Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Bark louder, little dog.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

“But what about the lurkers?”

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Thursday Mid-Day Refresher

Thursday Mid-Day Refresher

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12647279_764891356974970_8889174675316955298_n

This popped up on my FB feed, unfortunately without photo credit. But aahhh-worthy.

It looks like we could use a fresh thread and I’m busy avoiding work. It will be almost 60 degrees when I take Bixby out for his lunchtime walk. I’m tying up loose ends and wasting time until then.

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This is from one of my favorite Colorado photographers. Lars Leber (used with his permission) Check out his website for some stunning Colorado nature pix.

This has been your afternoon pick-me-up (though it’s only 10:30-ish here). Consider this an open thread.

ETA: Thanks to sharp-eyed commenters (including Punchy), looking closely at the kerning, borders and layers, another Obama forgery has been uncovered. Our owls appear to be faked. Thanks to The Golux and Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism,  we know the origin of this fake is here. Carry on.

 

Reader Interactions

59Comments

  1. 1.

    Applejinx

    Ooooh, owlets! My little sister’s very into owls.

    Agenda for the day: some more coding work, and going back to bed to rest and hopefully continue shaking the death flu. Not necessarily in that order ;)

  2. 2.

    jacy

    The house I grew up in has a lovely view of Garden of the Gods. And Lars Leiber does absolutely wonderful photography of Colorado — his pictures popping up in my Facebook feed always make me homesick.

  4. 4.

    Keith G

    Had a blood lab rendezvous (fasting) scheduled at ten-thirty. Breakfast, truly a breaking of a fast, is at my favorite Cajun stop: Shrimp gumbo, oyster poboy, and a stout. Then back to work.

  5. 5.

    Jerzy Russian

    I love the scenery in Colorado. Now I have to waste the morning looking at Mr. Leber’s pictures. Thanks Obama!

  7. 7.

    Punchy

    Real question — are those real birds, or stuffed animals in a tree? The eyes appear so disproportionately out of whack large for the body size to be reals…

  9. 9.

    The Golux

    I think there’s a strong possibility that the owlets were Photoshopped. In particular, the twigs they’re sitting on don’t appear to be part of the tree.

    ETA: @Punchy – Or stuffed, as you say.

  19. 19.

    Germy

    30 years ago, the Disaster

    The thing that got me teary-eyed thirty years ago was seeing footage of one of the astronauts’ old parents. They watch the takeoff with joy, and then after the explosion, the mother understands immediately something has gone wrong, but the old man doesn’t. He keeps smiling with pride while the expression on the mother’s face turns grief-stricken. Then he realizes what has happened. Heartbreaking.

  23. 23.

    catclub

    Did anyone else hear the NPR bit on advertising for a large format photographer for the National Park Service
    (format is large, photographer need not be). It is the job that Ansel Adams held.

    They got a lot of applicants.

  26. 26.

    Tim C.

    So I know Slate is a mixed bag and William Saletan is very much the epitome of that Slate “Mixed Bagness”. However, this is a pretty good piece on what he refers to as the “Failed State” nature of the GOP at the moment. It’s a pretty epic takedown.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/the_gop_is_a_failed_state_donald_trump_is_its_warlord.html

    On the other hand the word that he never uses is “Gerrymandering” I think a huge difference between the Pre-2010 GOP and what’s happened since then, is not the change in governing philosophy, but the simple fact that map is so rigged at the moment, that even if Cruz gets the nomination, and even if he alienates every singe non-hardcore GOP voter in the country, it’s still impossible for the Democrats to take the house. We might win the national House vote by a historic margin and still not have a GOP controlled chamber.

    TL, DR: Gerrymandering is killing out democracy more than anything else.

  28. 28.

    FlyingToaster

    @Applejinx: I’m getting over something which is horribly like a 12-hour bout of norovirus (sans fever) plus 4 days of gastroenteritis. Yesterday was the first day I was able to sit in front of a computer and just forward e-mails to the relevant parties. Today I can actually read blogs, and make a comment without having to run for the bathroom.

