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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  July 20, 20116:34 am| 30 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

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(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

All the early-morning regulars seem to be sleeping in, so… What’s on the agenda?

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Previous Post: « Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) Co-Founder Aaron Swartz Indicted for Wire and Computer Fraud***
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Reader Interactions

30Comments

  1. 1.

    Phyllis

    July 20, 2011 at 6:41 am

    Moving a little slowly in these parts. Have a few errands to run today & I plan to do them early; forecast high is 99. The ac pumped for seven hours straight yesterday.

  2. 2.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    July 20, 2011 at 6:42 am

    Doctor’s appointment and then there’s one other thing … Oh, yeah. Work.

  3. 3.

    Alexandra

    July 20, 2011 at 6:42 am

    What’s on the agenda? OS X Lion.

  4. 4.

    WereBear

    July 20, 2011 at 6:50 am

    I’ll try to make it to book club tonight; visiting bro-in-law has left.

    We’ve been hitting 80 with actual humidity; it would make a Deep Souther sneer and skip around, but for acclimated natives, this is crossing the desert with no Gatorade.

  5. 5.

    Linda Featheringill

    July 20, 2011 at 7:08 am

    I wish I were sleeping in this morning but the furry alarm clocks would have none of it.

    Too hot this week to do anything much. I wanted to plant my fall container garden but don’t know if I can – unless I sneak out after sundown and do it. Bummer.

  6. 6.

    Bizono

    July 20, 2011 at 7:14 am

    Track down Al Gore at the nearest Dunkin Donuts and heckle him about all the snow we got in the northeast last winter, then I’ll go home and walk the dog and water the plants before the heat becomes unbearable.

  7. 7.

    Southern Beale

    July 20, 2011 at 7:14 am

    I’m here.

    So Ladies, do you have a scary vagina? Summer’s Eve has just the ad campaign for you!

  8. 8.

    bemused

    July 20, 2011 at 7:16 am

    I read over at Think Progress that Rep Allen West said that people sporting 2012 Obama bumper stickers threaten the gene pool and I couldn’t stop laughing.

  9. 9.

    Southern Beale

    July 20, 2011 at 7:20 am

    @bemused:

    Rep Allen West said that people sporting 2012 Obama bumper stickers threaten the gene pool

    Wait, I thought we were all either gay or having abortions? Wish the wingnuts would make up their fucking minds about us already. Too many conflicting stereotypes does not a rational message make.

  10. 10.

    Southern Beale

    July 20, 2011 at 7:23 am

    Goldman Sachs laying off 1,000 workers. Guess they need a bigger tax cut to be job creators again!

  11. 11.

    RossInDetroit

    July 20, 2011 at 8:07 am

    Temp got down to 77 overnight and will hit 94 today. Possible 100 tomorrow. I’ll be working in a building with the AC off, climbing ladders & hauling stuff around. This will suck.

  12. 12.

    RossInDetroit

    July 20, 2011 at 8:08 am

    BTW, that’s a great comic. One pic, 1000 words.

  13. 13.

    bemused

    July 20, 2011 at 8:14 am

    Southern Beale@9,

    Right, they either want our liberal gene pool to die out or evolve into rightwingers if they believed in evolution.

  14. 14.

    DBrown

    July 20, 2011 at 8:18 am

    The NYT just wrote that the NOAA has calculated (from over 4000 US stations) our average temp for this decade and it is 1.5 C (2.7 F) increase over the previous time frame (based on a thirty year average so the comparison is to the 1970+ time frame, not the last decade.) That is a huge difference and explains the heat waves and their terrible effects. While this is not a global change it is significant and a sign of the times – we aren’t going back and like peak oil, the good times are over.

    Thanks to all the liars and ass lickers this is only going to get worse as electric costs climb, brown outs and black outs during the worse heat waves increase and life just gets worse unless you are in the elite. Thanks and hope all you AGW deniers all eat shit and die terrible deaths in terrible pain you ass wipes deserve for helping this crime against humanity to have been perpetrated.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 20, 2011 at 8:24 am

    @DBrown: Word.

  16. 16.

    jo6pac

    July 20, 2011 at 8:30 am

    Go pick up the scones I ordered and put the dough in the freezer and then later today pickup the salmon and put it in the freezer. Then wonder around the yard doing what ever.

  17. 17.

    Cliff in NH

    July 20, 2011 at 8:32 am

    Rode up to the top of the cliff and down to the lake for the morning walk ~4 miles, Its about 63 now, will get up to 90+ later today

  18. 18.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    July 20, 2011 at 8:33 am

    Bemused @ 8 – Hey, the fact that a neo-conservative African-American legislator from Florida can make a comment like that without flopping over because his brain has jumped out of his head and run off screaming, is a sign of progress. Of a sort*.

    We’ve been hitting 80 with actual humidity; it would make a Deep Souther sneer and skip around, but for acclimated natives, this is crossing the desert with no Gatorade.

    D.C. isn’t terribly far south of the Mason-Dixon line and I know I speak for all of my DC Metropolitanites when I say I’d gladly skull fuck six kittens for weather like that.

    Yesterday I went outside around noon. First I couldn’t see shit because my glasses fogged up. Then I couldn’t see shit because I had to take off my glasses. Supposed to be hotter today.

    *Where Progress = Intense lack of personal, historical or geographical awareness because one is confident an angry mob won’t decide to lynch one’s ass for some obscure offense against local norms.

  19. 19.

    Exurban Mom

    July 20, 2011 at 8:41 am

    Trying to figure out if we should be seriously panicking about the debt ceiling or not. Starting to have trouble sleeping at night…when a frickin’ presidential candidate goes on record calling the debt ceiling problem “a misnomer” and “not a serious problem,” we got trouble.

