Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

In after Baud. Damn.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

You cannot shame the shameless.

This fight is for everything.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tuesday Mid-Day Open Thread

Reader Interactions

223Comments

  4. 4.

    Germy

    Yesterday I saw a New Yorker cartoon. Two hens are looking up at a rooster weather vane. One of them says “He’s good with directions, but that’s about it.”

  7. 7.

    Division

    Ain’t even 8am on the west coast. How the fuck is it even starting to be mid-day? (Just snarking. It is 7:53am here though…)

  8. 8.

    ShadeTail

    Betty Cracker @ Top:

    Egrets, I saw a few, but then again, too few to mention:

    Well, obviously not, because you mentioned them. ;)

  11. 11.

    rp

    This is funny, but it also gets to something that’s been bothering me about Sanders. It’s one thing to say that Wall Street needs more regulation, but quite another to say that Wall Street and the people who work there are inherently bad. It’s a tribalist, us vs. them view that’s more consistent with the right than the left IMO.

    I don’t want the left to turn into a mirror of cleek’s law.

  12. 12.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I love Florida. Well, the natural part of it. Save for the good Ms. Cracker, a long-deceased friend, and my old drummer, I have not liked any Florida humans. But the nature? Wonderful.

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    Repeating my PSA from yesterday. If you live in an area serviced by the Showcase Cinemas chain, tomorrow they will be screening The Maltese Falcon. Not something you get to see on the big screen very often. Check your local listings for showtimes.

    “I tell you right out, I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”

    So many other good lines.

    “I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over.”

  17. 17.

    schrodinger's cat

    @rp: The rhetoric emanating from Bernie’s campaign and his supporters is reminiscent of the old capitalism bashing leftier-than-thou rhetoric which is incredibly nuance-free. I say this as someone who is not fan of the current economic order and financialization of the economy.

  18. 18.

    Germy

    @Gin & Tonic: Last year I saw “The Big Sleep” at our local movie house. What a thrill it was seeing it on a big screen! Same theater showed “Key Largo”

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    @Gin & Tonic:

    So many other good lines.

    Like …

    “Falcons? We don’t got no falcons. We don’t need no falcons!”
    – – – – – – – – –
    “Rhett, where will I go? What will I do?”
    “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a falcon!”
    – – – – – – – –
    “Major Strasser has been shot — round up the usual falcons.”

    Or am I thinking of another movie?

  22. 22.

    Germy

    @Gin & Tonic: Didn’t care about the plot. Just loved the performances… and those sets! I want a round fireplace like the one in the Big Sleep. And that car.

  23. 23.

    Germy

    Also saw Rear Window at the same theater. I like watching the classics on TV, but NOTHING beats seeing them on a big screen. I felt like I was in their rooms.

    I’m pissed because last week our movie theater showed “The Girl Can’t Help It” and we were out of town.
    Classic wide-screen rock ‘n roll comedy.

  26. 26.

    Linda Featheringill

    Middle aged daughter has decided to go for an advanced degree and we are all awaiting replies from the various universities. This whole thing is nuts. How long does it take them to make a decision?

    [Answer: Too damn long.]

  27. 27.

    japa21

    Looking forward to when the egrets, herons and cormorants reappear up here in Chicagoland. When the spouse and I drive to Chicago Botanical Gardens there is one lake with a couple dead trees near the shore that usually have 20-30 cormorants perched on them.

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Germy: the one in the Big Sleep. And that car.

    Somebody mentioned Packards the other day. If I ever win the lottery I’m gonna get me a 1940s Packard and have somebody put in one of them engines that runs on french fry oil. If it’s a Powerball, I’ll make it a Deusenberg

    @Gin & Tonic: You’ve probably heard this story, which if it isn’t true, should be

    This is the crime film with a virtually indecipherable plot, though it doesn’t really matter because the scenes, one after the other, are so utterly compelling and enjoyable that after a while you shrug and think, Who cares what’s going on, it’s all too much fun to worry about details like that. A famous anecdote: During shooting, neither Hawks nor Faulkner nor the other screenwriters (the reliables, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett) could figure out who had killed a certain character, so they wired Chandler this question and he wired back that he couldn’t figure it out, either.

    I’d watch it just to hear Bogart say “she tried to sit in my lap while I was still standing up”

  30. 30.

    Poopyman

    @AxelFoley: By coincidence (?):

    Today is Tuesday, Feb. 23, the 54th day of 2016. There are 312 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Feb. 23, 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

    On this date:

    In 1848, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died in Washington, D.C., at age 80.

    In 1863, British explorers John H. Speke and James A. Grant announced they had found the source of the Nile River to be Lake Victoria.

    In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

    n 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    @Betty Cracker:
    Per Wikipedia, there are indeed water buffalo in Florida:

    In 1974, four water buffalo were imported to the United States from Guam to be studied at the University of Florida. In February 1978, the first herd arrived for commercial farming. Until 2002, only one commercial breeder was in the United States. Water buffalo meat is imported from Australia.[37] Until 2011, water buffalo were raised in Gainesville, Florida, from young obtained from zoo overflow. They were used primarily for meat production, frequently sold as hamburger.[38] Other US ranchers use them for production of high-quality mozzarella cheese.[39]

  32. 32.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Linda Featheringill: I’m trying to remember, because it’s been a while since I chaired a grad admissions committee, but for PhD programs, there’s a national deadline most universities observe when they offer fellowships. It’s supposed to be fairer for students to know what their choices are rather than have one place try to force an early decision.

    Waiting is the pits.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @MattF:

    There are so many things wrong with that, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Although you’ve gotta give him points for rhetorical chops in that casually-tossed-off “Andrew Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party….”

  36. 36.

    p.a.

