Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let there be snark.

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

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Wednesday Evening Open Thread: No Surprise

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: No Surprise

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Secret Service Director Julia Pierson has resigned, apparently at the President’s request.

Also predictable, as reported in NYMag, “Why Some Stocks Are Jumping on Ebola News“:

…[A]s soon as the [Dallas case] CDC press conference happened, the stocks of the handful of companies invested in Ebola research surged. Take Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, Canadian a firm working on a treatment along with the Department of Defense. Its stock is up about 20 percent. Shares of BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Newlink Genetics, and Sarepta Therapeutics also jumped.

Why? In part because the press conference signaled that the market for Ebola treatments could be bigger and higher-income than previously thought. If American insurers and European governments are going to want to buy Ebola drugs, pharmaceutical companies are going to want to produce them. It also might have indicated that more public research funding — and there are tens of billions of dollars of it — might be headed Ebola’s way…

I first read Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississipi when I was eight. He taught me there will always be a certain mordant satisfaction in the vast predictability of human nature.
***********
Apart from cheap chuckles, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  1. 1.

    Mustang Bobby

    He taught me there will always be a certain mordant satisfaction in the vast predictability of human nature.

    Phineas T. Barnum was more succinct: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

  2. 2.

    KG

    I’m honestly surprised the numbers are so high in both rural and urban populations when it comes to terrorism.

  3. 3.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I got a robocall from the Republicans today, saying they were sending me an application for a vote-by-mail, and it was important that I vote. This seems cluelessly untargeted to me.

    1. I am a registered Democrat.

    2. I already voted. I’ll bet the Democratic GOTV already removed me from their contact list.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    @KG:

    I think some of it is TV shows. I can’t tell you how many times the NCIS team in L.A. has stopped a major terrorist attack on the homeland.

  7. 7.

    Bob In Portland

    I am reminded of past “lapses” in Secret Service coverage. In 2008 Obama was against extending FISA. Then his campaign plane, carrying him and his family, had “troubles” and had to land. Then the Secret Service for some reason shut down the metal detectors at a rally for Obama being held in Dallas, of all place. Then Obama switched sides and voted with all the Republicans for the extension of FISA.

    This can only be a coincidence. I’m sure no one in the permanent government would be leaning on our President.

  8. 8.

    aimai

    I’m making potato rosemary pizza, roast fig/smoked fish salad, poached spiced beets with haloumi salad, and little rhubarb-plum crumbles for dessert. Spouse has a guest visiting. My shoulder hurts and I wish we could just eat without guest and crawl into bed.

  9. 9.

    Bob In Portland

    Also, this. Your tax dollars at work.

    There is irrefutable evidence that the National Guard and ultra-nationalist Right Sector fighters are responsible for the murder of people recently discovered in mass burial sites near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine said Russia’s Investigative Committee.

    “For those who have doubts regarding who’s responsible for these murders, the Investigative Committee has irrefutable evidence – witness accounts and appropriate examinations – that directly indicates that this crime was committed by fighters from the National Guard and Right Sector,” the committee’s head Vladimir Markin in a statement on Wednesday.

    The mass graves discovered in September near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine “are further eloquent testimony to the atrocities of the Ukrainian nationalists,” Markin said, adding that “all of the victims were tortured before their murder.”

    The murders were described in detail in the testimony of a soldier from the ‘Dnepr’ battalion, Sergey Litvinov, detained in a Russian hospital as a civilian after he fled Ukraine, Markin said. Currently Litvinov is under arrest and is to be transferred to Moscow for further questioning, he added.

    Litvinov “personally killed civilians not involved in the military conflict, including women and children residents of the villages Melovoye, Shiroky, Makarovo and Kamushnoye, guided by anonymous denunciations,” Markin said, quoting the soldier’s testimony.

    “What is more interesting that this fighter received a money reward for the killings from his leadership sponsored by Igor Kolomoysky,” Markin said, referring the Kiev-appointed Dnepropetrovsk governor and prominent oligarch.

    “We know the names of many of the commanders of military units, the militants of the Right Sector and the National Guard, who carry out criminal orders of the military and political leadership of Ukraine,” Markin said, adding that all of them will sooner or later have to answer “not only before the law, but also to their own conscience.”

