Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The lights are all blinking red.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Not all heroes wear capes.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

When we show up, we win.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Wednesday Evening Open Thread

Wednesday Evening Open Thread

by | 62 Comments

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(Mike Thompson via GoComics.com)
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On the bright side, I just picked the first batch of basil, so it’s pasta with basil and home-grown cherry tomatoes for dinner. (Boxed pasta; my gardening is better than my cooking, and it don’t take mad gardening skillz to grow basil/tomatoes.)
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What’s on the table at your house?

P.S. Happy birthday, commentors SiubhanDuinne and Omnes Omnibus!

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  2. 2.

    Mark S.

    Happy birthday, Suibhan and Omnes!

    I was surprised to read some gooper strategists don’t think Rick Perry would be a strong opponent against Obama. I’m more worried about Goodhair than anyone else, so I’ll defer to their better judgment. But here’s the money quote that has everybody talking:

    Veterans of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s unsuccessful 2010 primary challenge to Perry recalled being stunned at the way attacks bounced off the governor in a strongly conservative state gripped by tea party fever. Multiple former Hutchison advisers recalled asking a focus group about the charge that Perry may have presided over the execution of an innocent man – Cameron Todd Willingham – and got this response from a primary voter: “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

    What kind of human being says something so incredibly amoral and deranged? Oh, that’s right, a typical Republican voter.

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Thanks, Anne Laurie!

    Can’t figure out how to link it from my (newish) iPad but for a slightly different — yet eerily similar — take on the “can” motif, check out Mike Luckovich in today’s or yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

  8. 8.

    Jeffro

    Holy cow, you just picked your first batch of basil? Today?

    My 1 potted basil plant has been going nuts since May. My kids are getting sick of having it in their Cheerioes and I’m even beginning to wonder if it’s really all THAT good in my morning coffee. lol

    Enjoy, AL

  9. 9.

    Chad N Freude

    Happy birthdays! To both of you, mostly because you are serious non-screaming commenters (except when Omnes engages me in a tepid-joke contest).

    Since this is an open thread: I missed participation in the Scandinavian mystery conversation, but, even at this late date, when some other fad may have captured everybody’s interest, I feel I should offer the Scandinavian Crime Fiction website.

  11. 11.

    Violet

    What’s on the table at your house?

    In the middle of eating food out of the freezer. Every so often I make a list of everything in the freezer and start going through it. Tonight is some Keta Salmon that I froze in November. Looks like it has a bit of freezer burn, but otherwise okay. Should have eaten it sooner, but things get buried.

    Going to do some lemon couscous and cook up some long beans from the garden. I should post a picture of the long beans. The longest so far is 18 inches.

  12. 12.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    Fortunately, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on the new Super Constitution you may have heard about. And O-course I put in a little somethin-somethin for all my balloonbagger friends, who were so scrupulous about demanding that all of their elected officials observe that quaint and obsolete original Constitution.
    .
    .

  14. 14.

    General Stuck

    Happy B day SiubhanDuinne and Onmes!

    May you have many more happy birthdays together

  16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    My tummy is still crabby from antibiotics, so bland is the order of the day. Trying to decide whether I’m willing to risk a carne asada quesadilla from Taco Mesa. Otherwise it’s probably going to be chicken and rice.

  18. 18.

    Cat Lady

    @Pavonis:

    It seems like the only way pundits cop to their hackitude is when they get shitcanned or shunned by their former ingroup. It happened with Joe Klein (sort of) when the Commentary crowd turned on him, and it happened with Dana Milbank when he got caught in a bank snafu after they got bailed out with taxpayer money and he realized he was just a peasant too. Bruce Bartlett got shunned by the neocons and started making more sense, and Charles Johnson got the white supremacists riled up against him and turn and ran to the light. Hopefully it’s a trend.

    Happy b-day OO and SD, and many many more.

  19. 19.

    Anne Laurie

    @Violet:

    Going to do some lemon couscous and cook up some long beans from the garden. I should post a picture of the long beans. The longest so far is 18 inches.

    Garden Chat tomorrow evening, hint hint!