    @japa21: When I take a camera out to get action at my feeders I get sparrows, sparrows, and sparrows. When I look out my window: flickers, jays, downy woodpeckers, etc. Got a modestly good shot out the window with my phonecam last winter of a Sharpshinned hawk noshing on a junco. 75% sure it was a Sharpie not a Cooper.

    I am in no manner a birder, just too lazy to do the work required, but 1 tip I do have is that wearing a hood seems to help viewing; may hide the human outline a bit.

  38. 38.

    boatboy_srq

    @Betty Cracker: Well, there’s this nugget from up this-a-way. Seems Liberty Counsel lost their fight with Fairfax schools over beating teh ghey out of kids and teachers non-descrimination policies. More wingnut dollars frittered away in losing battles.

    OTOH, there’s this gem from WV: “Senator introduces resolution that bans LGBT-inclusive local ordinances” – apparently so WV businesses can benefit from statewide bigotry consistent nondescrimination standards. Apparently the state senator proposing this execrable bill is surprised that it could be construed as anti-LGBT (whodathunk that wiping out LGBT protections from local nondescrimination ordinances would be perceived as anti-LGBT). Something tells me this won’t go well.

    (H/T JoeMyGod for both items)

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: Well, I’ll be darned! I should have known that since I went to the University of Florida, but I never saw a water buffalo during all my years there, nor anywhere else in the state. (Plenty of gators, but no water buffalo.) I have had “buffalo mozzarella” cheese, which is very good. I guess that’s water buffalo cheese. I always assumed it was imported, but perhaps not!

  40. 40.

    Mustang Bobby

    Every time I drive from Miami to Lakeland along US 27 and go around the south end of Lake Okeechobee, I keep an eye out for streams of water crossing the road… just in case the dam breaks I hope I can make a run for it.

    Egrets have become like pigeons in Miami; they’re everywhere. I see them on the median of US 1 at rush hour, strutting along the banks of canals, keeping an eye out for anything they consider edible.

  42. 42.

    Lisa Lampanelli

    @rp:

    It’s a tribalist, us vs. them view that’s more consistent with the right than the left IMO.

    Get a penis, moran.

  43. 43.

    oldster

    “Egrets, I saw a few, but then again, too few to mention:”

    awesome. And very funny. Well done–continuing the DougJ line of brilliant lyric-embedding.

  44. 44.

    Peale

    In a snit today because the web series from China I was watching got banned. Serves me right for watching when I knew it was likely to get the hook.

  47. 47.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mustang Bobby: I read somewhere that they built the present day berm after the hurricane in 1928 broke the levees and killed a couple of thousand people. You’d have a good chance since you have a fast car.

  48. 48.

    CaseyL

    Open thread: I’m at home, waiting for an insurance adjuster to take a look at the damage on my car from the last time it was stolen (twice! within 2 months! – I use a Club all the time now). I’m hoping he shows up on schedule, because I’ve got a day full of meetings at work I’d like to be on time for.

  50. 50.

    Elizabelle

    @AxelFoley: Closing Gitmo? PBO speaking?

    Do tell. Just tuned in to CNN and they’re covering — you’ll never believe it — the Republican primary season.

    It’s all I ever see them doing. (Anthony Bourdain was on one night as I surfed through ….)

  51. 51.

    Paul in KY

    @rp: What Wall Street concentrates on now is inherently bad (IMO). No problem calling it what it is.

    Do you work in the industry?

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    @Poopyman: Ooh, twofer.

    Historical day, and remind those pesky Republicans of Theodore Roosevelt, who would get after THEIR asses, were he around today. Lincoln might have some choice words too.

  55. 55.

    SarahT

    @Betty Cracker: Thank you, ladies and Terns – I’ll be Heron all week ! And don’t forget to tip your Waders.

  56. 56.

    CaseyL

    The “undefined” comment is mine – I think I left the edit window open too long.

    ETA – Never mind; it fixed itself.

  58. 58.

    Denali

    Deer, we got a few in our back yard. Can’t figure out how to post photo though. Just imagine five seated in a pile of leaves. They look very calm, unlike exploding wingnuts.

  59. 59.

    rp

    @Paul in KY: No, but I don’t think it’s productive to say “wall street bad!” Not everything that wall street does is evil, and not everyone who works there is evil. It’s just too reminiscent of “unions bad!,” “feminists bad!” rhetoric from the right.

  60. 60.

    rikyrah

    McConnell says Senate won’t vote on Obama Court pick
    By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that his party won’t permit a vote on any Supreme Court nominee submitted by President Barack Obama and will instead “revisit the matter” after the presidential election in November.

    The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that Obama is within his rights to nominate a replacement for the late Antonin Scalia but said Republicans controlling the Senate would exercise their rights.

    “Presidents have a right to nominate just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent,” the Majority Leader said in a speech on the Senate floor. “In this case, the Senate will withhold it.”

    McConnell quoted a 1992 Senate speech by Vice President Joe Biden, then-chairman of the Judiciary Committee and Delaware senator, in which Biden said that in a presidential election year the Senate should “not consider holding hearings until after the election. Instead, it would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.”

    In response, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused McConnell of taking his cues from Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. On the day of Scalia’s death, Trump told a debate audience that the Senate should “delay, delay, delay.”

  62. 62.

    The Golux

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Back in the early eighties, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford had a summer film series, where I saw Casablanca for the first time, with a full house. I had somehow reached the age of 30 without knowing anything about the plot. Seeing it on a big screen with a big crowd was fantastic, and when the line “Round up the usual suspects” came, the audience erupted in a huge roar.

  63. 63.

    uire some action by Congress

    @MattF: He seems to have listened to a different speech. Most of what Obama wants to do will require some action by Congress. But according to Issa Obama making a cup of coffee in the White House is exceeding presidential authority

  65. 65.

