Open Thread.
Reader Interactions
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.
I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.
You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.
Consistently wrong since 2002
Technically true, but collectively nonsense
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.
Second rate reporter says what?
It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.
Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.
You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.
“But what about the lurkers?”
Books are my comfort food!
There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.
Changeroo
This New York Times article from today’s paper is interesting in that even the NYT begins to notice that our new emperor is pretty much naked.
Punchy
My Cubs have scored 3 runs……in their last 5 games. This is almost impossible.
My god are they worthless and weak.
r€nato
Uh oh, Tom Ridge criticized Rush Limbaugh.
Ordinarily I’d predict 36 hours until a grovelling apology is issued, but since it’s a holiday weekend I give Ridge until Wednesday before he crumbles like Harry Reid.
r€nato
@Punchy:
You haven’t seen the D-backs play lately, have you?
r€nato
@Changeroo:
That’s an interesting article because in some ways it reflects something I’ve been thinking and saying about Obama’s skilled use of rhetoric.
But really, I read Ms. Cooper’s examples of Obama’s rhetoric and most of them were hardly anything like Bush’s simplistic “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” rhetoric. In short, Cooper’s article itself is battling strawmen:
He may not have specified it but if you have not been in a coma for the last few months, you would know damned well the Republicans have been strenuously advocating not doing anything to stimulate the economy except for more tax cuts and slashing government programs which conservatives don’t like.
Really? I was just imagining Obama’s GOP critics and their water-carriers in the Beltway media, alleging that Obama was on TV too much or trying to do too much all at once?
Two paragraphs later, Cooper as much as admits that Obama wasn’t making up strawmen with regards to this speech (citing Anne Applebaum and Bill Kristol), and then picks a nit over the use of the word “Iranians” instead of “Iran’s government”.
This column is just more of the same false balance bullshit we’ve come to expect from the lapdog media. Obama’s rhetoric is much more sophisticated and nuanced than Bush’s, and trying to equate the two is like saying they’re both the same because the speeches from both men use many of the same words in the English language.
geg6
I don’t want to hear anyone else complain about their MLB teams. There is a very good reason this huge sports fan in Pittsburgh hates baseball. My last cheer for the Bucs was squelched by Sid Bream, lo those many years ago.
Keith G
Good Morning from Houston. A question: my lovely kitty Izzy, took a chunk out of my ipod Nano gen 2 docking cord. It still works if held just so. Can I splice a data cord the way I spliced my phone charger cord last month? Or will I risk frying the Nano?
Gotta go, Izzy is eying my ear buds.
MikeJ
“Even the NY Times.” Ah yes, the newspaper of Judy Miller, the newspaper that sat on the warrantless wiretapping story.
Anyone who thinks the Times is a liberal paper is brain damaged.
r€nato
@MikeJ:
The newspaper which also hyped the hell out of the bullshit Whitewater story.
Peter J
I don’t think the rule applies to “RINOs”. See Powell, Colin.
While they won’t grovel, they also won’t have a future in the GOP.
John Cole
@geg6: Exactly.
@r€nato: Ridge won’t apologize. He’ll take the chance that Rush responds to bash him again. Guy grew up in steel mill country around veterans and then served as a SSG in Viet Nam. Say what you want about him, but he won’t back down from Rush. Plus, he isn’t running for anything and doesn’t care what the hell anyone thinks. I’d be surprised to see him do anything other than throw another punch.
Elderta
Green Day interview coming up. Woot!
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6: This Atlanta Braves fan feels your 1992 pain :-)
Honestly, that NLCS Game 7 must have hurt like hell for Pittsburgh — the precise inverse of the joy (and yeah, total shock) we experienced in Atlanta. Nothing in baseball since then has come even close to that moment. Good memories.
geg6
John, you are spot on re: Ridge. He’s a Republican but he’s a principled and pretty tough guy. I’m no big fan, especially after his stint at DHS, but I don’t think he’ll quiver and shake over Rush.
sgwhiteinfla
@John Cole
I agree about Ridge. I think there is something liberating about not having to pander to anybody because he isn’t running for office and he is going to speak his mind. He may still carry some water for the party but he won’t carry water for some of the clowns in it. Remember he was one of those who refused to say Sarah Palin was ready to be President last year. In the end I think he wants to make sure his own reputation isn’t damaged. I also think Colin Powell’s appearance on Face The Nation this morning has the potential to be a watershed moment for the GOP. If he goes at the wingnut wing head on, which I fully expect him to, I think it might be time for a lot of people in the party to choose sides. And that may lead eventually to a fracture that can never be healed.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I think it is hilarious that the NY Times is derided by the wingnutz as a librul loving paper full of nothing but librul lies about conservatives. Until the wingnutz find an article in it that they think they like, then all of the sudden it’s a reputable paper worth quoting.