    My abdomen still hurts like hell. Not funny, whoever at my PCP’s office gave it to me (timing maps to picking it up at the doctors’ office). At least the minimal snow is almost gone, so there’s no shoveling in my immediate future.

    Hope you feel better, too.

  32. 32.

    Gravenstone

    @Germy: I was at my parent’s home during January break from college. I remember the news breaking into regular programming. We’d become so jaded by then (well, the networks) that covering the launch live wasn’t even a thing. Even for such a momentous occasion as the inclusion of a non-astronaut in the crew (Christa McAuliffe) whose focus was to raise interest and awareness of space exploration in the young.

  33. 33.

    TaMara (BHF)

    I just cooked up a batch of black rice (forbidden rice) for lunch and tomorrow’s recipe exchange and realized it’s going to be bitch to try and photograph well. But it sure does taste good.

  34. 34.

    Fair Economist

    @Tim C.:

    the simple fact that map is so rigged at the moment, that even if Cruz gets the nomination, and even if he alienates every singe non-hardcore GOP voter in the country, it’s still impossible for the Democrats to take the house.

    This isn’t true. We would need a swing of about 7% from 2012 to take the House. The net racist anti-black vote has been estimate at about 3%, and there’s about a 2% swing from demographics. So we need only a 2% gain over expectations to get the House. That’s not easy, but it’s certainly not impossible. I actually think Cruz or Rubio could actually give it to us based on their nutty pro-rapist abortion stands.

  36. 36.

    Germy

    @Gravenstone: I was working second-shift at the time, and my daytime was free to hang around the apartment and listen to music. I had the tv on in the background when it happened. I remember standing in front of the tv, staring in disbelief.

  37. 37.

    RaflW

    Marco Rubio now being compared to Tim Pawlenty on Twitter.

    As a Minnesotan, I find this delicious. Y’all carry on with your carrying on.

  38. 38.

    dexwood

    @Gravenstone:

    I was teaching in a high school that day. I made it to the teacher’s lounge just in time to watch the launch. I’ll never forget the stunned silence, the shock, and the tears that fell.

  39. 39.

    hueyplong

    “Who will Hillary throw under the bus?”

    Why wouldn’t she just have him/her killed? An uncharitable person might say you need to step up your game.

  40. 40.

    Svensker

    @srv:


    Arguably the single one thing that would restore American’s trust in government again would be the DoJ indicting Hillary.

    Arguably, that is the single most genius sentence in commenting history. Really polished. Kudos!

  42. 42.

    Anoniminous

    @Tim C.:

    Too soon to give up on taking the House. The extreme gerrymandering the GOP undertook is going statistically wonky on them in 2016. Any GOP House seat won with 3% or less is vulnerable and any with 5% is a possible, depending on the Democratic challenger.

    Circumstances favor the GOP keeping the House. If we do nothing “favor” turns to “certainty.”

  43. 43.

    Tracy Ratcliff

    @Tim C.: Saletan’s article was my afternoon dose of schadenfreude. He’s got to to the despair-and-anger phase, realizing all those nice moderate Republicans that he says Pres. Obama needs to reach out to are imaginary. I expect in a couple of weeks he’ll move on to acceptance, and do Slate-pitches about how fascism isn’t really that bad.

  46. 46.

    Applejinx

    @FlyingToaster: Yay! I’m really pleased you’re feeling better. I’m gonna nap, and pretty much abandon any hope of keeping to a predictable schedule: my body can’t sleep or rest predictably right now, I’ll be sick and sleepless and then randomly crash for nine hours.

    If I need another one of those (probably should, being willing to mix it up in a political thread is a clear sign I ain’t right) I should grab it when I can.

    @srv: I’d rather see government do basic income than a Silicon Valley investment firm, though I can actually see why they would. I think they’re of the opinion that giving everyone seed money will make the whole economy wealthy, and they’re right plus their location, California, is in crisis due to extreme wealth inequality so it’s an appropriate place to try it.