    Technocrat

    @rikyrah:

    Our political disfunction continues to increase. For all the criticism Communism recieves, we’re doing our damndest to show how Democracy can fail.

  66. 66.

    Applejinx

    @Paul in KY: I’d soften that even more, personally.

    I think there’s no reason to assume any difference of goodness and badness, of people entering that industry, than there would be in any industry. Might not be self-deluding Silicon Valley ‘make the world a better place’ idealism, but there’s no grounds to assume Wall Street attracts the bad.

    BUT.

    Systemically, it punishes the good and drives them out. You can’t even stay viable in there much less excel unless you’re a wizard at arbitrage plus absolutely tireless. The system compels a certain attitude by punishing everything else with failure.

    I’d be happy to say all the Wall Streeters have (at least in theory) the capacity for good, cooperation, and decency. But the outcomes the systems produces are straight-up evil, and it’s on them for staying in it. Some don’t. Some quit and do something else, for exactly that reason.

    It tells you something when you have to quit and go work in government to be more moral! :D

  69. 69.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Paul in KY: Bernie is no FDR. He won’t have the kind of backing FDR had in the Congress and Senate.
    I am well versed in the economic history of the Depression era and the New Deal reforms. I think we should bring them back. I like FDR’s speeches. However, not all of FDR’s policies worked and we almost got another recession because he scaled back on the stimulus spending. WWII’s war stimulus is what saved and boosted the economy.

    ETA: BTW thanks for your concern.

  70. 70.

    Poopyman

    Meanwhile, desperate for attention:

    Washington (CNN) Ben Carson suggested that if elected president he might be the first African-American to hold the position noting, President Barack Obama was “raised white” and outside of the United States.

    That’s just pathetic.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    Georgia deputies buy bullied Macon child Air Jordans

    Three Bibb County deputies received national attention after helping a child who was being picked on because of his old, worn sneakers.
    13WMAZ 5:02 p.m. EST February 20, 2016

    Three Bibb County deputies are being recognized on ABC World News as “Persons of the Week.”

    The deputies, Trinicholas Carswell, Timothy Jones and Jeff Howell, are getting national attention for what they did after responding to a call in Macon Feb. 13., according to a sheriff’s office news release. Turns out a 16-year-old girl was picking on a 9-year-old boy. The boy’s grandmother, Carolyn Taylor told deputies several kids were picking on him and making fun of his worn out shoes.

    Last Saturday when Taylor looked outside, she saw the 16-year-old placing her grandson Adam Flowers in a choke hold.

    “When I heard him scream, I knew he was in trouble,” said Taylor.

    Carswell learned that kids were regularly making fun of the child’s old sneakers. The deputies found out that Adam is an A-student at Vineville Academy. His grandmother is taking care of him and his two brothers by herself and she struggles to care for them, according to a sheriff’s office news release.

    The deputies wanted to do something to help, so after leaving Adam and his grandmother, they went to The Shoppes at River Crossing in north Macon and bought the boy a brand new pair of Air Jordans.

  80. 80.

    p.a.

    @Poopyman: I wonder, does he consider BHO neither African (white mom) nor American (foreign youth)? If a) also Dr. Carson should not do a detailed genealogical investigation as he may disqualify himself as being of African descent.
    One of my admittedly not numerous A-A friends doesn’t cobsider Bamz black; a rather unfortunate reversal of ‘one drop’ philosophy perhaps. Can’t remember the context of how the topic came up.

  81. 81.

    jeffreyw

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Nice photo? What camera are you using? How is the kittehs?

    Is OK photo
    Is Nikon D90 w/ 300mm lens
    Kittehs is about same, Mrs J sending Homer to overnight in garage now the temps are warmer. Homer still asshole, picks fights with all the others but runs from Toby.

  82. 82.

    Paul in KY

    @rp: I think a lot of what they do now, with the derivatives, etc. is ‘bad’. I personally think we’ve been kowtowing to these slimoids for way too long. Understand you don’t like the rhetoric. Noted.

  83. 83.

    Cermet

    @The Golux: And NEVER forget when Ingrid Bergman says in Casablanca “Who is the “BOY(!)” playing at the piano?” That “boy” was an African American adult male! Inexcusable. (aside: not the exact words.)

  84. 84.

    Punchy

    Anyone wonder what McTurtle would say should another (R) SCOTUS justice kick it in the next few months, giving the Dems a 4-3 court? Would he be as adamant that Obama not be allowed to pick a judge, or would he instead scream that Obama is required to nommy a staunch conservative justice immediately, because reasons?

  86. 86.

    rikyrah

    ‘Got to Go’:
    Success Academy, New York City’s largest charter school network, loses more than 10% of its enrolled student population each year once testing starts, compared to 2.7% at nearby schools
    Monday 22 February 2016 17.01 EST

    Brendin Smith was only four years old when his mother, Monique Jeffrey, realized her son was no longer wanted at Success Academy. Jeffrey says that administrators at one of the charter school’s Brooklyn locations told her the kindergartener “wasn’t going to make it”. Jeffrey later found out that Brendin was one of 16 students who been placed on the school’s “Got to Go” list, a list uncovered by the New York Times that singled out students that the school wanted to shed.

    Success Academy, the largest charter school network in New York City, also has some of the highest test scores. Critics have alleged that Success Academy achieves this in part by driving low performers out.

  87. 87.

    Tim C.

    So… random thought. With one more non-crazy Supreme Court justice on the bench, is there hope partisan gerrymanders could be found unconstitutional?

  88. 88.

    Poopyman

    @p.a.: By that logic, I, and a whole lot of others of Irish descent, are African. The dark-haired “Black Irish” came about because many ships of the Spanish Armada were shipwrecked on the Irish coast back in 1588, and the Moorish survivors hunted and killed by the English – except for the not-insignificant number who were hidden by the natives and tenderly nursed and – well, sailors….