  20. 20.

    Bruuuuce

    July 20, 2011 at 8:45 am

    Forty-two years and counting since the success of Apollo 11. Here’s to everyone who made that, and all the other wonders of space exploration possible — and a hearty Bronx cheer to the wusses and dreamless people who’ve torn that dream down to where we have no independent launch capability.

  21. 21.

    bemused

    July 20, 2011 at 8:49 am

    Thoughtful@18,

    That and basically telling a woman to get back in the kitchen and keep her mouth shut. Is this creep married?

  22. 22.

    WereBear

    July 20, 2011 at 8:55 am

    D.C. isn’t terribly far south of the Mason-Dixon line and I know I speak for all of my DC Metropolitanites when I say I’d gladly skull fuck six kittens for weather like that.

    Yes, I know, but would you feel the same in our -40 winters?

  23. 23.

    DZ

    July 20, 2011 at 8:55 am

    I feel bad for all of you suffering from the heat, but we’re having the opposite problem here in Portland, OR. We;ve had one day over 80 in 2011 and only about 12-15 days over 70. Plus, it’s raining in July – almost unheard of here. Forecast for today is high of 74. Next 10 day forecast shows 9 of 10 days in the 70s but no 80s and more rain.

  24. 24.

    Jeffro

    July 20, 2011 at 9:25 am

    Check this out from Jennifer Rubin over at WaPo:

    House Republicans aren’t so intransigent as they have been portrayed. And there is no appetite for default.

    lolwhut???

    And this also, too:

    Well, at least we know what Obama stands for: huge tax hikes, ephemeral domestic spending cuts, savaging the defense budget, and zero entitlement reform. I imagine that will come up in ads for the Republican presidential nominee next year.

    “Savaging” the defense budget – oh my.
    Give me the budget pen, ma’am, I’ll show you savaging the defense budget…

  25. 25.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    July 20, 2011 at 9:29 am

    Bemused – Of course. The GOP has raised homophobia to such a level I doubt an unmarried pol could get elected. (BTW, W-S responded to West’s tantrum by spanking him some more.)

    Yes, I know, but would you feel the same in our -40 winters?

    Yup. Here’s the thing. It gets pretty cold here, not that cold, but when you factor in windchill it gets damn cold. And DAMP cold. But you can always add more layers. You can get those chemical hand warmers and all that groovy cold weather gear.

    With heat, especially intense humid heat, there is only so far you can strip down before people start to complain, throw up, poke out their eyes with sticks. You’re hot the minute you step out the door, start to stew in your own sweat after 60 seconds, you stink after five minutes and everyone around you is also hot, sweaty, stinky and fucking hates life.

    I’m just glad I work in an office where business casual dress is considered really dressy. If I had to wear a suit and a tie in this shit I’d be psychotic. (However, nothing save of a threat of violent death will make me wear shorts and sandals to work, even though I could.)

    So yeah, I’d take the -40 temps. Wanna trade?

  26. 26.

    bemused

    July 20, 2011 at 9:37 am

    Good for Wasserman Schultz but it would have been a lot more fun if she could have told West to get his big boy pants on and quit his whining.

  27. 27.

    Amir_Khalid

    July 20, 2011 at 9:58 am

    You Harry Potter fans,spare a thought for our fellows in Indonesia. Because of a dispute over taxation between the government there and distributors of foreign movies, nothing from abroad is currently being shown in the country’s theaters. So if you want to see Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, you need to factor in the cost of a plane trip here or to Singapore (and an overnight stay as well, most likely).

  28. 28.

    Bruce S

    July 20, 2011 at 10:00 am

    Here’s a take-down of both David Brooks and George Will in one swell foop:

    http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-on-fannie-and-freddie-and.html

  29. 29.

    pattonbt

    July 20, 2011 at 10:06 am

    I’ve lived overseas (Australia) for the last 8 years, but I still work for the US company that sent me over and I make several trips a year back.

    Like most here, I spend too much time following politics and have been amazed at the crazy from the right. But in some sense it’s all abstract for me. While it frightens me, I know I am away from it (although the Liberal, read Conservative, party in Aus is starting to take tactical pages out of the Republican/Tea Party playbook – scary).

    But on this trip, the impact of these changes in the politics in the US has been really laid bare and today it is not abstract, I really have come to the conclusion that the US is well and truly f’ed and I can’t see the silver lining anymore (and if a silver lining were to come it is decades away now).

    What triggered it was getting in my rental car and looking for a news radio station (NPR) because I like news and hate morning/evening drive radio. And it was channel after channel of right wing bile. I mean I had the dial on “seek” and station after station, for the 2 or 3 seconds the seek feature lasted, there were tons and tons of morans spouting out the Tea Party BS. Slogan after slogan, talking point after talking point, hate after hate, stupid after stupid.

    And I realized, there is really no left leaning counter punch. I’ve always known left messaging is harder (it’s more easy to make people afraid than educate them on policy – I get that), but the right wing message machine has so taken over it’s not hard to understand why so many people buy in to the memes or the “main stream media” follows suit. It’s no wonder that whatever the right squaks about gets attention (the greasy wheel gets the grease) and becomes the story. They have such a powerful tool at their disposal. And even if you are leftly inclined, there is simply no outlet for your views. It was really sad.

    And then when I found NPR, it was a shell of it’s former self. Even sadder.

  30. 30.

    Lit3Bolt

    July 20, 2011 at 2:02 pm

    I ran across a story about the Winklevoss twins and Larry Summers on Yahoo. Full of the usual rich asshole on rich asshole litigious violence, but I thought this quote from Summers was amusing:

    “One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case.”

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