Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Consistently wrong since 2002

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The willow is too close to the house.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Thursday Evening Open Thread: Prescient

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Prescient

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One of my political idols from earliest childhood:

“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery.
The politician will be only too happy to abdicate
in favor of his image, because the image will
be much more powerful than he could ever be.”

― Bella Abzug

***********
Apart from Decline & Fall, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

100Comments

  1. 1.

    Bob In Portland

    Fyodor Zavaleykov? They were finally able to fly him out. He’s in a hospital in Russia now. He lost a lot of blood but he’ll survive.

  9. 9.

    West of the Rockies

    Has the Children’s Book Council taken any heat for Flush Limbaugh winning the bloody author of the year award? NPR is infested with ditto-heads trumpeting the grandeur of their bloated bloviator.

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MomSense: My system updated overnight and when I logged in this morning the new FF loaded automatically. I was a bit nonplussed.

  11. 11.

    Schlemizel

    @Baud:
    I remember some CBS reporter telling the story of having an interview with someone in the St. Ronnie admin. They had just done a scathing piece on Reagan & the reporter (Leslie Stall?) was worried she would catch hell for it. Turns out the aide was quiet pleased because the visuals were all the blessed saint with flags flying in the background etc. The aide explained that it was all the images that people would remember they would never hear the words.

  12. 12.

    raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: I dunno, I just came from the corner eatery. Couple of mellow bands, lot’s of kids and dogs. I just ain’t in the mood to be all bummed about how awful the world is.

  13. 13.

    Bob In Portland

    Betty Cracker, if Madrak is too much of a “firebag” for you, is looking at WaPo too far to the right? Where can I find a source that you will read? Maybe if Cole links to something?

  14. 14.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus: My tech expert (aka the Spousal Unit) installed Pale Moon for me, for just that reason. Among other. I’m quite pleased with Pale Moon!

  22. 22.

    MomSense

    @raven:

    Sounds like fun. I made massive quantities of spicy nachos and beans and rice and listened to the new Black Keys CD with the kids.

  23. 23.

    Pogonip

    Did Elmo ever find anyone to take all those kittens?

    I go to the eye doctor tomorrow. The excitement builds.

  27. 27.

    lurker dean

    @Billgerat: me three. i loaded the classic theme restorer because i hated that the “reload” button can’t be moved in the new version.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Totally agreed, which is what led me to install and recommend here earlier the Classic Theme Restorer add-on, with which one can set their design as preferred.

    In about five minutes, you can get send those gawdawful new tabs to the dustbin of digital history.

  33. 33.

    Bob In Portland

    @Omnes Omnibus: At 3:42 pm this afternoon “A Humble Lurker”, when asked about the story of Hunter Biden getting that gig at Burisma, wrote:

    You don’t think maybe the fact that it hasn’t is a bit of a…I don’t know…hint maybe that it’s bullshit? If there was something better than Benghazi out there, don’t you think they’d leap on it?

    The question was why the right-wing has been avoiding the story too. And yes, the news was a couple days late in the MSM.

  41. 41.

    Anoniminous

    @Baud:

    Or pants forgetting, mustard losing, car left in a field, slice of life immortalizing.

  49. 49.

    Billgerat

    @lurker dean: I’m not saying I totally hate the new FF – the tabs are screwy, and I still have trouble with the bookmarks being on the right rather than on the left, bu a few features are nice. It just takes getting used to. I just don’t like not being given a choice in the matter. I’ll be keeping the link to the Classic Theme Restorer handy in case I end up missing the old style more.

  50. 50.

    Gin & Tonic

    Wow, I go out for dinner and look at all the fun I missed. How many threads are now crapped up?

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    Wowzers.

    Just hopped down (between the raindrops) to the street to check the mail.

    Have seen dark clouds before. Have seen black clouds before. But this is perhaps the first time have seen a fuligin cloud, hanging wide and low of the entirety of southern coast of the island, including where tourist hotel hub Kihei is.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Anoniminous:

    Or pants forgetting, mustard losing, car left in a field, naked mopping, shoulder-dislocating, cat-ass-shaving, slice of life immortalizing.

    Improv’d.

  58. 58.

    Schlemizel

    @raven: Are you familiar with “Bored Of the Rings?” The bold adventures of Frito Moxie and Pepsi taking the ring to be destroyed in the Zazu Pits?

  59. 59.

    Sly

    One of the worst things to happen in the entire history of New York Democratic Party politics was Abzug losing the 1976 Senate nomination to Moynihan (and by less than 1% of the vote).