  10. 10.

    Bob In Portland

    @Baud: I suspect that there will be an increase in murdered drunken sailors in New Orleans this season.

  12. 12.

    The Dangerman

    Being an urbanite, I disqualify myself from evaluating what rural people consider to be important.

  14. 14.

    Patricia Kayden

    Just heard from Al Sharpton that Michael Dunn was found guilty of first degree murder. So glad to hear this.

  15. 15.

    srv

    How long is it going to take this administration to realize that the Ebolamen are viral terrorist bombers?

  17. 17.

    StringOnAStick

    @Iowa Old Lady: I suspect that the vote-by-mail “application” you are about to receive is just as well-targeted to destroy/invalidate your vote as what the Kochtopus has recently sent out in VA. A voter’s guide filled with misinformation such as when is the last legal day to register and giving the wrong address to return your application to, guaranteeing that you will never be registered in time for this election. And it looks quite official too.

  18. 18.

    scav

    @jenn: Nah, let’s let him hang there and string a few sparkly lights on him to liven the decor. Widdle white boys, lower lip extended, stamping in footed jammies and pouting do tend to overestimate how long they’re cute with it, especially when clutching their all-important toys and eternally threatening to leave with them. At least turning him into animated grumpy floorlamp is vaguely useful.

  20. 20.

    JoyfulA

    @The Dangerman: When I was a kid and people worried about atomic bombs, the Soviet Union, and the like, people in my small city were certain we were a prominent target: A quarter-million people in the area! State capital! Tourist attractions!

    Even as a kid, I couldn’t take it seriously.

  22. 22.

    Bill Arnold

    @StringOnAStick:

    A voter’s guide filled with misinformation such as when is the last legal day to register and giving the wrong address to return your application to, guaranteeing that you will never be registered in time for this election.

    This is somehow legal, because free speech or something? And is OK because Democrats did it in a county sheriff election in 1937 or something?

  24. 24.

    ant

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/ebola-us-doctors-texas-liberia

    Speaking in the parking lot of the apartment complex where Duncan was staying, Mesud Osmanovic, a 21-year-old manual labourer who lives there, said he saw the ambulance arrive.

    “When the ambulance came his whole family were all screaming, he got outside and he was throwing up all over the place … when he was throwing up he was trying to walk and he couldn’t walk,” Osmanovic said. He said he had met Duncan only a couple of times but knew him as kind and helpful to residents. “I know him through his family … This ain’t his first time coming to America,” he said. “He was a quiet guy, a really nice guy.”

    I’m thinking this virus will spread.

    It will be contained until it isn’t.

  25. 25.

    burnspbesq

    I’m not especially happy with the narrow scope of the preliminary injunction that the Fourth Circuit allowed in the North Carolina voting rights case, but the opinion is good, for two reasons.

    First, the harsh language about abuse of discretion sends a clear message to the District Court that it is on an exceedingly short leash. Second, the description of the burden of proof, and what’s relevant, in Section 2 denial-of-access cases is effectively a checklist for DOJ to follow in building a winning case at trial.

    http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/141845.P.pdf

  27. 27.

    burnspbesq

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I was not a fan of the decision to retry Dunn on the murder charge after the first jury hung. He could have gotten (and could still get) up to 60 years on the three attempted murder charges of which he was convicted the first time around. That in itself was a pretty big win, and from a resource-allocation perspective it was easy to justify taking that and going home.

    I was wrong.

    The murder conviction has symbolic value that far outweighs the additional time that one scumbag will do.

  28. 28.

    ? Martin

    @Iowa Old Lady: Don’t discount the possibility that the GOP figured they could get you to vote a 2nd time. Best case you vote for the Republican and cancel out the Dem vote. Worst case you vote for the Dem and they report you for voting twice wiping out both votes.

  29. 29.

    ? Martin

    @Bill Arnold:

    And is OK because Democrats did it in a county sheriff election in 1937 or something?

    ‘Because Chicago stuffed the ballot boxes for Kennedy.’ That’s always the excuse and it still will be a century from now.

  30. 30.

    JPL

    @burnspbesq: That was breaking news in Atlanta since his mother lives in Marietta. I’m so pleased not only for his family but to know that justice still exists.

