong point.

    337 chars

  16. Heather said on February 6, 2017 at 11:19 am

    Sorry, I was referring to the protest against Milo Jerkface in Berkeley, not a march.

    85 chars

  17. coozledad said on February 6, 2017 at 11:30 am

    it seems like nuance is not conservatives’ strong point

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michigan-gop-official-kent-state_us_58952eafe4b09bd304bb86f0

    Nah. They’re wholly invested in murder. They’re all Pepe now, even if some of them try and come off as more Tio Pepe.

    285 chars

  18. Andrea said on February 6, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    hahahahahaha

    I needed the laugh today. 1.5 million marched #AlternativeFacts

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/portland-sad-trump-rally_us_5897fab9e4b09bd304bc1242?3s35a7rjkm7k3xr&

    192 chars

  19. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 12:44 pm

    Andrea, one question I always have about those “here’s the real trick for persuading someone” studies is, have they ever been applied outside the artificial realm of a study? Has anyone ever tried to use the results to change minds and votes in an election? Psych studies are notorious for the limited diversity of the subjects, because it’s hard to get a broad range, and psych studies are also notorious right now for the lack of reproducibility of their affects.

    The recent study out of UCLA that was reported to have been done in the field involving conversations using people actually affected by a vote convincing people seem interesting until it turned out the researcher had faked the data. (http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/05/how-a-grad-student-uncovered-a-huge-fraud.html) In that article it also mentions that most persuasion techniques don’t stick; people snap back to their prior belief soon after.

    So, frame away. I just think that framing and particularly crafted language is overrated. I don’t think calling the estate tax a “death tax” turned conservatives against it; it was a tax, so they were already against it. Persuasion against what your tribe believes, particularly in an authoritarian culture, is a long, slow, painful process. You’ve got to overcome the cognitive dissonance that they will be hearing the opposite all the time in their daily lives.

    1383 chars

  20. Judybusy said on February 6, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    Andrea, that was a good laugh!

    30 chars

  21. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 1:03 pm

    We woke up to 4 inches of snow this morning, which is just pretty, since my husband can work from home, my lone appointment of the day was cancelled, and we have everything we need.

    181 chars

  22. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    Here’s a list of the 97 companies who have signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Washington AG’s suit against the trump administration’s Muslim ban: https://news.fastcompany.com/these-are-the-97-companies-that-filed-an-amicus-brief-against-trumps-immigration-ban-4030096

    Amazon is not on the amicus brief because they filed a declaration in the original suit.

    371 chars

  23. Joe K said on February 6, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    Heather
    So was my niece, hurray for you for keeping it peaceful, I guess it’s only a nuance, if it’s not your windows being busted, or being pepper sprayed while being interviewed.
    Pilot Joe

    193 chars

  24. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    Peaceful protest doesn’t mean there’s no pepper spray involved. Just ask the kids at UC Davis who were sitting down protesting and were pepper sprayed by the cop. Or ask the people protesting at Standing Rock, who were basted by firehoses in freezing weather while peacefully protesting.

    People talk like MLK peacefully protested and everybody loved him and gladly gave him what he was asking him for, or that peaceful protest was the only kind that happened during the civil rights movement and had an impact.

    513 chars

  25. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    Lest you think Kellyanne the Liar just “misspoke” when she talked about the Bowling Green massacre, she had claimed that Obama had banned refugees after the Bowling Green massacre in an earlier interview with Cosmopolitan.

    http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8674035/kellyanne-conway-bowling-green-massacre-repeat/

    319 chars

  26. brian stouder said on February 6, 2017 at 2:49 pm

    Sherri makes a very good point. If this was February 6, 1969, I’m pretty sure I’d be much, much more distressed than I am right now. The country really seemed to be cracking up and dissolving. The guy who may well have won the presidency that year got murdered in a hotel kitchen, and we got stuck with Dick Nixon – who promptly began dumping lots and lots more bombs on Vietnam. Before that, we lost MLK, justlikethat, and our major cities began to burn. Kent State (as was mentioned earlier) was soon to occur….but our factories were humming, and the white construction workers and factory laborers wanted ‘lawn order’, b’God, and Tricky Dick could hear the whispers of the ‘silent majority’.