Child’s brains, $5.00 a pound
Genius brains, $10.00 a pound
Wingnut Brains, $50,000.00 a pound
You know how many wingnuts it takes to get a pound of brains?!
Little Dreamer
@Changeroo:
If our new emperor is naked, the last one had no skin at all.
Little Dreamer
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
I dunno, by my guess is all of them?
geg6
Suibhan Duinne: You have no idea. I remember my sister and I just bursting into teras and crying for a good half hour. Horrible. No other sports moment holds that sort of despair for me that that one did.
John Cole
When I see Ridge and Powell both going after the Rush wing, I think something is afoot. The two guys aren’t cowards, and they are connected. The adults may be rebelling within the GOP.
Also, both are combat vets and aren’t like the rest of the spineless chumps who insulted Rush and went back groveling a day later.
Tim F.
It is offensive to even suggest that Pittsburghers would still hold a grudge over Francisco Cabrera’s BS single that should have been an easy out at first if the Atlanta dirt didn’t cheat and give the ball some weird bounce.
Little Dreamer
Newt Gingrich just said on MTP that he agreed with Leon Panetta that the CIA doesn’t break the law… that’s rich!
John Cole
Did anyone see the 90 year old newspaperman? Guy killed me.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ:
No kidding. I found that article absurd. “Straw men”? So when Obama says:
“There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more”
–there aren’t hoards of Republicans saying exactly that? It’s costing too much, putting our children into debt, it will fix itself, Roosevelt cause the Great Depression anyway, just leave it alone and the invisible hand will fix everything?
There aren’t people saying that we can’t tackle climate change? And all of the other things mentioned in the article?
The entire article is a straw man, if you ask me.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tim F.: That “Atlanta dirt” of which you speak so disparagingly? That’s the red clay of Georgia that Scarlett O’Hara threw in the face of her Yankee overseer. Red clay has attitude.
JL
Daniel Carasso died at age 103. He was the person behind Dannon Yogurt. The NYTimes does have a great obit about him and his life.
The Grand Panjandrum
@SiubhanDuinne:
You have to be a Bucs or Braves fan to make that statement. Since then … OK maybe. But I think Cubs and Marlin fans would argue that Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS would be that game. That was the infamous Foul Ball Incident that had the Cubs within 5 outs of going to the World Series. However, Game 6 of the ’86 World Series might be the most memorable post season game.
Zuzu's Petals
Greetings from the Metropolitan Lounge at Chicago’s Union Station. Waiting for the train that will take me over the Rockies, over the Sierras, and finally home.
Just arrived on the Capitol Ltd from DC, traveling through parts of West Virginia in the lovely afternoon summer light…lush and beautiful. Harper’s Ferry! Martinsburg! History! Whoo-hoo!
shoutingattherain
Go Pens! They looked good last night….
Malware question: I picked up the “Security System” bug this morning. Any hints on how to get rid of it?
Thanx in advance.
redbeardjim
There was also the Biggest Choke Ever in 2004 when the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit to beat the Yankees.
Belvoir
Oh, that NYT article annoyed me deeply. As rEnato said, Republicans have been vocal as can be in obstructing Obama’s economic intiatives. What planet does Helene Cooper live on?
dslak
That bit about people saying Obama is trying to do too much ins’t a strawman. David Brooks has made that exact claim multiple times in Cooper’s own paper. I guess not even its own writers read the NYT anymore.
Brachiator
Southern California food critic Erica Wayne has a very interesting reflection on how she became a food writer, which becomes a moving tribute to her earliest and deepest influence — her parents. Their curiosity, love of travel, and love of food was infectious.
Enjoy!
The article also brings to mind one of my favorite foodie films, Big Night (1996), a gentle film about food, family, life, starring Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as brothers who (as IMDB notes) gamble on one special night to save their struggling restaurant.