    Since right now I’m grappling with Social Security trying to claw back Disability money when I was in a plan specifically for the purpose of getting me off Disability which WORKED, I am real pleased to see anybody talking about the ‘no strings attached’. You start means testing stuff and immediately you produce these situations where it damages you to do too well, forces your attention away from what it is you’ve got to do to succeed (and I’ve run for about eight years on the business I made with the PASS plan, though it’s had to constantly change and evolve: self-support as a tiny small business is hard!) and then when you get claw-back happening, odds are they’re going to demand two thousand dollars all at once when you are only making $900 a month and depending on a Section 8 voucher and various subsidies to even continue to exist.

    This is not only dumb and mean but costs a huge amount in bureaucratic overhead. Better to work out how much you want to help, do it no strings attached, and hope it worked more often than it didn’t.

    The funniest thing is that these months where I had more than $2000 in resources weren’t about milking the program and sitting back with a T-Bone and a big screen TV. They were the foundation of a small business that has gone on to make more than $200,000 over the years, much of which has been overseas sales bringing money into the country from places like the EU and Scandinavia, and those would have been the times when I was scrambling like mad to develop new stuff and had no time to pay attention to anything but my work.

    I’m looking at a similar time now, but at least now I’m not getting off Disability. I’m still autistic but I’ve been off Disability for years, and though the business has dwindled so has everybody else’s, and I’ve out-survived some companies in my market sector and am hanging in there against other ones who are doing a sort of Wal-Mart/Amazon ‘cut off the air supply’ thing to their whole industry.

    Bring on basic income. It’d give my customers money enough to buy the occasional thing.

  48. 48.

    maurinsky

    I just have to share with the world that my older daughter is pregnant and she and her husband found out yesterday they are having twins.

  49. 49.

    maurinsky

    @dr. bloor:

    I met Buddy a couple of times when I worked at Cox Communications….you could smell his cologne from a mile away, I think to cover up the colossal but often appealing bullshit coming out of his mouth!

  50. 50.

    Germy

    In a new film called “Nine Lives” Kevin Spacey plays a wealthy businessman who is turned into a cat by Christopher Walken.

  52. 52.

    Germy

    Donald Trump’s attempt at a hostile takeover of the G.O.P. is astonishing in its breadth. He is not just competing against a large field of candidates for votes in the primaries; he is at war with nearly every power center in the Republican Party—and he is winning. How is he doing it? One of Trump’s strengths is that he has effectively co-opted a conservative counter-establishment that has been growing during the Obama years, which has seen the rise of a movement on the right that dislikes Republican leaders almost as much as it dislikes the President. Trump is finding that the anger of this movement can be harnessed to attack a broader array of targets than just Washington politicians.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @Tim C.:

    We might win the national House vote by a historic margin and still not have a GOP controlled chamber.

    The “national house vote” is, I guess, some kind of statistical reference point, but otherwise meaningless. The presidential election, Cruz becoming the GOP nominee vs Rubio, would not have much direct impact on Congressional outcomes.

    Gerrymandering, on the other hand, has much more impact, and the GOP have been experts at carving out districts to their benefit.

  54. 54.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Someone took two little owl brooches and posed the picture. You can search images.google.com, first right mouse to view image, get the URL of just the picture, paste it into images.google.com, search, and voila.

  55. 55.

    Shell

    Clinton says she’d consider appointing Obama to the Supreme Court. That means we’ll have years to say “Thanks, Obama!”

  56. 56.

    Germy

    @Shell: I read an interview with Obama where he said he wasn’t interested in an appointment to the supreme court. He said he’d rather teach law. He says he likes working with young people, that the court would be too isolating.

  58. 58.

    WaterGirl

    @Germy: I read that, too, but I came away with the thought that he said he is not interested FOR NOW. I wonder if that was wishful thinking on my part?

  59. 59.

    Miss Bianca

    Colorado is lousy with great photographers. I dunno, maybe something about our surroundings just inspires ’em…

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