  20. 20.

    jnfr

    Basil and tomatoes coming in from our garden too. Peppers and eggplants growing, and the squash are finally starting to fruit. Woop, woop!

  22. 22.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Cat Lady: What you are saying is conservatives are functionally unable to empathize with others and so require something bad to happen to them in order to reassess their beliefs.

  23. 23.

    opie jeanne

    SiubhanDuinne and Omnes Omnibus, Happy birthday to both of you.

    I’d have a piece of cake in your honor but that means I would have to bake one first.

  25. 25.

    Chad N Freude

    And just in case any of us thought we are not a nation of morons, Nancy Grace couldn’t outdraw Fox News in the contest between evil ignorance and ignorant evil.

    ETA: No, I don’t mean Nancy Grace and HLN are better than Fox News. I mean the big media draws enhance our collective ignorance and stupidity. Just to be clear.

  28. 28.

    eemom

    @Mark S.:

    about Perry’s execution of an innocent man — it’s pretty much certain that Willingham WAS innocent, and denied a fair trial because he was, among other things, dirt poor. A really harrowing story. Don’t have time to find links, but there’s an excellent, exhaustively researched story in the New Yorker or New York Magazine (I always get those confused), and also a recent documentary.

    It is also an excellent cautionary tale about the abuses of junk science.

  29. 29.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    OT in an OT?

    I had MSNBC on in the background today and heard that MasterCard is reporting a 33% increase in quarterly profits.

    33%. Usury anyone?

  30. 30.

    Linnaeus

    Probably sandwiches and tater tots for me tonight, as I’m feeling lazy and the salmon won’t be thawed until tomorrow.

    Then I need to dive into this history of British Columbia.

  32. 32.

    Cat Lady

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Either that, or they just get mad enough or are smart enough to realize that they sold themselves too cheap, or to even more craven scumbags than they were. They’re not true believers, and needed a push. John Dean being Exhibit A.

  33. 33.

    different church-lady

    I had MSNBC on in the background today and heard that MasterCard is reporting a 33% increase in quarterly profits.

    People just keep signing up for their own problems. They involve MasterCard with every $6 purchase in their lives, and then they stand there and wonder how MasterCard rules their lives. Learned helplessness, with a side-serving of laziness.

  35. 35.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Chad N Freude:
    It’s easy to get more news than you need without resorting to big media. I ceased watching any televised news, talking heads, etc. in late 2008 and the rewards of free time and peace of mind are immeasurable. Big media has been in the tank for a long time, denying it our attention is all we have.

  39. 39.

    different church-lady

    @eemom:

    exhaustively researched story in the New Yorker or New York Magazine (I always get those confused)

    The New Yorker is the one with the cartoons.

  40. 40.

    jharp

    I’ve got a mountain of basil. I’m drying it for later use and to be honest have no idea if I’m close to doing it right. Nevertheless it’s fun.

    And my tomatoes just aren’t very good this year. They won’t turn deep red (they are kinda orangeish) and kind of grainy. Like the shitty ones the give you at Wendys. The flavor is at best a 5.

    I don’t know what they lack. Or maybe because it has been blistering hot here for 3 weeks. (indianapolis)

    Any help?

  41. 41.

    different church-lady

    I’ve got a mountain of basil. I’m drying it for later use and to be honest have no idea if I’m close to doing it right.

    Pesto! It freezes!

  43. 43.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Thank you to ALL who sent birthday wishes. Very much appreciated and cherished.

    Just learned that August 3rd is also the birthday of one of my all time fave Atlanta Braves, the great Sid Bream.

  46. 46.

    suzanne

    Happy happy, Siubhan and Omnes. :)

    I read that New Yorker article about Willingham when it came out, and I just remember being so angry, I quite literally couldn’t see straight, I just kept trembling.

    I really don’t want to ever let hate and anger dominate my life, but sometimes it’s hard. I read about things like that, and feel sick inside.

  48. 48.

    suzanne

    In other things that make me feel sick inside, Eric Cantor said that the federal government is going to break its promise and that Medicare and Social Security won’t be around for many people.

    THE DEMOCRATS ARE TOTAL FUCKING MORONS IF THEY DON’T MAKE COMMERCIALS OUT OF THAT AND PUT IT ON EVERY NETWORK SIX TIMES AN HOUR.