    I’d still pick 2017, and our Goodyear Blimp president, and our future ‘sight-unseen’ – instead of February, 1969

    837 chars

  27. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 2:50 pm

    In any event, if those two Iraqis were really masterminds and wanted to kill US soldiers with IEDs, there would be better hunting just an hour down the road at Ft. Campbell. Sure, it would be difficult to get on the base, but there are whole strip malls of businesses set up to cater to soldiers on Ft. Campbell Blvd.

    317 chars

  28. Heather said on February 6, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    I’m sorry that person was pepper-sprayed, Joe, but let’s not forget that there is video of black people being punched and shoved at Trump campaign rallies, and the candidate didn’t do anything to speak against it or prevent it.

    227 chars

  29. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 3:09 pm

    In discussing what happened to manufacturing jobs in America, there’s been way too much focus on NAFTA, and not nearly enough on private equity. NAFTA’s impact is much more limited than what private equity has done and continues to do not just to manufacturing jobs, but any jobs it can get its hands on.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/02/brian_alexander_s_glass_house_about_lancaster_ohio_reviewed.html

    421 chars

  30. Deborah said on February 6, 2017 at 3:31 pm

    I’m back from Abiquiu and then a hot soak at Ojo Caliente. I think the Patriots won the SB but I’m not even sure. I haven’t looked it up and I really don’t care.

    Little Bird is having a colonoscopy tomorrow, another procedure to get now while she still has healthcare coverage. In another hour she has to drink the miserable stuff that starts the ball rolling, so to speak.

    Really, no one is going to change the mind of someone entrenched in an ideology, why try? Better to use your energy convincing those who don’t vote that they should. There are way more liberals and moderates than conservatives in this country, and the conservatives know it. That’s why they’re always trying to suppress the vote, that’s why they gerrymander, etc.

    746 chars

  31. Suzanne said on February 6, 2017 at 3:34 pm

    So true, Sherri. A relative of mine just lost her job. She is 58, has worked since her teens, and lived through breast cancer several years ago. She lost her job because investors decided that the company needed to go in several new directions which didn’t work out very well. So, to save their investments, they sold out to another company and merged the payroll departments which is where my relative worked. She’s out of a job but the investors are all happy, I guess. She’s also a Trump supporter and her husband is retired, so if she can’t find another job and the ACA is repealed, she is screwed for health insurance.
    I’m just not sure how hard it is to grasp that investors will do what is best for them, the heck with everyone else, but for many people, it does seem hard to get. Those of us that don’t have enough money to be big investors lose out. Even trade agreements like NAFTA when you distill it, are the babies of the investor class. Sure, we import more, and get cheaper goods, and all that. But ultimately, it’s the big investors who win, not the rest of us.

    1079 chars

  32. Judybusy said on February 6, 2017 at 3:40 pm

    Little Bird, good luck with the colonoscopy tomorrow–or rather with the prep tonight. I plugged my nose while drinking it and imagined I was drinking chocolate milk. That held up until the last few glasses the day of the procedure. I hope the results are negative.

    265 chars

  33. Scout said on February 6, 2017 at 3:52 pm

    So, Bannon’s appointment to NSC was slipped under Combover’s EO pen and he signed it without reading or understanding what he was signing? We. Are. So. Fcked.
    http://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-is-signing-executive-orders-that-he-doesnt-read-or-understand

    258 chars

  34. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 4:10 pm

    Talking about violent protests: http://www.hcn.org/issues/49.2/revisiting-malheur-one-year-after-the-occupation

    112 chars

  35. Jeff Borden said on February 6, 2017 at 4:21 pm

    Our illustrious leader will be denied the opportunity to address Parliament when he visits UK Prime Minister Theresa May. Members cited his racism and sexism as reasons for not extending the honor. A sizable number of ‘Muricans still seem to be in thrall to the ” *president,” but overseas, he is going over like a bad case of food poisoning.

    342 chars

  36. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 4:30 pm

    Why Breezewood, PA exists and is the bane of every traveler between the D.C. Area and Pittsburgh and points west.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/us/politics/a-pennsylvania-highway-town-at-the-junction-of-politics-and-policy.html

    235 chars

  37. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 4:48 pm

    It feels like this hasn’t gotten very much attention, but it should. JCCs often have daycare facilities.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/04/us-jewish-community-centers-bomb-threats

    194 chars

  38. brian stouder said on February 6, 2017 at 4:53 pm

    Sherri – a great article about Breezewood (which I’ve been through) –

    and indeed, it was written by a Fort Wayne boy, who graduated from North Side High School (we’ll forgive that he’s not a South Side guy, since he’s still an FWCS fellow!)