  61. 61.

    Bob In Portland

    @Omnes Omnibus: No, it was merely a coincidence that the Vice President’s son gets a gig with a natural gas company in Ukraine a few weeks after Biden conferred with the coup government. It had to be a coincidence, because people in these here parts don’t believe that there is such a thing as quid pro quo. Except when that evil Dick Cheney made all that money in Iraq.

  62. 62.

    trollhattan

    @Schlemizel:
    Harvard Lampoon. Read it before the trilogy, which I’d still recommend, although nobody today would get Goodgulf.

  63. 63.

    Hungry Joe

    At noon in San Diego it was 102+ and there were nine wildfires in the county. But still, more than 50 of us descended on the Burger King on Balboa Ave. to demand $15/hr. for fast-food workers. This was part of a world-wide event. Fight for fifteen! Lucha por quince!

    About an hour ago a new fire ignited in a canyon about five miles south of us. Until now they’d all been to the north; this is the first one actually in the city. We’ve been at least 15 miles from the nearest fire, but even here the air stings your eyes — and I’m inside. Temp outside is only down to 93. This isn’t even a little bit fun.

    (I don’t want to be dramatic: We’re in no danger.)

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    @Bilgerat

    You can move the Bookmarks icon (or remove it) easily. Right-click on the title bar or menu bar, choose Customize, and drag it to where you want it to reside, or drag it to the customize storage pane to remove it from the bar.

  66. 66.

    muddy

    We had a back breaking day here. My son was kind enough to spend his vacation flying across the country to install a new fence for my jumpy diggy dogs. I said, let’s rent a powered augur for a day, we’ll just bang right through it.

    Well, there was all kinds of stone. You expect that here (“glaciah brought it”) but this was really ridiculous. Each 6″ augur hole turned into a 3 foot crater. It became apparent that we were accidental archaeologists. It was a 3′ high stone wall under the ground entirely, right in the exact wrong place. The rocks were very large, flat on 2 sides, and laid in an interlocking pattern.

    We were only able to do 6 sections, and Muddyson is big and strong and works like a demon. Nice vacation for him. This critical part in the front being done, I’m voting for some variations in location. This was just unreasonable.

    Wish I had some ground penetrating radar or something. My b-i-l was telling me last night about this large ridge of rock (we call that “ledge”), it’s basically a long hillside. They did some kind of tests and it turned out it’s actually an immense boulder, half in the ground.

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: Good thing he’ll survive. Vasily Sergiyenko and Vyacheslav Veremyi weren’t so lucky. And where are Sergei Lefter? Yevgeny Gapich/Hapich? Irma Krat?

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    I hope this isn’t a totally stupid question, but is there an iPad equivalent to “right-clicking”?

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @Hungry Joe:
    Good on ya, mate.

    Now stay safe. We’re thinking of you up north and wondering how soon Calfire will burn through their budget this year.

  73. 73.

    Anne Laurie

    @some guy: Nobody buys a Jeff Koons piece for the “art”; they buy it for the Jeff Koons signature, which is the CoA(tm) establishing its commodity status for resale.

    You want real artcommodity mindfvckery, read this: “To Break Even in Seattle Art, Your Paintings Have to Be Made in China“. Significant Artist William Powhida (who usually works in the medium of colored pencil on lined paper) can’t deliver art to the masses without devaluing his brand… until he pays Chinese factory-paint-limners to bulk-paint copies of his “neurotic rants about the heatedly capitalist contemporary art world” on stretched canvas.

    … Each painting at Platform sells for $350.

    Meanwhile, Powhida’s non-made-in-China drawings—the pencil drawings he makes with his own hands—sell for $5,500 on the low end in New York and Los Angeles. In Seattle, art dealers say it’s virtually impossible to sell anything for more than $1,200. Powhida began showing in Seattle in 2006, but his prices have risen beyond Seattle. To afford to show in Seattle, Powhida has to hire Chinese labor…

    Thorstein Veblen would be so tickled!

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Nope on the cane burn. Intimately familiar with those* (higher and mushroom-like clouds and a gray hue). Major rain cloud action. Can’t even see the West Maui mountains from here now.

    *As my front window faces west and looks down on a vista of the central isthmus, which is all cane fields except for the villages along the coasts, it sometimes looks like Mordor when there are multiple night burns going on.

  77. 77.

    Schlemizel

    @trollhattan: @SiubhanDuinne:

    I had read all 4 books before I read BOtR and I loved it! I read Tolkien to my kids when they were little and gave the the other when they were old enough. They all love it too. Thought there were a lot of product references they didn’t get Bromo-Seltzer!? But where else can you fine great writing like:
    “He would have finished him off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the tunnel.”

