FairAndUNbalanced.com

 

From Max’s Dad:

Woodstock can only happen once. As many times as it has attempted to be duplicated it never has been. Give it up. Altamount happened just a few months later and people got beat up and killed and the ugliness of humanity came back full force. But for that 3 days in upstate New York in August 1969 humanity was free and nice and kind to each other. Its just a fact. Its not some hippie rewriting of history its just a fact and it cannot be taken away.

Later in 1970 the 3 hour movie came out. Now you could see what you’d been listening to on a record. The only problem was because it had a few F bombs in it and a few naked people bathing in a pond, it was rated R and this kid couldnt get in without an adult. Well my parents were not going to take me to see Woodstock thats for sure. So we had to find an alternative. So my friend and I bought tickets to see one movie at the Six West Theaters (yes we had a “multiplex” in 1970) and snuck into the Woodstock movie. And we got caught and booted out. Ok thats traumatic. I wasnt sure I could ever show my face there again. Then we tried again a week later. But this time we followed very closely some guys in their 20’s into the theater and sat right next to them which probably freaked them out a bit. Then the movie started. We moved. For 3 hours we SAW what we had been listening to for all those months. Holy shit again. I knew all those songs by heart by now. Thats what those guys and gals looked like. F bombs and nudity. Who cares? Get on with the tunes man.

I almost jumped out of my seat to rock out to Santana doing Soul Sacrifice. I fell in love with Grace Slick, Roger Daltrey became a golden God, Sly and The Family Stone, and the beauty of CSNY doing Suite Judy Blue Eyes. Migawd it was an experience.

– More –
 

 

From nojo:

But Greenland, well, we can ignore that. Right?

Except for what follows. Except for other people taking the idea seriously, explaining it, defending it. Why wouldn’t we buy Greenland? We bought Alaska, after all. An American purchase of Greenland could represent an extraordinary deal in terms of America’s national security, economic interests, and environmental protection.

We should have put that last line in quotes, but why bother. Another week, and it’ll be conventional wisdom. Another week, and the batshit pronouncement of an illegitimate leader will have been absorbed into the cancerous part of America’s body politic. Not because it’s a good idea. Because he said it. And anything he says must be defended at all costs.

That’s the part we can’t ignore: The blind allegiance. The contagion of it. The utter denial that the globe has spun off its stand, much less fallen to the floor and shattered into a million pieces. It’s still spinning in place. Our Glorious Leader says so.

God knows what he’s gonna say this week.

Here’s something else that happened last week.

– More –
 

 

From The Propaganda Professor:

Predicting the future accurately is always a daunting challenge, even when it entails merely assessing the potential of a single person. Walt Disney was fired from his first newspaper job by an editor who declared that he had no imagination or original ideas. Michael Jordan failed to make the cut on his high school basketball team. Steven Spielberg was rejected three times when he applied to University Of Southern California film school. Elizabethan playwright Robert Greene famously scoffed at a newcomer on the theatre scene, a certain young “upstart crow” named William Shakespeare. Network executives urged Gene Roddenberry to “get rid of the pointed ears guy”. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job because she was “unfit for TV”. A newspaper editorial during the 1992 presidential campaign predicted that George Bush would win reelection quite easily, with Ross Perot coming in a distant second, and dismissively added that “Bill Clinton is not considered a factor.”

The difficulties are magnified astronomically when you are dealing with groups of people, and entire cultures. There are so many butterfly-effect variables, so many of which are unforeseeable. In 1962, when a new major league baseball team made its debut, they were truly horrible, winning only 40 out of 160 games. Everyone wrote them off as hopeless, forever doomed to be a laughing stock. Nobody saw it coming when, 7 years later, this ragtag team called the New York Mets made an abrupt pivot in mid-season, surged into the playoffs, and decisively defeated the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series.

Not surprisingly, then, many people who have predicted the future, including individuals who were extremely knowledgeable about the topic, have been drastically, embarrassingly off track.

– More –
 

My President explains why he must start a trade war with China:
(3 sec)

Harry Potter explains why a young woman, Romilda Vane, must have him:
(2 sec)

Wrestler Jeff Jarrett explains why he must be the next World Wrestling Champion:
(10 sec)

A future Republican President:
(5 sec)

 

From Gregory B. Gonzalez at MadMikesAmerica:

Donald Trump is an idiot! I know saying that every time I write an article about him is redundant, but as they taught me back in middle school, you must always begin whatever you write with a topic sentence.