    243 chars

  39. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 4:57 pm

    Republicans afraid to face constituents with questions.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/constituents-push-back-lawmakers-cancel-town-halls

    141 chars

  40. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    Uber was advertising heavily in Seattle before council passed law allowing unionization. Now they’re suing. Uber doesn’t make money. Their overheated valuation would crater if they had to adhere to normal labor regulations and treat their drivers like employees.

    262 chars

  41. Deborah said on February 6, 2017 at 5:23 pm

    I got an email response from Senator Durbin today. It actually seemed like he read, or at least someone read my email to him, by the way they answered my specifics. I was surprised. Probably some peon, but still.

    212 chars

  42. basset said on February 6, 2017 at 5:34 pm

    Little Bird and Judybusy, I’m with ya on that… had mine today, so no more drinking green slime for awhile. Doc gave me propofol, the Michael Jackson death drug. Don’t see how that stuff has any recreational potential unless the dose was a whole lot smaller, I remember saying “I feel it coming on” and the next thing I knew I was waking up.

    Mrs. B and I and another couple our age drove the 3 1/2 hours to the new IKEA in Memphis on Saturday and it sure seemed like we discussed our various health issues for a significant part of that time. We are indeed getting old… years ago we talked about concerts and work and our friends, now we compare grown-child stories and work out who’s getting a butt-scope next. First world problems.

    743 chars

  43. Deborah said on February 6, 2017 at 5:58 pm

    Little Bird has a friend who suggested she skip the vile solution and go to Taco Bell instead, it would have the same effect. She’s calling it the “ass blaster” As in “time for next cup of ass blaster”.

    202 chars

  44. David C. said on February 6, 2017 at 6:42 pm

    Annual FIT (occult blood) tests are used in Europe and Australia as the first line screen and have been found to be just as effective in use. They only do a colonoscopy in the event of a positive result. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I had a colonoscopy probably 35 years ago and that’s enough for me. Plus, I don’t want to give money to the colonoscopy industrial complex.

    375 chars

  45. Dorothy said on February 6, 2017 at 7:50 pm

    Colonoscopies save lives. My husband is a colon cancer survivor and without the scope, the mass they found at his cecum might not have been seen as early as it was. He’s 59 and this was in 2009 so he was relatively young to have it. Don’t knock colonoscopies.

    Little Bird here’s hoping you breeze through yours. Just keep some good reading material in the b.r. tonight, use wet wipes as needed and a little A&D ointment applied in the general area is also helpful to the overall unpleasantness. (I’ve had them too but never had a positive reading thank goodness.)

    574 chars

  46. alex said on February 6, 2017 at 8:07 pm

    An apt description of Taco Bell if ever I’ve heard one. Lived on it in college and that’s probably why I’m on Crestor now. But at least I maintained a 30-inch waist the whole time I ate it. It greased the skids so well I didn’t hold it long enough to absorb any nutrition from it.

    Getting ready for my butt scope one day soon. One of my neighbors has been riding my ass to have it done. He and his wife urged another neighbor to have hers and fortunately they caught her problems when she only needed seven inches of her bowel removed. Said neighbor took my partner in for his and got to see him nekkid and drive him home while he was on Versed and pump him for all kinds of information that my partner doesn’t remember divulging. Now he wants to take me to my appointment and says I have no excuse for turning him down because he’s retired and always at the ready. Well, I do have an excuse. He’s creeping me out. If I have butt cancer it’s because I’ve been dreading the prospect of him chaperoning me to my colonoscopy. Shit, this is a great Dear Prudence letter. I’ll see if I can do it next week when she’s taking questions live.

    1137 chars

  47. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 8:11 pm

    David C. is right. Annual FIT is just as good at colonoscopy at saving lives, much cheaper and easier, and without the risk of complications that colonoscopy carries. I did a lot of research on this when my doctor was pushing a colonoscopy on me, and unless you’re in a high risk category, FIT is better. I showed my doctor my work, and she prescribed the FIT kit for me.