    My father was raven-haired.

  90. 90.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @eclare:

    I sure am! If you want to exchange phone #s so we can plan to get together, please email me. SiubhanDuinne (at) gmail (dot) com.

  91. 91.

    Paul in KY

    @schrodinger’s cat: I was only speaking of Pres. Roosevelt’s speeches & comments regarding Wall Street & some of the shenanigans they liked to do.

    He (IMO) wasn’t afraid of slamming the excesses of basically unfettered capitalism (like we had in roaring 20s). I think you need some good ole ‘red meat’ speeches to help get your base galvanized to do the tedious things necessary to win in November.

  93. 93.

    SFAW

    @Paul in KY:

    Actually, stinking/steenking didn’t get uttered until the bandido says: “I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”

    (Of course, he also said “ain’t,” not “don’t,” in the first line.)

    Yours truly,
    Pedants’R’Us

  94. 94.

    uire some action by Congress

    @Cermet: True but what was perfectly normal usage given the time. And in the movie Holiday Inn Bing Crosby did a song in black face. Even the liberal MASH had no problem with drunk driving and gay put downs. Not fair to hold movies/TV of the past to the standards of the today.

  96. 96.

    daveNYC

    @Applejinx: I disagree. Wall Street, at least the front office, is very much setup to attract not very nice people. The job description is basically ‘make tons of cash and get bragging rights, while doing things that are technically legal but you know that someone is getting screwed on the deal’.

    And that’s before you get to the incentives to do actually illegal things (hello LIBOR scandal!).

  98. 98.

    Cermet

    And speaking of inexcusable – that earthen wall that straggles the Everglades and holds back most all the critical water in the Lake Okeechobee should be torn down!!!! Its a crime that one needs locks to enter/leave Lake Okeechobee so water can be used for farms and boaters.

  100. 100.

    dedc79

    I really hope Kris Kobach has an “I need to spend time with my family” type scandal sometime soon. If not, I fear he is going to do a lot of damage over the next few decades:

    Facing lawsuits over Kansas’ requirement for proof of citizenship to register to vote, Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Saturday railed against the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the League of Women Voters, labeling both groups “communist.”

    “The ACLU and their fellow communist friends, the League of Women Voters — you can quote me on that, the communist League of Women Voters — the ACLU and the communist League of Women Voters sued,” Kobach said at the Kansas Republican Party’s state convention, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.

    The new executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Brian Newby, in January approved Kansas’ request for a change on voter registration forms to require residents to provide documents proving that they are U.S. citizens.

  101. 101.

    p.a.

    @Poopyman: @Poopyman: My father’s family is Southern Italian 3 generations that I know: red hair & freckles. And in definite need of sunscreen beginning in June. These things are complicated.

  103. 103.

    D58826

    @MattF: Actually one wingnut talker is making just that argument even though he seems to be limiting it to cases already argued. Since the other 8 justices ‘know’ how Scalia would vote then they should just award his vote to that side and break the 4-4 tie.

  104. 104.

    Paul in KY

    @schrodinger’s cat: Not only the OTC ones, but the ones where they use crazy formulas to fleece stupid investors & all the other tricks we’ve seen.

    The whole thing needs to be overhauled, IMO.

  108. 108.

    Jeffro

    One more shout out here for Dark Money by Jane Mayer…the threat to the country (not just Dems) is both enormous and real

  109. 109.

    rp

    @Paul in KY: To be clear, I hate a lot of what Wall Street does and stands for, and I appreciate that some red meat is good politics. My concern is more about the overall tone of sanders’ rhetoric and what it might mean for the future of the party. It seems like his campaign is getting increasingly negative, particularly with respect to Clinton and her ties to Wall Street, and I don’t want to see us head down a path in which we’re defined by who we oppose rather than what we stand for.

  110. 110.

    p.a.

    @Poopyman: @schrodinger’s cat: I haven’t studied European colonialism specifically, but from what I know in general on the topic, the Catholic colonials were more likely to mix with native populations than Anglos, at least with those native pops joining with ‘mother church’. Not implying rainbow and lolipop racial/sexual relations, but there was more belief that native populations were actual human beings and acceptance as such.

  112. 112.

    Peale

    @dedc79: Yep. He’s probably going to be the next governor there and it a walking example of why it will be very important to get our grubby liberal hands on Scalia’s seat

  113. 113.

    Bobby Thomson

    @dedc79: I know Kris from way back. Let’s just say he hasn’t always been “godly,” but he’s always been an asshole. His margin was lower than Brownback’s but they both still won, possibly due to outright election fraud. A WSU professor is trying to get the data for the elections and Kris is refusing to provide them.

  114. 114.

    Linnaeus

    @rp:

    I wouldn’t worry too much about that. The negativity of the Democratic race has looked relatively mild to me, especially compared to other campaigns, both on the Democratic and Republican sides.

  115. 115.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Our political disfunction continues to increase. For all the criticism Communism recieves, we’re doing our damndest to show how Democracy can fail.

    @Technocrat: Anyone with a passing knowledge of Greek or Roman history has seen how democracy inevitably fails. Humanity keeps forming these governments, thinking “somehow, this time, it will be different” but it never is.

    Because people don’t change, and it’s because people don’t change that no democracy has lasted to the 300-year mark.

  116. 116.

    Paul in KY

    @rp: I think we (Democrats) can do both. Bernie does raise a good point on Hillary’s chummy relationship with some people that I think should probably be serving a stretch. They aren’t, so I guess that’s why she has met with them at times.

    If she doesn’t do their bidding, then all is cool. If you can’t eat their food, take their money, and (metaphorically here) screw their women/men & then vote against them, you don’t belong in politics.