Like a lot of people, I just assumed Trump would hit bottom and finally realize how much of a moron he truly is and at least try to keep his mouth shut long enough to do his job, and like those same people, I was wrong.

As much as I hate to admit it, there is no bottom. It’s like jumping off a cliff and finding out there is nothing below you to hit, just this abyss that never ends. I swear, by the time he’s done screwing up this country, every citizen in it is going to have a scorching case of PTSD. I can feel it already.

– More –
 

 

From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Hey, it’s sports in Seattle!

From Axios’ morning email thingie, so the weird formatting and odd bullets are totally theirs:

“‘Adult Recess’ Is Booming,” with people reliving schoolyard memories with tetherball, hopscotch and Lincoln Logs, despite sore muscles and tweaked knees, The Wall Street Journal’s Jim Carlton reports (subscription):

• “In Seattle’s Cal Anderson Park, about 1,000 men and women turned out for an adult recess … that included kickball, hopscotch and tetherball, along with chicken nuggets and grilled cheese.”
   
• “In Greensboro, N.C., the city decided to put on an adult recess [that] included Twister, four square and tetherball.”

Afterward, many head to a bar.

Imma call bullshit. Jim Carlton clearly is out of his depth in reporting how infantile Seattle is.

As Cal Anderson PLAYFIELD is in my neighborhood and I walk past it at least twice daily, I can confirm that are no tetherball courts anywhere in the playfield or park, I’ve never seen anyone playing kickball. It’s a big park/playfield, BUT 1K hipsters playing four square? Hopscotch? It would be noticeable. Also: There is no large expanse of concrete to do this, so this is also patently BS.

– More –
 

 

From Julian Sanchez and Caleb O. Brown:

An assault in Manhattan leads a prosecutor to get a warrant for cell phone location data from Google. Is this how it’s supposed to work? Julian Sanchez comments.

– Podcast –
 

 
From John Scalzi at Whatever:

The intent behind this person’s words was cruel, and I believe intended to insult and to wound. After no small outcry, this person apologized, and Mary Robinette, who is one of the most gracious people I know, accepted it. But I for one never forgot either the insult to her, or the dismissive intent behind it.

Last night, Mary Robinette Kowal won the Hugo Award for her novel The Calculating Stars. This follows her and her novel also winning the Nebula and Locus Awards.

– More –
 

 

From Tommy Christopher:

Leaked Memo Shows House Republicans Literally Claiming Trump-Echoing El Paso Shooter Was ‘From the Left’

A leaked memo of gun violence talking points shows House Republicans instructing members to claim that the El Paso shooting suspect whose manifesto echoed President Donald Trump‘s anti-immigrant rhetoric is actually an example of “violence from the left.”

On Friday, The Tampa Bay Times published a document entitled “Q&A on Combatting Gun Violence” and subtitled “House Republicans Are Committed To Preventing Gun Violence,” which features many well-known Republican arguments against gun control.

But one passage in particular seeks to blame the El Paso shooting, as well as several other shootings that were not politically motivated, on “the left”:

– More –
 

 

From Infidel753:

The world’s two largest mafia gangs — the “governments” of Russia and China — have recently come under challenge from some of their subjects. These challenges are not likely to end well, but they serve as reminders of the long-term weaknesses of such regimes.

Since July, Moscow has been the scene of pro-democracy protests drawing tens of thousands of people. The immediate cause was the official “disqualification” of non-toady candidates for local office (Russia still holds “elections”, but de facto bars anyone not loyal to the regime from running), but the real fuel for the protests has been discontent with corrupt authoritarianism and lack of democracy at the national level. The regime has called the protests “riots” and reacted with mass arrests and beatings, yet the numbers grow with each march. The city has been put under what amounts to military occupation. Polling shows 37% of people in Moscow supporting the protests, 27% opposed, and 30% “neutral”.

So far the uprising doesn’t seem to have spread beyond Moscow, but as Al-Jazeera explains:

In a highly-centralised state like Russia, the capital is possibly the only place that really matters when it comes to regime change. It is indeed the peaceful revolution in Moscow in August 1991 that ended communism and precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. That revolution was preceded by two years of gigantic rallies with hundreds of thousands in attendance. Today’s protests are still a far cry from those, but they are growing…..

This may actually be the biggest threat to the regime yet.

– More –