By David Futrelle
Sorry I’ve been AWOL for a couple of days; I’ve been taking care of some personal stuff (nothing dramatic, just very time-consuming). But there’s so much going on in the world I thought I’d put up an open thread.
Talk about Trump’s shittiness, the shutdown, the dueling Fyre Festival documentaries, the blizzard here in the US, or maybe those snot-nosed racist high school students harassing Native American elder Nathan Phillips, a veteran conducting a ceremony to honor the war dead in DC
On that last point, here are some videos; watch only if you are ready to be enraged. The students, from a Catholic high school, were in DC for the “March for Life,” evidently ran into Phillips by chance, and decided to harass him for being Native American, I guess.
On a somewhat lighter note, there was the whole Ben Shapiro/Baby Hitler thing. Here are several , er, enhanced versions of his remarks at the March for Life on the classic time-travel quandary — “would you kill Hitler when he was a baby?”
Despite Ben’s qualms about killing baby Hitler, he doesn’t actually give a shit about babies and other civilians from enemy countries killed in wars.
In other news:
Speaking of crappy food:
“Married A Single Father”
Ummmm… are Fathers who fine themselves single for whatever reason supposed to remain that way for the rest of their lives then? That particular indictment makes no sense whatsoever.
None of those Indictments make any sense really. Given the perpetual “sins” Repubs seem to find themselves in they have zero room to throw stones. But that one seems particularly nonsensical.
RE:Operation Sea lion
Yeah I remember watching this video that stated that Germany didn’t have the logistics to invade Great Britain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnPo7V03nbY
logistics is provably the one big thing armchair internet generals don’t think about .
Uh-oh, I spelled Macksey’s name incorrectly above. Sorry. (Don’t mix him up with Piers Mackesy, a different person who write on similar subjects!)
@Phaos
That looks interesting…thanks for the cite. It would be interesting to compare that to Macksey and Evans, neither of which I’ve read. You all are motivating me to do that now! I deal with invasion of Britain plans a lot in my work, but usually in earlier period and not Sea Lion. So I know Richmond (and some monographs on the invasion threat during the Napoleonic period and the eighteenth century, but I digress).
@tim gueguen
Yes, I think I’ve gotten that too (with the disclaimer that, once again, I haven’t read Evans or Macksey.) I think I remember Macksey having the Germans win though. The book has been around for a while so if the consensus is that a successful operation wasn’t possible then it shouldn’t be hard to find people who take apart Macksey. His argument would still be worth considering, though, even just for that (i.e. the experience of refuting it).
Anyone seen substantive discussion of the ATS and the Women’s Voluntary Services in Sea Lion alternate history?
@Fabe
That’s true about logistics.
And I notice that MGTOW fantasies of “when the world collapses you’ll miss us…” never account for logistics. Nor do most alt-right fantasies of a new civil war.
SO many captured German records are available on microfilm that historians know quite a bit about Axis plans and capabilities throughout the war. Writing well-researched alternate history in this area is certainly possible.
Yeah they all think their L33t call of duty skillz will be enough.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/02/red-pill-redditors-prepared-to-take-new-zealand-by-force-using-skills-gained-from-call-of-duty/
@BeastMistress
Maybe the scandal is supposed to be that she picked up a spouse with one or more children already included, instead of bearing her own offspring like the Good Lord intended? idek
@BeastMistress, @Karalorca—
You’d think, given the conservative insistence on two-parent families, that they’d praise someone willing to become a step-parent; but maybe they think doing so contributes to divorce by demonstrating that it’s not impossible for a single parent to find a new partner and co-parent, and thereby lessening the hostage value of children in keeping a marriage together.
re: Operation Sealion
The Bismark in the English Channel! Wow, that’d be some heavy firepower, but it would take an act of god to keep it afloat in such a narrow confine.
The German Navy got away with Cerberus, but that was a headlong dash, not a naval bombardment.
@BeastMistress; @Karalora; @Moon Custafer:
I seem to recall hearing some story about how Saint Joseph was willing to rear a child he hadn’t sired.
@Huggbees:
Yeah, the Snotzis would richly deserve Hank Hill’s following through on his periodic threat to kick somebody’s ass. Or, better still, Bobby’s devastating “That’s my purse! I don’t know you!” attack.
The elder was filmed responding to his experience with the kids. I feel like it’s appropriate to share here, because his words are infinitely more valuable and important than the vile words and treatment those youth gave him.
At the same time, though, I’d rather not give our lurking trolls a direct link to the person who posted it.
If you find it on your own, it’s worth a share.
In other news: The news all have terrible takes on the recent petting Deep Blue the shark videos. NPR even used the phrase “Frolics with Divers” in their headline.
I’m quite annoyed, especially since the result was a ton of folks staking out the whale carcass in the following days, which meant that fewer sharks visited the carcass, which is a damn shame because that’s a super valuable food resource.
Don’t pet sharks! Or (as the shark-petter did in a video with a different shark) grab their dorsal fins and go for a ride like they’re a trained dolphin.
Seriously, so far I’ve only found one news outlet that didn’t jump on the “Ooooh that’s so cool” bandwagon with their headline about the video. One!
Married a single father: Right wing, you baffle me. Since when is making an honest man out of a single father a bad thing!
Lives with “partner”: Right wing, I can see your point on this one. The quote marks indicate that this partner is imaginary, right? Such flights of fancy shouldn’t be packaged as the truth.
Muslim with hijab: Right wing, your bad faith is showing on this one. You wouldn’t like her any better if she went bare-headed.