  81. 81.

    NotMax

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Thanks, raven. I don’t know nuthing ’bout birthin’ usin’ no iPads. Though that may change, as a friend mentioned he wanted to give me his old iPad 1 now that he has treated himself to a shiny new tablet of some sort. Or else give me his old Nexus.

    Leery of any touchscreens, as apparently the oils on my fingers are more than normally acidic and I’m kind of anticipating the screen becoming etched. Friend who repairs computers for a living said he has never seen a touchpad like the one on my laptop, which has a veritable crater eroded into it.

  83. 83.

    Schlemizel

    Dildo Bugger of Bag Eye
    Frito Bugger
    Spam Gangree
    Moxie Dingleberry
    Pepsi Dingleberry
    Stomper, or Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt
    Gimlet, son of Groin
    Legolam
    Bromosel
    Eorache
    Tim Benzedrine
    Goddam
    Sorhed, the evil wizard, ruler of Fordor
    Serutan the wizard of Isinglass

    Almost forgot the merino riders of Roi-Tan

  85. 85.

    Anne Laurie

    @muddy:

    Well, there was all kinds of stone. You expect that here (“glaciah brought it”) but this was really ridiculous. Each 6″ augur hole turned into a 3 foot crater. It became apparent that we were accidental archaeologists. It was a 3′ high stone wall under the ground entirely, right in the exact wrong place. The rocks were very large, flat on 2 sides, and laid in an interlocking pattern.

    Owwww! Old folk saying: The only reliable crop in New England is rocks.

    That’s why, the longer I live here, the more I love raised-bed/ container gardening.

    Which, yeah, is no help with the jumpy diggy doggies problem!

  86. 86.

    Bob In Portland

    @Omnes Omnibus: As opposed to Benghazi? That’s actually got me smiling. Because Republicans think Benghazi is what, versus business as usual, and they can’t afford to go toe to toe with Democrats when dealing with government corruption?

  87. 87.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemizel: Ah, Bored of the Rings! “Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt, son of Stuffed Shirt” is just the perfect nym for The Hero…

  89. 89.

    Schlemizel

    @Anne Laurie:
    Boggies are an unattractive yet annoying people whose numbers have decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral squalor. They don’t like machines more complicated than a garrote, a blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the “Big Folk” or “Biggers,” as they call us. As a rule they now avoid us, except on rare occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter. They are a little people, smaller than dwarves, who consider them puny, sly, and inscrutable and often refer to them as the “boggie peril”. They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them. As for the boggies of the Sty, with whom we are chiefly concerned, they are unusually drab, dressing in shiny gray suits with narrow lapels. alpine hats, and string ties. They wear no shoes , and they walk on a pair of hairy blunt instruments which can only be called feet because of the position they occupy at the end of their legs…

  90. 90.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Double theta super-secret classified.

    Quasi-related cartoon you might like.

    @raven

    Pretty. All that’s missing is a smell-o-vision app.

    The empty lot directly across the street always has one or two cars that park there shortly before sunset so that tourists can ogle and film the view I get from my window.

  92. 92.

    lurker dean

    @Billgerat: i feel pretty much the same, the lack of warning was more problematic than the actual change. but the inability to move the reload button was enough for me to load the classic theme.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    They do suck donkey balls don’t they?

    I’m on a quest to send them a feedback every day till they fix it. Go to the help pulldown and send them one. Or one a day. Maybe they will get the message. I doubt it but it can’t hurt either.

  94. 94.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    You should get a screen protector — then at least you’re damaging the $10 piece of plastic and not the actual iPad screen.

    I have screen protectors on my devices because I am clumsy and do things like drop chicken salad on the screen when I’m trying to eat lunch and check email at the same time.

  95. 95.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Join the crowd. Lot of other stuff I don’t like, but someone (NotMax?) told me it was because I had customized too much. Apparently, if you just run vanilla Firefox, the changes are not as noticeable.

    ETA: If it really bothers you, here’s an add-on that will resquare the tabs.

    ETFA: As usual, read the fucking thread first.

  96. 96.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: I have already installed it and am happier. I am still bothered at least as much by the involuntary upgrade as I am the substance of the change.

  98. 98.

    the Conster

    @Anne Laurie:

    When I lived in Connecticut I would plant pansies and end up with the first row of a stone wall. We joked about opening a rock farm with Japanese investors.

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