  34. 34.

    JPL

    @Omnes Omnibus: I should have known that. I was a freshmen in h.s. when he was murdered and that’s a day I won’t forget. I can still remember the tears of a friend who ran to my house. I never met him but my parents had a picture with him when he was a Senator.

  35. 35.

    Baud

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    According to Caro, LBJ “helped” in Texas, which did make a difference. Of course, Nixon’s people apparently helped California go for Nixon.

  36. 36.

    khead

    I know I certainly enjoy telling the folks from home to BUCK UP LITTLE CAMPERS – because the Bluefield and Beckley WV area isn’t really a major terrorist target.

  37. 37.

    The Dangerman

    @jenn:

    I am tempted to offer you a ladder and a helping hand off that cross you’ve strung yourself on.

    No, no, I think we need consistency; I should treat rural people the same way other groups of people want me to treat them. I don’t want to engage in any acts of urbansplaining.

    Now, a little more seriously: Pretty damn stupid, isn’t it?

  39. 39.

    Thoughtful David

    @KG:
    I’m a bit surprised that it’s so high too, but not that the rural population–where terrorism will almost certainly never hit–is more afraid than those in urban areas. I have been thinking lately about how one of the major defining characteristics of conservatives is fear. They’re just bloody afraid of everything. They’re now screaming about ebola, IS/IS/IL, and prayer rugs on the border, and everything else. Gotta carry a gun because ….fear. It’s really striking.
    They must piss their pants several times a day. Being a conservative means doing frequent laundry.

  41. 41.

    khead

    @Thoughtful David:

    Last week:
    “Why is Obummer sending troops to contain ebola and not the terrorists?”

    This week (same person):
    “I told you Obummer should’ve done something about ebola before it was too late!!”

  42. 42.

    JPL

    I just started streaming Hardball and good news….. Roger Simon doesn’t find the President lazy and Chris Matthews said he didn’t mean to suggest he was..
    WTF WTF I know I missed the segment but talk about feeling despair.

  43. 43.

    KG

    @Baud: six states worth 95 electoral votes were decided by less than one percent of the vote in each state. Kennedy won NM NJ MO IL and HI for 63 electoral votes, Nixon won California for the other 32. Another 4 states (61 electoral votes) were decided by less than 2% – Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, and Texas went for Kennedy, Alaska for Nixon. For all the justified crap we give Nixon for what he did later in his career, the fact that he decided against fighting the returns in 1960 should count heavily in his favor. It would have made 2000 look like a JV game.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    They also put Rhonda Rouer, Mr. Dunn’s onetime fiancée, on the stand to try to damage Mr. Dunn’s credibility. In tearful testimony, Ms. Rouer, who was inside the gas station convenience store when the shooting took place, said Mr. Dunn complained about “thug” music. And in the night and day after the incident, he never once mentioned that he shot at the teenagers because one of them pulled out a firearm.
    “Let me be clear,” Erin Wolfson, a prosecutor, told the jury. “There was no shotgun in that Durango that night. There was no stick. There was no branch. There was no hollow pipe. There was no weapon.”

    “Onetime” fiancee. I would say so :)

  45. 45.

    Mike J

    @KG: It’s widely believed that downstate Illinois had as much or more ballot box stuffing as Chicago had, only going the other way. You might not be eager to call for an investigation if it might turn up your own crimes.

  47. 47.

    Howard Beale IV

    The airlines are getting hammered over ebola fears-even Southwest, fer crissakes.

  49. 49.

    planetjanet

    From the annals of “I kid you not”… On my way home I saw a vehicle whose back window had been covered with an enlarged family photo, much like the ads on buses. The photo was of a toddler on the back of a full sized alligator. It took a moment for that to set in. The photo did not cover the entire window. The sides were filled in with camouflage, which made some odd sense to me. Looking again at the pickup truck, because, of course it had to be a pickup truck, the vanity tag offered some relief. The tag said simply “gatorboy”, which I hope means that the toddler survived to adulthood. It was a reminder that evolution is a probabilistic process and not deterministic. As I passed the truck, I saw the driver, who was, of course, texting. The forces of evolution may eventually prevail.