    Now if I can bring her around on mammograms…

    Colorectal screening does save lives, but it doesn’t have to be colonoscopy. The research on many other cancer screenings, including mammography, isn’t as clear, and in the case of mammography, is becoming clear that it doesn’t save lives. It detects cancers, but that’s not the same thing as saving lives, and the entire premise of early detection save lives is coming into question.

    809 chars

  48. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 8:15 pm

    Alex Jones seems to be the Rush Limbaugh of today. Sad!

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/trumps-suggestion-that-the-media-is-ignoring-terrorist-attacks-has-a-familiar-source-infowars/

    211 chars

  49. David C. said on February 6, 2017 at 8:23 pm

    I’m not some nutty colonoscopy truther. They’re fine, but the FIT is just as good, less expensive, and not at all invasive. I’ve already lost a foot of my colon to some weird condition I had where my appendix essentially grew inside my colon and caused massive bleeding. I wouldn’t risk my own health and another chunk of my colon to crackpottery. I checked it out and my doctor agrees. I give you randomized trials.

    http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/761654

    463 chars

  50. Julie Robinson said on February 6, 2017 at 8:42 pm

    Alex, I don’t understand why he would have seen him in the buff. When I had mine it was only medical personnel. I’d be creeped out by that too.

    LB, you’re probably in the thick of it all right now, so I can only add my best wishes for smooth sailing tomorrow.

    It’s paradise in Orlando right now, am soaking it in.

    320 chars

  51. Andrea said on February 6, 2017 at 8:50 pm

    Sherri, yes it does make a difference. I have some examples from my professional life. Are you familiar with Frameworks Institute? They are like the equivalent of marketing and advertising message development for human services/social issues. Think about it — does any major product go to market without extensive research done through focus groups, etc.? Most social issues/groups don’t have the resources. Frameworks does great research. They help us in the field figure out the gap between what insiders say about their work and what the general public hears. They got a MacArthur genius award a few years ago when MacArthur first started awarding orgs and not just individuals. Go to their website — there are tons of resources about how to talk about various human services or social issues, like racial disparities, or criminal justice, or services for youth, etc.

    In my professional life, I have been fighting against the Illinois state budget impasse for the past 19 months. In the beginning, we only talked about the human toll the impasse was having or could have on people. We got nowhere. It led us into rabbit holes we did not want to go into, where our clients get judged as to whether they are worthy or deserving, or if the state should even be in the business of paying for these services. 10 months in, we switched to talking about contracts: we have legal and binding contracts, we did the work, we should be paid. Turns out, that is a non-controversial statement, and even though we took the radical step of suing the Governor of Illinois, no one ever challenged our right to be paid, said we had a frivolous or partisan lawsuit, or suggested that our claims weren’t deserving or legitimate. We used to beg for media coverage, but after filing the suit and sticking to a very disciplined message, we were swamped in media coverage. The freaking Daily Show even covered us! Crain’s Chicago Business wrote editorials about our message, etc., etc. Right wing and left wing media covered us — in the exact same way (although they each had different theories about why we were in that predicament.) Having a coherent consistent message that tapped into people’s existing beliefs about how the world operates or should has been extremely powerful. http://frameworksinstitute.org

    We have become the face of the human services hurt by the historic and destructive lack of a state budget: http://www.paynowillinois.org/news.html If a story mentions social services or human service providers, they almost always mention us.

    2545 chars

  52. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 8:55 pm

    Andrea, no question a very disciplined message is very important. What I’m less sure is how effective the contents of that message are at changing the minds of people who are already convinced of something else. I’ll check out Frameworks.

    238 chars

  53. alex said on February 6, 2017 at 9:08 pm

    Julie, as I heard my neighbor tell it recently when he was inebriated, my partner was too doped up to dress himself so the neighbor was asked to help him dress. They’ve always seemed like decent enough people, but their obsession with taking us to our colonoscopies is unsettling to say the least.