  117. 117.

    boatboy_srq

    @rikyrah: Disgusting. And typical. And typically disgusting and disgustingly typical.

    FYI Benen took apart the Biden reference this morning. Predictably, McConnell showed the GOTea propensity to take comments out of context and to omit parts that under cut Teahadi arguments.

  121. 121.

    Amir Khalid

    @Paul in KY:
    If I were American, I wouldn’t care if Hillary did literally screw the bankers’ women. (Not, of course, that I think she ever did or would.) As long as it stayed behind closed doors.

  122. 122.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Poopyman: Portuguese ruled the strip from Bombay to Goa on India’s west coast.The Marathas defeated the Portuguese at the battle of Vasai (1730s) and from then on the Portuguese were confined to Goa. Vasai is a suburb of the current day metropolis of Mumbai.
    The ones with green and hazel eyes are mostly a brahmin subcaste, the people with Portuguese last names are Catholics like Dinesh D’souza.
    There was also a substantial Muslim presence in Southern Maharashtra, the Siddhis of Janjira, they were originally from north Africa. My great grandfather was one of the book keepers for the Siddhis.
    The concept of race makes little sense in India, just in my extended family we have people who could pass for Africans and some who could pass for dark haired Europeans like the Spanish or the Portuguese.

  123. 123.

    dedc79

    @Bobby Thomson:

    A WSU professor is trying to get the data for the elections and Kris is refusing to provide them.

    I am absolutely shocked to learn there are limitations on his interest in ensuring the “integrity” of elections.

  124. 124.

    daveNYC

    @Paul in KY: OTC refers to ‘over the counter’ which isn’t a particularly useful description these days. Basically (really basically, like only vaguely accurate) you’ve got OTC and Listed options. Listed options trade on an exchange, as options can be on near any stock, for near any strike price, and with various expiry dates (used to be monthly up to three months out, but the expiry dates have expanded greatly) this means there’s a lot of listed options (variations on Put/Call, Symbol, Strike Price, Expiry Date) but they’re all pretty straight forward in concept, and pretty liquid(ish). So you buy an option on the exchange and you can sell the option on the exchage easy peasy.

    On the other hand, you have OTC options. These are ‘non-standard’ options. They could have goofy underliers (multiple underliers or the underliers can change when calculating the price), their strike price isn’t necessarily a stated number, they can have additional conditions attached to them, all sorts of stuff. Upshot is, you aren’t going to be able to just up and sell them to anyone at any time. They can be complicated contracts and the pricing models are not nearly as straightforward as for listed options. In fact the pricing models used for OTC (or ‘structured’) products are pretty valuable pieces of information.

    Now the main danger with OTC derivatives is that you can’t really get rid of them except with the person who sold them to you in the first place. So you’ve got pretty serious counterparty risk. Imagine going to a casino, dropping $500 on ‘red’ and then while the wheel is spinning, the casino goes bankrupt and takes your money. Or alternatively, the player put $500 on ’23’ and then suddenly every spot on the wheel is ’23’. So the player might have something worth tons of cash, but if the company isn’t around for them to sell the product back, then they have nothing but paper. Roughly that’s the reasoning behind bailing out AIG.

    To be clear though, not all OTC derivatives are stupid. That category also includes swap products, which, while incredibly bad for some customers (Merrill was screwing small towns over with fixed -> floating swaps a while ago) they can be quite useful for companies attempting to reduce their currency and/or interest rate risk. (one principal is that you want to match the currency of your cash flows, so if you’re starting a business in Europe, where you will be getting Euros, then you want to have all the costs of that also be in Euros, you don’t want to have a loan that you have to pay using USD while you’re cash inflows are all in EUR, because if the EUR crashes, then you are screwed. A fair number of people were getting screwed on home loans a few years back because they had taken out lower interest loans from some other country, and then their home currency crashed, good luck with that)

  125. 125.

    Kay

    There are still 3 wks before Ohioans vote. @JohnKasich down by 5 points to front runner Trump right now. Gap could be erased by Election Day

    Oh, yay. The best part would be he has to come back here after telling the whole country how much we love him, which was not true :)

    It’s also not true he has “3 weeks” because we have early vote.

  126. 126.

    singfoom

    So, evidently the Republicans have said they won’t even give Obama’s SCOTUS nominee a hearing. AFAIK, they’re well within their rights to decline to approve a nomination, but can they flat out refuse to have a hearing?

    Seems like a winner for red meat to the base, but I hope that voters will get tired of their shit and possibly encourage turn out?

  133. 133.

    singfoom

    @Bobby Thomson: @dedc79: She lost the first round and is appealing to higher courts in Kansas. This whole story is just too much.

    I like how groups who want to make sure people get to vote are communists. At what point does a word just completely lose its meaning?

  135. 135.

    Technocrat

    @Paul in KY:

    I’d disagree that the crazy formulas (like Black-Scholes and Gaussian Copula) are designed to fleece investors. They represent genuinely original statistical thinking – but they get misused, or the good old Law of Unintended steps in. Black-Scholes won the Nobel Prize in economics – and of course almost destroyed the global economy.

    I suspect if you want to predict the next global meltdown, you can wait for the next Nobel lauded economic paper on derivatives.

  142. 142.

    muddy

    @Poopyman: Old wives tale. Plenty of black haired folks in Ireland pre-Armada. The original inhabitants were said to be dark, the very blond and ginger are from Vikings and Scots at a later date.

    There was much settlement from Iberia (Spain) in ancient times. Those few ships in the Armada did not change the phenotypes in Ireland in such a short time.

  145. 145.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Dee Loralei:

    Terrific! Saturday night work for you? Email SiubhanDuinne (at) gmail (dot) com with your thoughts and phone # and I’ll send you mine and we can all plan a meetup. Besides you and eclare, are there other Memphians who’d like to get together?