  49. 49.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Just back from letting my inner nerd out by going to the Harry Potter movie and I find out my birthday got front paged. Damn. Thank you all for the good wishes.

  50. 50.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @eemom: That particular story rattled even my conservative “kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” friends. Not enough to make them change their views, of course. Expressing shock and horror is free.

  51. 51.

    mike in dc

    HP Lovecraft:As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a
    frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky
    idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their
    emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and
    provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning
    artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly
    and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded
    phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone
    agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or
    unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that
    real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of
    unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of
    resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical
    ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the
    slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the
    Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to
    the dead.

    * Letter to C.L. Moore (August 1936), quoted in “H.P. Lovecraft, a
    Life” by S.T. Joshi, p. 574

  52. 52.

    Anne Laurie

    @eemom:

    It is also an excellent cautionary tale about the abuses of junk science.

    The New Yorker, Trial by Fire. Even scarier, IMO, is what the whole sad, sick multiple tragedy says about the Real Heartland American(tm) mindset. Nobody with the power to do anything useful wanted to admit that three little girls had died horribly because their parents were dirt-poor and “our” social safety net would embarrass a decent Victorian. Rather than admitting a crappy good-enuf-for-Walmart-shoppers heater ignited unneccesarily flammable materials in a crappy, substandard hovel (and IIRC that cut-to-the-bone fire services didn’t respond in time), Gov. Perry’s legal experts and their media mouthpieces decided that somebody must be publicly punished, and the person least capable of defending himself happened to be the girls’ father. Cameron Willingham was murdered by the state for the “crime” of not having enough money — either to protect his kids from the Invisible Hand of the Market, or to buy a lawyer with enough clout to point the media lynch mob at someone else.

    And that’s what the “it takes real ball to execute an innocent man” Perry cheering section is actually saying: “We want someone to be held responsible. But we know in our shriveled hearts that the powerful people who might actually be called responsible are out of our reach… so we’ll settle for watching some poor mook get executed for the crime of not having money.” They’re the spiritual descendents of the people who made it a family holiday to go watch some desperate soul hanged for stealing a loaf of bread — or insulting the king’s leman. Hey, at least it ain’t us (today), and besides, why shouldn’t Making Trouble for One’s Betters be a capital offense?

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    Night shift checking in. Just got home from work, a little earlier than usual.

    I am off work tomorrow–it is rare that I am home at “dinnertime”–so I am planning a big sit-down dinner: rib-eye steak, baked potato, salad, maybe something for dessert. Need to get a bottle of red wine.

    Off to catch up on the threads . . .

  55. 55.

    eemom

    I guess we will see if the Willingham story gets any traction if the motherfucker does run for president. I’m not getting my hopes up.

    “To see him obviously framed
    couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed
    to live in a land
    where justice is a game.”

    Sadly as true today as it was however many years ago Bob Dylan wrote those words about Reuben “Hurricane” Carter.

  57. 57.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anne Laurie:

    It’s not just that “someone” has to be held responsible. We have developed this strange conviction that if a child dies or is injured, the parent(s) must be to blame. It’s the same thing that happened to Raquel Nelson, who was convicted of vehicular homicide because her four-year-old son was struck and killed by a hit and run driver (fortunately, she is going to take the judge’s offer to appeal and get a new trial).

    It’s the flipside of helicopter parenting — since parents are supposed to monitor their children 24/7, obviously it’s the fault of the parents if something bad happens because they didn’t live up to their responsibilities.

  59. 59.

    Violet

    @Anne Laurie:

    Garden Chat tomorrow evening, hint hint!

    Probably won’t get a photo to you by then, but I will put it on my To Do List. They should continue to produce for another month, so hopefully there will be more time to take photos.

  60. 60.

    different church-lady

    Has anyone here ever made a mojito with gold rum? And was it a successful endeavor?

  61. 61.

    Gretchen

    Lucky you to have tomatoes. It’s been 110 degrees here in Kansas City (seriously! so glad climate change is a myth) so all the blossoms dropped off all the tomato plants.

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