    297 chars

  54. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 9:18 pm

    Obviously, SNL’s next move should be to get Meryl Streep to replace Alec Baldwin.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/melissa-mccarthy-sean-spicer-234715

    158 chars

  55. Andrea said on February 6, 2017 at 9:41 pm

    Sherri, it does change minds or at least it can change support. Example: about 4 months into the budget impasse, my husband and I had dinner with a friend of his. This guy, while generally liberal, was incensed about the issue of the day — public support for child care. Why should he, a childless adult, pay to take care of someone else’s kid? People should not have kids if they can’t take care of them, etc. etc. Nothing I could say would change his mind about this core belief, that people should take care of their own kids. All examples I gave– someone lost their job, someone got ill, domestic violence, etc. — were just outliers to him.

    Fast forward 6 months later. We have just filed our suit and gotten the first wave of media coverage. We happened to have dinner planned with this same couple again. My husband begged me not to talk politics, but as soon as we sat down, this guy goes: I’ve seen you in the media, what’s happening to you is so unfair. You have a contract, you did the work, you should be paid. No arguments about what “the work” was. Pretty interesting.

    1088 chars

  56. Sherri said on February 6, 2017 at 10:09 pm

    That’s great, Andrea. I’ll definitely check them out. There are a lot of issues even normally liberal voters can be pretty NIMBY about.

    135 chars

  57. Diane said on February 7, 2017 at 12:49 am

    Sherri @54 I saw this on twitter somewhere and think they nailed it: Rosie O’Donnell as Bannon.

    95 chars

  58. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 2:13 am

    I like that, Diane!

    More on the city of Seattle possibly terminating its relationship with Wells Fargo. The vote is Tuesday afternoon.

    http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-officials-look-to-cut-city-ties-with-wells-fargo/

    239 chars

  59. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 2:35 am

    Melania is suing the Daily Mail because they damaged her once in a lifetime opportunity to leverage her status as FLOTUS and make money.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/melania-trump-missed-out-on-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-to-make-millions-lawsuit-says/2017/02/06/3654f070-ecd0-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html

    trump’s probably checking all the sofas in the White House to make sure Obama didn’t leave any spare change behind.

    446 chars

  60. Dexter said on February 7, 2017 at 3:49 am

    I think the best SB ads were during the tech boom years of the 90s…last few years, only one I remember is the Dodge 200 ad. SB 51 , I remember the talking yearbook but it creeped me out a little. GaGa was great if you are a “Little Monster”, her fan base, but I am a long way from being a little squealing girl. Now when she turns into an adult and sings solo or with Tony Bennett, she’s fantastic..a true song-and-dance chameleon fersure. And wasn’t the ghastly Spuds MacKenzie ghost-dog just awful? And A-B’s little docu about Mr. Anheuser meeting Adolphus Busch was well done but boring to an old man who quit giving a shit about beer a quarter century ago, but hey…beer ads are made to lure kids into the vat, but still? History lessons? Ah hell. bring back Spuds MacKenzie, the talking frog, the Wassup? dudes, and even Raymond J. Johnson (You can call me Ray and you can call me Jay, but ya doesn’t has t’call me Johnson)
    If you were at a sports book, and believed the Patriots could overcome a 28-3 deficit, at that moment the books began offering 1,600-1 odds. Sheeeeeeit, if I had been there and laid down a G, I’d be set for life. To make everybody feel better, Las Vegas books got clobbered badly Sunday night. It’ll take them a little while to recover these massive payouts. I heard all books lost huge amounts on the over-under of 58. I predicted 61 so I would have killed it.

    1415 chars

  61. Jolene said on February 7, 2017 at 4:10 am

    I saw this on twitter somewhere and think they nailed it: Rosie O’Donnell as Bannon.

    Also on Twitter, Rosie has said, if called, she is ready to serve.

    163 chars

  62. alex said on February 7, 2017 at 5:14 am

    Melania’s lawsuit is bullshit, never mind the risible premise that she’s entitled to make money from being FLOTUS. I’m surprised the Daily Mail hasn’t won summary judgment already on the lost income claim.

    You simply cannot sue for lost income and prevail unless you can show that you have actually lost income. She would need to show that she had been signed as a spokesmodel by companies and then cancelled because of her reputation as a whore. (Which reputation obviously didn’t come from the Daily Mail but from the very fact of her marriage.)

    The real point of this suit is to punish a media outlet and send a message to others that the Trumps won’t hesitate to abuse the legal system in order to harass their critics.