  146. 146.

    Calouste

    @p.a.: Switzerland was occupied by France during the Napoleonic era, so no. And in any case, they didn’t have full suffrage until the 1970s or 80s, when the last canton finally allowed women the vote.

    All that talk about 300 year old democracies isn’t relevant anyway, as the oldest democracy in the world is New Zealand, which has had universal suffrage since 1893.

  150. 150.

    Paul in KY

    @Technocrat: OK. Guess whomever invented napalm maybe didn’t mean for the main application to be killing people (don’t know, that just popped into my head as an analogy).

    Interesting point.

  152. 152.

    SFAW

    @Hal:

    A trigger warning for that picture of Babs would have been helpful. My cats could sense her demonic nature, and they weren’t even looking at the screen.

  156. 156.

    Paul in KY

    @schrodinger’s cat: That was part of it. The taking over of Moodys, all part of a grand scheme to ‘cheat’ both the good & the bad, both the old investor & the new out of whatever they could get.

    And we ended up paying for a lot of that. I think they still are chucking about that & I want ever so much to wipe the smirks off their faces.

  160. 160.

    D58826

    @boatboy_srq: The GOP has officially announced no hearings and no vote on SCOTUS. Time for a recess appointment I think.

    In the meantime President Trump will prosecute (or is it persecute) the Clinton’s for all the crimes they have committed.

    Where is that asteroid when you need it.

  162. 162.

    TallPete

    @schrodinger’s cat: Unlike stocks and business debts, derivatives are a category of investments that provide no tangible value to the real economy like workers that sell their time to bosses so they can feed their families. Instead they are contracts between investors that function almost exactly like betting tickets at a race track: People who have contributed nothing to the business of raising and training horses get a chance to win or lose money based on how those horses perform in the near future. Supposedly they spread risk. How did we ever function without them? And even after the crash, the derivatives market was still 23 times larger than the GDP of the entire planet. ​

  165. 165.

    trollhattan

    @jeffreyw:
    Nice egret/heron/large flying thingie! (Evidently egrets are herons, so go figure.) I can usually only catch them standing still, as they tend to be shy in these parts. Am informed by birders this grab shot is of a fleeing green heron. Bird I.D. not a personal specialty. “Yes, definitely a bird.”

  166. 166.

    scav

    @p.a.: Another difference I remember learning about Catholic v. Protestant colonization is that in many ways, The Catholic focus on ritual made it a bit easier to cope, mouth the right words in the proper setting, sychretize Barbara et al into Shango or Ogun or Mictlantecuhtli, not so much a problem. Protestants, with their focus on inner faith often made more of a trash of native cultures.

  169. 169.

    Technocrat

    @TallPete:

    People who have contributed nothing to the business of raising and training horses get a chance to win or lose money based on how those horses perform in the near future

    What’s wrong with that? You’ve just described everyone who bets on a sports team. Are office pools inherently bad now?

  171. 171.

    Gravenstone

    @rikyrah: Nice gesture on the surface. But now the kid is likely to be subject to getting those same Air jordans stolen. Because status envy is still a thing, or something.

  172. 172.

    boatboy_srq

    @D58826: Trouble with a recess appointment is the high probability that Alito, Roberts and Thomas would likely sit out any hearings/decisions where the appointee was on the bench. I can’t see 4-1 decisions holding any more sway than the 4-4 decisions we’re likely to get now.

  173. 173.

    p.a.

    @D58826:

    Where is that asteroid when you need it.

    Relax a bit: it’s beginning to look like asteroid ground zero is the Republican party! Even a pessimist like me thinks sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling lalala won’t play well beyond the true believers.

    Ugh, I just don’t feel right. Someone kick me.

  174. 174.

    daveNYC

    @Technocrat: Eh…. depends on your definition of ‘legit’ and ‘boondoggle’ and whatnot. At the time, yes, the rating agencies gave them two thumbs up. And though there are examples where S&P and Moody’s gave them a free bump, a lot of the time their models legitimately pooped out an AAA (or other high quality) rating.

    Now the thing is, all their output was based on on the idea that a national housing collapse wouldn’t happen. So even if some section of the bonds became worthless, you’d still have enough good stuff to cover the interest payments on the bonds (or coupons, whatever you want to call it).

    So on the one hand, yeah, legit AAA ratings. On the other hand, obvious bullshit, because one of the key assumptions was ‘this bad thing will never happen’. Basically they were rated AAA because there was an assumption that the value of the underlying mortgage would never go down. That’s way off in ‘assume a can-opener/spherical cow’ land.

  175. 175.

    Gravenstone

    @Punchy: Been wondering something similar myself. My guess would be an immediate and deafening Republican demand at all levels that the ghost of Robert Bork be seated immediately, forgoing even the appearance of a confirmation hearing.

  179. 179.

    trollhattan

    @Paul in KY:
    Thanks! For the focus I can thank the camera AF, and checking the EXIF the shutter speed was 1/4000, which can usually do the trick. “Back in the day” it would have taken phenomenal luck to catch something like that.

  180. 180.

    Russ

    University of Houston Offers Teachers Helpful Tips
    For How to Not Get Murdered

    Beginning Aug. 1, Texans who legally own guns (so, all of them)
    will be able to carry their concealed weapons on the campuses
    of the state’s public universities. Some faculty at the University
    of Houston appear concerned over what the new law might mean
    for their safety

    ·Be careful discussing sensitive topics

    ·Drop certain topics from your curriculum

    ·Not “go there” if you sense anger

    ·Limit student access off hours

    “Be careful out there”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmg86CRBBtw

  181. 181.

    Steve in the ATL

    @CaseyL:

    I’m at home, waiting for an insurance adjuster to take a look at the damage on my car from the last time it was stolen (twice! within 2 months! – I use a Club all the time now)

    Where the hell do you live?