  52. 52.

    KG

    @Thoughtful David: I live in southern California, I drive by Disneyland most every day and by DTLA probably once a week, I live within a bike ride’s distance from the LA/LB harbor – basically, I live in a very target rich area. And terrorism is so far down my list of concerns that it just amazes me that people are worried about it. It’s been 13 years since the towers fell, and other than a handful of random idiots with backpack bombs, we’ve had no terrorist attacks, yet 70% of the country still thinks it’s September 14, 2001? I mean, I remember people being worried about sleeper cells and security everywhere being tight. But after all this time?

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @StringOnAStick:

    According to Benen, this kind of stuff has happened in at least three other states, thanks to Koch Bros and Americans for Prosperity: WI, WV, and (most recently) NC.

    On a related note, I just signed up with the Nunn/Carter campaigns to do early-voting poll watching. Don’t know yet what my schedule will be, but it would be kind of gratifying to catch out some AfP Kochalicious shenanigans here in GA.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @Suffern ACE:

    “I was in fear for my life”. Too bad Zimmerman didn’t have a fiancee.

    I didn’t know he got down on one knee and fired after the car. He was still in fear for his life. They might go buy a shotgun and come back. Was he trying to execute every witness, or what? Jesus.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @KG

    Some of those in a position to know at the time have over the ensuing decades been guardedly candid about the reason for the GOP not challenging Chicago returns as being because the Nixon campaign was condoning the same shenanigans in downstate Illinois, and knew that the JFK camp could marshal evidence of that.

    @Patricia Kayden

    On first read couldn’t help but think of justice being meted out to Dr. Miguelito Loveless.

    (No edit function, repeat to fix errant link.)

  61. 61.

    Josie

    Wow. I was just listening to the local news and they reported that the man with ebola went the first time to the hospital and told a nurse he had been in Africa. She neglected to mention that fact to anyone else and he was sent home, only to return several days later in an ambulance. They said an investigation is underway. I’ll bet it is and I’ll bet she is in huge trouble.

  63. 63.

    lamh36

    Grand jury considering the Ferguson shooting is being investigated for misconduct

    Grand jury considering the Ferguson shooting is being investigated for misThe St. Louis County prosecutor’s office is investigating an accusation of misconduct on the grand jury that is hearing the case against the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

    Ed Magee, the spokesman for county prosecutor Robert McCulloch, said they received the information from a “Twitter user” Wednesday morning.

    “We are looking into the matter,” he said.

    An account of possible jury misconduct surfaced Wednesday morning on Twitter, when several users sent messages about one juror who may have discussed evidence in the case with a friend.

    In one of those messages, a person tweeted that they are friends with a member of the jury who doesn’t believe there is enough evidence to warrant an arrest of the officer, Darren Wilson.

    The same person who tweeted about being friends with a member of the jury has also tweeted messages of support for Wilson…

  66. 66.

    Mike in NC

    @SiubhanDuinne: Read a story today that the voter suppression law passed by NC Republicans has thus far cost nearly $2 million in fees billed by the lawyers hired by the governor and legislature to defend it. Our tax dollars at work.

  67. 67.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Gin & Tonic: From his neighbors. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen an interview with at least one of them about the ambulance arrival.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @Josie:

    That is a major breakdown in hospital procedure, to say the least. No wonder the nurses posting on here have been so paranoid — their own co-workers are putting them at risk.

  70. 70.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    @Bob In Portland:
    Hey, they had Bubonic Plague this week, engineered by a medical profiteer. So instead of being drunk the sailor was “Typhoid Marty”. Scott Bakula needs to drop the phony southern accent and sound like someone actually from NOLA. Which is more like somone from Boston than Alabama.

  73. 73.

    JPL

    Much ado about nothing.. Many decades ago, my neighbor was the administrator of the Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. He and and his wife adopted two abused children but were under threat because Presbyterian performed abortions. There was an unmarked car outside there house 24/7, which dummy called the police on. (in defense, I had young children playing outside and there was a strange car) I was informed they had received death threats. Yup.. two folks with grown children adopting two abused children with threats. That is the first time I heard about the religious right.

  74. 74.