    729 chars

  63. David C. said on February 7, 2017 at 6:32 am

    President Bannon wants to make the Catholic Church great again.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/europe/vatican-steve-bannon-pope-francis.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

    192 chars

  64. Icarus said on February 7, 2017 at 10:04 am

    “If you were at a sports book, and believed the Patriots could overcome a 28-3 deficit”

    but would you have thought that? also, are you saying $1,600,000 would be enough to cover you for life (did I do the math right?)

    regarding the Super Bowl commercials, I try not to over think them. Some are clever, some aren’t. Some are memorable, most aren’t. Some companies can afford to be creative or take chances. Other companies treat them like their moon shot. Everyone just hopes the game is close enough to keep everyone interested so that the ones that run in the last quarter get nearly the same attention as those that run in the first. Every year I suspect there are some that buy the OT slot just in case. (the advertising equivalent of Dexter’s 1600:1 payout).

    okay maybe I’ve thought a little too much about them.

    834 chars

  65. Deborah said on February 7, 2017 at 11:13 am

    One thing for sure, the Trump family is living proof that money doesn’t make you classy. They’re acting like trash. And Melania never looks happy, but who would be if you had to married to him.

    I’m waiting for Little Bird’s colonoscopy to be over. They make the drivers stay in the waiting room the whole time. I wish they had coffee and donuts but that would be cruel.

    372 chars

  66. nancy said on February 7, 2017 at 11:15 am

    I didn’t realize until now that Natasha’s lawsuit claiming lost income was filed by the guy who successfully sued Gawker out of business. This now is officially elevated from contemptible to worrisome.

    384 chars

  67. MarkH said on February 7, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    OT for Jeff Borden, Kirk, maybe Nancy(?) – former Dispatch sports scribe Jim MacQueen passed away last Wednesday, 02/01 at age 70. He was a former editor at Autoweek, RaceCar and Formula magazines and former PR director at Mid-Ohio Sports Car course. Terrific auto and racing reporter. Basset, you may have followed his work.

    https://www.facebook.com/jim.macqueen1?fref=ts

    RIP

    383 chars

  68. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 12:42 pm

    I know January is usually soup month around here, but since we had a snow day yesterday, I made a roasted butternut squash soup that was quite yummy. I had roasted the squash the day before in anticipation of the snow, in case we lost power, then sautéed bacon and onions together until the bacon fat was rendered and the onions were nice and golden. Then I added the squash, a couple of diced apples, stock, minced ginger, salt and pepper, and simmered for an hour or so, until we were ready to eat. I puréed everything with my immersion blender, and forgot to put in the cream I meant to put in. It was tasty even without the cream. I think the bacon gave it plenty of richness and depth so maybe the cream wasn’t necessary.

    728 chars

  69. Scout said on February 7, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    This makes me smile.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/06/twitter-mocks-a-tiny-trump-rally/?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news&utm_term=.d478d1a8cb64

    197 chars

  70. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    No credit for Collins and Murkowski over DeVos, who’s been confirmed. Time to get to work to stop Price, Mnuchin, and Sessions. Price is corrupt and destructive, Mnuchich corrupt and destructive, and Sessions a racist ideologue.

    Call your Senators, and if you can get through, fax them. Faxzero.com let’s you send up to 5 faxes a day free, and has a handy link for sending a fax to your Senator: https://faxzero.com/fax_senate.php

    434 chars

  71. Jakash said on February 7, 2017 at 1:25 pm

    “are you saying $1,600,000 would be enough to cover you for life?” Holy moly, Icarus, if 1.6 mil., along with whatever he’s already got, isn’t enough to cover a guy of a certain age like Dexter (or me, for that matter) for life, a whole lot of folks are certainly up shit creek. (Which I realize IS the case, but still.)

    I assume nobody, but nobody will read this. That seldom stops me! The Chicago Tribune beer reporter (yes, they have one, though he writes about other things, as well) posted this regarding that Busch meets Anheuser commercial, which was for Budweiser. “Nice commercial, but Budweiser was Carl Conrad’s idea. Not Anheuser’s. And not Busch’s.”

    https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/CarlConradCo.pdf

    722 chars

  72. Icarus said on February 7, 2017 at 1:49 pm

    “…Holy moly, Icarus, if 1.6 mil., along with whatever he’s already got, isn’t enough to cover a guy of a certain age like Dexter (or me, for that matter) for life, a whole lot of folks are certainly up shit creek. (Which I realize IS the case, but still.)”

    well remember, about half of those winnings will go to taxes, unless you’re a rich old white guy with sufficient tax shelters. It’s funny, my financial advisor cannot put a number on how much we will need for retirement, other than to say we don’t have enough.