  182. 182.

    dance around in your bones

    The last day we were in our favorite blue house in Baja on the beach, a huge! white egret (as tall as me! 5’6″, really true!) landed outside my kitchen window in the backyard.My dog about had a cow,gazing at it in disbelief. Us, too! Seemed a fitting last experience in the Camp Runamuck HQ .
    Yes, a total non sequitur for your delectation.???
    (Now if I could get “comments” to work, I might, ya know….”comment” more.grrr)

  183. 183.

    boatboy_srq

    @Russ:

    ·Be careful discussing sensitive topics
    ·Drop certain topics from your curriculum
    …
    ·Limit student access off hours

    In other words, “don’t teach.”

  184. 184.

    ? Martin

    @daveNYC: I think the ratings were based on something else. When banks were originating loans and then holding them, there was a vested interest in accurately reporting the origination data. After all, the bank was on the hook themselves if it went south.

    Once it became easy to sell off the mortgages (easier than Fannie/Freddie) then the banks could originate far more than they could hold, and that’s when the origination business got spun out to brokers. The brokers had no skin in the loan – once it was sold it as off their hands. And the broker businesses were so lightweight that even if it did blow up, they’d just fold the company and spin up a new one, often in the same set of offices. You can’t do that with banks.

    So out of efficiency we broke a system that had a decent set of checks and balances – ones that the ratings agencies (foolishly) depended on, and it came at a time when the volume of loan origination and sales were skyrocketing meaning that they were spending even less attention to the details.

    The problem with the financial collapse attempts to point fingers is that you need to point to almost everyone, but the burden of the blame should land at those at the top that should have had the perspective and room to operate to see this problem developing and shut it down. That never happened.

  185. 185.

    WarMunchkin

    Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s statement on Obama’s new plan strongly suggests the calculus hasn’t change one bit.

    “After seven years, President Obama has yet to convince the American people that moving Guantanamo terrorists to our homeland is smart or safe,” Ryan writes.

    There has been so much wingularity-worthy political news today that my entire body has been starting to slowly smolder with rage. But why, why, why are we allowing these folks to get away with calling people at Guantanamo Bay terrorists?

    They are, objectively, not charged with any crime. For over a decade now.

  187. 187.

    Brachiator

    @Russ:

    Beginning Aug. 1, Texans who legally own guns (so, all of them)
    will be able to carry their concealed weapons on the campuses
    of the state’s public universities. Some faculty at the University
    of Houston appear concerned over what the new law might mean
    for their safety

    Brings a whole new meaning to the term, “trigger words“

  188. 188.

    J R in WV

    @Germy:

    I have always loved “Key Largo”. We lived in Key West 1971-72 while I was in the USN, and K W was then just a shrimp boat port, not the tourist infested Cruise Ship magnet it is today.

    Seeing Key Largo is time travel to a long ago and far away Key West for me.

    And the cast is perfect for the screenplay. And better for being B&W. The scene of Edward G Robertson in the bathtub with a fan trying to cool off, so genuine. We never had AC in key West, and lived through it somehow.

  190. 190.

    p.a.

    @boatboy_srq:Syllabus:
    The NRA History of Western Civilization
    The Second Amendment and its Addendum/Constitution
    From My Cold Dead Hand: A Reexamination of Civil Liberty Through Fear and Intimidation.

  192. 192.

    dance around in your bones

    Es un milagro ! Los “commentarios” funciono! No puedo creerlo !

    ( it’s a miracle! The “comments” worked! I can’t believe it ! )

    See, I’m a googletranslator in my alternate life. Sneaky, No?

  193. 193.

    Paul in KY

    @WarMunchkin: Don’t let it get you down. You knew they’d have a cow about this, all for trying to score some political points.

    On an aside, ‘Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’! Jeezus, wonder what Joe Cannon would have thought of this pipsqueak?

  195. 195.

    Paul in KY

    @J R in WV: Loved Key Largo when I was stationed in Homestead. Used to go down to John Pennekamp State Park at least once a month.

    Pro tip: Don’t pick up what looks like a bright yellow/orange ‘rock’. It is not a rock.

  197. 197.

    Steve in the ATL

    @WarMunchkin:

    But why, why, why are we allowing these folks to get away with calling people at Guantanamo Bay terrorists?

    They are, objectively, not charged with any crime. For over a decade now.

    Hillary hasn’t been charged with a crime and she’s a terrorist.

    Sorry, meant to post that at breirbart.

  198. 198.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    this is a good question …

    Simon Maloy ‏@ SimonMaloy 10m10 minutes ago
    what happened to Trump surrogate Sarah Palin

  200. 200.

    ? Martin

    @TallPete:

    Unlike stocks and business debts, derivatives are a category of investments that provide no tangible value to the real economy like workers that sell their time to bosses so they can feed their families. Instead they are contracts between investors that function almost exactly like betting tickets at a race track: People who have contributed nothing to the business of raising and training horses get a chance to win or lose money based on how those horses perform in the near future. Supposedly they spread risk. How did we ever function without them? And even after the crash, the derivatives market was still 23 times larger than the GDP of the entire planet. ​

    Derivatives are an incredibly broad class of investments. A LOT of derivative investments are hedges against sudden unexpected rises or falls in the market. I’ve used them personally in this role and they quite often are a contract between two investors that have different risk concerns. If I’m holding a stock position and want to hedge against losses, I can take out a put contract on those shares that guarantees my right to sell them at a given price. If the price falls below that, my sale price is guaranteed. Costs me a bit to do that, though. If the price goes up, I can sell at the higher price. If it goes up enough, it’ll cover the cost of the put.

    The person on the other side of that contract is making a similar hedge, but in the opposite direction. In isolation they are risky bets, but when paired with a held security, they’re very safe and responsible. When not paired, they can carry unlimited downside risk – potentially unbounded losses.