    Josie

    @Mnemosyne: You would think that hospitals would have already inserviced their people about what information is pertinent to a diagnosis. Hopefully no one else will make this mistake.

  75. 75.

    Mike J

    @Violet:

    It’s not a HIPAA violation if the patient okays the release of his name.

    It’s only a HIPAA violation for the person that leaks it. The media hasn’t broken any law, even if someone who works at the hospital did. Much like publishing Greenwaldian info.

  76. 76.

    Mnemosyne

    @Josie:

    I know that Ella in NM and elie were both saying that they’re nurses and really worried about Ebola. Based on this nurse completely missing every warning sign, I can’t say they’re being paranoid. I still don’t think that the general population needs to be too worried about Ebola, but hospital personnel should be on the alert, FFS, since they’re the ones most endangered by an outbreak.

  78. 78.

    burnspbesq

    @Mike in NC:

    Read a story today that the voter suppression law passed by NC Republicans has thus far cost nearly $2 million in fees billed by the lawyers hired by the governor and legislature to defend it. Our tax dollars at work.

    And the fun has barely started. Still to come: discovery, hiring expert witnesses, cross-motions for summary judgment, a trial if there is no summary judgment, and another round of appeals.

  79. 79.

    Elie

    some interesting news about the use of statins (a class of drugs used to treat high cholesterol) that are also anti-inflammatories and their impact on survival of sepsis by ebola patients. I am copying a letter from a comment in the NYT in response to the article today on the horrors in a hospital in Liberia.

    Here is the letter:

    David Fedson
    Sergy Haut, France 1 hour ago

    Ebola might affect up to 1.4 million people by next year, and more than 500,000 could die. The lack of treatment threatens national security in West Africa. It needn’t be this way. Scientists who study Ebola virus disease focus on vaccines or treatments that target the virus, but these interventions will be available to only a few Ebola patients. These scientists and the health officials who rely on their advice ignore treatments that don’t prevent infection, but instead shore up host defenses and improve chances of survival. Other investigators who study patients with sepsis have shown that acute statin treatment reduces the risk of developing severe sepsis (multi-organ failure) by 83%, and multi-organ failure is what kills people with Ebola virus disease. Moreover, acute treatment with statins and other immunomodulatory agents (e.g., ACE inhibitors, ARBs) dramatically improves 30-day survival in patients hospitalized with pneumonia and sepsis. These generic agents are inexpensive and available to doctors in West Africa today. They are safe when given to patients with acute critical illness. They could be used to treat Ebola patients and to prevent complications in healthcare workers who become infected. Ebola scientists, investigators at NIH, WHO staff and the UN Coordinator for Ebola all know about this, but they have chosen to ignore it. Thus, Ebola patients and those who care for them are denied the possibility that treatment with these agents could save many lives.

    Here is the link to some research. There is a fair amount. Time for thinking out the box?

  80. 80.

    Sherparick

    @Baud: It is very much based on the media source most of these people rely on, Faux News, which constantly hypes the “Islamic Terrorist Threat,” in part because the story line reaches and activates dark places in Americans (“Islamic” is 3-fer since so many Muslims are black, Asian, or Arabic, foreign, and non-Christian) and in part because Roger Ailes himself has an hysterical fear Muslims. Panics about imaginary threats is part of the human condition, but America has particular affection for such threats, especially when there is a small nugget of reality at the core (ante-bellum America had panics about slave rebellions, the last one triggered by John Brown’s raid and led directly to the secession movement; and of course, the periodic “red scares” starting in 1890s through 1960s and then the “drug panics” since the 1960s that have encouraged our never ending “War on Drugs.” Of course, a lot of money was made and power acquired by certain individuals and institutions in all of these panics.

    By the way, I disagree with Charlie Pierce on on the 1972 election being the one where the Republicans started beating the Democrats to death on national security and the Democrats running scare. It was the 1950 mid-terms, six months into th Korean War, after Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the Russian detonation of their own nuclear bomb, when Joe McCarthy came on the scene that led to a Democratic losses in Congress that year and following 1952 election where Eisenhower beat Stevenson and Republicans had two years of controlling Congress allowed the Republican Party to portray itself as National Security Party and the Democrats playing defense on it ever since.o

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