    526 chars

  73. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 2:45 pm

    Jamelle Bouie on the white nationalist administration: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2017/02/government_by_white_nationalism_is_upon_us.html

    171 chars

  74. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    Puzder, corrupt and destructive: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/07/andy-puzder-will-be-a-disaster-for-workers-i-know-he-was-for-me/

    158 chars

  75. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 3:14 pm

    Congratulations, everybody! Before, we weren’t Real Americans. Now , we aren’t even Real People!

    “She basically said the people jamming up the phones don’t matter to this White House,” the communications director continued. “That this administration just cares about what matters to ‘real people.'”

    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-white-house-congress-234717

    Question: are the unborn Real People? Are our unborn Real People? Am I not allowed to make fun of the Liar Kellyanne Conway because that will reel them trump? Where do I get my Soros payment for calling my Senator, or is that only if I call a Republican? So many questions!

    661 chars

  76. brian stouder said on February 7, 2017 at 3:57 pm

    If Melania can win a defamation lawsuit against anybody at all – then Michelle Obama ought to be able to sue the absolute shit out of Oxy-Rush or Shit-for-brains-Sean (et al), no?

    I mean – Good God! We just finished 8 years + of non-stop, unrelentingingly defamatory crap from that whole noise machine, yes?

    317 chars

  77. Kirk said on February 7, 2017 at 4:26 pm

    MarkH@67: That guy pre-dated me. I would think I’d have heard of his being at The Dispatch, but I had not.

    106 chars

  78. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 7, 2017 at 4:33 pm

    This is for Icarus at #64 (set irony on “stun”):
    https://medium.com/@CardsAgainstHumanity/why-our-super-bowl-ad-failed-2af66e6a976c#.j192snoaq

    143 chars

  79. Deborah said on February 7, 2017 at 5:29 pm

    For some reason I’m worn out, I’m not the one who had the colonoscopy even. I woke up at 1:45am and never went back to sleep. Little Bird had to get up at 5 to take the last half of her Ass Blaster solution. After going to Ojo Caliente yesterday morning for a hot soak, and I mean hot, 104 degrees, I was a wet noodle and now I’m a zombie. Because I’ve been on my butt most of the day in a waiting room and now on the couch all I’ve done is surf the net and boy is that depressing. I go back to Abiquiu on Thursday, we’re having some workmen come and do some stuff, I need a respite from the Internet. All of the news coming out of Washington these days is mind boggling (Betsy DeVos, really?), I either feel like screaming or curling up in the fetal position. I need a drink.

    776 chars

  80. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 6:03 pm

    An ACLU lawyer was stopped and questioned extensively, even though she’s not from one the 7 countries.

    https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu

    221 chars

  81. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 7:16 pm

    I listened to the audio stream of the arguments in State of Washington v. trump. So cool that it was available in real time. I thought WA Solicitor General Noah Purcell did a good job.

    Arguing before appeals courts and supreme courts is tough, because the judges are interrupting you and asking challenging questions about hypotheticals and precedents, but it’s fascinating to listen to and watch.

    401 chars

  82. Deborah said on February 7, 2017 at 7:26 pm

    I may have commented about this before, if I have sorry about that. In the mid 2000’s I took a job that I didn’t feel good about taking but I thought I could learn a lot about exhibit design from my boss. Anyway, we, the a architectural firm and I marketed for a job with Amway. It was their make-up division and they wanted a space designed for potential sellers to go to to get the spiel about why they should buy into the system. On our tour we were guided through a display of their top sellers, they had shitty portraits hanging on a long corridor and they were all Chinese. We were told that their biggest customer base was in China and the most popular product they sold was a skin bleacher. I was dumbfounded. This is the family of our new cabinet member, Betsy Prince DeVos.

    783 chars

  83. Sherri said on February 7, 2017 at 8:00 pm

    The Seattle City Council voted unanimously not to renew the contract with Wells Fargo due to the pipeline project. Maybe if our legislature can get its act together, Seattle (and other jurisdictions) can avoid all the big banks.

    228 chars