    These tools can provide real benefit to the economy by blunting the effects of rapid market swings. Tools that allow for a smoothing of market prices and demand are generally good for workers as they provide for predictability. But derivatives can also go the other way and increase volatility – or at least profit from that volatility, particularly really short-term volatility.

    Simply rolling derivatives under a tax scheme that penalized short-term investing by having either transactional fees or a sliding cap gains rate that was inversely and non-linearly proportional to how long the security was held would go a very long way to incentivizing the good derivative action over the bad.

  201. 201.

    gvg

    @Betty Cracker: Apparently the first UF heard was for meat but they are branching into dairy. What I find interesting is the UF professor who started the herd also wanted the water buffalo for aquatic weed control of our waterways….which makes a kind of sense. When I was a kid we also had more of a water weed problem for boating I think. I think we are getting water hyacinth under control. I wonder about elodea. that stuff was awful when my dad took us out skying as a kid in the 70’s. used to clog up the propeller if you didn’t see the sargasso like areas in the lakes.

  203. 203.

    boatboy_srq

    @p.a.: Sad, but true.

    @SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel: We do oft think alike, no? All I am wondering is how many faculty who abide by those recommendations would be able to keep their jobs. And you’ll notice that the default assumption boils down to “don’t challenge uneducable ammosexuals, Sovereign Citizens and the like because you might get shot” as if that were somehow normal: yet dollars to doughnuts the same schools faced with some Blah kid with a water pistol or some student in turban or hijab would go completely b#tsh!t and call for the National Guard to come protect them because Those People™ are dangerous.

  204. 204.

    boatboy_srq

    @p.a.: Watch for some wingnut to take this and start squawking about how those EEEVIL Yurpeans are seeding US candy stores with plastique IEDs and destroying good Ahmurrrrcan choklit in the process.

  205. 205.

    Paul in KY

    @boatboy_srq: The big thing is that they will let people have guns in the dorms. If their dorms are anything like my dorms (especially Freshman year), there will be an accidental or not-so-accidental shooting by Halloween.

    Wonder if they (college administration) could ban ammo? The guns themselves are allowed, but ammo is forbidden. I’m thinking they wouldn’t have the balls to try that.

  208. 208.

    Technocrat

    @daveNYC:

    I hear you man, I just push back somewhat on the “obvious” bullshit part. Statisticians tend to take as granted that everyone involved understands the assumptions behind a particular model. The biggest assumption, of course, is that conditions in the future will generally resemble conditions in the past. But the second biggest one is probably that a large group of events behave independently.

    The housing crisis broke both of those implicit assumptions at once. It’s easy to see how that could have caught even well-meaning people flat-footed.

    Honesty, the theory has a certain elegance. One mortgage is too risky to fairly price it. A hundred million mortgages reduce that risk by a factor of, I dunno, 10 thousand? Now you “know” how many are going to fail in a given period, so you “know” how to price the risk. Until your models shit the bed.

    I personally view the whole thing as more Eggheads Gone Wild, than Sauron Sells Derivatives. Except the NINJA loans and such…those seem fairly premeditated.

  211. 211.

    J R in WV

    @daveNYC:

    You guys talking about derivatives, short sales, rating agencies, etc. You need to read “The Big Short” or watch the movie. For a movie about econ it’s really good. You get to see the folks attempting to create a financial instrument that will allow them to short the mortgages being written interview bonding agency employees who evaluate the mortgage-backed securities.

    You get to hear the rating agency employees say they have no choice but to award AAA ratings, or the issuers of the instruments will go to the other rating agency, and they will lose their jobs.

    You get to see the would-be, gonna-be short sellers interviewing a stripper in FL who owns 5 different houses, makes no payments, just keeps getting another loan on the same houses.

    Amazing read/movie. The worst part is that there are still no real rules about rating agencies.

  215. 215.

    daveNYC

    @J R in WV: I’ll have to get the book. Smartest Guys in the Room, When Capitalism Failed, and Barbarians at the Gate are all good reads.

    I get that there’s an issue with coming up with a risk model that tries to incorporate crisis type events when all the correlations go to 1. What’s annoying is that the rating agencies were continuing to push out high ratings even as the housing bubble was becoming painfully obvious (to anyone who didn’t have a vested interest in not seeing it).

  216. 216.

    SFAW

    @Paul in KY:

    Brachiator beat you! Nyah nyah nyah, pppbbbpptt!

    Brachiator’s in a different time zone, which is how he/she beat me to it.

    I fart in your general direction.

  217. 217.

    SFAW

    @Paul in KY:

    Pro tip: Don’t pick up what looks like a bright yellow/orange ‘rock’. It is not a rock.

    OK, I’ll bite … what is it? Ordnance? Or something living, easily annoyed, and poisonous?

  219. 219.

    No One You Know

    @p.a.: Good for you! I’m not always sure I can tell them apart; how can I tell the “square head” without anything in real-time to compare it to?

    I was thrilled to see a northern harrier showing off the other day. I thought it was too early to be courting.

  220. 220.

    No One You Know

    @rp: I’ve revisited my thoughts about that after seeing the closing scenes of The Big Short.

    The tale of the frog jumping into a pot of water, not noticing the increasing heat, seems apropos.

  223. 223.

    Paul in KY

    @SFAW: It is a kind of coral, known as ‘fire coral’. Looks like a rock with holes in it, sorta like a sponge. Can be squeezed. I was warned in general about it, but (at time) did not know that corals could look like rocks or sponges, thought they all looked like trees or anenomes.

    After about 15 mins, my palm began to itch really badly. Terrible itching feeling. Lasted for several hours. Pain not terrible, just really uncomfortable.

Comments are closed.