Single mother of lesbian daughter: Right wing, are you hinting that if the mother hadn’t been single, the daughter wouldn’t have been a lesbian? Tell that to Dick Cheney, married father of a lesbian.
Officiated a “gay wedding”: Right wing, more imaginary stuff. You win on this one.
LESBIAN: Right wing, all caps? That should be reserved for really big news, such as WAR OUTLAWED — CLIMATE CATASTROPHE AVERTED.
Also, the “Married a single father”
If that makes a woman ineligible to be in a leadership position, and is super scary, and is the sign of a terribly immoral woman…
…why do they love the current First Lady so much?
She has no power.
The ‘partner’ reference may or *may not* be implying that the individual who is the partner in question is of the same gender (admittedly this seems incorrect given there are other women in the photo/meme where using the term “lesbian” is not an issue), maybe the partner is transgender (if this were the case it’s remarkable that none of the usual suspects in right wing bigotry media have seized upon such information and run with it – but I wouldn’t put it past them to have their story researchers looking for anything they can use in this subject area for ‘red meat’), or simply trying to suggest that she’s incapable of ‘landing’ a ‘man’ who is willing to make a lifetime commitment of marriage with her.
It is the last option that seems most plausible, even the single mom has a daughter who obviously had to be conceived with a male contribution. Whether or not there was some kind of failure on the part of the mother (of course she is deficient! She’s feeeeeeemale!) which resulted in a lesbian child (these guys don’t understand that’s not how this sort of thing works) and drove the father away, but at least (/s) she had a man who was willing to commit to her at one point (blergh. All this speculation is nauseating.)
And now I’m going to go cleanse my mental palate with pics of emergency puppies, kittens, maybe a few sea lions (thanks for putting them into my head guys, now I’m going to be thinking about sea lions and seals – as a meme points out, they are the doggos of the sea.)
@Msexceptiontotherule:
I don’t think that it. I think it’s much simpler. Remember the phrase “live in sin”? This is just a statement that she’s living with someone to whom she’s not married, which is immoral to this regressive jerks.
Don’t think that just because we’ve been fighting over queer stuff lately that they’ve stopped wanting to stop hetero-sex outside marriage. It’s all sin to them … except whatever they happen to be doing today.
The cat who hates me is sleeping on my foot. My toes are currently serving as her pillow. I guess I can never move again.
Because she is conventionally attractive and quiet and miserable and confirms their views that women are just out for resources.
@ pavlovs house, & phaos, & Fabe, & Eddie
Wow, thank you for all those links!
I’ve now got a bit of reading to do. I’m not surprised someone has fictionalised it before I guess; it’s an obvious counter factual. I was only familiar with the SS-GB type genre though. That’s interesting in its own right (especially these days. “It couldn’t happen here” being an all too relevant warning.); but of course they all assume the success of Sealion; which is rather optimistic. But yeah, ‘amateurs think tactics, pros think logistics’. And the role of all the women’s auxiliary forces. Our last female Spitfire pilot died recently. Funny, people will bang on about Hanna Reitsch, but the RAF had hundreds of women pilots.
Oh, the horrors of elected leadership not being the patriarchal head of a traditional 1950s Dad-Mom-Dick-Jane-and-Spot family. Why, that might lead to uppity citizens thinking all are created equal.
If you were to do the same meme for GOP leadership, you would have to do one person at a time, and split the image into several parts, in order to have room to list all of the felonies, money laundering, kompromat, treasonous activity, illegal campaign shenanigans, voter suppression, obstruction of justice, ethics violations, sexual hypocrisy, chickenhawkery, and other egregious behavior. “Married a single dad” is pretty weak sauce compared to “Sold out the United States of America to the highest bidder”.
But clearly the meme maker thinks their purity fears should take precedence over all else.
Wow, that QAnon image with Trump carrying babies (something he’s probably never done in his life)…
I know it’s a waste of time to try to understand the QAnon mindset, but how can they look at his words and actions and think “yes, this is a man who has compassion for the vulnerable, particularly young children”? Those who get teary-eyed at the thought that he’s been chosen by God to save babies from Zombie Hillary and her Nazgul must be seeing a side of him which has been very much not in evidence to the rest of us. In fact, this lack of any fucks given seems to be a big part of his appeal to his base.
Also, there’s no way he’d be able to run through water.
@kupo: I performed in the one in the Denver!
@Phaos
Thanks for linking that. It almost makes me wish the Nazis had gone ahead with Sealion, if only we could have history books on the greatest clusterfuck in military history. I particularly like the detail that the Royal Navy wouldn’t even have had to shoot to sink the troop barges, just sail between them and swamp them.
What they don’t tell you is that that those figures in the background are the mothers with blankets on, that the Hillary-bot provided and that Trumps wants to drown the babies for the corpse wall he already started on the right.
I remember seeing the original photo of Trump on the campaign trail, trying to do the traditional baby-kissing, and thinking that the babies knew what he was like. And then I remembered the times we saw President Obama with babies and kids – calming down the crying baby, letting the Girl Scouts put a tiara on his head, pretending to get webbed by a WH staffer’s son dressed up as Spider-Man for Halloween, and bending down to let a little African-American boy feel his hair.
If marrying a single father is wrong to this person, I wonder if they think that the Brady Bunch is an evil and immoral show. I always thought there was a consensus that it’s annoyingly wholesome, but maybe I was wrong!
Interesting how only the woman congressperson’s personal lives are under such scrutiny. Rumored to be presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker is reportedly dating actress Rosario Dawson, but apparently that’s no big deal even though the right hates Hollywood?